As artificial intelligence (AI) took the world by storm nearly a year ago. Home educators took notice and began to wonder what this would mean. While many traditional schoolteachers initially expressed fear that their students would use this emerging technology to cheat, homeschooling parents often took a different approach, considering how AI could be used to support their child’s learning. So, how can we use AI to teach our children?
Using AI to Teach
If you think about it, we’ve been using AI as an educational tool for years. Calculators, spelling/grammar check tools and devices like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa have become regular fixtures in homeschooling. Newer AI tools, like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and countless others, are simply the newest version. With these “generative AI” tools, our children can receive personalized assistance when they need tutoring, practice problems in math and outlines to help them organize a paper. AI can even help parents provide feedback on assignments and recommendations for the next instructional steps.
Benefits of AI in Homeschooling
Modern AI tools can’t replace your current curricula or provide all the instruction your children may need. However, they can help tailor learning experiences. Imagine teaching multiple children using the novel, “Johnny Tremaine,” by Esther Forbes. While some children can read the actual book, AI can summarize it at a lower reading level for younger children. Then, the entire family can discuss the book together!
Considerations and Challenges
The biggest concern educators in all settings have expressed about AI is that it will be used for cheating. (That’s what they said about the calculator, too, when it was first introduced!) Yes, AI can be used to cheat. However, by setting boundaries and supervising your child’s education as homeschoolers do, the risk of that is diminished. Instead, children can use AI as a tool to help them learn problem- solving, self-directed learning and critical thinking skills as they read, reflect on and use the information they receive from the AI.
It’s also important to note that writing assignments completed by AI are actually pretty easy to detect. There are free tools online that will do that for you, or you may simply begin to notice words, phrases and sentence structures that repeat themselves when they’re used. One way to use this to your child’s advantage is to allow them to ask AI to write something, copy it into a Microsoft Word document, and then use track changes to edit and revise it.
Will You, or Won’t You?
As with most homeschooling curricular options, it will ultimately be up to you, the homeschooling parent, to choose to use or ban AI from your instruction. If you choose to use it, take time to play around with it, learn to use it and identify what it can and can’t do for you and your family. Then, discuss the ethical and responsible use of AI with your children, setting boundaries along the way.
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