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State Board hears AI primer from Dr. Jake Steele as start of learning series
Summary
Dr. Jake Steele gave a classroom-focused introduction to artificial intelligence at the Kansas State Board of Education meeting, urging the board to anchor AI use to instruction and adopt a measured, tool‑by‑tool approach.
Dr. Jake Steele led a learning-session presentation on artificial intelligence before the Kansas State Board of Education on Sept. 10, framing AI as a domain of study and urging the board to prioritize instruction-first decisions for school use.
Steele told the board, “Our vision is to lead the world in the success of each student,” and said any decision to use AI must be judged by whether it advances that primary goal. “If it cannot, we have no time for it,” he said. He gave the board four principles for evaluating AI in schools: instruction first; use purpose-built tools for the job; the framework of adoption matters; and AI at its core is a pattern-recognition system.
Steele displayed a live demonstration with a chatbot to show how the tools work and described several configuration choices—disabling “improve the model for everyone” and turning off voice/audio data sharing—to illustrate privacy settings. He said he pays for a version of the tool he demonstrated to control data and turned off features that would let the vendor reuse his prompts.
The presentation emphasized pedagogy and the science of learning. Steele warned against “a laissez‑faire approach” in which districts focus on device procurement rather than how devices and AI tools are used. He recommended purpose-built, pedagogically-aligned tools rather than using a single general-purpose chatbot for all tasks, and urged teaching “prompt engineering” as a skill so users can request alternative perspectives from models that tend to be agreeable.
Board members and other attendees asked questions about security, contracts and the practical classroom implications. Steele said contracts and privacy settings are important and that he would bring legal and contract experts to future sessions to explain what to look for in vendor agreements.
Steele proposed continuing the series with future sessions on public perception, research about effects on learning and responsible-adoption frameworks. He repeatedly framed the sessions as “learning” rather than policy decisions: the goal is to make board members and local educators informed consumers of AI.
