AI in the Classroom

By: Michael McVey

My Teacher Candidates in LTEC 330 (Learning Technology and Design), Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age, are leaning into the challenges of partnering with generative AI tools as an intentional, safe, and equitable partner in teaching.

Last winter, when ChatGPT was still only just emerging as a potentially disruptive technological affordance, especially for my teacher candidates, I was fairly calm. I thought my own course assignments would be, for the most part, immune from the influence of this tool since so many of the tasks in my class were iterative and part of a piece-by-piece stack leading toward a final project

I quickly learned that my complacent attitude and efforts to sidestep generative AI were going to shortchange my students when they found themselves in the reality of daily life as a teacher in an information-rich, digitally-engaged, and rapidly-changing environment.

There were a few early adopters the first semester ChatGPT arrived. One of my students took on a free writing activity that, if sufficiently interesting and thoughtful, would be deemed blog worthy and end up in the class blog, Ed Tech in Our Classrooms. Her post immediately set off alarms, though, because of its length, clarity of writing, and its five roughly equally-sized paragraphs.

We gratefully used her submission as fodder for an extended class conversation about the differences between plagiarism and inspiration. But now, months later, we find ourselves needing to further examine the potential of generative tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, Poe , and even Bing. Perhaps as early as this winter, we will be able to examine other helpful tools such as StretchAI for educational scholarship, for which I am a beta tester. Not only will this tool answer research-oriented questions but it will provide actual sources. We have reached a new phase for how the tools will enhance our work as teachers and educational scholars and we are leaning deep into its potential to save time in our lesson planning.

One of the main activities in my course for Teacher Candidates is the development of a fully fleshed out online learning experience using Google Classroom as our learning management system – as ill-suited as it is to that task. As an LMS it was not originally designed to be a full-featured learning system so students in my class need to figure out a number of workarounds using technology.

We approach the online learning experience carefully, intentionally, and equitably in small increments. For example, early in the process, Candidates develop an anticipatory set of activities that might include links to websites and vetted videos. This task provides them a chance to develop their own unique online voice and teaching strategies.

As we work toward the creation of their online learning experience, we begin using ChatGPT to start the process of outlining ordinary tasks such as writing letters to parents, developing overviews of lessons for administrators and, a class favorite, the developing an age-appropriate short story following a complicated AI prompt that covers essential parameters. Some of the students who work with the youngest learners actually take the next step by developing small booklets for their students using Book Creator, which they can share either as a paper copy or a digital resource. 

Generative AI tools can offer help in figuring out how to create manipulatives, either digital or ones we can build in the physical world. Generative image generators such as Ideogram can even create illustrations for their digital artifacts or even design logos. 

Using ChatGPT, they have the potential to create a digital artifact uniquely designed for each student that modifies the lexical set, the reading level, or blend in occasional phrases in the students’ home language. The power this tool has for differentiating lessons cannot be overlooked.

I am still waiting for my teacher candidates to find out how tools like ChatGPT can lighten their workload. Let me share a final case that speaks to this point.

Earlier this month, Google announced it was going to phase out its popular collaborative whiteboard application Jamboard by this time next year. I know of some colleagues who use it almost daily for all manner of collaborative tasks, both at the classroom level and school-wide. 

Finding technological alternatives under the pressure of time and budget is a task teachers encounter regularly since sometimes their schools will not allow certain tools for budgetary or data security reasons. I asked my students to do a deep dive into a handful of alternatives to Jamboard discussed in my various teacher discussion groups. They went into a rapid fire huddle to review Figjam, Miro, and Padlet as well as workarounds using Google Slides. While they huddled, discussed, and shared, I quietly asked ChatGPT to do the same task, which it completed adequately well in just shy of 10 seconds. 

When my future teachers find themselves up against a teaching challenge, I know they will turn to tools like ChatGPT as the first step in the journey toward a solution. And when their own students try to cut corners or present the output of an AI as evidence of their own intellect, I know these teachers will use those situations as a starting point in a longer conversation of how to work intentionally, ethically, and equitably with AI because it is here to stay.