RAPID CITY, S.D. (KELO) — TIE, which stands for Technology and Innovation in Education, held a workshop in Rapid City last week.

As AI continues to grow and develop, TIE is looking to give educators more exposure to this tool.

“A good starting place, just to see what that world looks like and then as they begin using it and seeing some of the advantages of it, they can start to drill in if they see this is a tool they want to use and see some of the potential with it as well,” Dakota State Interim Dean of Arts and Sciences Mark Spanier said.

AI is getting treated similarly to calculators and the Google search engine back in the day, and reality has shown that technology continues to evolve.

“You hear the downside of it but there are so many ways that are time-saving. Techniques and strategies and really to differentiate and adapt your instruction to help make the learning process better,” Hill City Superintendent Blake Gardner said.

Western Dakota Tech, is the first of four different stops for the artificial intelligence tour. They are trying to help out as many different districts as they can. Later this month, they’ll stop by Harrisburg, Aberdeen and Chamberlain to help spread this awareness.

These tools are for all grade levels, and can even help teachers out with planning.

“Hopefully what some of the elementary school teachers as well as the high school teachers can get out of it is maybe early on just a little bit of that lesson plan aspect, of how we can use this to possibly help improve some of their lesson plans that they’ve already built,” Spanier said.

“Give them ideas for activities, or encourage students to do a pros and cons if they’re giving a speech and have AI write the cons so that they can start to debate themselves. So there’s a lot of really neat uses of AI,” Gardner said.

With the growth of AI in education, TIE hopes to get both educators and students on the same path.

South Dakota and TIE hope to help teachers through the use of AI.