When I started teaching in 1991, the highest level of technology in my class was my pocket calculator. Supervision was a matter of circulating the room to make sure students were engaged.
When technology became part of our schoolrooms, we had to surrender a lot of the supervision that we used to have. Students could now hide behind ChromeBooks or click away quickly when we walk by and easily become off-task and disengaged. The main reason for this was that the first technology solutions were designed for offices, not for classrooms. We thought this was a great idea, since many students would one day in the workforce be using such applications.
We were wrong about that.
Software designed for adults, for office workers and designers, is not appropriate for most classroom settings simply because it does not have the guardrails and monitoring that we used to have in pre-EdTech days.
Yes, we worked around it. We added internet filters, screen monitoring software, and the like. But that is not the same as having direct observation of our students and control over their workflows.
Many efforts to create truly classroom-friendly EdTech have focused on “gamifying” learning. Developers believed in the old trope that you could trick them into learning if they were having fun. Don’t get me started on that…
The problem I wanted to address in this post occurred in a remote AP French class I was teaching. The remote platform was Canvas. The assignment was to produce a 2-minute video presentation in French, mostly improvised, to model how the task was set up on the AP exam. The students dutifully uploaded their little videos to Canvas and it was obvious that they were reading prepared scripts and they had either an AI either do the work or correct the work. I knew from class sessions that they were not capable of that level of language proficiency and anyone watching could see they were reading.
How does one rationalize giving a high stakes grade for that?
EduTech Solution from a Teacher-Coder
Presto is an application at the Innovation platform that resolves the issue of students having AI-generated presentations and scripts without real learning or synthesis. While originally devised as an evaluation tool for world language learners, it is extremely effective in content area classes like social studies.
Students log in and are redirected to the assessment. After setting their camera and mic and starting the camera, the task begins. Only now can they see the prompts. There is a strict timer and an AI-enhanced proctor records their engagement and activity on the page. There is a time limit. Once started, they need to finish or they must be readmitted by the teacher. This prevents viewing the prompts and then starting again after research.
The proctor provides the supervision we often lack in modern education software. The time limit and the coordination of camera activation with prompt visibility prevent cheating very effectively.
“AI has made scripted assignments meaningless. Presto measures thinking instead.”
More importantly, the structure encourages authentic thinking. Students must interpret the prompts and organize their ideas in real time rather than relying on pre-written scripts. Instead of reading polished AI-generated text, they must explain ideas in their own words within a clear time limit.
For teachers, this makes evaluation more meaningful: the focus shifts from detecting AI assistance to assessing a student’s ability to communicate understanding.
Students must interpret the prompts and organize their ideas in real time. Instead of reading polished AI-generated text, they explain ideas in their own words within a clear time limit.
For teachers, this changes the evaluation process completely. Instead of trying to determine whether a script was written by the student or by an AI assistant, we can focus on what actually matters: a student’s ability to communicate understanding.
And that was the goal all along.