On Feb. 10, David Visnofsky, the Technology Integration Manager of the State College Area School District, announced the district’s new AI policy through StudentSquare. The announcement read: “We are pleased to share that the State College Area School District’s Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Education Policy, shaped by the Pennsylvania School Board Association (PSBA) and approved by the District’s Board of Directors, is now in effect. This policy aims to ensure the responsible and ethical use of artificial intelligence tools.”
The new AI policy is the perfect method to help students adapt to their changing world, as artificial intelligence is predicted to become more and more impactful to their future society. Many students are willing to adapt, including sophomore Ranya Ounaies Carpenter.
“I haven’t really experienced it with AI, but I would be open to it, cause you know, it’s just like, I feel like I should just try something new and see how it works,” Carpenter said.
A society with Artificial Intelligence will significantly change the demanded skills necessary to thrive, while shaping our way of living. According to Statistica, the [AI] market size is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2025-2030) of 27.67%.
One of the most useful, yet unknown, AI-related skills is prompt engineering. Prompt engineering is the skill of crafting the best instructions for Artificial Intelligence machines, in order to produce the best and/or most useful output; it is key to maximizing the utilization of the latest technologies. Not only is it great for regular interaction with AI in the future, this skill has become so demanded that there are job titles centered around this skill. According to ZipRecruiter, the average salary of a prompt engineer is $62,977 per year. This new IT AI policy can help students practice this skill, when making interactions with the allowed AI tools.
Social studies teacher Justine Kononov emphasized this growing importance. “I think if you are somebody who doesn’t use AI at all, you’re gonna be left behind…I think it can be a helpful tool. I think it can enhance teaching and I think it can enhance student learning,” Kononov said.
State High English teacher Kara Corman agreed. “I think that it is helpful for students to have a framework with which AI can be used,” she said.
However, the concern for students using AI to plagiarize their work is understandable. Sophomore Justina Wang related to this concern. “I could see how that’s hurtful to you, cause you know how many hours you’re spending on your essay and then someone can just use Chat GPT,” Wang said.
This is most likely the reason why IT keeps a maintained list of AI tools to be used. For example, ChatGPT is a popular AI application/website that is capable of writing entire pieces of work for students. As a result, ChatGPT is not in the list of approved AI tools on the public portal.
Teachers are well aware that this could be a potential problem that needs attention to. “It is important to be able to kind of navigate the systems that we have in place to be able to detect AI writing, and being able to know what the appropriate consequences are if we know a student has used AI,” Kononov said. Click here to view and potentially try out the list of approved AI tools, in the SCASD public portal.
