This month, brought a lot of research projects into the Media Center, which is reflected in the increased amount of books circulated this month to 184 and in 38 different classes using the Meida Center. Also, a lot of planning and conversations around generative AI took place among Media Center and technology staff. The world of generative AI is full of exciting possiblities and ethical dilemmas that schools must consider. In coversations with professionals in the fields of computer coding, software development, and large data, they revealed how AI is able to do a lot of the tedious work of coding and crunching numbers that used to fall on them; therefore, it is more imperative in their roles to act as human oversight, problem solvers, and communicators than ever before. Discussions around AI with researchers from UNCC pointed out the importance of focusing on the learning process and helping students fall in love with the learning process versus focusing on learning for the sake of a final product as moving forward generative AI is going to be able to produce many different types of products. At the end of the day, all conversants agreed that while generative AI has great potential, at the end of the day, it will always be a sofisticated computational model that cannot replace the need for human oversight and interaction, so these are the areas that need to be focused on in our schools and classrooms. Many of our teachers are already accounting for this as in their classrooms, they are encouraging students’ curiosity by having them engage in the inquiry process to learn about topics of interest to them. For example, Ms. Mayhew’s freshmen classes developed argumentative essays about topics they were passionate about, covering everything from who the greatest basketball player is to the best ways to deal with depression and mental health issues. The IB juinors and seniors have also been working on or are beginning to work on inquiry projects about a subject area of their choice. 

The month of February was busy in the Concord High School Media Center. 102 books were circulated over the course of the month with the top circulated title being a new book that was just added to the collection, Bad Like Us by Gabriella Lepore. 28 different classes came to the Media Center this month to participate in a variety of activities, including checking out books, working on creative projects, and learning about the research process. Numerous teachers started research projects this month, so we focused on using the CRAPPAY method to learn how to evaluate sources for academic use. Lastly, this month started the process of ensuring our students and staff are AI literate. Teachers attended a training, led by Miss Armstrong and Ms. Seaman, CHS’s School Library Media Coordinator and Instructional Technology Facilitator respectively. During this training, teachers received clarification on the different types of AI, on how to talk to their students about AI, on how to teach AI literacy, and they spent time brainstorming ideas on how to leverage AI to improve the eduaction of our students. The students were then taught about AI and CHS’s expectations for ethical AI usage in homeroom on February 26. In order to get more information on ethical AI usage at CHS, see the student handbook and the AI section of the Media Center webpage.