MARSHALL — With the growing development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Marshall Public Schools have seen it being used in a positive, professional manner among teachers and students for educational purposes. Acknowledging the drawbacks AI can bring as well, the school board approved the updated Digital Learning Handbook to be used for the 2025-26 school year earlier this week.

“AI remains one of the top resources that schools are working to implement. I feel here at Marshall Public Schools, we are currently in a very good place with AI usage in our district,” Marshall district Digital Learning Coach Karen Londgren said. “We’re one of the first schools in the region to develop and implement guidelines surrounding Artificial Intelligence use by our staff and students, as well as providing a student facing AI tool that provides guardrails for them to work within.”

Marshall implemented MagicSchool AI in January of 2024 for staff, which is used across 160 counties and by over 5 million educators, according to the platform.

“MagicSchool contains a library of over 80 tools or templates for teachers to use, so it’s very robust,” Londgren said. “These templates prompt the user to enter applicable information that they need. For example, a topic, a grade level, potentially a state standard. They can build a lesson off of these, and that helps to provide the most effective results.”

MagicSchool also has built-in safeguards and doesn’t use identifiable student information.

Marshall has now recently started to use MagicSchool for Students, an AI resource for the students to use.

“We’ve started with grades 7 through 12, which we felt for the first year, was a good starting point for us. MagicStudent is optional. It’s a tool that teachers can choose to distribute to students in their classroom, and it’s in a teacher controlled environment,” Londgren said. “The teachers control the tools that the students have accessibility to, and the teachers also see all the interaction that the students do with the AI tools.”

There are 50 tools available for students to use, including Research Assistant, Raina, which is a chat bot, Writing Feedback, and more.

The district tracks the usage of the MagicSchool. Since it was implemented in January of last year, the school recently saw its highest activity last month in February, with the AI tool being used 1,941 times among staff. It was used on 1,201 occasions in January, and 1,123 times in September when school got in session.

The top tool usage for teachers from Jan. 2024 to Feb. 2025 under MagicSchool is Raina, used by 44.63% of teachers.

“It’s (Raina) just a generic chat bot. However, with Raina, she is not based on just one source of information. It uses multiple sources of information across the internet from multiple AI resources to provide the best possible and most up to date information,” Londgren said.

The top tool for students has been the Character Chatbot, Raina and Writing Feedback.

“The Character Chatbot, for example, a student could use that if they’re studying U.S. History, and they could actually have a one-on-one chat with a historical figure,” Londgren said. “(Writing Feedback) allows students to copy and paste writing into the tool, and it gives them feedback on the strengths of their writing, suggestions for improvement and how to make that improvement. It doesn’t do the writing for them.”

The board approved the updated Digital Learning Handbook for the next school year, which acknowledges the benefits and drawbacks AI continues to have.

“While AI tools can offer several benefits, such as helping students with writer’s block or improving their writing skills, they may also have drawbacks, such as the risk of cheating or reliance on technology instead of developing writing skills,” the handbook states. “Students should be aware of the potential benefits and drawbacks of using AI tools and encouraged to develop their own writing skills through practice and feedback.”

The handbook details at AI tools “May be used for research and organization purposes … Students are responsible for ensuring that their work is original and that use of AI tools does not necessarily constitute academic misconduct.”

The district also says that academic integrity is expected to be upheld, and forms of misconduct like the lack of honesty, trust, fairness and responsibility in school work will be subject to disciplinary actions.

“Students are encouraged to develop critical thinking skills and to use AI tools as aids to their own learning and research, not as a substitute,” the handbook says. “Special attention will be paid to misinformation and biased information produced by AI tools.”

The Minnesota Department of Education has also listed guiding principles for the use of AI in education, and listed opportunities and challenges for teachers and students that may come with it.

Listed by the department for opportunities are improved accessibility, immersive learning, creative innovation, automated tasks and more.

Challenges listed are such as access and equity, concerns about the evolving roles of teachers and technology skills, training and support, data privacy, limited transparency and more.

Marshall’s updated digital handbook also mentions the district will continue to provide professional development training to teachers and staff to continue building familiarity with the usage of AI tools.

“The school expects all students to comply with these guidelines and to use AI tools in a responsible and ethical manner,” Marshall district officials said per the digital handbook. “We commit to auditing, monitoring, and evaluating our school’s use of AI. Understanding that AI and technologies are evolving rapidly, we commit to frequent and regular reviews and updates of our policies, procedures, and practices.”