Superintendent Dr. Shari Camhi Interviewed by Education Week

The following is an excerpt from the article:

Shari Camhi, the superintendent of the Baldwin Union Free school district in Baldwin, N.Y., said that in updated school board policies, student-created deepfakes of their peers or educators will lead to suspension. But the suspension will also be followed or preceded by other “restorative” measures “to make the students understand the terrible thing that they did and to be able to make amends to the person they did it to,” Camhi said.

“It’s important for the student to have a path to come back to school. In situations where a longer suspension is necessary, we allow for a shortened suspension if they also attend counseling for a specified duration. That’s necessary when someone does something so egregious,” she added.

Policies need to focus on the needs of victims, too

As administrators create new disciplinary guardrails around deepfakes, experts caution that schools may be paying inordinate attention to dealing with the perpetrators, while leaving victims vulnerable.

“The latest amendments to Title IX frame deepfake imagery as sexual harassment. I think where schools might fail is if they treat [deepfakes] as a violation of acceptable-use policy, and not as sexual harassment,” said Siegel from the Future of Privacy Forum.

The new amendments to Title IX, though, have been challenged in 26 states and by conservative groups, who’ve supported at least eight different lawsuits that prevent these regulations from taking effect. In other places, though, these regulations are in full effect.

It’s possible that once President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January, the regulations, and the inclusion of deepfakes, may be dropped if the administration decides to completely withdraw them.

Camhi’s district started working on a media literacy curriculum in 2020-2021 school year, which is now required for students in grades 6-12 as part of its English/language arts and social studies coursework. Students are pushed to think critically about the information they receive, triangulate data sources, and judge if the information is credible enough to share. Camhi hopes her students will apply the same critical-thinking skills to information they find online.

Camhi said that both teaching and non-teaching staff also went through three hours of professional development in media literacy at the start of the next school year. “We need to backtrack too to train people who didn’t get the skills when they were in school,” said Camhi.

Schools need to move forward with the assumption that students will be tempted to create or share unsuitable deepfakes about their peers or teachers, experts say. It’s their responsibility to teach students how to make the right choice.

The Social Institute’s Tierney collaborated with educators and students to create a peer-to-peer learning platform that’s used in schools across the country. It focuses on posing “essential questions” to students during different class periods, like science, social studies, or English, which are then also shared with their parents. These questions could quiz students about the differences between a real and an AI-generated picture or ask them what’s their role if a deepfake related to their school is being shared on social media.

“These open-ended questions spark curiosity, problem-solving, and huddling and discussion. I think those are the important conversations that can help a school community tackle this topic that is new and ever evolving,” Tierney said.

Signs that this conversational or “educational” approach is working are difficult to pin down. Tierney said that teachers who use this curriculum report higher levels of empathy in students toward each other and their teachers.

Camhi, for her part, is trying to gauge how students have responded to the district’s programming on AI.

The “biggest check mark” for her is when students report they now think more critically about the information they receive.

Read full article in  Education Week >>