#392 – AI Trust You, with Michael Morrison

In this episode of Unpacking Education, Michael Morrison, Chief Technology Officer at Laguna Beach Unified School District, helps us explore the intersection of artificial intelligence and classroom trust. Mike introduces us to AI Trust You, a free Google Docs add-on designed to build transparency between students and teachers by making AI use visible and intentional. With just a few clicks, students can generate a trust statement that outlines how—and how much—they used AI in an assignment, while teachers can define acceptable use through customizable guidelines.

This episode also extends beyond tool usage, as Mike shares how AI Trust You is helping shift school culture away from suspicion and toward open dialogue. “Kids just want to have an opportunity to show integrity, and we just haven’t given them that,” he explains. From implementation insights to practical ideas for creating an AI-empowered learning environment, this conversation offers actionable steps for any educator looking to embrace AI while keeping human connection front and center.

. . . New tech can feel risky, especially when there aren’t clear guidelines. Some students told us they felt guilty using AI, even when they weren’t breaking any rules. Teachers felt like they were stuck trying to catch students doing something wrong, which created the conditions for a negative classroom culture. AI Trust You helps everyone understand what’s okay, what’s not, and how to use AI in ways that support learning.

Michael Morrison, Chief Technology Officer, Laguna Beach Unified School District

Resources

The following resources are available from AVID and on AVID Open Access to explore related topics in more depth:

• AI in the K–12 Classroom (article collection)
• TeachAI, with Dr. Kristen DiCerbo (podcast episode)
• Free AI Courses (podcast episode)
• The Promises and Perils of AI in Education, with Ken Shelton (podcast episode)
• Learning Evolution: The New Era of AI in the Classroom, with Carl Hooker (podcast episode)
• The A.I. Roadmap: Human Learning in the Age of Smart Machines, with Dr. John Spencer (podcast episode)
• SchoolAI (podcast episode)
• AI Prompt Engineering (ed tip)

Human Connections

Laguna Beach Unified School District is using artificial intelligence to strengthen—not replace—human relationships. AI Trust You, a free Google Docs add-on, promotes transparency and trust. Students are empowered to reflect on their AI usage and engage in honest conversations with teachers. It’s a simple tool with transformational impact.

AI Trust You has improved trust in Laguna Beach USD. Mike says, “This tool showed us that kids just want to have an opportunity to show integrity.” The school district is also using strategies to strengthen relationships though AI-empowered activities. From song creation based on life stories to using AI to visualize memories and emotions, he shares powerful examples of how his district is using AI to spark empathy, deepen understanding, and bring learners closer together. This episode reminds us that the future of AI in schools can be deeply human. The following are a few highlights from this episode.

• About Our Guest: Michael Morrison is the Chief Technology Officer for Laguna Beach USD. He was a classroom teacher for eight years and has spent the past 25 years working in educational technology. Laguna Beach USD consists of four schools and about 2,300 students. Mike was the 2023 Region 17 Technology Administrator of the Year and the 2020 OCCUE Administrator of the Year. Laguna Beach USD was recognized as one of the Top 10 digital school districts in the nation in 2018 by the National School Board Association and a Best Example of Professional Development by Tech & Learning in 2023.
• AI Trust You: AI Trust You is a Google Docs add-on that fosters honesty and openness regarding student use of AI as well as teacher expectations. Mike says, “It builds a statement of trust from the student, and on the teacher side, it builds some guidelines for the assignment.”
• How the Add-on Works: Users must first install the add-on to their Google Docs account. When the application is launched, users identify themselves as a student or teacher before responding to a series of questions about AI usage. Teachers indicate what AI service is allowed and for which parts of the assignment AI is permitted. Students indicate an estimate of what percentage of the work was aided by AI. Mike says, “It’s very subjective, but it gives the teacher an idea of what the student thinks, as far as how it helped them.” After that, students identify the AI techniques that they used on the assignment.
• Categories: AI Trust You is broken down into four categories of potential AI use: writing, reading, research, and audiovisual. Writing help might include generating ideas, making a draft outline, and helping a student get “unstuck.” Mike says, “On the reading side, it might be to simplify, translate, or summarize. On the research side, it might be to make AI become a persona.” For audiovisual, students might use AI to generate an image or a song or to receive help with creating a presentation.
• Trust Statements: Once all the questions have been answered, AI Trust You generates a trust statement. Mike says, “The statement would include all that information in a nice, little, formatted box.” He adds, “It’s like a citation, but it’s not because citations don’t tell you much about how kids used AI. . . . I think this is better because it’s really the technique the teacher wants to know anyway.” Trust statements are copied and pasted into the Google Doc and are submitted with the assignment.
• Best Practices: When teachers use AI Trust You to generate parameters for an assignment, the app also suggests related best practices. Mike shares an example, saying, “If you do research, you’re going to need to find another source because AI isn’t always the best for sourcing something.”
• Stanford Research: Mike says, “About two years ago, we had Stanford come down and do some research with our kids about AI, when it was first kind of getting going in our schools, and they found two super disturbing things. One was that the kids are feeling guilty about using it, and the other was the teachers felt like they were having to catch kids cheating or being police. And this is the absolute worst culture that I can think of when you have a lack of trust, transparency, and people are trying to catch you cheating. I mean, what a horrible place to live and work.”
• App Builder: Andrew Stoneman created the Google Doc add-on. He has also developed Autocrat and Doctopus. Mike says, “This is a passion project for him, too.”
• More Honesty: Mike says, “It opened up a discussion and a dialogue about the use [of AI]. If a kid is honest about it, then the teacher is able to kind of talk to them about what’s happening.” Students have indicated that student self-reporting has been honest and accurate when using the app. Mike says, “This showed us that kids just want to have an opportunity to show integrity, and we just haven’t given them that. That’s the problem, I think, so students feel a sense of relief is really what they describe, like ‘I can be honest now, and I can tell my teacher what I did, and I’m not going to get in trouble for it because I’m being honest.’” This type of open communication allows for good conversations between the teacher and student.
• Access AI Trust You: At present, AI Trust You is being used in over 40 districts. Mike says that they have about 400 teachers using the add-on. It’s currently free to use, although they may need to begin charging for statistics and custom menus in the future to offset the cost of providing those additional services. Information is available at tinyurl.com/aitrustyou.
• District-Wide Approach: Laguna Beach USD was the fifth district in the country to purchase ChatGPT for their entire staff. Mike explains the benefits of this, saying, “It allows us to have what’s called a walled garden, which means, essentially, that the data that we put in it is only for us.” This data privacy angle is key since it allows them to fully utilize the power of AI to analyze local data. “That’s really helpful to feel confident that the data that we have in there is not going out to the larger language model,” adds Mike. “We wouldn’t want that to happen. Also, it allows us to create GPTs (generative pre-trained transformers) that are shared internally with staff.”
• Guidelines and Play: While Laguna Beach USD did develop AI use guidelines, they focused heavily on play. Through play, teachers became comfortable with the tool and discovered its capabilities. Mike adds, “In the beginning, we had a team of AI-empowered teachers.” These became the core experimenters. They also spent 10 minutes of every admin meeting using AI and offered lunch-and-learn opportunities to teachers, which were well attended.
• Student Use: Mike explains, “We want teachers to use it during class, like modeling the correct use, and we wanted to allow students to use AI. So, we have other tools that we purchase that allow for monitored use for students, like SchoolAI, and MagicSchool, and Snorkl. Those are tools that are really good to help monitor that use.”
• Third Grade Example: Mike shares an example of how third grade students used AI to generate pictures of animals they created during a unit on adaptation. Mike says, “What they found is that the kids didn’t like the first one that came out of the AI tool, so they had to write the prompt again and again. ‘It’s not blue.’ ‘Well, you didn’t tell it to be blue.’ All of these language art skills are being developed as these third graders are developing their animal.”
• Increasing Human Connections and PD With a Purpose: Laguna Beach USD is continuing their AI exploration. Mike shares one focus: “How can we be more connected as humans?” The school district is also working on a project to identify nine problems or challenges that their district is experiencing, like with teaching and learning. Then, Mike says, “Our goal this summer is to have an AI workshop—where we call it PD With a Purpose—where they’re using AI to study that problem, like deep research, and then they’re going to use AI to create learning materials that also the user would experience AI with and have options for learning.” One module, for instance, may include using NotebookLM to generate a podcast.
• Mike’s Toolkit: Mike suggests Runway and Sora as AI video generation tools to explore. He’s excited about how these options can help people tell untold stories. For instance, he says, “I was thinking about grandparents that didn’t have movie equipment, and they could describe some of their childhood. And maybe we could create a movie that really captures the essence of that childhood, and what that was like, and things they experienced that were important to them.”