Students from the 6th grade at Nathan Hale School complete a “bingo challenge” as part of the Red Sox Hall of Fame stop on their guided tour of the Fenway Park Learning Lab.
Excerpt:
The six-stop tour has students learning history, geography, math, and science. Student visitors get baseball caps, t-shirts, and a backpack full of other souvenir items like baseball cards, binoculars, a calculator, and a pen. The most important piece of equipment may be a 40-page, seriously substantive workbook, developed with the Boston Public Schools, that students work their way through along the hourlong guided tour.
In March, I reported a pair of stories from Jackson, Miss., where the school district is paying for unlicensed classroom aides to go back to school and get their master’s degrees.
In April, I told the story of a remarkable idea: A new high school in San Antonio dedicated entirely to training high-schoolers in the art and science of good teaching.
From DSC: I would add a few more items:
Significantly reduce the impact of legislators on K-12. If they do vote on something that would impact schools, each legislator that votes on such legislation must first spend at least ___ week(s) observing in some of the schools that would be impacted before even starting to draft legislation and/or debate on the topic(s).
Instead, turn over more control and power to the students, teachers, K12 administrators, parents, and school boards.
Provide more choice, more control as each student can handle it.
Stop the one-size fits all system. Instead use AI-based systems to provide more personalized learning.
Develop more hybrid programs — but this time I’m talking mixing what we’ve known as public education with homeschooling and smaller learning pods. Let’s expand what’s included when we discuss “learning spaces.”
Strive for a love of learning — vs. competition and developing gameplayers
Support makerspaces, entrepreneurship, and experiments
Speaking of experiments, I would recommend developing more bold experiments outside of the current systems.
Along the lines of potential solutions/visions, see:
Foremost among them is this: Despite all the fancy models and white papers around what are all the levers to pull in order to transform a system, system transformation almost never happens by changing the fundamental tenets of the system itself. Instead, it comes from replacing the system with a brand-new system.
To start to understand why, consider the complicated system in which public schools find themselves. As Thomas Arnett explained, they are one part of a vast value network of federal, state, and local regulators, voters and taxpayers, parents and students, teachers, administrators, unions, curriculum providers, school vendors, public infrastructure, higher education institutions, and more.
New ideas, programs, or entities that don’t fit into these processes, priorities, and cost structures are simply not plug-compatible into that value network. They consequently get rejected, tossed to the fringe, or altered to meet the needs of the existing actors in the value network.
There’s a remarkable disconnect between how professors and administrators think students use generative AI on written work and how we actually use it. Many assume that if an essay is written with the help of ChatGPT, there will be some sort of evidence — it will have a distinctive “voice,” it won’t make very complex arguments, or it will be written in a way that AI-detection programs will pick up on. Those are dangerous misconceptions. In reality, it’s very easy to use AI to do the lion’s share of the thinking while still submitting work that looks like your own.
The common fear among teachers is that AI is actually writing our essays for us, but that isn’t what happens. You can hand ChatGPT a prompt and ask it for a finished product, but you’ll probably get an essay with a very general claim, middle-school-level sentence structure, and half as many words as you wanted. The more effective, and increasingly popular, strategy is to have the AI walk you through the writing process step by step.
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From DSC: The idea of personalized storytelling is highly intriguing to me. If you write a story for someone with their name and character in it, they will likely be even more engaged with the story/content. Our daughter recently did this with a substitute teacher, who she really wanted to thank before she left (for another assignment at another school). I thought it was very creative of her.
We’re building resources to teach AI literacies for high school and college instructors and assembling them into a full curriculum that will be deployed in a course with the National Educational Equity Lab offered in Fall 2023. .
AI video is getting insanely powerful.
Soon, you’ll be able to create a Hollywood-grade movie from your pocket.
Here’s the most breathtaking AI-generated videos I’ve seen:
— The AI Solopreneur (@aisolopreneur) May 11, 2023
ChatGPT has changed the world.
It does lack in some areas, but my favorite use case is leveraging it to teach me things twice as fast.
Here are the 10 best prompts to learn anything faster:
Why I’m Excited About ChatGPT— from insidehighered.com by Jennie Young Here are 10 ways ChatGPT will be a boon to first-year writing instruction, Jennie Young writes.
Excerpt:
But from my perspective as a first-year writing program director, I’m excited about how this emerging technology will help students from all kinds of educational backgrounds learn and focus on higher-order thinking skills faster. Here are 10 reasons I’m excited about ChatGPT.
? stfu and take my money
This is the most impressive campaign I’ve seen from a mega brand so far using AI & StableDiffusion.
edX Debuts Two AI-Powered Learning Assistants Built on ChatGPT — from press.edx.org; with thanks to Matthew Tower for this resource edX plugin launches in ChatGPT plugin store to give users access to content and course discovery edX Xpert delivers AI-powered learning and customer support within the edX platform
Excerpt:
LANHAM, Md. – May 12, 2023 – edX, a leading global online learning platform from 2U, Inc. (Nasdaq: TWOU), today announced the debut of two AI-powered innovations: the new edX plugin for ChatGPT and edX Xpert, an AI-powered learning assistant on the edX platform. Both tools leverage the technology of AI research and deployment company OpenAI to deliver real-time academic support and course discovery to help learners achieve their goals.
We’ve found pockets of excellence in three dozen high school visits this spring.
Where we’ve spotted evidence of deeper learning (i.e., engagement, critical thinking, excellent public products) it’s been work that matters to the learner and their community– it’s relevant, purposeful, and consequential work.
First, a brief note from DSC: I publish this piece because I’m a firm believer that all of us are now into lifelong learning. Each of us needs to be intentional on enhancing our personal learning ecosystems.
Excerpt:
College graduation often becomes a turning point in students’ lives. Fear, confusion, and self-doubt often affect you at this time. They are likely to impact your interest and motivation for further study. To overcome this, you will have to adopt a lifelong learning mindset.
Our team wants to help you preserve your natural curiosity and interest in studies long after your college years are over. Below you will find reasons why lifelong learning matters and how it can help you live a fulfilling life.
It’s a new tradition in the curriculum of the senior-level English class, where teacher Carrie Mattern asks her students to seek out a mural in Flint and write poetry about it.
This year, there was a focus on writing around cultural grief and the process of healing.
It’s become a favorite assignment for the students who’ve worked on the project, who say it allows them to use “creative freedom” in a way that other classes don’t. .
5 Playful Strategies That Reduce Language Learning Anxiety— from edutopia.org by Paige Tutt We visited a classroom in Denmark to see how a playful learning philosophy can put students at ease and make language learning joyful and engaging.
Excerpt:
Instead of trying to convince students that their fears aren’t warranted, Belouahi makes a point of creating a positive, mistake-friendly classroom where students feel comfortable experimenting. One of the ways she does this is by incorporating playful learning strategies. “It doesn’t have to be perfect from the beginning,” Belouahi says. “The goal is for them to use their English language as much as possible and as best as they can. Not perfectly.”
Here are five playful learning strategies from Belouahi’s classroom designed to make the act of learning a new language less daunting, and more joyful, social, and engaging.
Activating Learning by Milling to Music When students pretend they’re at a fancy party making small talk, a simple brainstorm for writing ideas becomes more lively, more cooperative—and more effective.
From DSC: Before we get to Scott Belsky’s article, here’s an interesting/related item from Tobi Lutke:
I just clued in how insane text2vid will get soon. As crazy as this sounds, we will be able to generate movies from just minor prompts and the path there is pretty clear.
Recent advances in technology will stir shake the pot of culture and our day-to-day experiences. Examples? A new era of synthetic entertainment will emerge, online social dynamics will become “hybrid experiences” where AI personas are equal players, and we will sync ourselves with applications as opposed to using applications.
A new era of synthetic entertainment will emerge as the world’s video archives – as well as actors’ bodies and voices – will be used to train models. Expect sequels made without actor participation, a new era of ai-outfitted creative economy participants, a deluge of imaginative media that would have been cost prohibitive, and copyright wars and legislation.
Unauthorized sequels, spin-offs, some amazing stuff, and a legal dumpster fire: Now lets shift beyond Hollywood to the fast-growing long tail of prosumer-made entertainment. This is where entirely new genres of entertainment will emerge including the unauthorized sequels and spinoffs that I expect we will start seeing.
This is how I viewed a fascinating article about the so-called #AICinema movement. Benj Edwards describes this nascent current and interviews one of its practitioners, Julie Wieland. It’s a great example of people creating small stories using tech – in this case, generative AI, specifically the image creator Midjourney.
From DSC: How will text-to-video impact the Learning and Development world? Teaching and learning? Those people communicating within communities of practice? Those creating presentations and/or offering webinars?
Problem-based learning is an instructional approach that engages students in active, collaborative, and self-directed learning by exploring complex, real-world problems (rather than sitting and listening to a stage on the stage).
In a Problem-based learning scenario, students work in small groups and, under the guidance of a facilitator or instructor, identify, research, and analyse a problem before proposing and evaluating potential solutions and reaching a resolution.
… Here are five of the most interesting research projects published on problem-based learning in the last few months:
Like a lot of you, I have been wondering how students are reacting to the rapid launch of generative AI tools. And I wanted to point you to creative ways in which professors and teaching experts have helped involve them in research and policymaking.
At Kalamazoo College, Autumn Hostetter, a psychology professor, and six of her students surveyed faculty members and students to determine whether they could detect an AI-written essay, and what they thought of the ethics of using various AI tools in writing. You can read their research paper here.
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Next, participants were asked about a range of scenarios, such as using Grammarly, using AI to make an outline for a paper, using AI to write a section of a paper, looking up a concept on Google and copying it directly into a paper, and using AI to write an entire paper. As expected, commonly used tools like Grammarly were considered the most ethical, while writing a paper entirely with AI was considered the least. But researchers found variation in how people approached the in-between scenarios. Perhaps most interesting: Students and faculty members shared very similar views with each scenario.
In the race to get ahead of new technologies, are we forgetting about the perspectives of the most important stakeholders within our post-secondary institutions: the students?
Leaving students out of early discussions and decision-making processes is almost always a recipe for ill-fitting, ineffective and/or damaging approaches. The mantra “nothing for us without us” comes to mind here.
Using AI to Help Organize Lesson Plans— from edutopia.org by Jorge Valenzuela
Artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT can help educators find activities that are set up to teach designated skills.
Excerpt:
My middle school students have to write a personal narrative about their experience with leadership and service. Which two or three specific Common Core State Standards are relevant to this task?
Now rewrite those standards into three to four “I can” statements. Although the chatbot can give you a great starting point, you may need to reword these into learning goals better suited for your students.
What formative assessments (formal and informal) can I use to check my students’ understanding of these standards?
Given your “I can” statements, what lessons can I teach to help my students write their best personal narratives?
Which high-yielding strategies can I use to teach these lessons? I aim to engage all my learners in tandem with increasing academic achievement.
You mentioned using “differentiated instruction.” What methods can I use to support my English language learners to improve their narratives?
Please provide the sources you used for your responses with websites.
10 Powerful Ways to End Your Lessons— from edutopia.org by Andrew Boryga Instead of cleaning up or going over homework assignments, try these creative activities that can help students make sense of new material—and have fun in the process.
Excerpts:
4. Create News “Headlines” or “Six-word Summaries”: Pair students off and tell them to imagine they’re writing news headlines that summarize what they’ve learned. Challenge each pair to write at least two headlines, then come back together to review the headlines. Alternatively, you can do this as an entire class activity, writing the headlines suggested by students on your whiteboard.
… 5. Traffic Light: …Before students leave the room, they take sticky notes and write one thing they learned in the lesson and place it on the green light, one thing they’re still mulling over and place it on yellow light, and one thing they’re struggling to understand and place it on the red light.
2 Ways to Encourage Better Note-Taking — from edutopia.org by Marianna Ruggerio Do your high school students think that taking notes during class means writing down everything you say? You can teach them effective note-taking skills that increase their engagement.
HOW DUOLINGO’S AI LEARNS WHAT YOU NEED TO LEARN— from spectrum.ieee.org by Klinton Bicknell, Claire Brust, and Burr Settles The AI that powers the language-learning app today could disrupt education tomorrow
Excerpt:
It’s lunchtime when your phone pings you with a green owl who cheerily reminds you to “Keep Duo Happy!” It’s a nudge from Duolingo, the popular language-learning app, whose algorithms know you’re most likely to do your 5 minutes of Spanish practice at this time of day. The app chooses its notification words based on what has worked for you in the past and the specifics of your recent achievements, adding a dash of attention-catching novelty. When you open the app, the lesson that’s queued up is calibrated for your skill level, and it includes a review of some words and concepts you flubbed during your last session.
The AI systems we continue to refine are necessary to scale the learning experience beyond the more than 50 million active learners who currently complete about 1 billion exercises per day on the platform.
Although Duolingo is known as a language-learning app, the company’s ambitions go further. We recently launched apps covering childhood literacy and third-grade mathematics, and these expansions are just the beginning. We hope that anyone who wants help with academic learning will one day be able to turn to the friendly green owl in their pocket who hoots at them, “Ready for your daily lesson?”
Also relevant/see:
Duolingo turned to OpenAI’s GPT-4 to advance the product with two new features: Role Play, an AI conversation partner, and Explain my Answer, which breaks down the rules when you make a mistake, in a new subscription tier called Duolingo Max.
“We wanted AI-powered features that were deeply integrated into the app and leveraged the gamified aspect of Duolingo that our learners love,” says Bodge.
The whole idea of AI as a useful teacher is here. Honestly it’s astounding. They have provided a Socratic approach to an algebra problem that is totally on point. Most people learn in the absence of a teacher or lecturer. They need constant scaffolding, someone to help them move forward, with feedback. This changes our whole relationship with what we need to know, and how we get to know it. Its reasoning ability is also off the scale.
We now have human teachers, human learners but also AI teachers and AI that learns. It used to be a diad, it is now a tetrad – that is the basis of the new pedAIgogy.
Personalised, tutor-led learning, in any subject, anywhere, at any time for anyone. That has suddenly become real.
We believe that AI and education make a great duo, and we’ve leveraged AI to help us deliver highly-personalized language lessons, affordable and accessible English proficiency testing, and more. Our mission to make high-quality education available to everyone in the world is made possible by advanced AI technology.
Explain My Answer offers learners the chance to learn more about their response in a lesson (whether their answer was correct or incorrect!) … Roleplay allows learners to practice real-world conversation skills with world characters in the app.
Artificial Intelligence is now taking the world of learning by storm. Here are 5 ways you can successfully incorporate AI in online learning.
Let’s say you’re training sales reps on handling different customer personalities. You can use this technology to diversify your branching scenarios so that trainees can also speak and not only type. This way, not only will the training become more realistic, but you’ll also be able to assess and work on additional elements, such as tone of voice, volume, speech tempo, etc.
