Growing Focus on Teaching AI Skills in Pennsylvania
The first half of September saw a series of news stories highlighting how businesses, universities, local school districts, and our state government are all working together to further AI implementation and education, handing us the next edition of our “good news in Pennsylvania” tech series on a silver platter.
Let’s get to it!
AI Education for Educators: We’re all trying to get a handle of both the possibilities and pitfalls of artificial intelligence. The University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education and the School District of Pennsylvania have teamed up to develop curriculum to teach AI skills as well as help navigate the issues that accompany AI. Educators are being taught best practices to foster strategic usage of AI while addressing how to prevent students from taking academic shortcuts and becoming overly dependent on AI.
The program engages with the educational ecosystem at three different levels: district, school leadership, and classroom educator. Building competencies while fostering understanding of both the risks and possibilities for different roles in the education structure is keeping Philly schools current on one of the critical issues of our time.
Next Steps for AI in State Government: Pennsylvania state government is expanding usage of AI by state employees. Governor Joel Shapiro made the announcement at the AI Horizons Summit. Commonwealth staffers’ use of ChatGPT Enterprise showed enough promise in greater efficiency and improvement of outcomes to justify qualified employees having access to Microsoft CoPilot as well.
According to Governor Shapiro, employees utilizing AI have saved 95 minutes per day and Pennsylvania is leading the nation in state government AI adoption. An independent organization agrees that our Commonwealth is well ahead of the curve. Utah, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are the only three states that have earned the highest grade of “advanced” AI adoption according to the Government AI Landscape Assessment, an analysis of all 50 state governments by Code For America.
AI Incubators on Keystone State Campuses: College students at five Pennsylvania universities are developing AI skills thanks to the expansion of a partnership between Google and Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education (PASSHE). Students will learn prompting strategies, responsible AI usage, and other foundational skills, allowing them to study more effectively, better understand complex material, and preparing them to transfer their new-found competencies to the workforce.
The five schools that have been selected for the AI initiative are Cheyney, East Stroudsburg, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, PennWest and Millersville. Faculty and staff are also eligible for the free training.
Better and Better: Thanks to the work of so many stakeholders in varied roles, our region has become a clear leader in AI adoption. We’re excited to be here for it.
Previous Editions: If you’d like to review our other overviews of good news in the Pennsylvania tech world, visit here, here, here, here, and here. Thanks for reading, we’ll be back in October with more good news from Keystone State tech that we’re sure is on the way.