Research Kick-off!


This week, I kicked off the research for our Genius Hour project. I was lucky to find some really good resources this week that aligned perfectly with my driving question.  The first was a video from Deidre Harrington and her presentation at the Ontario Teachers Federation (OTF) on May 2, 2024.  In this presentation, Deidre provides her perspectives on Generative AI use in the classroom from an educator's perspective.  Her presentation provided a foundational overview of Generative AI, the type of uses that teachers can leverage AI for in their day-to-day activities with some clear examples, and a few areas that she is makes sure to steer clear from for ethical reasons.

A couple of the pitfalls that she calls out for AI included environmental and labor ethics, along with algorithmic bias (Harrington 2025).  On the functionality side, she outlined several examples such as writing and formatting documents, assistance with spreadsheets, presentations, image generation, article and book summaries, and email (Harrington 2025).  The three areas that she was adamant about steering clear on for ethical reasons were in the use of personal information when adding content to the Gen AI tool, especially children's personal information (names, OEN, address, etc.) (Harrington 2025). She also suggested that AI should not be used as the 'grader' for assessments and evaluation, as a teacher's human insight is required to validate the student learning (Harrington 2025).  Also, due to the bias inherent in the models currently, she would also steer away from using the technology for role-playing identity and not use AI to 'pretend' to be historical figures (Harrington 2025).

The next article I researched was from the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO).  They took a stance that education is relational, and that AI must be a complement to human processes and not a replacement. The areas which the article focused on as ethical and policy concerns were around algorithmic bias, worker surveillance of teachers, de-professionalization of the profession, and commercial exploitation of student/teacher data (ETFO 2024). They also mention four key principles that educators and boards should follow in their use of AI (ETFO 2024):

  1. Transparency and Explainability: Can you explain how the AI got to its answer?

  2. Privacy and Data Protection: Is the student's identity safe?

  3. Addressing Biases: Does the tool promote fairness?

  4. Human Agency: Does the teacher remain the final decision-maker?

This week's research provided a lot of information, and food for thought as to how I will want to present my final Genius Hour product.  It is clear that this is an important concept in the world of education, and we are at the forefront of defining how we will move forward in partnership with this technology. For next week, I want to create a set of interview questions that will help to distill and understand what teachers in the field are feeling about this technology, and how they might be using it today.

References
Harrington, D. (2025, May 2). Enhancing Classroom Practices with AI. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YKxHDTjvRk

Artificial Intelligence in education: Advice for members. Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO). (2024, November 15). https://www.etfo.ca/about-us/member-advice/prs-matters-bulletins/artificial-intelligence-in-education-advice-for-members

Gemini. Create image related to AI in Education for Productivity and Ethics for my Brock University Genius Hour project. (2026, January 23). https://gemini.google.com/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Genius Hour Project - Week 4!

Image
Thank you for joining me on my Genius Hour journey for week 4.  This week, I focused on continuing my research on AI regulations at the federal level, and how the future of AI is being guided.  I also took the time to create my teacher interview questions in preparation for next week.  I found this week's deep dive to be incredibly interesting, and I think you will enjoy learning about the information I was able to gather during my research. I started my research with the Government of Canada, looking into the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) (Government of Canada 2025). As of today, the government does not have a formal set of regulations around AI and its use.  However, they have created this framework as part of Bill C-27, the Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022 (Government of Canada 2025). The framework outlines how the government intends to work through a public discussion and assessment phase before bringing in legislation.  They had antici...
Read more

Welcome

Image
     Hello everyone, and welcome to my Genius Hour blog! I am excited to get this project underway and experience the creative process first-hand. I can see how Genius Hour projects help students to take control of their learning, providing the 'spark' necessary to drive them forward in the learning process. For my project, the Genius Hour question is: "How can teachers leverage the benefits of Generative AI to help support productivity while upholding professional ethics?"      The reason I chose this driving question is that Generative AI is a very new technology that is sweeping the business world. With its use, there are many various moral and ethical debates currently taking place in both the public and private spheres. This technology will have a massive impact on society in the coming years. In the absence of clear direction from authorities on its use, I believe that it is in the best interest of the teaching profession to understand this technology...
Read more

The end of the road

Image
Well, this is the end of the road for my Genius Hour Project and my final blog post.  I wanted to thank everyone who followed my journey.   As I finalized my Genius Hour  product , I completed the final piece of my research.  Last week, I launched a survey to Ontario based teachers within their Reddit channel.  The survey was a success, gathering 45 responses over 7 days.  The findings were quite interesting, showing that while 86.6% of respondents felt confident in their understanding of Generative AI, 60% felt that their school board did not present clear guidelines on its use. There were also some very good suggestions as to its use (create rubrics, generating make-up tests), and where teachers draw the line (no personal information, never used to grade assignment).  I was able to use this information to help prioritize the valuable pieces of AI against the items that AI should never be used for. Below are the snapshots of the responses I recei...
Read more