Wake up…AI. Afternoon planning…AI. Evening grading…AI. 

(Playground-v2.5, 2024)

I am a lucky lady because my school embraces the AI movement with positivity, embracing, and open arms. I have let AI consume much of my time these past two years, and I don’t want to go back. My current AI go-to tools are Perplexity, Magic School, Poe (because of China), and Omni (of course!) when I have a VPN. AI is excellent for generating starting ideas, guiding students’ questions, and ensuring things are UDL with Ludia. This year, I even ran a workshop with the tech department on how to craft prompts and build AI bots. You can check my bot, which is in progress, HERE! My school is fantastic because we started running AI pilot classes with grade 9 English, which was a total failure. However, we have an excellent sample of data to work with for refining the process going into the upcoming school year.

I connect with teachers and students at my school through old-school Microsoft email and Teams. I love Teams for accessible communication and resource sharing, as does my new principal. However, the rest of the staff still needs some training. Because I work at an IB school, my online platform for student work is ManageBac. It is a clunky piece of technology at best, but I have little choice. In terms of communicating with other IB teachers, I am in WeChat groups for my subject area and Facebook groups for resource sharing. My school offers Tech Bytes afternoon workshops during the school year to have more face-to-face communication while exploring emerging technology. This year, It has focused solely on AI and is working towards creating an AI policy.

Tara Winstead at Pexels

Within my classroom, I like to ensure that there are scannable QR codes for station activities, Magic School AI for students, Google Docs for collaborative work, and Canva for presentations. My students have been happier with my switch to Canva for PPTs because my old stuff was ugly and needed a “glow-up.” My students all use Mac computers, iPads, and cell phones in the classroom. There is no discouragement when it comes to using tech. Most international school students respect the tech rules, especially in tech-forward schools.

Anywho, if you want to do impromptu AI PD, feel free to leave a comment. I would love to chat.