AI in the classroom: In this Lehigh Valley school district, a chatbot is aiding English learners. It’s opening up new possibilities for students – The Morning Call
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It started with history teacher Caitlyn Wilder telling the AI who to be.
“You are a friendly, expert research assistant,” she wrote. Then she told the chatbot its goal — help 10th grade students choose a topic — and provided parameters: only translate materials if a student asks for help.
By the time her students sat down to learn about 1950s culture, their SchoolAI-powered chatbot was primed to assist, prompting them to narrow down their areas of interest into topics of inquiry and offering real-time translation on request.
As schools across the country navigate the use of artificial intelligence, some Lehigh Valley districts have turned to the technology to meet student needs. The chatbot at use in Wilder’s room is a Northern Lehigh School District project. In Parkland, the district is piloting Google’s Gemini AI platform. Catasauqua Area School District has updated its Digital Citizenship curriculum to explore the use of AI.
The Northern Lehigh chatbot was developed by the district’s technology integration specialist with input from English as a Second Language teachers and students. It can translate text, answer questions and provide language practice.
“This allows students to build confidence and language skills while keeping pace with grade-level expectations,” Assistant Superintendent Tania Stoker said in an email. “Looking ahead, we are also exploring gamified activities to make language practice more engaging, especially for our newest learners.”
Its customizable functions work well for students at all levels, Stoker said.
“For example, with an Arabic-speaking student, we were able to connect academic material to familiar places and cultural references, as well as personal interests like soccer, to make learning more meaningful,” Stoker said. “For newcomers, the chatbot can start by fully translating text into a student’s native language, and then gradually transition into more English simply by adjusting the prompts.”
Those translation abilities became increasingly important as the district saw more newcomers entering its schools, and the number of languages it needed to support grew far beyond Spanish to include Arabic, Punjabi and Haitian Creole.
“That challenge was really the impetus for exploring a tool that could work with any student, no matter what language they spoke or what background they came with,” Stoker said. “That’s where AI became especially helpful. It allows us to provide support in real time, in all classrooms, across all of our multilingual learners, and it gives us the flexibility to adapt as our student population shifts.”
Northern Lehigh has seen significant growth in the number of English learners it supports. In January 2018, the district had about 15 students in its English Language Development Program. Now there are 57 students in the program, with another 15 in the four-year monitoring period after exiting services.
About 20% of the district’s English learners are newcomers to the United States. They collectively speak seven languages and hail from 13 countries.
English learners are “potentially very disconnected from the school environment,” said Scott Pyne, director of educational technology, curriculum and instruction, and the chatbot has “the ability to engage students that right now have a diverse set of languages.”
Wilder remembers the moment a Haitian Creole speaker arrived in her classroom last school year. Without any other way to gauge the student’s reading ability, she turned to the chatbot to generate a fourth grade level text as a starting point.
“If I wouldn’t have had that, he would have just sat there,” Wilder said.
It takes less than a minute for Wilder to prompt the chatbot to adapt instructional materials into another language. Although adding images is outside its capability, the tool has saved her hours of prep time, she said.
Seeing unfamiliar languages on other students’ worksheets has also sparked conversation, Wilder said, recalling how students began expressing curiosity about their classmates’ experiences and cultural traditions.
The translation support allowed once quiet students to engage.
“It gets them feeling like they can have a conversation without feeling embarrassed,” Wilder said.
Programming the chatbot to only provide translation on request forces students to practice their self-advocacy skills, Wilder said.
“Sometimes they are so afraid of saying, ‘I need help,’ ” she said.
As students progress, many begin rejecting the translation support, Wilder said. That’s when she knows the chatbot has done its job.
Northern Lehigh built its chatbot by customizing the functions of SchoolAI, an artificial intelligence platform built specifically for education. The district’s technology team creates interactive “spaces” in response to teacher requests. Teachers can then adjust the tool further before allowing student access.
There are three basic modes. In the first, the teacher inputs specific content and activities, such as a text and reading comprehension questions, and students work through the material.
There’s also a tutor mode in which the chatbot asks students what they are learning and what they’re struggling with and then guides students through related content.
Another model allows students to hear and record audio to provide more active practice with speaking and listening skills.
Beyond assisting English learners, the district sees potential for expanding chatbot use, with special education students being the likely next group of testers.
“We see a future of radical personalization,” Pyne said.
There are safety features built into the chatbot. Teachers can see all the chats, and the software also issues alerts if student responses are deemed dangerous or concerning.
Data is stored with SchoolAI and generated content is not shared with other users, Pyne said.
The tool has the potential to be used in all grade levels, from kindergarten to 12th grade, technology integration specialist Amanda Bariana said. She’s new to the role this year and is building off the work Blasia Dunham did to launch the chatbot.
Bariana is focused on onboarding teachers. Once all teachers in the district’s English Learner Development Program are comfortable using the tool, she will be able to experiment with additional use cases.
Bariana encouraged other districts to explore how chatbots can support teachers and students.
“Just getting started is the biggest hurdle,” Bariana said.
Reporter Elizabeth DeOrnellas can be reached at edeornellas@mcall.com.
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