How to Get Comfy with AI

If the thought of AI entering your classroom is still a bit daunting to you, I get it -- that's normal! There is no need to formally address AI in your classrooms right now anyway! This is something that a school district needs to approach thoughtfully, and our district hasn't come out with any official statements or thoughts related to using AI in the classroom with students directly. Some school districts are embracing it, some are banning it, some are dealing with it on an as needed basis, and some are in between all these positions! If it comes up in your classroom, either by students asking about it or you discover students are using to to help them do their work, then by all means address it, letting students know it's out there and while it's tempting to use it, just like any other tool, some training and understanding of how to use the tool properly is needed, so they really need to proceed with caution. More in a later post about kids and AI tools.

This post is about how to get comfortable with it yourself, and the best way to do that is to try it out! AI tools can be a HUGE timesaver for teachers! They can really help you with the whole "work smarter, not harder" mantra. I'm right there with you, dipping my toe in myself! I have tried using ChatGPT to help me write some social media posts for a group on Facebook I run, and I've used it to help me some up with some lesson ideas and questions to use with some books I got this summer related to digital citizenship. What I have discovered is that I can get some really good suggestions, but like anything, they're not perfect so I have to tweak them!

So here's mu challenge for you this week! Try one of these things using an AI tool (right now, I have only tried ChatGPT, but if you're familiar with any others, feel free to use those!) and then shoot me an email sharing what tool you used, what you tried, and your thoughts on the results!

Things to Try with AI (from the book The AI Classroom by Fitzpatrick, Fox, & Weinstein):

• Create group names for small groups in your class that are thematic/tied to curriculum (examples: names of different elements in a science class, different literary genres in an ELA class, different historical periods or geographical features in a social studies class).
• Create an email message to send to a parent about their child's performance in your class (bonus points if you make it a positive/celebratory email -- parents always love those!)
• Ask for warm up questions to start a lesson (ask for the answers to the questions as well!)
• Ask for discussion questions for a story or poem you're reading (ask for the answers to the questions as well!)
• Ask it to anticipate misconceptions students may have about a lesson you're planning to teach.
• Ask it to create a set of questions on a topic (with answers) that are at different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy.

As an example, here is one I came up with, asking for discussion questions for 5th graders for a book I want to use with them to teach digital citizenship.