Dinowitz and Strickland on ChatGPT and Gemini student access
Scott Strickland clarifies that ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are approved for staff use only, with Gemini available to about 35 high schools by principal request. Dinowitz challenges this, noting teachers and principals report students accessing these tools in classrooms, and asks about VPN circumvention.
So when we're talking about ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, we have not opened these up for student facing,
only under some very specific circumstances.
Alan, would you like to jump in and perhaps Scott?
So this is a great opportunity to clarify that.
And just make sure you state your name for the record before you speak.
Scott Strickland, I'm the Deputy CIO in the Division of Instructional Information Technology at the New York City Public Schools.
In relation to technology that's been approved for schools, we do have Microsoft products and Google products that have been longstanding approved.
As Copilot and Gemini came out, we evaluated them under our new standard and also approved them, again, for staff use.
I want to be very clear on that.
For students, there is only the Gemini system within Google that we open up to high schools if a principal requests that.
And there's about 35 high schools that have requested that this spring.