The Teacher's AI Co-Pilot

Artificial intelligence is no longer just a buzzword — it’s becoming a classroom companion. Auburn University’s College of Education is diving into this transformative topic with the launch of its new podcast, Auburn Ed Talks. The inaugural episode, “The Teacher’s AI Co-Pilot,” explores how AI is reshaping lesson planning and the future of teaching.

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Hey everyone, and welcome to our inaugural episode of Auburn Ed Talks, the new official podcast of Auburn University's College of Education. On this podcast, we spotlight the people, ideas, and innovations shaping the future of education right here at Auburn's College of Education. Today, we have a special student host, one of our college's amazing student ambassadors, and we'll be diving in to a topic that's transforming classrooms everywhere: “The Teacher’s AI Co-Pilot.” Who better to guide us than Dr. Megan Burton, a professor in our College of Education, and a passionate advocate for empowering future educators. So let's get to talkin’! Hey, everybody. This is Mimi Dorough, and I'm a student ambassador for the College of Education. I'm so excited to be talking today with you, Doctor Burton. Thanks, Mimi. It's great to be here. So before we get into the tech talk, let's warm up a few rapid fire questions to get to know you better. Are you ready? Let's go. Where's your hometown? I was born in Huntsville, Alabama, but grew up in Frankfort, Kentucky. I was actually in Huntsville this past weekend for a deb ball, so I've been there. What's your favorite place to grab lunch here on campus? Definitely Hey Day Market. Love Hey Day. Which one's your favorite? I love.. what's the name of the Mexican one? I can't even remember. I love the tacos. I love the tacos too. And the quesadillas are good as well. What's your favorite pastime when you're not teaching? I love to travel. Favorite thing. Where would your number one destination spot be? My favorite place is Italy. I'm planning a trip to Spain though, because I've never been there. So awesome. When do you think you'll get to Spain? We're looking at maybe next year. That'll be great. What's your favorite Auburn tradition? Definitely Hey Day. It's just such a fun, fun thing to do. And such a sweet story. It is. It's definitely so intentional. I love participating in hey day. If you weren't in education, what career could you see yourself in? Oh that's tough. I can't imagine doing anything else. I've racked my brain, but I did work as a part time youth director when I was teaching in my early years, and that was fun. But teaching's just what I meant to do. Yes, ma'am. Do you prefer coffee or tea? Both. And they both have to be hot. What would your favorite or most ordered coffee be if you were in a coffee shop? I like just the Americano. Just black. Okay. Plain and simple. What's your favorite book that you've read this year? There are so many, but I've just finished a book from my friend Christa Jackson called “Powerful Mathematicians Who Change the World From A to Z.” It's a really neat book that looks at people all over the world who've contributed to things, and I was excited to see Annie Easley from Birmingham. The human computer for NASA was in it. Love it. Now let's shift gears. You've been a guiding force for future teachers here at Auburn. Can you tell us a little bit about what you teach and your focus areas? Sure. I teach current and future elementary teachers, specifically in the area of mathematics and in Stem, which is science, technology, engineering and mathematics. So today's topic is the teachers AI copilot. AI is everywhere from lesson planning to classroom management tools. How do you see AI fitting into the future of teaching? Oh, it can be used in so many ways, just like it can and in so many professions. It can be a tool to support teachers to effectively meet the needs of their learners. It also can be a tool so that it can save time for teachers on things that don't matter as much, so they can really spend their time on the things that need the personal or professional touch that only a teacher can give. What are some examples of AI tools that future teachers should know about? I was just talking about this at the National Council of Teachers Mathematics last week. There are, I'd say if you are starting out, there's some education tools that are great. There's Eduaide, Brisk, Conmigo, Magic School, Teacher Tool AI. But all of those are really kind of constricted. They help you see all the possibilities, but they're not the best once you start to get comfortable with AI and really want to personalize things. For that, go to the broad ones like Gemini, Claude, Copilot. Those are the ones that once you know what's possible, you can ask it and it can do it effectively. Then there's some personalized ones like snorkel can help you look at student work and all at once and find general patterns. Napkin AI you can type in something. It can create visuals for you. Slides GO. There's Notebook LM. It can create audio files of things that you've typed. There are just so many platforms that can do so many different things. Once you feel comfortable and know the possibilities and they're emerging every day. Yeah, that's so crazy. I had no idea the amount of different softwares and different AI features, but is there one in particular that you utilize the most, or that you think will be utilized the most in the future with teachers? I will be honest. I have learned, I'm learning. I kept exploring as new ones would come out, and I'm learning that if you really stick with one, it gets to know you better and can personalize. So I'm trying to stick more consistently with copilot because it's what Auburn offers to all of our students that can be so helpful. I'm curious, have you used AI in any of your classes so far? I have, so I'm an exercise science and one of my classes is a research class. And so we would use AI to help pull different sources about a specific topic. And with that it was so helpful. But it definitely was challenging to navigate AI. And honestly a little bit scary because I feel like AI in some classes is looked down upon and considered cheating or could be considered cheating. But in that class we were encouraged and told to use it. So that was kind of cool to navigate. And then also just being able to use copilot, which Auburn offers, and getting to learn how to use that software as well. One of the things you just mentioned made me think it's really interesting, because so much of it is about your input and your output and being able to critically think what to put in and what to put out. And so, for instance, when we were doing our NCTM presentation, we did a quick search trying to find what literature is out there. And we found AI gave us some misprints and some things that because it's only using what's on the internet and we know, you know, it's only using resources that are out there. And we know there's incorrect resources out there. So it can be a great tool, but we certainly have to be able to analyze it once it comes out and decide if it's effective or not. Yes, definitely. That's something that we were worried about with our project, is making sure we were getting the correct information, because you're also always told that Google is never, always correct. So how do you help students critically evaluate AI and its benefits, but also its limitations? I think there's several ways. First of all, using it in class, when you send students to go explore on their own, it can. So many different things can happen. So we have at least one class period in my course where they all bring computers or devices. And if they're comfortable, then they're able to go explore in there and we look at what it produces. One of the key things is we keep in mind what our mathematical teaching practices, what research and best practice shows us. Just like with any tool, my students know that there's calculators, there's manipulatives, there's so many things they can use in their classroom that can help support the learning, but can also take away from learning if not done effectively. So we spend time unpacking what it puts out and if it's good or not. In addition, one of the things that I think becomes important is the bias that AI can have. And so for example, we often have our students do a quick search. One of the easiest ones I read a book once that talked about asking it for professional hairstyles. And even to this day I have my students search professional hairstyles and most of the time, nine out of ten of the pictures are white males. That lets us see who's not in there, that could have a professional hairstyle and the bias that AI brings. And so helping them think about whose voices aren't included is important. That's definitely a great way to look at it as well, because like as a student, I wouldn't look at that when I'm doing a research project, seeing that there's also bias within AI because we see it as this huge, new and upcoming thing that just knows, knows all about, any of the topics that we're learning about. So in the classroom and just in daily classroom activities or assignments, how do you use AI to help the students engage in activities? Well, some of the things AI can do, for example, to help my future teachers, it's hard to know what should a second grader know? We can look up the standards of what we're teaching, but what is the background? And so having them go in and ask, you know, what are common misconceptions for a second grader on double digit addition? That's one thing it can do. It can also offer things of, what are some different activities I can do to meet a learner that's interested in Taylor Swift, and it can find a way to bring that in sometimes. It also can create some great bad examples of lessons that we can look at and say, look, AI produced this horrible lesson. What would you do to this? Because unfortunately, some of our textbooks have some horrible lessons that we need to adjust from. It's also great at pushing our students when they're trying to think of different types of questions to ask on a topic we can ask it. What are some web's depth of knowledge questions related to this geometric standard? And so we use it in a lot of different ways. What's the biggest misconception about AI in education? I would say I think there's two that really I keep hearing. First of all, it's cheating. That's one that a lot of college students used to think. I remember the first time. I think it was about maybe it was 2022, maybe that I first started working with this in my classroom, maybe it was 2021. But whatever year it was, I asked students who had used AI and you could see they were scared to raise their hand. And it's, you know, it's a tool that's out there now. I feel like that's getting dissuaded somewhat. This semester I asked and every student raised their hand. They'd used it some way. They just didn't know how to use it in education. And that's what we work towards now. And I think the other would be that AI is going to replace teachers. I heard it in NCTM, somebody asked me about it. I heard an NPR piece about a school that was just an AI school. Well, when I listened to the NPR piece, the more I heard they actually had teachers in the classroom. They didn't call them teachers, but they were there facilitating the relationships between students. They were helping plan. They were helping to adjust. They also only used the computers for two hours of the day for the AI, and the rest of the day was working on the other, what you might call soft skills, how to work together with others, how to communicate, how to problem solve things that a teacher is needed for. While I think AI is a great tool, and I think it really can help in the classroom, I just can't ever see it replacing a teacher. Yes ma'am. I definitely get the fear of cheating when, in your classroom, because that definitely I feel like when we first came to college last year, that was a huge thing, is no one knew whether we were allowed to or not with using AI. But I think now that we know more about AI, it's definitely not as scary of a tool and is super beneficial, if you use it correctly. So when I was a second grade teacher, one of the things we really worked on is using the resources around you. We put things around the wall, use those to help you. AI is another resource. It's important to communicate when you've used it, and I think that's where the line is. Is just like on a test, if I'm using a calculator, I need to make sure I'm allowed to use it. There's certain places that we can use AI in certain places we're asked not to, and we need to, you know, recognize that. But it's a great tool if we're willing to say, hey, I use this to help me. With that second misconception about AI replacing teachers, how would you turn around that misconception and argue that AI supports but doesn't replace teachers? So I would say, first of all, that AI can do a lot, but it's using the resources that it's given and it doesn't know the individual students in your classroom. And I was just out at a local school with my students, and one of the elementary students was having a hard time because of a personal issue going on. We could see the student starting to shut down, and we could adjust in a way only a teacher can. And I think only a teacher can create that culture. In a classroom where kids learn to rely on each other and where kids learn to communicate. And a classroom is so much more than just learning. Three plus four. Math is so much more than that. It's problem solving and logic and and so many things that need to happen in the real world. That's messy. AI can help in a lot of ways, but it can't replace that human element. That's great. I definitely agree with that, because I feel like community and just the support of a classroom and the growth that, not the math equations or anything like that, but just the lessons that a teacher can teach you when you're going through something that at least right now, AI is unable to see and unable to do. What advice would you give to future educators who may feel intimidated by AI? I think the first thing is just don't be afraid to dive in. With our teachers last week we were saying, you know, if you've never used it before, go in and ask something as simple as list some things in your refrigerator and ask it what it could make for dinner. Ask it when's the best time to travel to a place you've always wanted to go to, or the best time to get tickets, but also when you start diving in in education, some of the education platforms I listed offer a list of things you can do, and it can help you think of things you might not have thought of. My students were laughing a few weeks ago about one of the platforms. Let you give a joke on whatever content you're thinking of, you know? I mean, there can be simple things. And then in addition, remember, just because you've put in something and it's given you something doesn't mean you have to use it. You can adjust it, you can ask AI to revise it, or you can revise it yourself, or you can say, this is a horrible lesson plan or idea, and I don't want to use it. So don't be afraid to go in and try. This has been such an insightful Auburn ed talk. Before we go, what's one thing that you hope every future teacher walks away with when it comes to using AI specifically in their practice? I think one of the most important things that Auburn does a great job of, and I think we also in education do a great job of, is the importance of community. We talk about it in the classroom. The same thing is true in our education community, part of where I've learned about different platforms in AI and all is my colleagues at other institutions that we research, we present together. I talk to their students. We had somebody come and guest teach with me Monday in my class about AI. We're better when we work together. And I think that with AI we have to work together and communicate and also think about whose voices aren't there exploring it, whose voices aren't in the output, and how do we keep everybody moving forward. Well alright. Thanks for talking with us on Auburn Ed Talks where great minds keep the conversations rolling. And thanks to everyone listening. Be sure to subscribe to Auburn Ed Talks for more conversations that inspire, inform and ignite your passion for education. War Eagle! War Eagle!