SRVUSD will enable Google’s AI tool, Gemini, on school-issued computers in order to aid student learning and acclimate them to the new technology. The district has been preparing since 2024, with an Embracing AI initiative and presentations for parents about the upcoming changes. The exact release date has not yet been determined, but likely will occur in the fall of 2025.
“It’s advancing at a very rapid rate, more than any other technology has ever advanced,” SRVUSD Director of Technology Kelly Hilton said. “One thing I’d like to emphasize is that AI is here. It’s not going away, and we really want to work together to define what that looks like in our communities.”
In 2023, Google released Bard, now Gemini, with the ability to converse with users and generate pictures. Unlike the products of competitors like OpenAI and Microsoft, Gemini is available for free to the district with the rest of the Google suite of products. Currently, the website is unavailable on school Chromebooks or on guest devices using school Wi-Fi, but that’s about to change.
“When we learned that Google was preparing to release Gemini LLM (Large Language Model) for student use in high schools, we immediately began engaging with a cohort of teachers known as the Instructional Technology Leaders (ITLs), district leaders, and site administrators to discuss the best way and timing to roll it out,” Hilton said.
Gemini for Education Premium, the version the school is working with, differs from Gemini for Google Workspace, a similar product. The Workspace version is embedded in other Google products such as email, but the Education version is only available on its own URL. This means it can be blocked using Securly by individual teachers, although only within their own class periods.
Hilton said that though the release date has not been determined yet, the fall of 2025 “has been recommended, and so we’ll see where that lies. That would allow a little more time for staff who haven’t explored it yet to get a handle on how they would use that for instruction.”
However, the software is associated with controversies. Google temporarily suspended the image generator’s ability to depict people after an attempt to reduce bias in the code led to images of female popes and Black Nazis. There have been reported incidents of the chat software “hallucinating,” a glitch-like phenomenon where AI responses stop making sense, with Gemini encouraging users to “please die.” This phenomenon isn’t unique to Gemini, but given the software’s high profile, it’s received substantial high-profile news coverage. Additionally, like other AI tools such as ChatGPT, the technology has invoked fears of cheating among DV staff.
“I imagine students who are themselves overworked, and stretched too thin with extracurriculars and sports and clubs and all that stuff, and in the interest of saving themselves time, would possibly offload some of these homework tasks to AI,” AP Literature and Sci-Fi teacher Justin Worley said. “And then the problem is, you know, what are we learning?”
On the other hand, some DV teachers are optimistic about the Gemini rollout, particularly in the Social Studies department. Jeffrey Vangene, who teaches US History and World Geography, is intrigued by the research and educational possibilities. He compared the development of Gemini to the advent of search engines, joking that he was about to “seriously date” himself.
“I remember when I was in high school in 1998, 1999 when Google was created,” Vangene said. “Teachers freaked out, and thought we were going to Google every answer, and that learning was going to totally cease and stop to exist. And it didn’t. Did it make research a lot easier? Yes. Did it make our lives a whole lot easier in certain ways? Absolutely. And it only got better and better.”
Vangene has used other AI tools in the past for class assignments; for example, he had a chatbot simulate historical figures for his students to interact with. In his opinion, the large number of projects in a history course lend themselves to AI benefitting learning, although he wouldn’t permit it for writing assignments.
“One of the things about the social science classes is that we can do a lot of projects as assessments,” he said. “We do writing, and writing essays is part of history, but we have different ways to assess your learning, because it can be more creative-based. I do feel that we can use AI in that way to still make it so that your finished product’s going to be different, but AI helped you get there.”
On the contrary, many DV teachers are hesitant about the technology, especially English teachers. According to Worley, the DV English department wrote an open letter to the district against the use of AI in classrooms last year, which they all signed. To protect academic integrity and prevent students from fabricating their essays, they’re considering reducing homework and making in-class writing assignments paper and pencil only. Worley has already made his Sci-Fi class’s major research paper project on paper, the first year he has done so.
“This year, the English department is pretty unanimous in not wanting students to use AI for any English things,” Worley said about writing assignments, “because for some subjects, the vehicle of the content knowledge is an essay. But since for English the writing is the point, that is something that is not really changeable or malleable in that sense, and so we’re pretty unanimous on that [AI] not having a place.”
And how DV students feel about Gemini and AI and general? For their teachers, it can be hard to gauge. English 11 and Sci-Fi teacher Michael Morelli, who has had to hand out zeroes in the past for AI plagiarism, said excitement and fear tend to coexist.
“I hear a lot of people talking about the potential good, and I’ve seen students write about potential good things regarding AI in the future, but I also hear a lot of fears about AI,” Morelli said. “Students more than ever are talking about ‘Man, I wish the job market felt more safe from AI’, ‘I wish my chances at college weren’t so slim that I feel like I need AI’. It’s just this looming presence in a lot of students’ minds.”
