• Students will gather evidence on the importance of events from a Medieval or Early Modern time period to determine lessons learned that can be applicable to a modern day world event.

• Student will determine solutions to a modern day world event based on research and share their solutions and historical background through the creation of a chatbot.

• Students will be able to engage with the essential questions and create their own inquiry questions to guide further research to deepen their investigation process.  

• Students will work effectively and respectfully as a group to create a project and evaluate group members' contributions.

• Student will be guided by unit coaches to make appropriate use of AI technology and other credible online sources in their historical investigations.

• Students will demonstrate their understanding of the unit content objectives through collaboration and the use of technology to create a functioning and reasonably accurate AI chatbot.

Students will: 

• Provide respectful, actionable feedback on their classmates' work

• Reflect on their own learning process

Teachers will assess: 

• How well the students collaborated

• Whether the students effectively identified their end users' needs

• How effective the solution was in addressing the stated problem

• Whether the project objectives were met

Teachers will also pay close attention to the peer review activity to ensure comments are respectful, actionable, and not destructive. In all cases, teachers should observe group interactions to help students develop skills for editing creative group projects in a respectful and constructive manner. 

Teachers will add their observations to a shared Google doc, in preparation for making their final assessment after the culminating event. 

2.0 Communications

• 2.2 Identify barriers to accurate and appropriate communication

• 2.7 Use technical writing and communication skills to work effectively with diverse groups of people

4.0 Technology

• 4.1 Use electronic reference materials to gather information and produce products and services

• 4.6 Assess the value of various information and communication technologies to interact with constituent populations as part of a search of the current literature or in relation to the information task

5.0 Problem Solving and Critical Thinking

• 5.1 Identify and ask significant questions that clarify various points of view to solve problems

• 5.5 Use logical and structured approach to isolate and identify the source of problems and to resolve problems

10.0 Technical Knowledge and Skills

• 10.3 Construct projects and products specific to the Information and Communication Technologies sector requirements and expectations

• 10.12 Know appropriate search procedures for different types of information, sources, and queries

Chronological & Spatial Thinking

• HSS CS.1 Students explain how major events are related to one another in time.

• HSS CS.2 Students construct various artifacts of key events, people, and periods of the historical era they are studying.

Research, Evidence, & Point of View

• HSS HR.1 Students frame questions that can be answered by historical study and research.

• HSS HR.3 Students distinguish relevant from irrelevant information, essential from incidental information, and verifiable from unverifiable information in historical narratives and stories.

Historical Interpretation

• HSS HI.1 Students explain the central issues and problems from the past, placing people and events in a matrix of time and place.

• HSS HI.2 Students understand and distinguish cause, effect, sequence, and correlation in historical events, including the long- and short-term causal relations.

Historical and Social Sciences Analysis Skills 6-8

• HSS HI.3 Students explain the sources of historical continuity and how the combination of ideas and events explains the emergence of new patterns.

• HSS HI.4 Students recognize the role of chance, oversight, and error in history.

English Language Arts Standards

• ELA.RI.7.3 Analyze the interactions between individuals, events, and ideas in a text (e.g., how ideas influence individuals or events, or how individuals influence ideas or events). 

• ELA.RI.7.10 By the end of the year, read and comprehend literary nonfiction in grades 6-8 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at high end of the range.

• ELA.RH.6-8.3 Identify key steps in a text's description of a process related to history.

• ELA.SL.7.1 Engage effectivity in a range of collaborative discussions on topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.

• ELA.SL.7.5 Include multimedia components and visual displays in presentations to display in presentations to clarify claims and findings and emphasize salient points.

In this project, students will be asked to engineer an AI chatbot persona to behave as if they are a specific historical figure from the past. The goal is to create a room of experts from the past that community members can interrogate in turn to gain insight into time-tested techniques for resolving the conflicts and crises of our own time. In this step, unit coaches will ask students to:

1. Decide on a modern problem they wish to explore and choose a historical civilization from which to glean relevant insights.
   Every civilization highlighted in this unit has experienced some crisis relevant to our lives today. For example, students interested in exploring approaches to dealing with a pandemic might choose to explore Medieval Europe.
   
   Note: At this stage, unit coaches may invite students to sort into groups according to their common interests. Every student should have a group, so some may need to modify their problem selection.
   
   

2. Define their end user's information needs. Students will work in their groups to define their end user needs. What will the parents, classmates, school board members, faculty, administration, and staff attending the Chatbot Carnival want to know? What do we need to tell them about the time period or about their historical figure to make them feel comfortable interacting with the chatbot? Attendees who have not encountered or heard of that historical figure before may need a fact sheet, for example, that includes a brief biography of the historical person and the major issues of their day to help them formulate appropriate questions. Attendees who have never encountered AI chatbots before may need a list of preliminary questions to help them begin the conversation.

During this step, students will explore the following questions. 

Content questions: 

• What is the modern problem that we are interested in trying to solve?

• What period of history might have the most relevant lessons for us? 

• How can we solve this modern day problem using insights from this period of history?

End user questions:

• Who are my end users?

• What are they likely to know now? 

• What do they need to know? 

• What kinds of questions are they likely to ask?

• Will they have encountered an AI chatbot before? Are they likely to know what to do? If not, what can we provide to make them feel more comfortable with this interaction?

• What do we need to tell them about our historical figure so that our end users can conduct a productive historical inquiry of their own?

• How should we handle the fact that our historical figures will have held antisemitic, racist, misogynist, and colonialist views that could be a shock for our end users to encounter at a school event? 

Unit coaches may need to work especially closely in the beginning with learners who do not have as much experience in this kind of empathetic thinking.  

Artifact: One-page QuickWrite

The artifact from Stage 1 will be a short 1-3 page Quick Write in which the student describes: 

• the modern problem they are trying to solve

• the time period that they are going to explore (and why they chose it)

• ideas for the type of person they will model their chatbot after 

• the end user's information needs

• 3-5 references they have found helpful so far in proper citation format  

Instructions and helpful resources for completing this assignment can be found on the Tools & Assignments page. 

Develop a better understanding of your chosen time period and identify a historical figure. 

In Stage 2, groups will dig deeper in to their historical investigations. During this phase, students will think like a historian in order to better understand: 

• who their historical figure was

• when and where they lived

• what they were likely to know based on their station in life (literacy, rank, wealth, education, profession, and so on)

• the major conflicts, events, and issues of their society

• how global events may have impacted their experiences, opinions, and access to information 

During this phase, students will identify and evaluate a variety of primary and secondary sources, to better understand the time period, the historical figure, and the boundaries that define what their historical figure was likely to know (and just as importantly, what they would not). 

Groups will work together to explore how conflicts, geography, travel patterns, trade routes, educational norms, and literacy rates could have shaped their historical figure's knowledge and attitudes. Groups will be asked to consider whether their historical figure would have belonged to a group with specialized (or especially restricted) knowledge, and how that might impact their ability to address the modern problem the group wishes to solve.   

Artifact: Initial Historical Inquiry

The artifact from Stage 2 will be an initial historical inquiry in which the group identifies: 

• the inquiry questions that informed your research

• a summary of your research results

• any additional inquiry questions you added as you learned more about your historical figure and how the conflict may have affected their knowledge and attitudes

Instructions and helpful resources for completing this assignment can be found on the Tools & Assignments page. 

In Phase 3, students will work with the information from their initial historical inquiry to create their chatbot persona and draft a fact sheet about them. Attendees to the Chatbot Carnival will use these Fact Sheets as they interact with the chatbots during the Culminating Event. 

Questions to consider: 

• What does my audience need to know about ____________________?

• What were the major issues of this time period?

• What was the main conflict? How did those issues contribute to it? 

• What might my end user need to know in order to have a productive conversation with my chatbot? 

• What does my audience need to know about how the major issues of my historical figure's time relate to issues in our day? 

• Do I need to warn them about problematic views? If so, which ones, and how? 

• What else do I need to give them in order to help them have a productive conversation with my chatbot? 

Artifact: Draft Fact Sheet

The artifact from Phase 3 will be a draft fact sheet based on the work completed so far. The fact sheet will be used to introduce their end user to the historical figure, and provide enough context for end users to engage the AI chatbot in a productive conversation. 

Instructions and helpful resources for completing this assignment can be found on the Tools & Assignments page. 

Unit coaches will use these artifacts to ensure that student projects are on track to meet curriculum objectives, provide feedback on the students' proposed direction, and identify any obstacles that might need to be addressed or otherwise managed as they move into the prototyping and testing stages. 

In Phase 4, unit coaches will introduce the Google Gemini Advanced Gems tool for engineering Generative AI chatbots. During this phase, groups will be asked to use their facts sheets, historical inquiries, and the Google Gemini Advanced Gems tool to engineer an AI chatbot that takes on the persona of their historical figure. 

To successfully create their chatbot, students will need to understand: 

• who their historical figure was

• when and where they lived

• their role in their society / civilization / history

• major issues and conflicts that would have affected the historical figure's lived experiences

• how these facts would have affected the historical figure's access to information and personal expertise

• how to articulate these constraints in a natural language prompt that can be used to steer a chatbot's responses and opinions

Artifact

The artifact from Phase 4 will be URL links to a draft AI chatbot for peer review. Although groups are not required to update their fact sheets during this step, they will be asked to submit a link to the latest version of their fact sheet for peer review as well. 

Instructions and helpful resources for completing this assignment, including guides to engineering and testing AI chatbots, can be found on the Tools & Assignments page. 

In Stage 5, unit coaches will randomly assign groups to evaluate and test another group's project. Each group will act as a Red Team, a group that pretends to be the enemy and tries to break whatever product, service, or software has been created. During the peer review process, teams will test the chatbot and evaluate the fact sheet. 

Some questions to consider during this phase include: 

• Is the chatbot ahistorical? Does it know about things that happened after the historical figure died? 

• Is the chatbot anachronistic? Does it use language or slang from our century rather than its own? 

• How does it speak about equity issues? 

• Does it replicate modern biases? 

• Does it adhere to the guardrails / norms we set as a class? 

• How many questions did you need to ask before it broke character? 

Groups will use a copy of this Google Doc to run their tests and provide their feedback.

Unit coaches will observe these interactions and assess the students on their ability to appreciate and provide respectful, actionable feedback on each other's work. Unit coaches will also assess how well the students collaborated, their ability to define end user needs, the effectiveness of their proposed solution, and whether the students made effective use of reliable information uncovered in their research. If a group needs to work an adult external to the class to obtain feedback, unit coaches will assist in setting up and facilitating these meetings as needed. 

Artifact: Peer Review Report

Instructions and helpful resources for completing this assignment can be found on the Tools & Assignments page. 

In Stage 6, groups will use the feedback from the peer review process to create a final version of their AI chatbots and facts sheets. 

During this Stage, unit coaches and groups may implement a test version of their Chatbot Carnival to give students one last look at their work before sharing it with the community. 

Artifact: Final chatbot and fact sheets

Instructions and helpful resources for completing this assignment can be found on the Tools & Assignments page. 

The project culminates in a Chatbot Carnival held in the library for the entire school community: students, teachers, parents, administration, and school board. 

In-person

The in-person version of the carnival will be a series of computer stations, decorated with images of the historical figure as well as common objects used during their time period. Each station will also have one or more Fact Sheets for users to use as they engage the chatbot in conversation. Students will be assigned to each station to answer questions and assist visitors who would appreciate extra help for whatever reason. At the discretion of the unit coaches, these students may be asked to dress up as a figure from their station's time period. After viewing the Chatbot Carnival, attendees will be asked to take a brief survey to collect their responses and reflections on the event. 

Survey Questions: 

• What problem were you most interested in today?

• What did you learn that surprised you? 

• What insights did you gain from your inquiry into the past that you can use in your community today?

• Tell us about an idea or solution this sparked for you.

• How did your thinking about this modern problem change as a result of this project? 

The in-person event will close with a roundtable discussion at which attendees will be invited to share their reflections on what they have learned and its implications for issues facing our communities today. The responses to the survey will be used to shape this discussion.

Virtual

An online Chatbot Carnival will be created for members of the community unable to attend the in-person event. The virtual Chatbot Carnival will include an image of the historical figure, a brief biographical description, a link to the chatbot, and a link to the Fact Sheet created to guide the attendee's own historical inquiry. Attendees of the online Carnival will be asked to complete the same Google Form-based survey used at the in-person event in order to continue building our collective knowledge about the impact of this experience. 

At the end of this experience, students will be asked to reflect on two questions: 

• What did they learn from the past that they can use moving forward?

• What do they think about the design thinking process itself? 

Questions to consider: 

• What did they learn that surprised them? 

• Which stage of this project did they have most difficulty with? 

• Which stage was the most fun for them? 

• Is design thinking a helpful framework within which to conduct historical inquiry? Why or why not? 

• What did you learn about the capabilities and limitations of generative AI technology?

To check their students' understanding of design thinking, unit coaches may ask students to formulate their own ways of explaining design thinking. 

During this phase, unit coaches may choose to use tools provided on the Reflection page to guide the conversation.

The idea for the technical side of this unit plan came from an ALA Crash course Shala Howell took in January 2024, titled AI and Libraries: Applications, Implications, and Possibilities. During the course, e-learning developer and AI education specialist Nicole Hennig discussed the possibility for museums to create chatbots inspired by historical figures to act as interactive docents to enrich their visitors' experiences. Quite frankly, Shala has been looking for an opportunity to explore this idea ever since, and Rachael Krumpe had several great ideas based on her teaching experience for using design thinking to deepen the learning associated with 7th grade historical inquiries. 

This interactive historical review is intended for 7th grade middle school students who are ending their course. Incorporating a Design Thinking approach allows students to connect their learning to real world problems and search for solutions by looking back at the past.

The unit can be delivered online using Zoom or other videoconferencing tool with the capacity to break students into smaller groups where they can work collaboratively in Google Docs, Google Slides, and the Google Gemini Advanced Gems service, while making use of the library's electronic resources. It can also be adapted for use in a blended or face-to-face classroom using the school library as a collaborative working area.