AI-ducation!
AI as a Teaching Tool
Truthfully, I am brand new to the world of AI. I don’t use Alexa or Google Home, and haven’t played around with any ChatGPT or the platforms that make you into a really cool looking AI person. I do, however, have a good buddy of mine who has spent countless hours playing with the new AI options that some of our favourite platforms have to offer. She put together a whole folder filled with AI tools that will help the administrative and planning portions of job way easier and much less time consuming. A particularly cool one can be found in Canva, and it creates lessons, games, assessment tools… it felt like the possibilities were endless. I always do some sort of review game before a quiz or test, usually making it myself in Kahoot or Quizizz, but Canva will create a game seconds (disclaimer – I haven’t had the chance to try it yet, but my friend’s reviews were positive!). There is never enough planning or prep time, so any tool that will help create these resources is one that’s good in my books.
The video might be a bit long, but here is a tutorial filled with Canva AI magic!
AI as a Learning Opportunity
AI will naturally be a point of discussion in most classrooms at this point. As a connected educator, I use tech with my students everyday and towards the end of the 2023 school year, I started to become hyperaware of the fact that it would be easy for students to use ChatGPG to comeplete assignments and it would be just a negative option in classrooms. However, a classmate made an excellent point in our Discord chat that a lot of proper use of tech comes down to relationships in the best of times. Why would AI be any different? Ensuring students are submitting their own work still comes down to knowing my students, their strengths, and areas for improvement. It comes down to communicating when it is appropriate to use AI and when it isn’t.
Further, AI is another layer of teaching digital literacy. Being able to identify what is real/legitimate is a skill students need to develop. AI opens up conversation as to appropriate use, identifying AI images (check the hands!), the benefits, and the shortfalls. Avoiding it as if it is only meant to be a problem in classrooms means missed learning opportunities for everyone – AI is here to stay, we should embrace it!
Have you used AI with your students yet? How has it gone?
Hello Meagan!
Thanks for your blog and Canva share. I have not used AI with students yet. My wife attended the AI session at our Teacher Institute earlier this month and was raving about the new possibilities she learned. One in particular stood out to me and that was School AI. The feature where it converses with students to generate ideas was super cool and the fact that teachers can control what the AI can do helps manage potential plagiarism and promotes active thinking. Many of our teachers used AI to assist with comments, but I am still hesitant to use it as it missed the personal touch. There is no doubt that AI has allowed for efficiency and could be used as a teaching tool.
Driving to work this morning I heard a report on CBC citing a recent study that stated up to 59% of jobs in the United Kingdom were exposed to redundancy if AI tools are fully embraced by corporate employers. Essentially, most white collar work tasks will become redundant. I think this gives us a strong impetus for teaching students how these tools work and what they are capable of. Preparing students in a vacuum where we deny access to AI will just leave them lost in a world that has moved on. On the upside, work that requires collaboration, team work, and critical thinking will be freed from some of the tedium that currently overwhelms us (I think of how easy it is to generate prompts now vs. 10 years ago – this leaves a lot more time for me to actually work with students one on one).
Hey Meagan!
My AI experience (or should I say lack thereof) is similar to yours. Exploring the world of AI in education, this week, gave me a lot to think about. I have not utilized any form of AI in my education practice, although I am also seeing it become more common among my coworkers. Especially during the last progress report roll out, many colleagues were raving about AI usage to help with their comment workload. Like you say, if AI can assist with some aspects of this extremely busy profession, why not? I agree with you that AI NEEDS to be embraced, as it is indeed here to stay. Thanks for the thoughtful blog post and helpful Canva video – I love Canva for classroom content creation and will be sure to explore these AI features further.