Start Small: 3 Easy Ways to Introduce AI Without Overhauling Your Lessons #AIinEDU #EdChat

"AI in the classroom? That sounds like too much extra work right now."

I get it. You have been hit over the head with all of the AI talk right now. You do not have the time to sort through the chatter to find the things that will simply help your students learn or help you teach. These feelings are not new. When other internet based tools were released, there were many teachers that had no idea where to start, so they didn't. It's not like everyone jumped on board Google Docs, YouTube, Web Quests, etc. when they were readily available. The thing is, you are using AI all of the time and you might not even realize it. Whether it is search results in Google or Netflix suggestions after you binge a show, you are using AI and getting awesome results from it. It takes time to ease into using a new tool and I want to give you 3 easy ways to bring AI into your life without having to overhaul all of your lessons that move beyond having AI rewrite your email or create another worksheet.

1. AI as a thought partner

One of my favorite things about using AI is that it can help me think through issues I'm having. It is not about having AI solve my problems, it is having AI walk me through the problems and suggesting solutions. Some of the suggestions are terrible. They are not practical and they really would not work in the classroom. However, those bad ideas often lead to the solution. As I work through the logistics of the suggestions, I will find the answer along the way. It is really something amazing. 

This is truly no different than the times I spent with teachers in the hallways between classes thinking through lessons or classroom management issues. I wonder if you have found, like I did, that those hallway conversations are not happening like they used to. Those free moments have been taken by other tasks and those interactions are not happening at the same frequency. Using an AI Assistant in SchoolAI or using ChatGPT to quickly work through ideas is an easy way to bring AI into your educational career without the worry of having to change everything that you do. 

Example Prompts you can use:

Sometimes you are at the end of your rope with how to deal with a student and need other suggestions to help solve the problem. This is a simple prompt to get the ideas going on supporting classroom management issues. 

1. I’m having trouble with __________ (specific challenge, e.g., students staying focused during group work) in my __________ (grade level/subject) class. Some students __________ (specific behavior, e.g., finish too quickly and get off-task), while others __________ (another challenge, e.g., struggle to get started). Can you suggest strategies to __________ (goal, e.g., balance pacing and keep everyone engaged)?

Find new ways to support a wide range of learners in the classroom can be very tough. It is important to make sure that 504 and IEP students are getting what they need to be successful. A simple prompt can help so many students in the classroom. 

2. I’m designing a lesson on __________ (topic, e.g., ecosystems) for my __________ (grade level/subject) class. I want to incorporate activities that support __________ (specific needs, e.g., visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners) and also accommodate students who __________ (unique challenges, e.g., need reading support or are English Language Learners). Can you suggest ideas that keep the core objective intact while addressing these diverse needs?

Variety is a spice of life they say, but it is not something that always gets into our lessons. After a while, teachers fall into a rut of the type of assignments or projects they give to students. It can be tough to get out of the rut, so asking AI for lesson ideas can help move to a new space with new ideas. 

3. My __________ (grade level/subject) students are struggling with __________ (specific issue, e.g., staying engaged during history lectures). I want to make the material more __________ (teaching goal, e.g., interactive, relevant, or student-driven) and help them see how it connects to __________ (real-world application or student interests). Can you suggest strategies or tools to help achieve this?

2. Formative assessments made easy

We all love the idea of formative assessments, but they can be time consuming to create and collect the data. As there is an even greater push towards data driven instruction, we need a way to get these formative assessments into our every day class structure. I think this can be done with bellringers and exit tickets. The traditional way of having students write on notecards or scraps of paper can work, but the teacher is often stuck trying to read handwriting and group similar ideas/concepts to help inform the next steps. It does not have to be that way AI. 

Utilizing AI to help create bellringer and exit ticket questions is the easy part. Having AI take a look at the answers and come up with common threads is how you can take these formative assessments to the next level and it can be done in a matter of seconds. Here are two scenarios that can help you get the formative assessment data to make data driven decisions for your classroom. 

1. You can create a formative assessment using Google Forms and share that with students. The students spend the next five minutes doing a short response to the topic for the bellringer and all of those responses go to Google Sheets. Trying to parse data in Sheets in a pain in the butt. However, it can be downloaded as a CSV file and that can be used to get answers. Take the file and upload it to ChatGPT or SchoolAI Coteacher and ask it to find common themes in student answers. You can drill down as much as you want depending on how much info the formative assessment collected. That information can be used to inform the direction you take for the rest of class. Once you get comfortable with the workflow, it will become faster and faster to accomplish in class. 

2. You can take out the middle man and use a Bellringer or Exit Ticket Space from SchoolAI instead of using Forms. Create the Space, launch it with your students using Google Classroom, Canvas, or posting the link in another LMS. The students engage with the Space, the teacher can see their interactions in real-time and then use the insights provided on the dashboard to inform next steps in class. Again, the teacher can go even deeper by downloading the Space as CSV file and uploading to Coteacher to get more in-depth data. The nice part of this approach instead of using ChatGPT is that the data shared with SchoolAI is secured and fully COPA and FERPA compliant. That cannot be said of all AI tools. Be mindful of that when using AI and sharing student or teacher data. 

These two approaches help teachers create and use formative assessments to make data informed decisions. This is a huge step in the right direction of AI use in the classroom. AI is great at parsing data and it does it quickly as part of a workflow you can establish. The amount of time that is saved using AI for data driven decision support can be used for other tasks or for taking it easy on a Wednesday night so you can watch some TV and enjoy a nice beverage. Either way, you now have the time to make that choice and you did not have that chance before. 

3. Differentiate like a boss

One of the things that I found to be most difficult and time consuming, but extremely important, was differentiating assignments, tests, projects, etc. Besides being legally required to do so based on IEPs and 504s, it is important to give students the best chance to be successful and meet them where they are. However, if you do not have a support person in the class that can differentiate assignments for you, you are on the line to make sure that every students that needs an assignment, test, project, reading piece, etc is differentiated. That can be long and arduous process. AI can now make that process simple and fast. Here are just a few prompt examples that you can use to help differentiate different class assignments in an instant. 

You can alter reading levels for students and even have translations as needed. This prompt will help you adjust reading levels as needed for students. If you want create them in a batch, just add a sentence that requests the content in multiple reading levels.  

1. I have a __________ (grade level/subject) class reading __________ (text title or topic), but I need the text adjusted for students who read at a __________ (different reading level, e.g., 4th-grade level or ELL beginner). Can you simplify the text while keeping the core ideas intact and include __________ (optional: vocabulary definitions, guiding questions, or key takeaways)?

For students with ADHD, chunking is a wonderful approach to helping them stay on task and do each part at a time so they do not feel overwhelmed. Instead of having to go over each assignment with these students and chunk it for them, AI can chunk it quickly and then it can be shared to them via email or printed and handed to them. You can do this with almost any AI model. 

2. I’m assigning __________ (type of assignment, e.g., a research paper or science project) to my __________ (grade level/subject) class, but some students struggle with completing large tasks. Can you break this assignment into __________ (number of steps, e.g., 4-5 manageable sections) with clear instructions and include __________ (optional: deadlines, checklists, or guiding questions) to help students stay on track?

Sometimes using AI is about giving students more options that you can think of at the moment. As I moved to more of a project based learning approach, I wanted to make sure that all of my students had a chance to showcase their work in ways that were meaningful to them. I can't think of all of the projects all of the time, so having AI create options that I can easily share is a huge time saver. If you want to take it to the next level, you could use SchoolAI to create a Space that would ask students a variety of questions and then suggest a personal presentation approach. Here is an example you can use in your class. 

3. I want my __________ (grade level/subject) students to complete a project on __________ (topic, e.g., Ancient Egypt), but I want to offer them choices in how they present their work. Can you suggest __________ (number, e.g., 3-5) different project formats (e.g., slideshows, posters, videos, or podcasts) that align with the same learning objectives, so students can pick the format that best fits their strengths and interests? 

There is a time and place to have AI write your emails or create another multiple choice test. That is not where a teacher should stop when it comes to AI use. That just scratches the surface of what is possible when it comes to using AI to support teaching and learning. These three approaches can help you become more comfortable in your use of AI and give you time back to use as you see fit. AI can and should be used to support sound pedagogy if you truly want to help students. Keep that in mind when you see and use AI tools. 

If you have any questions about using AI, please feel free to reach out, leave a comment, or connect on socials @TheNerdyTeacher. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP

Utilizing AI in the Library #TLChat #SchoolAI

I am really excited about the work I have been doing the past few weeks with the amazing Shannon Miller and SchoolAI. There has been so much content created to support classroom teachers to help make school awesome every day, but we did not want our amazing librarians and media specialists to feel left out. Working with Shannon, we created a couple of really cool Spaces that we think you will love. 

What Book Should I Read Next?!

One of the tough things for a young reader is to figure out what they should read next. There are so many options, it can be tough to choose if you do not know what might be perfect for you. The Teacher Librarian might be unavailable when the students needs to ask questions about their next book or the student is at home and wants to be able to choose their next book as soon as possible. I built a Space to help with this exact problem! Shannon took the Space to FETC and shared it with her workshop with over 100 librarians and they loved it! You can remix the Space and add any other parameters you want to meet the needs of your school. You can even add a csv file of your catalogue so it can only recommend books from your collection. If you want the Space to have a specific theme for a specific month to recommend certain books, you can do that too! Have some fun and play around with the Space and let me know how you made it your own. 

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus Research Space

Many years ago, the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus took media literacy circles by storm. It was an amazingly silly resource that educators started to use to help teach media literacy using the Internet. This amazing collection of information put together by Lyle Zapato on his site, has helped thousands of students understand that, just because it is on the Internet, does not mean it is true. I think about the PNWTO often, which is admittedly weird, and how it was such a fun way to engage students in an important learning task. As I was thinking of ways to explore media literacy and AI, I thought about the PNWTO again and came up with a Space that can be used to help students understand that AI needs to be understood in a similar vein as basic Internet searches from years ago. 

I also used SchoolAI to create a worksheet to help the students prompt the Space and write down their answers. You can find the worksheet here and make your own copy as needed. If you want the prompt I used to generate this worksheet, you can find that here. Using the prompt will allow you tag any standards from your state that you might need. The overall goal of the Space is to engage students in using AI to research a topic and the Space will give more and more ridiculous answers to the questions until the students starts to question the accuracy. Once that happens, the Space will start to ask the student how they could go about verifying information they find online or through using AI. Let me know if you use this with your students and how it went. 

SchoolAI Librarian/Media Specialist Community Space

Lastly, I am excited about the launch of a space in the SchoolAI Community dedicated to librarians and media specialists. You spoke up and we listened! The contribution to edtech from these educators is immeasurable. They are having amazing conversations around AI in schools and we wanted to make sure they could continue to have these conversations and share their ideas in the community. As part of that, we had Shannon Miller on the SchoolAI Sandbox! Join us for an hour filled with important conversation on the role of AI in the library and schools as a whole. We are really excited about this partnership with Shannon Miller. Watch the recording here! The last time Shannon and I dove headfirst into a project, we organized The Epic Romeo and Juliet Project. If you do not know what that is, please check it out. 

We hope to see you in the new Community space to lead, innovate, and collaborate. 

As always, big hugs and high fives, 

-Nerdy

Citations in the world of AI #EngChat #EdChat

I encountered a great question about citing things students finding using AI resources. If students were using a Space in SchoolAI and they were given information they wanted to use in an essay, how might they go about citing that? Well, the folks at MLA and APA are one step ahead and have provided examples on how to do that. I was able to take that work and build a Space that will help students with their citation questions that you can use with your students. 

What is nice about this Space is that it will not only properly format their citations, it will provide help with in-text citation as well. In-text citation was one of my big focus points when I taught writing to my grade nine and ten students. I really drilled it home because I always viewed proper citation as a mechanical function that should be completed and checked during proofreading. I was probably a little too hard on it, but I feel like it payed off for students. 

I once had a former student visit the classroom during their Fall break and they told me their professor told them that they were the only one in the entire lecture hall sized class to have accurate in-text citations and they wanted to make sure to tell me. It made my entire week. It was even better because they came in and told me while I had my Freshmen with me, so they got to hear the story as well. 

Citation can be a tedious part of any writing process, but it is much easier than it has ever been. There are plenty of programs out there that will create citations for you and and you no longer have to worry about having too many spaces or not enough spaces in the citation. You do not have to worry about the punctuation in the citation. I remember being marked down for these thinks in high school. With the advent of AI, how the heck to you cite ChatGPT? I remember when we asked the same question about wikipedia and other websites. Well, MLA and APA do not let their writing community down. There are guidelines on how to cite chat conversations with AI. There are even guidelines on citing memes! 

To help cut through the noise, I built a Space that will help users with their citations. It is built to help with citing AI specifically, but I also built in examples and pdfs from MLA and APA to help with all citations types and to even provide examples to showcase what they user should have. I have also built the Space to NOT write essays for students, but help them insert in-text citation as needed. 

If you want to explore the Space, give it a look over and see how it might help you or your students. 

MLA and APA Citation Space

Make Moments with AI #EdChat #SchoolAI

Time. The most valuable asset of any teacher. Teachers have been asked to do more and more over the years, but the schedules have never allowed for more time. Added bus duty, recess duty, aftercare duty, etc. All of these take time away from all of the other little things that teachers need to do to do their job effectively. All this really means is that the time do these things gets moved to personal time. Longer days in the classroom or longer nights before bed are needed to complete many of these tasks. Worse yet, the stress of coming up with new lesson idea, assignments, projects, etc, can make it hard to create on the spot before tackling the numerous other responsibilities we have as adults. I wasn't sure what role AI was going to play in my life as a teacher, but when I opened the door to the possibility of AI helping me with the little things, I found myself reclaiming my time. 

One of my biggest issues when it came to lesson planning was Lesson Block. A cousin of Writer's Block, Lesson Block is when a teacher has some sort of idea, but they just can't put it into words or the format needed to roll out in class. Too often, seemingly awesome ideas would never fully develop because I could not get over Lesson Block. Sometimes the idea would finally fully form, but after that part of the unit has passed. I used to be able to pop into another teacher's classroom and bounce ideas off of them to help flesh out the lesson, but those windows of time are few and far between because all of us are so busy. I needed a thought partner and one that could be there for me when I needed to explore an idea. I turned to ChatGPT to see if it can help me. 

I first explored the free version of ChatGPT and then eventually turned to the paid version. I started with a casual conversation exploring what it knew about lesson plans, education, state standards, etc. I was impressed by what it knew and understood with my various prompts. I decided to give it a broad idea of what I was thinking for a lesson and I wanted to see what it would do. Well, it gave me a lesson that was amazing...for someone else's class. The lesson would not work for the students I had in the class and rolling that out would have been trouble. But, that failure of a lesson was helpful to me in the long run. It gave me a starting point for exploring a similar type of lesson that would work best for my class. So, similar to how I might go to my teaching partner and ask for their thoughts on my ideas, they might not have an idea that would work, but it could lead me to the idea that works for me. This conversation with ChatGPT was great in its failure to understand my class dynamic and that back and forth and the creation of the lesson took less than 10 minutes! 

After exploring multiple school specific AI tools because I was concerned about data security and model training, I settled on SchoolAI because it was fully COPPA and FERPA compliant and I just loved the UX more than the others. I can be a bit of snob about those things. Anyway, SchoolAI has an assistant called Coteacher that functioned in a similar fashion as ChatGPT, but it was designed to better understand classroom dynamics and the things that a teacher might need when requesting different solutions. It became one of my go-to tools to help me work through ideas quickly. There was even a time when I had an idea mid class that I was trying to articulate and I dropped it into Coteacher and it was able to put into works my jumbled idea to use in class and it worked! When I started to explore Spaces and how I can prompt a chatbot to support the students in class, that was a game changer. 

One of the first things I did with SchoolAI Spaces was to build a Space to help students building in Minecraft. The Minecraft House Builder Space was designed to help students with varied experience with Minecraft to build a house using the Design Thinking approach we covered in class. The common issue with this lesson was that the class has a wide range of experience with Minecraft. I had students who have never played Minecraft and some students that kill the Ender Dragon for fun on a Saturday night. I am somewhere in the middle of those two groups. I am either spending lots of time with the first time users or I am struggling to help the advanced student figure out how to do something beyond my experience. Either way, I am spending too much time on one type of student. What the Space does is support all students based on their skill level. It will help newbies explore Minecraft with basic steps on getting started and it will also help students use redstone in wildly creative ways. That frees me to engage more fully with the whole class and observe how all of the students are doing, not just the top and bottom of the experience ladder. That reclaimed time allows me to connect with more students. 

Being able to connect with students with the reclaimed time is a huge part of using AI correctly and effectively. By creating that Space to support students, I was able to focus on the thing that makes teaching so amazing; connecting with students and helping them 1-on-1. That is my hot take when it comes to AI. Using AI effectively can lead to more human moments, not fewer. Reclaiming 5 minutes here and there might not seem like much, but that student that you connected with during that time felt seen and heard for the first time all day, week, or month. Teaching is all about the moments. If AI can help create more opportunities to have those moments with students, then it is worth every bit of time spent learning how to utilize it in the classroom for yourself and for students. 

I'd love to hear how you are using AI in your class to create more moments with your students. 

Hugs and high fives, 

Nerdy

Note: All images are AI Generated using SchoolAI and do it that way saved me tons of time!