Page 8 Excellence In Education Lincoln Daily News January 2026 AI EDUCATION in Artificial Intelligence has taken off in the past few years. From generating images and videos to answering any question you can imagine, AI is slowly but surely becoming a tool used by many different industries. Education is not immune, but the ways different schools have been tackling this boom of AI is drastically different. How is AI having an impact on the education system, and how are educational institutions handling it? It seems that many educational institutions are trying to integrate AI into their curriculums rather than outright ban it. Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed a multi-million-dollar deal with Nvidia to expand AI’s role in public schools and educational institutions. Ohio public schools have been given guidelines on how to integrate AI into the classroom. Even the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) is going to start drafting guidelines on how AI is to be used in the classroom. These states are certainly not the exception, with many other states joining the ranks. With all these states and schools trying to figure out how to use AI in the classroom, one would imagine that there must be some good reasons as to how AI can benefit education. The University of Illinois’ College of Education published an article on the pros and cons of AI in schools back in October of 2024. The article references many of the most well-known reasons that some schools are not fans of AI, like academic dishonesty. It also references issues like less human interaction and the potential for inaccurate information. As for the positives, the article mentions the ability AI has to simplify difficult concepts. It mentions that teachers can use AI to create supplemental content for their classroom curriculum, as well as give students immediate feedback. One of the largest school districts in Logan County, District #27 in Lincoln, is also getting in on AI. According to superintendent Kent Froebe, the district recently purchased a subscription to Magic School AI, an AI classroom tool that can be used by both teachers and students. According to a video made by Magic School, it is a “vast array of AI tools created for educators.” The majority of the people working at Magic School (75-80 percent) are former educators. This video goes on to show one of their tools, which was as a rubric generator. It also shows that teachers can limit what AI tools their students have access to, with some of the tools on screen being called “AI Literacy Bot” and “Real World Connections with AI.” According to emails Froebe allowed LDN access to, he explained the reason behind
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