With nearly 100 schools, 86,000 students — and three instructional technology staff — Fulton County Schools, located in Atlanta’s inner suburbs, built a “train the trainer” model to scale professional learning around artificial intelligence.
The end result: at least two trained AI leaders at each school who, in turn, train their colleagues on how to use AI, support them in its safe and effective use, and troubleshoot as needed.
The Vanguard team created through the train the trainer initiative numbers around 350 employees who are mostly teachers — however, none of them are instructional technology specialists, said Heather Van Looy, director of instructional technology. “But they’re passionate about it. We do a lot of training with them, and then they’re experts, and they go back to their school.”
While the team members are not paid extra, they do get perks like upgrades to their computers and a trip to a state educational technology conference, she said. “They end up being an extension of our department, at the school level.”
“We support almost 100 schools with a very small team; obviously that presents challenges in terms of us being able to get ourselves out, in person,” said Van Looy.
“We do a really great job of scaling things with a tiny support team,” she said. “Especially in hard economic times when districts don’t have the ability to staff large teams, doing something like this, where you’re training a smaller group to be experts and following up with that group, allows us to reach a much broader group than we could do by ourselves.”
Each principal recommended two people, who participated in a full day’s of training, spread over six days this fall, Van Looy said. “They were trained not only on how to use AI and have expertise in the platform, but we also created materials, and they reflected on how they might use those materials to re-deliver that content at their schools.”
While Fulton County Schools just adopted AI district-wide this school year, the train the trainer model has been used before — including when the district rolled out an instructional gamification app, Van Looy said.
The instructional technology department also has extended its reach in other ways, including through a contract with nearby Kennesaw State University’s iTeach center, which sends out instructional technology teachers to provide coaching.
Fulton County Schools rolled out instructional AI and related guidance and training this year because the district believed the time had come, Van Looy said.
“We have a really strong belief that this is a very important, essential skill that our students need to have,” she said. “We are working in a lot of different ways to build AI literacy in staff and in students. There’s tremendous potential. Obviously, there are things we need to be watching out for in the classroom, but the benefits far outweigh the challenges.”
Those benefits include giving students greater opportunities to receive feedback, Van Looy said. “We still want teachers to give feedback, and do the things they’ve always done,” she said, but AI can add another layer.
In addition, teachers are “able to personalize learning or provide a personalized tutor to students for a certain topic, as a supplement to great direct instruction from the teacher."
AI can be used to remediate or enhance what students are learning, as well as to teach them AI skills like learning how to tell what’s accurate, recognize bias, write strong prompts, and collaborate with AI, Looy said. "By giving them opportunities in the classroom to use AI, they start to develop those skills.”
