Riding the AI Wave
While there is some fear that AI is going to replace many jobs, including teaching, I think that until it replaces me it can certainly be leveraged to create engaging materials in my gamified classroom.
Posted: February 26, 2024
"I'll be back." - T-800 Terminator, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger
While Arnie's famous line is a classic one, it isn't the only pop-culture reference from those classic movies being made today. Not with ChatGPT and the rise of AI actually leading to some worries of AI becoming self-aware, just like Skynet did in these movies before it declared war on humanity.
Yes, the rise of AI has been sudden and quick, and it has left society at large slow to respond. Governments have begun the oversight process of the private companies that are creating these products, and entire industries are currently worried about being replaced with less than stellar results (AI journalism is off to a rough start).
And yes, the fear is also in education. I saw on Twitter (I refuse to call it X) that a private school in Texas is already letting AI teach core subjects to its students, and it's likely just the tip of the iceberg. I can already see higher-ups looking at this and thinking that AI doesn't require dental and sick days. But until the day comes that AI can supervise 100 students as well, I don't think we're in any danger... yet.
But while we try to fend off that day when robots take over the role, I plan on using AI to enhance my classes. I have found numerous sites and apps that range from incredibly helpful to stunningly creative to wildly time-saving. I'd like to list a few here so that you could maybe find some use of your own.
For those that have checked out this blog before, you already know that I have a huge appreciation for Genially which I've been using for years to make my interactive and animated course maps.
(With Classcraft closing down, I wonder if Genially has an opportunity here to make a bold step into the Gamification arena, but I digress...)
Feel free to demo District 12 on the map to the side here - the rest may be locked at any point but District 12 will always be open.
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ChatGPT Prompt: "Create a short description that tells a Panem citizen about an example of how all of the television shows that the capitol allows citzens to watch has an incredible amount of product placement added showcasing The Capitol in a positive light. Keep it generic and a bit mysterious, and at a level a 11-year-old can read. two to three sentences at most. "
But where it's gotten interesting is my application of AI to make the map, and my courses, hopefully a bit more engaging. I have been using ChatGPT to help connect my content to the course theme (in this case, The Hunger Games) by perfecting my prompt game and making our adventure one that makes sense.
If you click on District 12 above, and then click on the 3 in the black square you'll see the example provided to the right - below it is the prompt I typed in to help create that information. Check out a few of the other ones for more examples if you'd like.
These "landing page blurbs" give me the opportunity to connect the topic that we're covering to our theme, and there's no way that I'm creative enough to do this on my own. In essence, ChatGPT is my very own copywriter.
I have populated my entire map, and thus my entire course, with little blurbs like that as our travelling troupe progress across Panem as the movie storyline happens. AI not only saved me time, but it helped with the creative portion that I lack and I personally think that it's made the story more engrossing.
Next up: MagicSchool.AI. I've curated multiple resources to match up to my curriculum over the years, especially during Covid, and with the way today's students learn I think that YouTube videos are more effective than myself lecturing. However, creating assessments to match up to these resources has been a challenge - I was allowing students to free respond with their opinions and the like, but with ChatGPT also available to them to some degree I think that keeping that going is a recipe for disaster.
Enter MagicSchoolAI. Even though the site is now set up in a "freemium" model, the free version is still wildy effective. I can create multiple choice assessment just by adding the YouTube video link to the file, it creates the questions, answers and answer key in seconds. I can create text dependent questions for short/long answer questions. I can create academic content for a topic that I think fits that my textbook or materials don't cover. I can rewrite text to lower reading levels to differentiate. It's awesome!
Now my Google Form responses are setup with 5 multiple choice questions (worth a few XP per correct answer), some short or long answer questions that require key words or a minimum response length to qualify, and voila! These assignments auto-grade and populate directly into my gradebook, and I allow them to re-do it for higher score if they like, just like re-doing an Angry Birds level to get 3 stars.
So my notes packages, and all of my must, should and aspire-to-do assignments (thank you Modern Classroom Project!) are graded this way, leaving our unit projects. I still collect these through the Google Classroom as the rubric function in there is good, but I once again struggled with creating creative or effective materials for students to display their learning. But not anymore, thanks to Diffit for Teachers.
This site is currently free (for 60 days) before heading to a likely freemium model (I hope!), but I've been quickly using the materials here to populate my courses as well. By giving Diffit a topic, theme, article, YouTube video, or text excerpt, it will generate amazing materials via AI to recap the material, give key terms and definitions, as well as multiple choice, long answer and other materials.
But where it gets incredible is the fact that it can then populate Google materials (Forms and Docs, but perhaps most impressively the Slides) from a very impressive list of Student Activity options. Notice, Think Wonder, Cause and Effect, Venn Diagram, Timelines, Word Map, etc... It's an impressive list.
What's impressed me the most is the open-ended question section - I love how they ask meaningful questions to the students that apply to both the material being covered and their lives, and then also creates space for them to ask a partner or two their opinions to foster collaboration and to hear other viewpoints. I've been teaching for 10+ years and I've never seen materials like this before - maybe our PD sessions should be hitting on these useful topics more often....
Here is my District 12 project where students are learning about The Reaping ceremony that occurs early in the movie and the book series. You can go through each page if you like, but I enjoyed this "Moment in Time Image Analysis" section as the lead-off. Again, I've never seen materials like this before and without Diffit I still wouldn't have. The responses I've gotten from my students have been excellent.
So there you have it. Three impressive AI tech tools that I've incorporated into my courses: ChatGPT, MagicSchool.ai and Diffit for Teachers. I highly recommend the latter two for creating course materials, but I also think it would be a mistake to ignore ChatGPT here as well. With some practice at submitting prompts, you too can connect course materials to whatever theme you wish.