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| AI Generated Image from Bing (don't mind the fingers!) |
My vision for learning for the 21st century is to utilize the technological tools available in authentic ways to help increase student achievement and engagement (Canadian Library Association, 2014). One of the ways of doing that is utilizing AI to support lesson planning and differentiation. This will enable increased personalization so students can access the curriculum at their level. Just as Sal Khan stated in his TedTalk, AI can be used as a personal assistant to help design lesson plans and save a lot of time (Valenzuela, 2023). A quick online search shows that companies are harnessing the power of AI for this specific purpose! Below are some examples of websites to help plan lessons which I plan to vet and share. They have free trials but require a subscription for full capabilities.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have had the opportunity to explore the use of Chat-GPT in lesson development, and I’ve got to say, it’s a game-changer. Anytime I felt stuck, I asked Chat-GPT a question, and it gave me very insightful ideas!
Social Emotional Learning
I utilize the Second Step program to teach Social Emotional Learning in my Grade 7 classroom. At the end of September, I started the first lesson with them which is a PowerPoint presentation with a video and often some interactive elements. I decided to teach this on a Friday afternoon, which was my first mistake. My students were bored out of their mind! I knew I had to make these lessons more engaging if I was going to have any learning to occur.
The second lesson was all about values and relationships, so I turned to ChatGPT. In the search box, I wrote, “create a drama lesson for middle school about values in healthy relationships.” ChatGPT gave me an objective, materials required, a lesson outline, a homework assignment, and ideas for assessment. Score! I looked through the lesson outline and took out what I thought were the good ideas:
Warm-up Activity: Value Charades (20 minutes)
- Write down various values (e.g., honesty, kindness, patience) on separate slips of paper.
- Have students take turns picking a slip and acting out a scenario that demonstrates that value without using words.
- After each performance, discuss the value depicted and why it's important in a relationship.
- Divide the students into small groups and provide each group with a scenario description related to a common relationship issue (e.g., resolving conflicts, peer pressure, bullying).
- Each group will perform the scenario while incorporating the values discussed earlier. Encourage them to focus on how these values can positively impact the situation.
- After each performance, have a class discussion about the values displayed and the consequences of their presence or absence.
I started with the Warm-up Activity, but instead of generating my own list of values, I asked Chat-GPT, “what values are important to relationships?” and it generated 15 values. I wrote these typed these values into the table below, cut them, and put them into a bin and my lesson was prepped!
The students were very engaged as they acted out the values to the whole class and the students did a great job of identifying the values and why they were important in relationships.
In the next class, we worked on creating scenarios based on common relationship issues, and of course, I consulted ChatGPT to help me come up with scenarios. My search phrase was “create 8 scenarios that are related to a common relationship issue (e.g., resolving conflicts, peer pressure, bullying) for a drama lesson”. The students created their skits based on the prompts and then the audience had to identify the values connected to the resolution of the conflict.
The next lesson in Second Step was about understanding different perspectives. You know where I’m going with this. Yep. ChatGPT to the rescue! My prompt was “create an engaging middle grade lesson about understanding others perspectives” and it gave me this idea:
Empathy Objects (15 minutes)
- Place a small object (e.g., a toy, a book, a puzzle piece) at each student's desk.
- Instruct students to take a few minutes to observe and think about their object. Ask them to consider questions like, "What might this object mean to someone else?"
- Have students share their thoughts and perspectives on the objects they observed with a partner or in small groups.
I gathered up 29 objects and then distributed them to each student. I asked the student to observe and think about their object and then think about what this object might mean to someone else. The students were again quite engaged, and they were able to get to the intention of the activity – to understand other people’s perspectives, especially in a conflict.
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| A selection of perspective objects |
Other Applications
Without LIBE 477B, I would have never inquired into ChatGPT. I knew about AI, but I didn’t think about its applications to lesson planning. I have used it almost daily since asking it many different questions:
- “Write a speech about cats” and then when the speech was too difficult for the student to use as presentation practice, I asked, “make it simpler.”
- Why does cross multiplication work in fractions
- Create an engaging lesson on Roman Numerals for Grade 7
- Re-write this article at a grade 6 level
- Create an engaging assignment connected to the novel Scythe
- Translate this text into Farsi
- Write comprehension questions for the first seven chapters of Holes (by the way I’m not a fan of comprehension questions but it helps struggling students to identify the important parts of the story to help them summarize their weekly readings for their Lit Circle groups)
I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, and I only just discovered the hidden potential of ChatGPT, so I know there are many teachers who do not know the benefits of using AI to help in lesson planning.
Future Vision Project Ideas
For my future vision project, I want to focus on helping educators utilize this amazing tool by creating a video tutorial using the website Loom, which I'm familiar with because of online teaching during the pandemic. The tutorial will include how to use AI for lesson planning, how to create strong questions to get the responses you want, and how to use it to differentiate content in your classroom, especially for students with Individualized Education Plans or for English Language Learners. AI for Education has a prompt library that helps educators craft their prompts, so I will definitely use this as a resource (AI for Education, 2023). They also have a video tutorial on how to use free AI platforms for lesson planning. I also plan on exploring lesson plan focused AI websites to see if they have better functionality than ChatGPT as well as explore the AI tools available in the app Canva and Image Creator from Microsoft Bing. I think that whatever technology will enable educators to have a more manageable workload, while simultaneously allowing for differentiation, will be embraced with open arms (Etherington & Thompson, 2023).
These AI generated images show teachers who are relaxed and happy and hopefully having an AI assistant will help more teachers actually feel like this.
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| AI Generated Images from Bing |
References:
AI for Education. (2023). AI for Education. https://www.aiforeducation.io/prompt-library
Canadian Library Association. (2014). Standards of practice for school library learning commons in Canada 2014. https://llsop.canadianschoollibraries.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/llsop.pdf
Eltherington, W., & Thompson, N. (2023, August 27). Teachers turn to AI to make workload more manageable, chart lesson plans. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/teachers-use-of-ai-1.6949046
Valenzuela, J. (2023, March 15). Using AI to Help Organize Lesson Plans. Edutopia; George Lucas Educational Foundation. https://www.edutopia.org/article/ai-lesson-plans/
What a great idea to look at how to incorporate AI meaningfully into teaching. I know a lot of teachers are wary of the idea. When I attended a ministry committee meeting last month, the topic of AI in provincial assessments came up and there were definitely divided opinions in the room on whether to welcome or banish AI from our practice. I am very interested in what you come up with!
ReplyDeleteI think this is a great idea, Annette. I have used ChatGPT once - to help me with the title of my blog :) but I can totally see its value. Your example perfectly outlines how educators can use it, especially if they are stuck for an idea. Sometimes it just helps jumpstart the brain.
ReplyDeleteAI is sooo AWESOME! Love your idea of using Loom and AI for education. I look forward to watching your videos and I learned alot about social emotional learning. I think the way you've made your lesson more engaging is really amazing because you were able to understand that your students were feeling bored and you were able to change the lesson to be more engaging which is really awesome! Thanks for sharing!!
ReplyDelete-Michelle L
DeleteThis is a great idea for a final project! There are so many applications. You clearly have a handle on the tech and AI world to make a meaningful product. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteYou have an excellent foundation here for your final project. I appreciate the examples you have included from your own practice. As you start to consider what your video might look like, know that you could break it into smaller video segments if you feel that this might better suit your audience. You will also want to consider a plan for sharing this work with others and how you might continue to build on it over time. Finally, something you might want to dig into a bit is the privacy and security of online tools. Does your school/district have a policy on the tools that teachers can use? Some 3rd party apps gain access to other online material that one might assume is private (like your full Google Drive) for instance. I don’t want this to dissuade you - you are exploring something really interesting and important - just wanted to draw your attention to this as another consideration.
ReplyDeleteThis project is so interesting! You have definitely encouraged me to try out ChatGBT for some of the time consuming planning I do day to day (I spent way too long today brainstorming recognizable nouns that ended with the sounds "m" and "s").
ReplyDeleteI have used the AI component in Canva for a few functions and found it hit and miss (hit for generating simple, new things or seamlessly blurring photos and miss for some of the other small editing functions). I look forward to seeing what you discover in your project.