🤖 AI and cheating: 20 things to consider

📺 Free webinar: The “Just for Me” Classroom

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I’m teaming up with Learning Genie for a FREE webinar where I’ll show you how to personalize and localize learning using AI tools (without the tech headache). 💡

🎙 The “Just for Me” Classroom: Personalize and Localize Learning
🗓 When: Wednesday, May 22nd at 9:00 a.m. PDT
📍 Where: Online (link sent after you register!)

Why join?

• Discover how to create location-based, culturally relevant curriculum

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Whether you’re already geeking out on AI or just curious, this session is all about practical, engaging ideas that make learning more meaningful.

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🖐 40 sites for students with free time on their hands

We’re down to the last days of school. (Hooray! 🎉)

It’s prime time for students to say, “I’m done … what do I do now?”

I’ve always wanted to provide them with answers to that question — answers that still stimulate them academically. (You know, instead of saying, “If you’re done, then you’re done.”)

At the end of every semester, we share this post — 40 sites for students with free time on their hands.

It’s a collection of learning-focused sites that are fun — or are games — but still keep students thinking. Here are a few from the list:

• Free Rice — Answer questions to donate rice through the UN World Food Programme.

• City Guessr — A global guessing game where students watch videos, collect clues, and then try to guess on a map where they are.

• iCivics — A flashy twist on civics-related topics, puts a ton of resources in teachers’ hands and lets students play REALLY fun games.

• 5 Clue Challenge — Students watch these short videos. They get 5 clues to guess the animal, location or person.

• Dollar Street — Homes are sorted on Dollar Street by monthly income one end showing the poorest, the other the richest and everything in between. Click on any picture to view images and learn more about families around the world.

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

🤖 AI and cheating: 20 things to consider

It’s at the forefront of almost every AI conversation happening in schools today.

AI and cheating.

We want to know:

• How can I know for sure if students used AI? (Answer: We can’t.)

• How can we stop them from using AI outside of school? (Answer: We can’t.)

• How can we create assignments where students can’t use AI? (Answer: We can’t.)

It’s such a tricky, murky situation. We know that students are using it. We know that they’re trying to avoid classwork they don’t want to do.

But we also know that AI is going to be a big part of their future.

BUT … we also want them to think, to develop skills … to grow as human beings.

How in the world do we navigate all of that?

I’ve been leading workshops all over the United States about AI, cheating and academic integrity for more than two years.

I’ve participated in some encouraging conversations — and some tense ones! — about how to manage and navigate this situation and do right by students.

Today, I pulled together 20 thoughts I’ve had — 20 things I’d like educators like you to consider — related to what many are calling the “AI cheating situation.”

You can read the whole post (with all 20 considerations and discussion about each), but I pulled out a handful for you to check out below …

1. AI detectors are not the answer.

They’re wildly inaccurate. They don’t really detect when someone has used AI. And they’re biased against non-native English speakers. Please don’t use them.

3. You can’t always just “eyeball it” to know if students used AI.

Sometimes you can. When a student turns something in that’s WAY above what they’ve ever written, it’s clear. But when students use text humanizers and adversarial prompting to make it sound less like AI, it’s getting harder and harder to eyeball it. Don’t fall into that trap.

6. Be very, very careful with “go back to paper and pencil.”

It doesn’t help students understand when to use AI — and how to use it responsibly. (It just kicks the issue down the road for someone else — or to never really be addressed.) Plus, it removes accessibility features that tech provides when we don’t give access to tech.

7. Telling students “don’t use this” makes it look appealing.

When you say “you should never, ever use this”? It gets students’ attention (some students who didn’t even know it existed) — and makes them want to know why they shouldn’t be using it. And now the attention is on something you didn’t want the attention on.

12. When AI cheapens the answer, focus on the question.

AI tools like ChatGPT make it really easy to get answers to questions. Unfortunately, with the emphasis that traditional education puts on answers, this creates a huge problem for our status quo. A response? Focus on questions — asking great questions and analyzing the answers.

13. When AI cheapens the product, focus on the process.

AI is also really good at creating the final product of learning that students create. (Worksheets. Quizzes. Essays. Etc.) We want to use these artifacts of learning to see how much students have learned … to peer into their brains and see how they think. When AI cheapens this product, then let’s ask students to reflect on and discuss the process they used to learn.

16. Students need their teachers’ guidance on AI.

If we’re nervous about getting it wrong on AI and just avoid the issue, we’re likely doing our students a disservice. If we have at least tried out AI tools like ChatGPT, we can immediately see what we like and don’t like about using them in certain circumstance. Even that basic guidance can be helpful to students.

20. Focus on relevance and motivation.

If we’re going to put our time and energy into something, I don’t think it’s well spent on the AI cheating battle. It’s a battle that we will never win — and it takes the focus off learning. Instead, let’s double down on making learning relevant (to students’ interests and goals) AND student motivation (being crystal clear about the why).

Read all 20 in the post

That’s just a recap of eight important considerations from the post. You can read the whole thing — all 20 PLUS discussion about each of them — below.

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!