Learning about artificial intelligence

To keep Dallas ISD moving forward and team members attuned to the latest innovations, Library Media Services is offering a hands-on virtual learning series that will teach the ethical and meaningful use of Gemini AI to support teaching, learning, and everyday tasks.

The learning series—Wired Wednesdays–Gemini at Work—was created by Patricia Alvarado-Barnes, director of Library Media Services and member of the district’s artificial intelligence task force, which was created to study ways to responsibly integrate AI across all levels. Alvarado-Barnes also happens to be a skilled user of Gemini.

“It’s getting easier and easier to really use AI for everything—for translating, for reviewing your documents, editing your emails, brainstorming ideas,” she said.

Gemini AI is not the only resource open to everyone in the district. Turning to her monitor, Alvarado-Barnes pulled up Notebook LM, a research and note-taking tool built on Gemini AI. She uploaded a 300-page document and watched as the AI extracted the main ideas and supporting evidence in just seconds. Small pop-up windows, known as tooltips, appeared below the chat window, giving her the choice to convert the document into a podcast or a mind map.

“Notebook LM is super powerful, and it’s wonderful. If you’re going to college, you feed it all your information from your professor, and it will create a podcast,” she said.

Many people have concerns about artificial intelligence replacing jobs or human capability, but that isn’t what Gemini AI does at all, she said.

“People feared the internet when it came out, too,” Alvarado-Barnes said as she continued demonstrating how Gemini can take notes for the user, synthesize information, create spreadsheets, and even generate a budget variance analysis. All of its input and output, however, requires human presence, making it a tool, not a replacement.

“I don’t see it as a shortcut,” she said, “but as a way to enhance learning. I want to make sure our students and teachers don’t miss out on this.”

Even so, there are valid fears about artificial intelligence gathering information for sale, but Alvarado-Barnes put those to rest.

“It’s connected to our district, so it is not selling the information to someone else,” she said.

The district in fact reached a privacy agreement with Google, which prevents the search engine from selling what employees create through the use of Gemini AI to third parties.

“Unlike ChatGPT, where there is no privacy agreement with the district, using Gemini AI is as secure as using Google Drive,” she said.

But what about plagiarism?

“We’re having these training sessions to teach the responsible use of technology,” Alvarado-Barnes said.

Also, anything put into or produced by Gemini’s vast database will be kept there and cross-referenced by its algorithm, thus flagging users who commit plagiarism, she said.

Reading Language Arts classes are already using AI-powered grading tools to provide essay feedback for students and teachers.

Over the next few weeks, the district will launch pilot programs in select high schools to implement Gemini AI.