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Colonial pilots vetted AI tools for instruction; district emphasizes privacy and teacher training
Summary
District technology staff demonstrated Khan Academy’s Cognigo and other vetted AI tools, described a teacher survey on AI attitudes and stressed data‑privacy guardrails and interoperability before broader rollout.
Colonial School District technology staff showed the board how the district is piloting and vetting artificial‑intelligence tools intended for classrooms, emphasizing student privacy, interoperability with existing systems and teacher training.
Why it matters: School staff said AI can speed routine tasks and supplement instruction but cautioned that improper rollout could reduce rigor or create privacy and ethical risks.
The district has adopted Cognigo (a Khan Academy tool) at William Penn and activated student access in January, Joe Gleason told the board. He described Cognigo’s student‑facing tutor and a teacher dashboard for lesson design, rubrics and targeted feedback. “It just helps her break down the math questions unlike anything else that she's ever been, you know, worked with before,” Gleason said, quoting a student who used the tool.
Technology staff said they follow Delaware Department of Education guidance and federal student‑data privacy requirements when selecting tools. “None of the tools that we recommend train the larger model, which means the data never leaves Colonial,” a staff member said during questions about security.
The district surveyed roughly 72 teachers to gauge attitudes; the average response to a question asking whether benefits outweigh challenges was 2.6 on a 1‑5 scale, staff said, with high‑school teachers generally more skeptical because of concerns about academic integrity and writing instruction.
Pilot tools include writing coaches, digital SAT supports, Canva AI features in elementary classrooms and Google’s Gemini for teacher use (Gemini was limited to teachers in the district rollout). Staff stressed a layered approach: student tools with strict guardrails and teacher tools that support lesson design, grading automation and personalization. They also emphasized prompt‑writing as a new staff skill.
Board members asked about safeguards against harmful prompts and inappropriate content; staff said school‑grade tools block unsafe requests and guide users back to safe responses. The district plans additional professional development, including sessions on prompting for educators.
Ending: Staff advised the board that AI is being rolled out incrementally with an emphasis on interoperability so tool outputs can feed gradebooks and reporting systems without duplicating work.
