REBOOT Jr. Hosts “AI in Education” Summit
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On Wednesday, March 26, REBOOT Jr., a Middle School committee, hosted the “AI in Education” Summit. Students and educators from the Ethical Community Charter School (Jersey City), the Willow School (Gladstone, New Jersey), Morristown Beard (Morristown, New Jersey), Fontbonne Hall Academy (Brooklyn), and Kent Place met to discuss the evolving role of artificial intelligence in the classroom.
The summit was planned and facilitated by the Kent Place student leaders. They began the day with an explanation of REBOOT Jr. and its goal: to empower the middle school community to ethically explore technology and social media. They then facilitated a discussion of a case study that featured an ethical dilemma about using ChatGPT for a classroom assignment, focusing on both the benefits and the harms of using AI tools in school environments.
The group then heard from guest speaker Ashley Parker, a junior at Morristown Beard who is one of the leaders of her high school’s chapter of REBOOT. She explored the impact of AI on cyberbullying, prompting students to think about how deepfakes, or explicit, non-consensual AI-generated content, manipulate images and recordings to do harm to others. She concluded her presentation by asking students to think about how they can prevent the risks that AI poses and instead make it useful in our communities.
The day concluded with a pizza lunch and the crafting of Conversation Cards, resources the Ethics Institute at Kent Place uses to prompt students to talk about ethical issues. Each Conversation Card contains a short case study or a story with an ethical conflict at its center. Students created these cards at their tables as they broadened their thinking about the ethics of AI in their schools.
“This first-ever REBOOT Jr. Summit was inspiring,” said Karen Rezach, Director of the Ethics Institute. “The level at which the students participated in meaningful conversations about the use of artificial intelligence in their schooling demonstrated the urgent need for educators to involve students in these discussions. Middle school–aged students will be tremendously impacted by AI in their lifetimes; therefore, it’s important that we ask them to think about the ethical implications of AI not only now, in their education, but also later.”
“Watching our REBOOT Jr. students lead the charge at our inaugural summit, navigating complex discussions about AI in education with such poise and creativity, was inspiring. They didn’t just participate; they facilitated and ignited a passion for responsible AI use in our classrooms. The Conversation Cards they crafted with other schools will serve as a lasting testament to their hard work and the powerful impact of student-led learning,” said Alicia Regnault, the educational technology and support specialist who advises REBOOT Jr.