Goshen schools adopt Magic School AI, new classroom tablets and cameras for teachers

Mark Slagle, invited to give technology and communications updates, outlined a district technology package the board will make available to teachers this school year, including high-resolution document cameras, Wacom education tablets and an enterprise subscription to Magic School, an AI classroom platform. Slagle said the district built teacher-led “Technology Explorers” teams over the summer and will deliver two tiers of training next week: building-level sessions for beginners and centralized sessions for advanced users.

The presentation matters because the district ties the purchase and training to two goals: making classroom technology more usable for teachers and giving teachers safe, privacy-compliant AI tools that can automate time-consuming tasks. "We invested in Google as a platform with Gemini and then a a platform called Magic School," Slagle said, adding that the district secured data-privacy agreements with those vendors and that "they will never use our data to train their models." That was presented as the district's protection against improper student data use.

Slagle described hardware and software changes the district installed over the summer: a 65-inch AV panel and a computer at each classroom AV station; a detachable, high-resolution document camera for close-up classroom demonstrations; and a Wacom tablet that lets teachers move about the room and annotate any content on the classroom screen. "This is a way we can deliver it with our current hardware right now," he said of the tablet solution for buildings that do not have touch-enabled panels.

On AI, Slagle said the district surveyed staff about time-consuming tasks — creating instructional materials, differentiating instruction, adapting resources and writing documentation — then worked with Magic School to map tools to those needs. He demonstrated a Magic School worksheet generator that produces an introduction, multiple-choice and open-ended questions and an answer key; teachers verify and then push generated quizzes to Google Classroom. Slagle noted the platform also offers a student-facing mode in which teachers can choose which AI tools are available to students and review every student prompt in a teacher dashboard.

Board members asked about training format, access and safeguards. Slagle said students only get access to Magic School when a teacher grants it; teachers can also allow continual access for a classroom if they choose. He described the training as two sessions per teacher: a building-level beginner session and a centralized advanced session, with approximately two-plus hours of hands-on practice per teacher for the first rollout. "By the time they leave, they've had a good 2 plus hours of solid engagement with this platform, and they've actually generated some things that they're gonna be using," he said.

District staff also described summer work by technology interns and the TechX team to refurbish Chromebooks and prepare networks. Slagle said interns inspected ports and cleaned devices after discovering evidence of physical tampering; he called the total number of damaged devices "more than 20" but said it did not rise to the level that would trigger a large replacement purchase. The district purchased roughly 150 new Chromebooks this year and maintains an on‑shelf inventory target (this year described in presentation as about 250) to ensure loaner machines are available when students forget theirs.

The board did not take a vote on procurement or policy during the presentation. Slagle said the district will monitor platform usage through Magic School dashboards and identify power users to support wider adoption.