MCPS officials and staff development teachers hosted training sessions for teachers to help them understand how to use artificial intelligence (AI) in August. This move comes as AI enters new fields for applications.
Outside the county’s recent introduction of AI tools, other schools have adopted the use of AI for education. Duke University recently launched a pilot program that gives students free access to ChatGPT-4o and also introduced its own AI platform, DukeGPT. Additionally, Oxford University gave students access to ChatGPT Edu.
World History and Human Geography teacher Jacob East participated in the training and said the county is working to master educational AI.
“The county is helping teachers essentially learn to not just embrace it, but also to use it as a tool to help enhance the educational classroom experience,” East said.
Generative AI has become notorious for enabling plagiarism and academic dishonesty, sparking debate over how to handle possible cheating without the sole use of sometimes unreliable AI detectors. Turn-it-in, an AI detection tool, found that out of 200 million assignments processed last year, 1 in 10 assignments were at least partly AI-generated, while 3 out of 100 were mostly AI-generated.
Media specialist Alexis Mazur said she has already begun experimenting with AI tools.
“Canva for teachers has been very helpful as well, because slide shows can be made more visually appealing,” Mazur said. “They’re still putting in their information, but it can be more engaging, visually to staff and students, as well.”
MCPS has not yet outlined specific policies for student use. Math teacher Anne Chiasson, who helped lead AI training this summer, said she used it to save time in the classroom.
“I wanted a two-question short quiz. So I gave the questions to AI and said, ‘Can you come up with three other versions with similar equations and different numbers?’ ” Chiasson said. “It creates problems much faster than I would.”
The training sessions introduced AI models for teachers to experiment with, such as Goblin Tools, Mazur said. According to her, teachers can use it to break down assignments into smaller tasks to help students work more productively.
East said he uses AI to create more unique lessons.
“I wanted to find ways to use AI in a fun way that enhances the classroom, so I made songs in parody or comedy in different music styles,” East said. “I plan on using them weekly to do recaps from the previous week when we return to school on Mondays, and also to incorporate what we’re going to do through the week.”
While the future of AI in the classroom remains uncertain, research shows its presence in education continues to grow. As of 2025, experts value the AI-education at $7 billion and project it to exceed $112.3 billion by 2034.
Mazur says there’s a learning curve since AI isn’t always effective for everyone.
“Try it out to see how it goes,” Mazur said. “See if it can be useful to you. If it’s not, then it’s not, and you can keep doing what you’re doing.”
