Counselor Edition: Two Counselors' Views On AI.
Bill Hancock and Jodi Foxx share thoughts about AI & its uses
Bill Hancock is the Senior Associate Dean of College Counseling at Cranbrook Kingswood High School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
Jodi Foxx is the Director of College Counseling at Charlotte Christian School in North Carolina.
I recently talked to them about AI in their schools, and how they were approaching AI in the realm of College Counseling.
Here are some edited snippets from those conversations.
Q: Your Overall Take on AI?
Jodi: I mean, my general opinion of AI is positive.
I think it can be a really valuable tool if it's used well, and that takes some training and experience.
So, it's not something that I think works easily immediately, right off the bat, but as we get into it and learn how to use it.
You know that you risk losing authenticity if AI is writing too much for you and you're depending on that too much.
And there's some concerns too about confidentiality and privacy .
But overall, my perspective is pretty positive.
Bill: I think we're on the cusp right now, of something big.
You know, I kind of equate this to when TI Graphing calculators came into the teaching world.
I was of that generation that fought back against them. No, we're going to use a slide rule!
But I obviously evolved, and and I think AI is kind of like that.
It's an incredibly powerful tool and I think it's in its nascent stages of development.
So is it ready for prime time? I don't think it is quite yet.
But it does some wonderful things.
Q: Your Experiments with AI?
Jodi: I did use it when I sat down to write my letters of recommendation.
I started out by using it and realized quickly that I don't really know how to use it well.
Trying to use it the first few times, it was giving me drafts that were just not my style, and not close to what I was trying to produce.
It became easier just to write the letter myself without the help of AI.
Although I will say there were a couple of students for whom I just was having a hard time finding the words to get started.
And I did end up using AI for one or two students!
So that experience really taught me that I need to learn how to use it well,
How to write the prompts
Really tell AI what I want in order for it to be beneficial.
So it just means I need to put more time into it!
Bill: So, I have written my letters. I use the narrative style generally.
And then after they're all done I asked AI to tell me what were the two or three themes that you picked up from this specific letter.
You may not use any other document. You must use just this.
What I was doing, was that I was checking to make sure that my writing brought out the points that I wanted to make as I was advocating for my students.
So, now if a student wanted to check if his/her voice is coming through, I suppose they could use it in this way too!
Q: How should students be using AI?
Jodi: I think AI is a great tool for a student who says, I don't know how to find colleges that match what I'm looking for. And so, you go to AI and say,
Please provide a list of colleges in South Carolina that offer a nursing major and a football team or whatever it is that they're looking for.
AI can be a great way to generate a list.
And just give you a starting point.
Okay, it gave me these five colleges.
Now let me go look at those five colleges websites.
And you know, it gets you started.
Bill: I do think some of our colleagues are using it with their students to brainstorm essay themes, or, flow charts of how how one should progress through that.
I do caution students not to let the AI do the hard work.
We hear it over and over again from our colleagues in the college side, We need to hear the student's voice and what you are giving up when you say, “oh AI can write this for me”, you're giving up your voice.
I think work with your counselor or work with an English teacher or somebody, if you need help, but your voice needs to come through, so don't, don't give up the the fight there.
Q: What is your advice to students about using AI?
Jodi: I would say keep in mind what the goal of the essay is.
It's to help the reader get to know you, that that's why you're writing this essay.
Be mindful of the fact that the reader is a college admissions officer.
Don't let AI try to make you into someone else.
I mean, not just the choice of words,
But is AI drawing a conclusion where you're like, Yeah, I actually never learned that lesson. That's not that wasn't my weight in this experience, you know.
And sometimes students will say, well, but this sounds good, and I think the college would want to hear this, so I'll just go with that, even if it's not really authentic!
But you're you're selling yourself short if you do that, and you're not accomplishing the goal.
Bill: I had students at the summer program that I was working at, writing essays and we had one student in particular that kept getting positive AI hits on his writing.
And so what we ended up doing, and I would say this is at least a suggestion that carries some weight, keep a document, a history, a draft history of what you're doing.
You could do that with Google Docs pretty easily, but keep a draft history, because if you get a false positive,
You could show that all you did was brainstorm with AI, and you did all the writing!
Have the history of your draft so that you can sit down with a teacher and say, Okay, here's the draft and this was the brainstorm.
Here's draft one, here's draft two, here's draft three, so that you can show that you did the work and didn't hand it over to AI.
And that's, I think, important for you, at least where we are right now with these detection softwares. some of them are good.
Some of them are good, but, with others there's the possibility of a false positive, and if you haven't really documented what you've done, you're kind of stuck.
There you have it. Now, what are your thoughts about this article?
How is AI changing learning and the college process? What kinds of policies and guidelines do you have with regards to AI and student work.
Hope you find the stories and articles in the Newsletter inspiring and helpful. Please give me feedback or leave a comment to let me how I am doing.
Thanks.
Finally, my heartfelt Thanks to all my Podcast guests who have been generous with their time and counsel on my Podcast.
Wish You a Wonderful February!
Venkat