Warren High School students Andre Winters, Levi Reynolds, Alexander Winters and Will Carte participated in the AI Hackathon held at Warren High School Friday. Students were presented with discussions about the use of artificial intelligence and how it can be used in their lives in a variety of tasks. The students got to work with it to try to solve a problem they might face within their own community. (Photo by Brett Dunlap)

WARREN – Students from three area high schools came together at Warren High School Friday to talk about artificial intelligence (AI) and the place it might have in their lives.

Teach For America Ohio, Future Plans and Warren High School hosted a hands-on AI Hackathon with around 50 students from Warren High School, Meigs High School and New Lexington High School.

Future Plans Executive Vice President of Social Enterprise and Strategy Chista Krohn said the students present Friday have an interest in possible technological career fields and this program exposes them to emerging technologies. The group is in over 50 counties in Ohio.

In this partnership with Teach For America, they are reaching kids across the state with part of their focus Friday reaching schools in the Appalachian region who were not traditionally near centers of technology, Krohn said.

“We want to focus on all students,” she said.

The event is designed to provide students an introduction to AI tools as the technology will become more prominent in the professional world by the time they graduate.

Organizers talked to the students about the emergence of AI tools online, what they are being used for in everyday life, what they can do and cannot do with them, the kinds of fears people have about AI and how it is ultimately a tool to do things with and not something that does it for them.

“We want you to be equipped,” said Jasmine Maze of the Reinvention Lab at Teach For America.

She talked about how using AI can open up potential job avenues if students learn how to use it. AI can be used to collect, organize and categorize information to fulfill a job the person using it has.

Students were able to tackle real classroom challenges, building custom chatbots, testing AI tools and exploring how emerging technology can responsibly support teaching and learning.

“You have options,” Maze said.

She talked about how AI is not, in reality, very smart as it can only produce information within a certain criteria which is why people have to be precise in what they ask of it.

“AI is just part of the solution,” Maze said.

She talked about what the preconceptions of AI that people have with the students telling her people are afraid it will cost people jobs, it will be given too much control over aspects of people’s lives and it will be used to allow people to cheat on tasks they themselves are supposed to do.

Teach For America Ohio Executive Director Jennifer Howard said the event was helping students to develop the skills to ask really clear questions and use the technology to their benefit and do it in a safe and responsible way.

“This is a responsible use of AI for high school students,” Howard said. “We know the skill is going to be necessary for them in college and beyond and to make sure they can use the technology now.”

Warren High School has around 24 students at the event with students involved in the Information Technology program, business classes and students interested in engineering, said Warren Career Navigator Jenny Higgins.

“AI is here to stay,” she said. “I think our students can learn to use AI the correct way and educators need to learn how to teach students to use AI the correct way.”

In a way students use to seek out information in an encyclopedia, AI can be used to gather and organize certain information they will use for the task they are doing.

“We don’t expect it to replace their brains and their thinking skills,” Higgins said. “We expect them to use it as a tool.

“It gives the students more time to think of better ideas and easier ways to do things. They can use their time wisely and more efficiently by using AI to take care of the tedious tasks and I feel they will be able to do things better.”

New Lexington High School had around 20 students attend the event who are involved in advanced manufacturing and technology courses at the school, said teacher Dave Burkhart.

“I want them to learn about using AI productively and not some of the things they might think it is used for now,” he said. “Some of them think it is used for cheating and making things easier.

“I want them to see how it can be used to go through data and be able to produce things when they use AI.”

Meigs High School had around nine students attending and they were looking at what they could learn from the event, said Career Tech teacher Jake Dunn.

“Our district is small and there are a lot of good opportunities for IT students,” he said. “There is a big conversation with AI and whether it is good or bad.

“What are the positive things it can do and what are the negative things that we need to be aware of. I think it is good for them to have that conversation so they can be more aware.”

A part of the day had the students using AI to form a solution to a problem in their community. A group of Meigs students were working on ways to use AI to increase problem solving abilities. They were looking at ways AI could be used to form a curriculum for home schooling students.

“This definitely helps,” said Meigs student Garrett Parry. “Many of us would not have gotten the opportunity to do this kind of stuff because we wouldn’t know where to start.

“This is giving us the experience on how to work with AI to make apps that can help improve people’s lives.”

Warren student Levi Reynolds felt the event was a great opportunity to work with and see some of the different things AI can be used for. His group was creating a model using AI to track athletes and injuries to come up with ways to prevent injuries.

“I think it is great for us to be able to understand this new application of AI,” he said. “A lot of people are uninformed on what it can do and I think we are learning about how great it can be.

“With us creating our own version of this it puts the best understanding of it in our minds.”