AI in the Classroom: A Complete AI Classroom Guide

AI in the Classroom: A Complete AI Classroom Guide

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

The conversation is about Artificial Intelligence. Is it helpful? Should it be welcomed in schools? Should it be blocked? Today's three guests are expert authors of the newly released The AI Classroom: The Ultimate Guide to Artificial Intelligence in Education.  We need to get practical, past the hype, and work to do that in this show.

This is also episode 800. We always celebrate when arriving at such milestone episodes so I have my son, John, share the stats for the first eight hundred episodes and we have a little fun. I hope this extended episode serves as a helpful addition to the AI discussion.

Also note, and ironically so, that due to the extended nature of this episode and that we have four speakers, the AI tools I use to write the transcript had a bit of a meltdown, and I've had to apply a significant amount of human intelligence to the transcript which delayed this episode to Thursday. This podcast does come out on Mondays and future episodes will be the ten minutes, but this conversation is so important.

Here are some great EVERFI courses I recommend:

Check out EVERFI and its financial literacy resources today!

Episode 800

AI in the Classroom: A Complete AI Classroom Guide

Dan Fitzpatrick, Amanda Fox, and Brad Weinstein

Subscribe to the Show

10 minute teacher podcas audible

Resources in Episode 800

Speaker Bios as Submitted

Dan Fitzpatrick

Dan Fitzpatrick is the author of The AI Classroom: The Ultimate Guide to Artificial Intelligence in Education. He was recognized with the Tech Champion Award at the 2022 Digital Industry Dynamite Awards and featured in the EdTech50. Dan is a respected authority in educational technology and artificial intelligence. As Director at Edufuturists, he is committed to shaping the future of education through technology and innovation. Dan holds an M.A. from Durham University, a PGCE from UCL, and a Post Graduate Diploma in Design Thinking & Innovation from MIT.

Website: www.theaieducator.io 

Twitter: @danfitztweets

 

Amanda Fox

Amanda Fox, is the Chief Content Officer for Teachergoals.com and currently resides in Louisville, Kentucky. She has taught English Language Arts, Social Studies, Film, Journalism, and enjoys writing, illustrating, and cooking in her free time.

Recipient of the 2016 ISTE Emerging Leader Award, recognized as a PBS Digital innovator for her initiatives in enhancing student learning with technology, Fox has also served as President of the Young Educator Network for ISTE, and received the President's Volunteer Award in 2018. She is the author of The Canva Classroom, The Quiver Classroom, Teachingland: A Teacher's Survival Guide to the Classroom Apocalypse, Zom-Be A Design Thinker, and Markertown. Learn more or connect with Amanda on Twitter @AmandaFoxSTEM

Brad Weinstein

Brad Weinstein founded TeacherGoals in 2014 as a way to inspire educators that do such important work with students. Brad is a publisher of education and children's books as well as leads the strategic vision of the organization.

Brad is the co-author of The AI Classroom and the Washington Post bestseller Hacking School Discipline. He has been featured in numerous publications and podcasts. He is a co-author of two upcoming books, The AI Classroom, and The Discipline Code. He has spent the last several years working with schools across the world with the implementation of his work.

Brad has dedicated his career to empowering students with the skills they need for success in a rapidly changing world. He first carried out this vision as an elementary and middle school teacher before later becoming the principal of a high school on the east side of Indianapolis. Brad went on to be the founding Director of Curriculum and Instruction for a STEM-focused network of schools dedicated to authentic learning by tackling real-world problems.

Website: www.teachergoals.com

Twitter: @WeinsteinEdu

Transcript - AI in the Classroom

00;00;00;03 – 00;00;03;16
John Davis
This is the Ten Minute Teacher podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

00;00;03;17 – 00;00;33;21
Vicki Davis
Welcome to episode 800 of the Ten Minute Teacher Podcast. AI in the Classroom.

Everfi – Sponsor of this Episode

Today’s sponsor is Everfi. April is financial literacy month, and they have fantastic free digital lessons for K-12 students. Stay tuned at the end of the show to learn more about these valuable lessons.

Episode 800 Is a Special Episode!

As I usually do with these special milestone episodes, we've got a very special extended episode for you.

00;00;34;05 – 00;01;05;12
Vicki Davis
But because I ran long on episode 798, this time, I'm interviewing the three authors of The AI Classroom: The Ultimate Guide to Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom for a deep dive into the topic everyone is talking about.

Thank you to my family for their support!

First, I want to thank my family my husband, Kip, for believing in me and, producing so many episodes, and always supporting me. And also, I want to thank my son John, who is an incredible editor and has an amazing podcast voice himself.

00;01;05;17 – 00;01;22;05
Vicki Davis
John, I'm so proud that you learned to edit audio in such a way that lets us work together every day. I know it's a lot to have to listen to your Mom as much as you have to, but I'm very proud of you, John. In fact, I've asked John to give us some stats on the 10 Minute Teacher podcast and where we've come.

00;01;22;17 – 00;01;23;14
Vicki Davis
Take it away, John.

Stats on the First 800 Episodes

00;01;23;21 – 00;01;45;21
John Davis
Well, Mom, since you and Dad started the 10 Minute teacher back in February of 2017, this show has reached over 6.5 million downloads across the globe. Your top show has reached over 25,000 alone. I've edited 41 of those episodes for Dad, who holds the record at over 500. Now let's get this show started. This is supposedly the 10 minute teacher, after all.

00;01;45;22 – 00;01;58;02
John Davis
And if you keep doing the extended episodes like this, Dad and I are going to have to suggest you change your name. And I will never finish college because this is going to be my full-time job. Anyway, congratulations, Mom. Now back to you.

The AI Classroom

00;01;58;21 – 00;02;20;07
Vicki Davis
Today, we are talking with the three authors of The AI Classroom: The Ultimate Guide to Artificial Intelligence in Education. As my last show on AI and I was a bit excited, and I could guarantee that with these amazing experts, today will be an extended version of the 10 Minute Teacher. But it's one that you don't want to miss.

00;02;20;08 – 00;02;57;01
Vicki Davis
So I'm going to introduce each of our guests as I pose them questions. I just want all three of you I really appreciate all of you coming on the show to talk about this important and very hot topic.

Introducing Dan Fitzpatrick

So we are going to start with Dan. So Dan Fitzpatrick is one of the co-authors. He was recognized with the Tech Champion Award at the 2022 Digital Industry Dynamite Awards and has been featured in the Ed Tech 50, and he is a director at ED Futurists and has a lot of credentials that we will list in the show notes.

00;02;57;01 – 00;03;15;15
Vicki Davis
And you could see all the amazing things he’s done, including a Postgraduate Diploma in Design Thinking and Innovation from M.I.T. All of us should be pretty familiar with that amazing program.

Can AI Enhance Student Learning?

So, Dan, can AI be used to enhance student learning? Because many sure schools are immediately banning it, right?

00;03;15;24 – 00;03;33;16
Dan Fitzpatrick
Absolutely. I think that's what excites me about this. And I think that's why the three of us got together and wrote this book because the potential of this new technology is absolutely amazing.

I think it was about three years ago that McKinsey said that over the next decade, we're going to see more technological progress than we have in the last 100 years.

00;03;33;16 – 00;03;53;23
Dan Fitzpatrick
Now, that's quite a statement. Last 100 years we put humans on the moon, we created computers, we created the Internet, and we're going to see more progression than that in the next ten years. I think we can start to get a glimpse of what that's going to be like when we look at artificial intelligence and especially the new types of A.I. Generative A.I. that we're starting to see, it's going to have a massive impact on teaching and learning.

00;03;53;23 – 00;04;16;21
Dan Fitzpatrick
And teachers all over the world are reporting back right now that it's absolutely supercharged learning within their classrooms. It's reducing teacher workload. It's helping them be more creative. It's helping teachers be more human with students as well.

So, yeah, it's the implications for teaching and learning are going to be absolutely vast. And I kind of compare this to like — Remember how they the Internet was in the mid-nineties?

00;04;16;21 – 00;04;40;17
Dan Fitzpatrick
When you look at it now, it looks so outdated. There was email. A basic browser. Who could have known that Steve Jobs would have introduced the iPhone only ten years later? Just how much that technology had progressed. And I think we're probably in the mid-nineties version of AI at the moment, and how it's going to how is going to benefit learning and education as a system ultimately, I guess, is for anybody's guess at the moment.

00;04;40;17 – 00;04;57;12
Dan Fitzpatrick
But I know we will have to drive this revolution with intent so that it's positive for our students and positive for our teachers. And hopefully, we can build a space, an education system, and develop it so that our students are fit for the 21st century and can go on to be successful in this new world.

00;04;57;18 – 00;05;19;21
Vicki Davis
And we have to remind folks the big question I remember from the nineties, which is when I first started teaching technology, was “with all this search engine stuff, will kids still have to think?” But you know what? We've discovered that they did think, and they are thinking. They just think in a different way. And in some ways, it did supercharge, and now we're on the cusp of another revolution.

00;05;20;02 – 00;05;36;04
Dan Fitzpatrick
Vicki This quote from when the Gutenberg press was invented about how Tim would read and was going to make our kids go blind like this, and any new technology has as broad fears and kind of get over as as a human race like we always have, and we'll find the benefits in it.

00;05;36;06 – 00;06;00;13
Vicki Davis
So now we're going to turn to Amanda Fox. She's recipient of the 2016 ISTE Emerging Leader Award, recognized as a PBS Digital Innovator, served as president of the Young Educator Network for ISTE, received the President's Volunteer Award in 2018, authored many books, The Canva Classroom, the Quiver Classroom, Teaching Land and a Barker Town. And she's @AmandaFoxSTEM on Twitter.

AI Tools for Teachers: Meet Curipod, AI Lesson Plan Builder

00;06;00;13 – 00;06;09;25
Vicki Davis
And so, Amanda, can you give us some examples of some AI powered educational tools and programs and how they've been effective in helping students learn?

00;06;09;26 – 00;06;35;02
Amanda Fox
Absolutely. One of the tools that I think I've seen educators most excited about is Curipod. So Curipod is like Nearpod and Pear Deck, except that has the magic of generating your lesson plans for you. They have a wonderful lesson library that they've created as well. Curated content from the other educators have created. Just like Nearpod or Pear Deck has the interactive elements where you can do quick formative check ins.

00;06;35;02 – 00;06;52;21
Amanda Fox
There's polling, Q&A, but what differentiates it is it has a word cloud. And then when you go to create a lesson, you type in your topic, you can put your learning objectives, and then you can pump in your standards, and it will generate like an amazing 15 slide presentation on that topic. And then, you can go in and edit it.

Prompt Engineering in Education

00;06;52;21 – 00;07;13;22
Amanda Fox
You can change the background images, you can change the content to suit your students in the classroom. Because one thing that we've learned from prompt engineering, which is like teacher prompt engineering with lessons, is that it doesn't stop at the output. We have to go back in and continually edit, check for accuracy, check for bias, make sure it's meeting and serving the needs of our students.

Use Canva Text to Image for Literature Classes

00;07;13;25 – 00;07;37;12
Amanda Fox
The other tool that I think is fantastic is Canva. I'm sorry Canva Classroom author. So I have to plug Canva Text to Image. Mainly. It's not as powerful or robust as Midjourney or DALL·E, but it's accessible to students. With the Canva for Education account, you can put it in the hands of students right now. You can use it to visualize character descriptions and literature.

Using AI to Write AI Funko Pop Poetry

00;07;37;21 – 00;08;04;02
Amanda Fox
We just created an AI Funko Pop Poetry activity where students are creating like Funko prose, like Edgar Allan Poe, and then they actually used ChatGPT to go in and author a bio on Edgar Allan Poe.

Inside of our book, we have this wonderful “Prep and Edit Prompting Framework”. Dan developed Prep, which is all about how to prep the machine in prompt prompted to get the desired output.

00;08;04;02 – 00;08;23;26
Amanda Fox
But I just did a session in Detroit for MACUL and the big question was like, “Well, what about plagiarism?”

And the thing is, is that if we're using it as a tool to meet the standards and we're focusing on the process instead of the product, the students are still learning by generating these outputs.

Writing Poetry with ChatGPT to Learn Rhyming Schemes

My daughter, she came home with an assignment.

00;08;23;26 – 00;08;49;17
Amanda Fox
She had to write a sonnet and it had to be AB AB CD CD with rhyming couplets and GG at the end had include figurative language such as euphemisms, allusions and metaphors, and it had to have an overall theme. She didn't understand rhyme scheme, so we went to ChatGPT. We put in the rhyme scheme we put in include these figurative legends elements, and it spit out a poem. We analyzed the poem.

00;08;49;17 – 00;09;06;25
Amanda Fox
We compared it to sonnets by Shakespeare. And I asked her, “Does this look like a sonnet?” She had to tag the ABAB. She met the standard of understanding that. Then we ran it back through and we had it analyzed the figurative language components inside of the poem, and it explained it to her Why This is a metaphor. She understood metaphor.

00;09;06;25 – 00;09;28;26
Amanda Fox
And then at the end she had to take all the things that she learned by generating poems with ChatGPT. Seeing exemplars and examples in action compared to actual sonnets that exist historically and compose her own. After the fact, she had to have an image to accompany it. So we went, we actually went to MidJourney and we designed we put in a prompt of exactly what fit with the poem's theme.

00;09;28;26 – 00;09;46;28
Amanda Fox
It spit out an image. We put that image in Canva, we added the poem on top of it, we doctored it up some and that in product she had a lot of scaffolding along the way because literature isn’t one of her fortes. But at the end of it, through that process, she hit all of the standards. All of the standards, she walked away with that understanding.

00;09;46;28 – 00;09;56;16
Amanda Fox
So I think is how we're leveraging the tools and how we're making sure that the learning is still there and still it might be invisible, but it is happening.

Why Teachers Should Teach Prompt Engineering with AI Tools

00;09;56;19 – 00;10;06;21
Vicki Davis
Well, don't you think teachers are concerned that at the point where she had ChatGPT generate that first sonnet that she was looking at, that most kids are just going to turn that in and sign their name to it?

00;10;06;21 – 00;10;28;20
Amanda Fox
That's exactly why teachers need to begin using it and teach students that we can't trust the AI to give us an output that doesn't have inaccuracies. It doesn't have information that is false or there's unconscious or implicit biases either from our own input, from what we're asking, or from the datasets that the AI is trained on.

Plagiarism Concerns with AI

00;10;28;20 – 00;10;45;16
Dan Fitzpatrick
I think we're going to have to get more creative with how we set assignments as well. So just asking students to hand in something that they could easily download off the Internet, I get ChatGPT, but we have to be smarter than that. As educators, we could start at that point. But then could the students come in and read the poems out?

00;10;45;16 – 00;11;04;22
Dan Fitzpatrick
Could they? Could they analyze them? And we have to really get smart with this now, because unfortunately, I think you're right, Vicki, students will just hand bits of work in that they've gotten a AI to do, and course they will. I mean, if I was a student, I'd probably do exactly the same. But I think expect that as a teacher, if all you're asking students to do is work that an AI robot can do.

Preparing Students for Their Future Using AI

00;11;04;22 – 00;11;23;22
Dan Fitzpatrick
And I think that's probably the one thing that gets me excited about the future of education is that actually, if we're teaching our students something that an AI robot can do, essentially, then we're probably not preparing them in the right way for the future because when they go out to employment, an employer is going to go for the AI bot every time because that's going to develop.

00;11;23;22 – 00;11;32;11
Dan Fitzpatrick
It's going to be huge. So we have to focus on what are the skills that are unique to the human being here and really bring them back to the core of the education system.

Relationships Help Us Teach Better and Prevent Plagiarism, Especially in the Age of AI

00;11;32;12 – 00;11;49;29
Vicki Davis
Well, I always say you have to relate to educate. And you know, those relationships between teachers and students are more important than ever. Classes that are huge, you're not going to be able to have that relationship, and it will proliferate the use of AI tools. And you know, we've got to get back to the core of what teaching is.

00;11;49;29 – 00;12;10;12
Vicki Davis
I think all of your points are excellent and we're about to get to Brad because Brad is going to talk about the ethical consideration issues surrounding the use of AI in the classroom. So now we're going to talk to Brad Weinstein. He's a successful author, publisher and educator. He's a founder of Teacher Goals, as he's authored multiple books, including this one.

00;12;10;12 – 00;12;27;10
Vicki Davis
And we've had him on the show before talking about hacking school discipline. On episode 473, he talked about restorative justice and school culture. So ethics is really an area of expertise for you.

Ethical Considerations of AI in the Classroom

Brad, so what are the ethical considerations of the use of AI in the classroom?

Consideration 1: Plagiarism

00;12;27;10 – 00;12;56;16
Brad Weinstein
Well, there's a lot of things to consider when working with AI and students. And when you think ethically, you think, first of all, plagiarism. Is it copying?

Consideration 2: Bias

You know, when you're thinking about that is the work yours is the work being produced biased or not biased? It really when it comes down to when you're thinking about ethical considerations, you have to consider that the inputs that the machine is being fed by humans and human nature and human biases being input into systems is being learned by systems and then output it into Chat

00;12;56;18 – 00;13;19;06
Brad Weinstein
GPT and other chat bots and other A.I..

Consideration 3: Effective Editing of AI Chatbot Output

So as Amanda mentioned earlier, you can't just trust whatever you're getting as fact as gospel. You always have to go through a process which we call the edit process, and that's, that's an acronym to actually check that out. And when you're thinking about something like plagiarism, you're thinking about things like that in the classroom and you're thinking about how that might impact education.

Ask Students to Explain What They Create in Their Own Words

00;13;19;06 – 00;13;37;27
Brad Weinstein
When you take a work like I take a work, and if I can write it and I can put it in the chatbot and I can turn it in, it doesn't mean I know it. So I have one simple test. Explain this to me in your own words. Like literally have them explain to them in their own words, you know, and that that will tell me right then and there that they know it or they don't know it.

00;13;37;27 – 00;13;52;01
Brad Weinstein
And that's always been the case, Right? You know, in education. So you could have always copied the paper off the Internet. You could have always found the research somewhere. You could have had a friend write the paper for you. It's just that now it's so much more in depth and so much more deep what we can do with this technology.

Feed the Rubric and a Paper into ChatGPT and Ask It to Pre-Score the Rubric and Offer Suggestions for Improvement

00;13;52;01 – 00;14;10;20
Brad Weinstein
So you could take something that you've already written and then content and improve it. You can write this using, you know, a better voice, better tone. You can feed the machine, and the machine will pop out. You know, how it will score on this rubric out of four. And you can go back and you can improve your paper and make sure that it includes those things that you've been missing according to the criteria.

Questions Teachers and Administrators Need to Be Asking Because of AI

00;14;10;20 – 00;14;28;23
Brad Weinstein
So when we're thinking about that, yes, it is plagiarism. You just copy something and turn it in as your own work, But it has to go much deeper than that. We have to think about, again, like Dan said, what we're assigning, how we're assigning it, what does mastery and success look like in the classroom? I'm just curious. You know, there's a lot more to that when it comes to the biases of the data and important things like that.

00;14;28;23 – 00;14;33;07
Brad Weinstein
I was wondering if Dan or Amanda had anything to add. You know, when you're thinking about ethics from a classroom perspective.

What About the Lack of Data Transparency with the Data Sets Used by AI?

00;14;33;07 – 00;14;55;24
Vicki Davis
Well, I wanted to ask a question that maybe one of you can answer. So the lack of data transparency really concerns me. For example, we've always said you can't quote Wikipedia because we don't trust all the sources and all the humans, but we allow these AI bots to produce all of this uncited text, no hyperlinks, no citations, and we're just quoting the AIBot

00;14;55;24 – 00;15;20;01
Vicki Davis
I don't understand how we allow AI to have a different standard than we allow for humans when AI is perfectly capable of generating those citations automatically. Now I've been told that ChatGPT will generate citations. I haven't seen it do it yet, but I will try it when it's no longer overloaded.

But what thoughts do you have about data transparency in why we don't have that right now?

Ask ChatGPT for Citations. Have You Asked It?

00;15;20;03 – 00;15;35;03
Dan Fitzpatrick
Got to ask it essentially. So one of the biggest types of questions is kind of do this, kind of do that. Wait a minute, it doesn't do this and the response is always the same. “Have you asked it?” Because remember, I think like Amanda said, it's a chat bot, so you've got to go back and you have to have a back and forth dialog with this thing and not just take.

Sometimes You Will Get False Citations So Always Check Them

00;15;35;03 – 00;15;49;23
Dan Fitzpatrick
The first thing it gives you is the finished article. So yeah, you can go back and say what is citations for this, Where are you getting this information from. Now with this was more so in the last version of it rather than the current one, but sometimes it gives false citations, so you've got to be really careful with that.

00;15;49;24 – 00;16;06;22
Dan Fitzpatrick
But there are lots of tools being developed at the moment. So Google Bard, which is like kind of the their version of ChatGPT is going to come naturally with citation. So everything at every information it gives you, it's going to have the citations at the bottom were very much on on day one of this technology. And I compare it a bit like, can you remember Napster?

00;16;06;28 – 00;16;07;07
Vicki Davis
Yeah, I.

00;16;07;07 – 00;16;08;17
Dan Fitzpatrick
Do. Yeah.

00;16;09;02 – 00;16;11;23
Vicki Davis
But all this stuff we're showing our age, aren't we, Dan?

Understanding the Principles of Change: You Have to Start Somewhere

00;16;11;26 – 00;16;29;07
Dan Fitzpatrick
I compare it to Napster because like Napster, not many people realize. But Napster revolutionized how we consume media and the Internet. Now, a lot of people remember Napster as a peer to peer music share in a movie sharing sites that then quickly got closed down because it was it was copyright infringement. Of course it was. It was people's sharing in other people's work.

00;16;29;17 – 00;16;51;21
Dan Fitzpatrick
However, the principles of Napster are what we see now in Apple Music. We see in Netflix, we see it in Spotify. It morphed into something new.
I don't think ChatGPT is going to be the final version of this technology. We’re at Napster stage. Okay. It could get sanctioned by government. There are law cases going up against some of the image generators at the moment.

00;16;51;21 – 00;17;11;02
Dan Fitzpatrick
But what's going to come out at the end is what we're going to see. And that's why I kind of say when we're in the mid-nineties Internet era, in the wild west of the Internet, we're in the Wild West AI. What's going to come in the next few years. We'll refine that. And we're so lucky because the world is getting to take part in the very early seeds of a new technology here.

00;17;11;02 – 00;17;30;15
Dan Fitzpatrick
Not very often do we get to do that, but because it's generated such interest. But we're doing this and we we're writing this book and we've written this book because we believe it's not perfect yet, but educate as can stop benefiting from it straight away. And if we can start benefiting from it straight away, then let's get ahead of the game and let's start transforming the classroom for our students.

00;17;30;15 – 00;17;33;08
Dan Fitzpatrick
Now, instead of waiting for that polished version.

00;17;33;08 – 00;17;41;07
Brad Weinstein
And there are a few out there that will give you some sources right now, I can't name it off the top of my head, but there are a few that are generating some sources for people.

Thank You to Sponsor: EVERFI

00;17;41;23 – 00;18;25;05
Vicki Davis
We're taking a short break from this extended episode to talk about today's sponsor EVERFI. You know, we all remember that teacher that study hall teacher who walked you through your first college application or the social studies teacher who taught you what taxes were and how to file them. The math teacher who used student loans to show you how interest worked. You can be that teacher and today's sponsor EVERFI wants to help you make that kind of impact with free digital lessons for K-through-12 students from budgets in banking to credit and savings, you'll find a financial literacy topic that's right for your classroom, and especially during April, Financial Literacy Month, there's no better time

00;18;25;05 – 00;18;51;04
Vicki Davis
to equip students with smart decision-making around finances. Learn how you can share these free resources with students and give them a financial foundation that lasts a lifetime. Just go to Everfi.com/coolcat. Now back to the show. Excellent.

How Do You Report Bias or Issues with AI?

So one other question related to ethics.

00;18;51;07 – 00;19;13;18
Vicki Davis
What about the fact that, you know, if you go in there and something said that you're like, okay, this is not okay. I've had that happen a few times. There's no easy way it seems whether you're testing the initial version of the being disaster, which seems to have gotten better and you get something inappropriate, it just did seem like there was a way to report that or to say, Hey, this shows bias.

00;19;13;18 – 00;19;20;03
Vicki Davis
You know, how do you with a chatbot report bias or flag something? So that somebody can look at it?

00;19;20;06 – 00;19;35;15
Dan Fitzpatrick
I use ChatGPT a lot, as you can probably tell. So there are ways to kind of to feed back on the responses that you get there. And I think I think on all on all the platforms that I've played with anyway, you can report you can report kind of if something is coming back and it's inappropriate.

00;19;35;16 – 00;19;58;06
Dan Fitzpatrick
But I think some of these tools would also say that maybe it's the maybe it's the job of kind of the tools that come between them and the users job to do that. So, for example, I know of an ed tech company in the U.K. who have built a platform using ChatGPT, where they they filter out certain information before it goes to ChatGPT , and then they filter out that information when it comes back from ChatGPT.

00;19;58;06 – 00;20;13;14
Dan Fitzpatrick
And it's kind of solving a lot of issues around data protection and and potentials for any kind of misuse there as well. So I think there's a big role for kind of those those third party companies say we're going to build applications around this. Yeah, I think we'll solve it. I think it's a major problem at the moment.

00;20;13;14 – 00;20;31;19
Dan Fitzpatrick
And I think the concerns that you've got and that teachers have got the same concerns. I work with businesses, I train businesses and marketing teams with AI as well as teachers, and they've got exactly the same concerns because, obviously they don't want to put content out that could potentially be biased. But there are companies out there who are working on this right now and I think we will get there.

Humans Are Still a Vital Part of AI’s Usefulness

00;20;31;19 – 00;20;48;19
Dan Fitzpatrick
But I think it's really important to say, like Brad and Amanda of emphasize as well, the human is still essential in this process. The human still has to edit. It still has to read it, I suppose just like a teacher picking up a textbook, they will read through it. They're not just going to give it straight to the student, get to see if it's appropriate, if it's relevant for their students.

00;20;48;19 – 00;20;53;03
Dan Fitzpatrick
And in the same way, you have to do that with the generated content that comes from how

AI, the Internet, and Smartphones Have Many of The Same Ethical Issues

00;20;53;03 – 00;21;11;07
Brad Weinstein
you're thinking about all this. You know, as Dan was saying, you can't just trust it when it puts it's gospel. As long as like I was saying before and you can get in trouble with the Internet, like our kids can search inappropriate things on the Internet and get themselves in trouble, They can pick up a phone and do something they should do with their phone when they call a peer, there's going to be things that are not perfect with the system for a while, right?

“It’s a Whole New World But Nothing New”

00;21;11;07 – 00;21;28;18
Brad Weinstein
So it's going to be a new way of monitoring things, a new way of looking at discipline, a new way of, you know, our school policies and procedures and handbook. I mean, it's a whole new world, but it's nothing. It's nothing new. The kids with technology are maybe, you know, looking at things or getting inappropriate responses or, you know, searching pictures.

00;21;28;18 – 00;21;47;28
Brad Weinstein
They shouldn't online, you know, those other things. And again, as we are saying, like you look at the algorithmic bias and what is input into the machine, they can further perpetuate inequalities and biases and things like that. So we always have to be careful of that because there might not be as much information, inputed from certain groups of people, ethnicities, cultures and things like that.

00;21;47;28 – 00;22;03;29
Brad Weinstein
So who's writing this content that's getting fed to the machine? So when you're thinking about that, it's always important. And also, when you get something that's outputted, you have to prove it. Like you can't just like take a sentence like this. What's the definition of social emotional learning? Like you have to actually go and verify, you know, that that's actually legit somewhere.

00;22;03;29 – 00;22;16;11
Brad Weinstein
You have to find a source and attribute it to that and make sure that it still makes sense. So that's why we're really big on the Prep and Edit process in our book. It's not just using ChatGPT, but it's using it with fidelity to enhance learning and what we already do.

Writing Code with AI

00;22;16;12 – 00;22;34;12
Vicki Davis
I'm teaching Python in my CS class when I had them go in and and asked ChatGPT to write in Python tic tac toe game, all ten students got ten different tic tac toe games. Only eight of them would run, and we had to tell them what platform and how we're running, but eight of them would run. And so they were all different.

00;22;34;12 – 00;22;48;12
Vicki Davis
So it was unique. But that just shows that, you know, you sometimes you get unique, that works and sometimes you don't.

The Impact AI Has on the Role of Teachers in the Classroom

So let's shift for a second. And Amanda, let's talk about the impact I will have on the role of teachers in the classroom and how teachers can adapt.

00;22;48;14 – 00;23;20;29
Amanda Fox
First and foremost, when we have classrooms of 30 students and the accountability of teachers keeps rising over the years. So, you know, we're responsible for addressing student learning gaps at grade level, holding students behind.

Using AI to Meet the Needs of Diverse Learners in the Classroom by Using It With Lesson Planning

When you have platforms and I just demoed this in Detroit that help with pedagogical frameworks like UDL and DOK, you can take your standards and you can plug it in and ask What complexity do students need to understand a standard at?

00;23;21;07 – 00;23;43;09
Amanda Fox
It'll tell you, and then you can design a lesson for that, like again with Curipod. And the beautiful thing is, is it will spit out a lesson in under a minute. And if you have ten kids that need that multi-tiered instruction, that have IEPs, that have different components to help them learn at grade level, you can generate ten different lessons on the same topic.

00;23;43;17 – 00;24;04;23
Amanda Fox
You can alter the grade level, you can alter the tone, the reading level, and and use it really to struggling learners and address all the different types of learners in your classroom.

AI Video Generators For Students Who Struggle with Speaking and Presenting

I know when I was teaching last year, I had a student who was a volunteer and would not speak in class and presentations weren't something that were in his wheelhouse.

00;24;04;23 – 00;24;32;28
Amanda Fox
But if I would have had like D-ID AI video generation platform where students can put in a script and have an avatar speak for them, I'm pretty certain that would have empowered him to be able to present his information and give him a voice.

When we're looking at how it's going to help teachers, it's going to help us become more efficient, is going to help us address the needs of our students and get some of our time back that we've lost with just the insurmountable tasks that are put on us.

Using AI for Parts of Lessons

00;24;32;29 – 00;24;44;13
Vicki Davis
You can hear some administrators saying, “Amanda, I want to make sure that these teachers are actually doing the lesson plans that they've written automatically.” And you said to it's like Curipod, how do you spell it?

00;24;44;14 – 00;25;06;23
Amanda Fox
Curipod. So for example, I generated a lesson on figurative language. You don't have to generate whole lessons. You can do lesson hooks, you can do exit tickets, check ins. There's even an SEL component to where you can check in where they are in terms of mental health and emotional well-being. This isn't just spitting out text, it's a lesson.

00;25;06;23 – 00;25;30;19
Amanda Fox
It's actually spitting out content. So the figurative language lesson that was created actually went through and laid out slides for what a metaphoric is, what a simile is. And like NearPod, you have a pin code, students join in, they participate and you're able to see in real-time their understanding of the content and their understanding of the topic through polls.

00;25;30;25 – 00;25;54;29
Amanda Fox
Word clouds, Q&A’s, open-ended discussions and there's a bunch of strategies that they have, we think, pair share having them team up, even using these text generative A.I. platforms to create project-based learning and genius hour activities for students and even leveraging it in their own research and their own direction. Creating chat bots that solve problems in local communities would be a great one.

New AI Tools Will Give Teachers The Capability to Create Content Faster and More Efficiently

00;25;54;29 – 00;26;21;00
Amanda Fox
Thinking of Shark Tank and my STEM background, the future where I see it going. And there's another platform called Prof Jim and it kind of does the same thing as Curipod, but it has an AI avatar. You can have Socrates or Archimedes come in and actually talk and teach these principles through interactive 3D models where they can click on a heart, they can turn it and they can see all the pieces.

00;26;21;00 – 00;26;54;02
Amanda Fox
So I think what it's going to do is it's going to give teachers access to tools to create content faster and more efficiently, especially new teachers that are coming in for the first time. And not all the content is perfect. Just like ChatGPT and students, we're worried about them generating something and running with it.

Encourage Teachers Using AI to Edit Things Generated for Them by AI

Administrators, you know, we need to talk to teachers about using these tools but going back in, editing it and make sure that it's meeting the needs of the students in the classroom, that it's hitting the standards and that the students are learning with it.

00;26;54;14 – 00;27;17;00
Brad Weinstein
And Amanda, I think adding to that is that the generation of the lessons is step one. But the differentiation of instruction, the ability to use, you know, UDL in what we do and reach all learners, I think that's the game changer. You know, we all have made lessons before, but differentiation writing different lesson plans, having tools that can be accessible for our learners is also huge.

Instant Feedback on Student Essays

00;27;17;00 – 00;27;37;10
Brad Weinstein
In addition to that, students can now get input almost instantly on some of the stuff that they're working on. Because how long does it take a teacher to grade an essay? You know, how long does it take a teacher give them feedback in class when there's 35 other kids in that room? So when you're looking at giving some feedback on what you're doing and asking ChatGPT or another Chatbot, you know, to look at this and how would you rate this?

Parents Can Use It for Homework Help

00;27;37;21 – 00;27;57;09
Brad Weinstein
And even parents at home, I mean, do all parents know how to help their kids? You know, write an essay or write a persuasive essay or do these certain types of math problems? And so I'm looking at this and then you were talking about this on our select group. You know, when we're thinking about the parent input and, you know, acting as almost a tutor sometimes and to be able to help kids do things that they couldn't do before.

Using AI to Get the Feedback They Need on Essays

00;27;57;10 – 00;28;15;11
Brad Weinstein
That's why one of the reasons I'm excited is not just the teacher usage. It's also how we can reach our learners and how the students themselves can use that technology to get the feedback they need. Because I've got and I've got an essay that was like three months or a month old from a teacher before right? Like, what use is it now that I turn in my paper and a month later I finally got a grade on it.

00;28;15;11 – 00;28;25;26
Brad Weinstein
And the teachers, you know, give them some credit. You takes 20 minutes to grade an essay times 175 students at the high school level. It's going to take weeks if they want to sleep or eat.

00;28;25;28 – 00;28;44;19
Vicki Davis
But if the student could just run it through and say, this is my rubric and how can I improve my writing? And it gives them feedback. They can do that first pass of a feedback from chatGPT or whatever tool they're using.

How Does AI Impact Our Humanity

So howm Brad, does AI impact our, you know, being human, our humanity?

00;28;45;04 – 00;29;05;10
Brad Weinstein
Well, I look at it in a couple of ways. I look at, you know, there was just an article that came out the other day about how people that were just really good at technology are kind of not the best in the office, the most well liked. They kind of have are pompous attitude are kind of out of place now because the technology is doing some of the things that maybe they were doing or maybe they were in charge of.

The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in a World of Artificial Intelligence

00;29;05;14 – 00;29;30;19
Brad Weinstein
So when it comes to the future, I look at, you know, I'm thinking about emotional intelligence as the key emotional intelligence, you know, has been proven to be probably the most important thing in the workplace success. It's this and, you know, furthering your career and all of those other big factors. So when you think about emotional intelligence, it doesn't matter what technology you have, You're going to always have a need for self management, self, self awareness.

00;29;30;19 – 00;30;00;29
Brad Weinstein
You're always going to need to have empathy for others. You're always going to be working with other people and in teams and collaborating. So I think the differentiator will be that emotional intelligence, but it's also applying that emotional intelligence and that humanity to artificial intelligence as well.

Because how would you know if the tone of the output is going to come across to your audience in this tone of voice or, you know, it's going to be empathetic or it's going to be something that the humans receiving your messages and communications are going to resonate with.

00;30;01;14 – 00;30;20;18
Brad Weinstein
So you can't lose who we are as humans. The machine tries to mimic, you know, emotions and tries to mimic tone of voice. But the reality is, is that we can't lose who we are in this. We still have to have human intuition. We still have to have, you know, our judgment. We still have to apply, which what ChatGPT put to our beliefs, morals and values as humans.

00;30;20;24 – 00;30;39;08
Brad Weinstein
So when I'm thinking about, you know, the future and what skills we're going to need, it's what we've always needed. Now we can spend even more time with our students because I'm spending less time doing some of the other tasks that are more monotonous. Now I'm able to spend more time talking to my students, going around building relationships and working with my kids and spending time with my own family.

00;30;39;19 – 00;30;46;29
Brad Weinstein
So if this makes my job even quicker, I have more time at home. I'm more energized. When I head back into school that next day and I got to spend some quality time with my family.

Concerns with Mental Health Counseling from AI Bots

00;30;47;00 – 00;31;07;29
Vicki Davis
We're talking about humanity. There's two more pieces we need to kind of cover. One is a lot of students and adults are starting to ask mental health-type questions of these AI bots. So what are the challenges with this phenomenon that's going on in? You know, for example, one of my concerns is that AI bot doesn't have the same reporting requirement you or I have.

00;31;07;29 – 00;31;14;14
Vicki Davis
If a student came and talked to us. So what needs to be done with the student mental health needs as they converse with AI chatbot?

00;31;14;14 – 00;31;31;06
Dan Fitzpatrick
Yeah, it's a really interesting one. This I did a bit of kind of research into this back in January, so back on the older version of chat JPT and kind of just almost just pretended to be a student and kind of interacted with it and kind of recorded what it was coming out with. And I think I did a Twitter thread on it at the time.

00;31;31;06 – 00;31;54;13
Dan Fitzpatrick
It's really interesting. It's very controversial. I think if students are using it, which they will do to ask questions. Personally, I think when I tested it, it came out with some great answers for students, and it always kind of ended the response by saying speak to somebody about it. Now, I think one of the running themes that we've talked about here is that you can't always trust this and we shouldn't.

00;31;54;26 – 00;32;12;08
Dan Fitzpatrick
But if a student on their own is accessing it, I think it's probably it goes back to kind of why banning the technology is so counterproductive because the student can go home and use it. We can't stop them using it in their own time. So I think what we need to do as educators and as schools to educate really is tell them about this technology.

00;32;12;08 – 00;32;38;13
Dan Fitzpatrick
Tell them that it's probably not the best place to do this at the moment and to keep drilling that message with our students if they if they're in help, if they need that need to talk to somebody that might be a school counselor or somebody in the school who can help. I do think, though, that this side of the technology will develop, and I know that there are some companies at the moment twho are doing a lot of research and investment into this of how tools like this can help the elderly who are lonely and can help.

00;32;38;13 – 00;33;04;02
Dan Fitzpatrick
Yet just generally people who are lonely and can be kind of a bit of a first stop for kind of somebody who needs to talk to someone who about their well-being and about their mental health. I think what excites me about this, I think, is that someone’s mentioned this already.

Organizations Can Create In-House Bots Using the ChatGPT AI and Their Own Data

You can actually train this technology on your own data so you don't just have to talk to ChatGPT and get out from from chat to you can train GPT on your own set of data.

00;33;04;02 – 00;33;24;08
Dan Fitzpatrick
So let's say for example, you or a school and you've got your policy around wellbeing and mental health, who to talk to when you need to talk to them. You could have an in-house bot that uses the GPT technology and you could promote that to students and say, So if you do need to talk to somebody and the bot would be trained to direct the student in the direction you need them to go in.

00;33;24;08 – 00;33;34;01
Dan Fitzpatrick
I think it's like anything isn’t it if our students are using something that we don't think is going to be 100% safe for them, then we need to do two things. We need to offer them an alternative and we need to educate them.

Administrative School Leadership in the Age of AI

00;33;34;01 – 00;33;55;00
Vicki Davis
We do. And so that really leads us to our final conversation, which is leadership. Dan, what kind of leadership do we need from administrators, from those in education as it relates? Because when you have upheaval like this without leadership, things just happen on their own, and the new policies, new thoughts, new uses, new pedagogies all need to emerge.

00;33;55;00 – 00;34;17;07
Dan Fitzpatrick
Yeah, 100%. And I think we've got a lot of lessons to learn from how we've kind of dealt with social media over the last ten years. I think what we did was, as a society in general, kind of went up here social media let’s use it, but then didn't kind of learn any lessons or safeguard. And I'm talking about from a government level all the way down to a parental level, really in certain circumstances.

00;34;17;08 – 00;34;34;22
Dan Fitzpatrick
I'm being very broad there. But I think especially from a government level, I think as you can tell by Max and I'm over in the UK, and our government have literally just put together a policy on social media, talk about trying to support the stable after the horses escaped. I think we've got to learn those lessons and I think we've got it comes down to intent.

We Can’t Pretend Change Isn’t Happening

00;34;34;22 – 00;34;50;08
Dan Fitzpatrick
We can't just I think we can't bury our heads in the sand and pretend it's not happening because we're just going to cause a larger digital divide for our students, which is going to cause more problems for them down the line. And we can't just pretend we'll just let it happen, because I think that's the other side of this, and I think we've got to use it with intent.

00;34;50;08 – 00;35;09;27
Dan Fitzpatrick
So we're going to need leaders who have got vision. We can't have the types of leaders that just let things take on as they always have been. They're not going to be able to lead our educational institutions into this new era.

The Leaders We Need

We're going to need leaders who are brave, who can collaborate, who are inclusive, who are adaptable, who are ethical.

00;35;10;04 – 00;35;35;02
Dan Fitzpatrick
And that's going to, and we've talked about ethics so much in this podcast, we need them to have a grounding of what ethics is and also our learners themselves. Because again, as we've talked, this technology is going to transform so fast, and we need to be agile. We need leaders who are agile, who can who can take their teachers, their students, their institutions with them on a journey that's going to be quite fast, it's going to be quite bumpy, but is going to be quite exciting as well for for learning.

Leaders Who Innovate with Teachers and Students

00;35;35;02 – 00;35;55;10
Dan Fitzpatrick
So I think we need to start innovating. I mean, you mentioned at the start that I did the design thinking innovation course at MIT, and one of the things that course taught me was that we, as institutions and as educators, we need to spend some time in innovation space and looking at what's coming in developing strategies. Otherwise, we're going to we're going to be kind of bunkered down in the school building.

00;35;55;10 – 00;36;12;15
Dan Fitzpatrick
And all this innovation is going to be is going to be banging on the door. And we can't just ignore it because it's going to make our schools irrelevant. After a while. We're going to have to move with the times and it all comes down, I think, to and this is where my Amanda and Brad's heart are,

00;36;12;15 – 00;36;26;16
Dan Fitzpatrick
With this book. It's how do we give our students the experience, skills and knowledge that's going to prepare them to be successful in the world. And it all comes down to that. And good leadership should make that happen, especially in turbulent times.

00;36;26;16 – 00;36;48;25
Vicki Davis
Excellent. The AI Classroom: The Ultimate Guide to Artificial Intelligence in Education is the book. This is a quadruple episode of the Ten Minute Teacher. Probably the longest it will be the longest one I've ever released, but I think it's also one of the most important. Thank you, all three of you, for helping us talk all around the topic of AI.

00;36;48;25 – 00;37;09;05
Vicki Davis
It's worth having extended conversations, and I just want to encourage everyone listening that we need to be part of the conversation really, in many ways, we're all newbies at this. I know a lot of people think the term newbie is negative, but we're all there. You can either join in and learn with all of these experts who are learning too, or you can just wait a couple of years and.

00;37;09;05 – 00;37;28;17
Vicki Davis
Let it pass you by. It's very exciting to be part of change. My students have been helping me form my own opinions about AI because A.I. is changing so rapidly, but we haven't talked about it. I use the AI inside my notebook app Notion and it's fantastic. Maybe I don't know if it's pushed forward by Chat GPT or what's the API, but it's pretty impressive.

00;37;28;17 – 00;37;59;26
Vicki Davis
So again, the book is the AI Classroom and thank you, Dan, Amanda, Brad, all of you for coming on the show.

Thank you. To today's sponsor EVERFI. We've talked about how everyone remembers that teacher and everybody's lesson to help you become that meaningful teacher who really helps students understand real world skills. From budgets in banking to credit and savings, you will find a financial literacy topic that's right for your classroom, especially now during April Financial Literacy Month.

00;37;59;28 – 00;38;14;06
Vicki Davis
There's no better time to equip students with smart decision making around finances. So go toeverfi.com/coolcat.

00;38;14;24 – 00;38;34;11
John Davis
You've been listening to the 10 minute Teacher podcast. If you like this program, you can find more at coolcatteacher.com if you wish to see more content by Vicki Davis, you can find her on Facebook and Twitter under @coolcatteacher. Thank you for listening.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via a cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The post AI in the Classroom: A Complete AI Classroom Guide appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

800_final.mp3

Back to blog