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What is AI?

What do I need to think about?

How can I use it to plan and prep?

How can I teach students about it?

What do I need to think about?

Before incorporating AI into your teaching practice, consider the following four questions and their components to ensure effective and responsible use. You should also consider how artificial Intelligence tools could impact the psychological and emotional well-being of students and staff. Avoid over-reliance on technology and ensure it complements human interaction and pedagogy.

 Safety and Privacy

Protecting students and yourself is always a priority. 

  • Only use AI tools authorized by your school board.
  • Avoid platforms that store or gather data. 
  • NEVER input confidential and private information, such as names, employee or student numbers, grades, and dates of birth, into AI tools.
  • NEVER input Indigenous stories, traditions or knowledge. This information is sometimes sacred. Follow OCAP principles and respect Indigenous data sovereignty.
  • If using tools with students, ensure your students meet the required age limits and/or have explicit parental permission. Here is an example of an application permission form from EMSB that you may find helpful. 

AI Age restriction:

Pedagogical Intention

  • Technology can enhance or hinder learning. Consider the SAMR model and how the AI tool can enhance your practice.
  • If using AI to help generate lesson plans or assessments, double-check to ensure it is using the right source documents.

Informed Use & Environmental Impacts 

energy consumption grid - ai uses more energy than other search engines

Authorship Transparency & Validation

  • AI systems can sometimes hallucinate or make up resources. Teachers should model the use of fact-checking strategies and stress the importance that students use them.
  • Model and stress the importance of citing your sources, especially when using AI tools to generate content. Below is an example of how you can cite AI:

“The use of [insert name of AI system(s) and link] to [specific use of generative artificial intelligence]. The prompts used include [list of prompts]. The output from these prompts was used to [explain use].”

You may also want to check out these AI Attribution Icons. 

Equity and Access

  • Choose AI tools trained on diverse data to help minimize bias and discrimination
  • Ensure all students learn about AI technologies. Understanding how AI systems work will help prepare them to be global citizens. 
  • Discuss issues related to equity, access and AI with your students. Explore concepts like misinformation, misrepresentation, and dataset bias with your class.

Example discussion questions:

  • How can AI reflect or amplify societal biases?
    Why do diverse perspectives and data sets matter in AI development?

Parents may also have questions about AI and how it is or isn’t being used in schools. Here is a tip sheet for parents on TALKING TO KIDS ABOUT AI by Meta and MediaSmarts that may be useful if parents reach out to you looking for resources and information.

What about plagerism?

As AI tools become more accessible, concerns about student plagiarism are understandable. However, with thoughtful implementation, you can minimize risks while embracing AI’s benefits. Here are some strategies and considerations:

  • If students are allowed to use AI, you could ask them to submit their AI prompts or share their AI chat history at various stages of their work. This provides an opportunity for you to intervene and guide students if they need support using Generative AI. You can also model and encourage students to cite AI.
  • You may want to use in-class writing time for key assessment components where AI access is controlled.
  • While AI is good at identifying patterns and key themes, it finds cultural references and emotional reactions more difficult (Yadav, 2024). Assignments that require personal connections or the consideration of cultural references may be less impacted by AI usage.
  • Multi-stage projects where students periodically explain their reasoning to teachers or peers enable effective formative assessment while reducing AI misuse risks. These checkpoints allow teachers to monitor understanding, identify misconceptions, and ensure students demonstrate their own thinking rather than AI-generated work.”

Karen Kenny (2025) suggests focusing assessments on skills AI cannot replicate, like critical thinking, personal connection, and the application of knowledge to new contexts, rather than punishing students for using new and available technology.

Is it possible to reliably detect AI-written work?

Currently, no tools can reliably detect AI-generated text. AI detection tools often incorrectly indicate false positives and negatives. By using these services, student work is shared with external third parties, raising significant legal and ethical data privacy concerns.

External Resources

Do you have questions about copyright and Generative AI?  Check out the Genially below, which was created by the Comité des expertes sur le droit d’auteur.

Check out Google’s 1-page AI responsibility checklist for educators.