Georgia educators participated in a September 23 Google Gemini professional-development session as schools increasingly move from debating artificial intelligence toward training teachers to use AI responsibly, critically, and effectively.
Editorial Note
This article covers a professional-development opportunity involving artificial intelligence. The September 23 workshop should not be interpreted as a statewide requirement that every Georgia teacher, school, or student use Google Gemini.
Generative AI tools can produce inaccurate, incomplete, biased, or fabricated information. Their use in schools can also raise issues involving student privacy, copyright, accessibility, academic integrity, assessment design, data security, and district technology policies.
New To Education's coverage of educational AI focuses on both opportunities and limitations. AI should support professional and instructional judgment rather than replace it, and individual school systems may establish different rules regarding approved tools and appropriate use.
Artificial intelligence in schools is moving into a new stage.
For the past several years, much of the education debate has focused on whether students should be allowed to use generative AI at all. Now, school systems increasingly face a more complicated question: if AI is going to remain part of education and the broader economy, how should teachers actually learn to use it well?
Georgia educators confronted that question directly on September 23 through a professional-development workshop focused on Google Gemini and Google Workspace for Education.
The training is significant not because it means Georgia has chosen one AI platform for every school, but because it represents a broader transition from simply reacting to generative AI toward building professional capacity around it.
Bottom Line
Georgia's September 23 Gemini workshop provided educators and school leaders with hands-on exposure to generative AI tools.
The session was designed for audiences including teachers, librarians and media specialists, teacher leaders, technology personnel, and district administrators.
It does not amount to a statewide mandate requiring the use of Gemini.
The larger significance is that educator AI literacy is increasingly becoming a professional-development issue rather than only a technology-policy issue.
What Happened
The Georgia Department of Education's professional-learning network listed a series of in-person Google Gemini workshops for educators and leaders.
The September 23 session was associated with Southwest Georgia RESA in Camilla.
The event focused on practical uses of Gemini alongside Google Workspace for Education.
Rather than limiting the audience to technology specialists, the workshop was designed for multiple professional groups within school systems.
That matters because AI policy is no longer something that can be delegated entirely to an IT department.
Teachers decide how assignments are designed.
School leaders establish instructional expectations.
Media specialists teach information literacy.
Technology staff manage access and security.
District administrators create policy.
All of those groups need enough understanding to make informed decisions.
What This Means
Professional development can help close the gap between AI policy and actual classroom practice.
A rule such as “students may use AI with teacher permission” sounds straightforward until teachers have to decide what permission should look like.
Can students use AI to brainstorm?
Can they use it to revise writing?
Can they use it to summarize a reading?
Can they ask it to produce an entire essay?
Can a teacher use it to generate feedback?
Can confidential student information be entered into a chatbot?
Those are practical questions, and educators need more than broad principles to answer them.
Hands-on training gives teachers an opportunity to experiment with the technology before deciding how it should fit into instruction.
Who This Affects
Teachers are the most obvious audience, but the implications extend far beyond them.
Students are affected because teacher knowledge influences assignment design, assessment, academic-integrity rules, and whether AI is taught as a literacy skill rather than simply treated as a shortcut.
Families are affected because they increasingly need to understand what types of AI use schools consider acceptable.
School leaders are affected because inconsistent rules between classrooms can create confusion and disciplinary disputes.
Technology staff are affected because AI tools may involve data privacy, account management, software integration, and cybersecurity.
Teacher-preparation programs and universities are also affected because new educators may enter schools where AI competence is becoming part of professional expectations.
The Education Context
Generative AI has created one of the fastest technology transitions schools have faced in recent years.
Traditional education technology usually entered schools through procurement systems.
Districts purchased learning-management platforms, devices, interactive boards, assessment software, or curriculum products and then trained employees to use them.
Generative AI spread differently.
Students and teachers could access powerful systems independently, often before districts had created policies governing them.
That reversed the usual sequence.
Technology arrived first.
Policy came later.
Professional development came later still.
Georgia's workshop is part of the effort to catch institutional capacity up with a technology already available to the public.
From Cheating Debate to AI Literacy
Early school conversations about ChatGPT and similar tools often centered almost entirely on academic dishonesty.
Those concerns remain legitimate.
Students can use generative AI to produce assignments without doing the intended intellectual work.
But focusing exclusively on cheating creates another risk: schools may fail to teach students how to use a technology that employers increasingly expect workers to understand.
AI literacy involves more than knowing how to write a prompt.
Students and educators need to understand that AI systems can hallucinate information, reproduce bias, obscure source attribution, generate persuasive misinformation, and produce confident answers that are simply wrong.
A student who knows how to use AI but does not know how to verify it is not truly AI literate.
What AI Can Potentially Help Teachers Do
Used carefully, generative AI may support parts of teachers' workload.
Educators may use AI to brainstorm lesson ideas, generate examples, differentiate reading levels, create practice questions, organize instructional materials, translate preliminary content, or draft communications.
But efficiency should not be confused with reliability.
Anything generated by AI still requires professional review.
A lesson may contain factual errors.
A generated question may unintentionally reinforce a stereotype.
A translation may lose important nuance.
A reading-level adaptation may distort the underlying concept.
Professional judgment remains essential.
What This Does Not Mean
Georgia's workshop does not mean all teachers must use Gemini.
It does not establish that Gemini is appropriate for every grade, assignment, or student.
It does not mean students should enter private or personally identifiable information into generative AI systems.
It does not mean AI-generated information should be trusted without verification.
It does not mean teachers can delegate professional responsibilities such as grading, student evaluation, special-education decision-making, or sensitive communications to automated systems without human oversight.
Most importantly, training in a tool should not be mistaken for endorsement of every possible use of that tool.
Privacy and Data Questions
One of the most important issues in educational AI is data privacy.
Schools routinely handle sensitive information involving grades, disability status, disciplinary records, family circumstances, contact details, and student performance.
Educators need clear guidance about what information may be entered into external AI systems.
Even when an educational version of a product offers stronger privacy protections, teachers still need to understand district policy.
Convenience should never override student confidentiality.
This is one area where professional training must connect directly with district technology and privacy rules.
Academic Integrity and Assessment
Generative AI also forces schools to reconsider how learning is assessed.
Assignments that can be completed almost entirely by a chatbot may no longer measure the skills teachers intended to evaluate.
That does not necessarily mean every traditional essay should disappear.
It may mean educators need more process-based assessment.
Students might submit outlines, drafts, source notes, reflections, or oral explanations of their work.
Teachers may place more emphasis on in-class writing, project development, discussion, and demonstration of reasoning.
The deeper challenge is not detecting AI.
It is designing learning tasks where students still have a reason to think.
Equity Questions
AI can create new opportunities, but it can also deepen existing disparities.
Students in well-resourced schools may receive structured AI instruction from teachers who understand the technology.
Students elsewhere may receive only bans or inconsistent rules.
Some families may be able to purchase premium AI tools, while others rely on free versions with fewer capabilities.
Students with disabilities may benefit from AI-supported accessibility tools, but poorly designed systems may also create new barriers.
AI policy therefore has an equity dimension that schools should not ignore.
The Bigger Picture
The broader economy is rapidly incorporating AI into writing, coding, customer service, research, design, marketing, administration, and professional workflows.
Schools therefore face two obligations that may appear contradictory.
They must protect the integrity of learning.
They must also prepare students for a world where AI use is increasingly normal.
The solution is unlikely to be unrestricted use or permanent prohibition.
A more sustainable approach is structured literacy: teaching students what AI can do, what it cannot reliably do, when its use is appropriate, how it should be disclosed, and how its output should be verified.
Teachers cannot effectively teach those skills without understanding the technology themselves.
That makes educator professional development foundational.
What Happens Next
The key question is what school systems do after individual workshops.
Strong AI implementation will likely require several layers.
Districts need acceptable-use policies.
Teachers need grade-appropriate guidance.
Students need digital and information literacy.
Families need clear expectations.
Technology departments need privacy and security standards.
Administrators need consistent disciplinary approaches.
Curriculum teams need to determine where AI literacy fits academically.
Professional development will also need to continue because AI tools are changing rapidly.
A one-time workshop cannot prepare educators for every future system.
Why This Matters
The future of educational AI will not be determined by the technology alone.
It will be shaped by how schools choose to use it.
A knowledgeable teacher can recognize where AI creates value and where it creates risk.
An unprepared teacher may either reject useful tools entirely or rely on them too heavily.
That is why educator training matters.
Schools cannot teach responsible AI use if educators themselves have never been given opportunities to understand the systems shaping their students' academic and professional futures.
Practical NTE Connection
AI literacy increasingly matters for students, educators, adult learners, and professionals.
New To Education's broader mission includes helping learners develop practical skills that connect education with changing academic and career environments.
AI should be approached as one of those skills: useful when combined with subject knowledge, critical thinking, source verification, and human judgment.
The goal should not be to teach people to outsource thinking.
It should be to teach them how to use new tools without surrendering the skills education is supposed to develop.
Key Takeaways
• Georgia educators had access to a Gemini-focused professional-development session on September 23.
• The workshop involved educators, leaders, media specialists, and technology personnel.
• The training does not establish a statewide mandate requiring Gemini use.
• AI professional development can help teachers make better decisions about assignments, privacy, assessment, and student use.
• Generative AI output still requires verification and professional judgment.
• Schools need policies addressing privacy, academic integrity, accessibility, and acceptable use.
• AI literacy involves critical evaluation, not merely knowing how to generate content.
• Teacher preparation may be one of the most important factors in whether AI improves or weakens educational practice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Georgia teachers required to use Gemini?
The verified workshop information describes professional development, not a statewide universal requirement.
Why should teachers receive AI training?
Teachers increasingly need to design assignments, evaluate AI-assisted work, explain acceptable use, protect student information, and teach students how to verify AI-generated information.
Can AI help teachers save time?
Potentially, yes. AI may assist with brainstorming, drafting, differentiation, and organization, but educators still need to review and validate outputs.
Can students trust AI-generated answers?
No AI system should be treated as automatically reliable. Students should verify claims using authoritative sources.
Does AI mean traditional assignments are obsolete?
Not necessarily. It does mean educators may need to rethink how assignments demonstrate genuine student learning.
Final Thoughts
Georgia's September 23 workshop represents something larger than training on one technology platform.
It reflects education's transition from reacting to generative AI toward deciding how to live with it responsibly.
The most important outcome will not be how many teachers learn to use Gemini.
It will be whether educators become confident enough to recognize when AI improves learning, when it undermines learning, and when students need to rely on their own knowledge and reasoning.
That distinction may ultimately determine whether AI becomes an educational tool or merely an educational shortcut.
Written by Cameron Smith, M.Ed.
Founder, New To Education
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Sources
Georgia Department of Education Community — Google Gemini Workshop for Educators & Leaders
https://login.community.gadoe.org/events/google-gemini-workshop-for-educators-leaders
