If you’re short on ideas, here are a few things you might compliment them on:
Relationships and rapport with students:
Decision-making:
Clarity and delivery:
Classroom management and logistics:
Lesson planning:
Design:
So this is my ask of you as an administrator: Choose 10 teachers on your staff and make it a goal to give each of them one piece of specific, positive feedback this week. For some, you might only need to think about what you’ve noticed during your past observations of them. For others, you might need to arrange a short classroom visit — make sure the teacher knows ahead of time that you will ONLY be looking for things to compliment them on. Even better would be to ask them to choose a time when they’re doing something they think you’d like to see.
Artificial intelligence is disrupting higher education — from itweb.co.za by Rennie Naidoo; via GSV Traditional contact universities need to adapt faster and find creative ways of exploring and exploiting AI, or lose their dominant position.
Higher education professionals have a responsibility to shape AI as a force for good.
Introducing Canva’s biggest education launch — from canva.com We’re thrilled to unveil our biggest education product launch ever. Today, we’re introducing a whole new suite of products that turn Canva into the all-in-one classroom tool educators have been waiting for.
Also seeCanva for Education. Create and personalize lesson plans, infographics,
posters, video, and more. 100% free for
teachers and students at eligible schools.
ChatGPT and generative AI: 25 applications to support student engagement — from timeshighereducation.com by Seb Dianati and Suman Laudari In the fourth part of their series looking at 100 ways to use ChatGPT in higher education, Seb Dianati and Suman Laudari share 25 prompts for the AI tool to boost student engagement
There are two ways to use ChatGPT — from theneurondaily.com
Type to it.
Talk to it (new).
… Since then, we’ve looked to it for a variety of real-world business advice. For example, Prof Ethan Mollick posted a great guide using ChatGPT-4 with voice as a negotiation instructor.
In a similar fashion, you can consult ChatGPT with voice for feedback on:
Job interviews.
Team meetings.
Business presentations.
With a prompt, GPT-4 with voice does a pretty good job of acting as a negotiation simulator/instructor. It is not all the way there, but as someone who builds educational simulations, I can tell you this is already impressively far along towards an effective teaching tool.… pic.twitter.com/IphPHF95cL
Via The Rundown:Google is using AI to analyze the company’s Maps data and suggest adjustments to traffic light timing — aiming to cut driver waits, stops, and emissions.
The camera never lies. Except, of course, it does – and seemingly more often with each passing day.
In the age of the smartphone, digital edits on the fly to improve photos have become commonplace, from boosting colours to tweaking light levels.
Now, a new breed of smartphone tools powered by artificial intelligence (AI) are adding to the debate about what it means to photograph reality.
Google’s latest smartphones released last week, the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, go a step further than devices from other companies. They are using AI to help alter people’s expressions in photographs.
Still using AI to help you mark a student’s work?
Mark a full class’s worth with one prompt.
Here’s the Whole Class Feedback Giant Prompt.
Comment & retweet & I’ll DM it to you.
Discover why thousands of teachers subscribe to the Sunday AI Educator ?https://t.co/ivpXYyWNzN
— Dan Fitzpatrick – The AI Educator (@theaieducatorX) October 22, 2023
Dr. Chris Dede, of Harvard University and Co-PI of the National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education, spoke about the differences between knowledge and wisdom in AI-human interactions in a keynote address at the 2022 Empowering Learners for the Age of AI conference. He drew a parallel between Star Trek: The Next Generation characters Data and Picard during complex problem-solving: While Data offers the knowledge and information, Captain Picard offers the wisdom and context from on a leadership mantle, and determines its relevance, timing, and application.
This “decreasing obstacles” framing turned out to be helpful in thinking about generative AI. When the time came, my answer to the panel question, “how would you summarize the impact generative AI is going to have on education?” was this:
“Generative AI greatly reduces the degree to which access to expertise is an obstacle to education.”
We haven’t even started to unpack the implications of this notion yet, but hopefully just naming it will give the conversation focus, give people something to disagree with, and help the conversation progress more quickly.
How to Make an AI-Generated Film — from heatherbcooper.substack.com by Heather Cooper Plus, Midjourney finally has a new upscale tool!
From DSC: I’m not excited about this, as I can’t help but wonder…how long before the militaries of the world introduce this into their warfare schemes and strategies?
In doing research for my Ph.D. program, I sought out the perspectives of five teachers through informal conversations about how schools have improved since the pandemic. Four themes emerged.
From DSC: To add another positive to the COVID-19 picture…
Just like COVID-19 did more for the advancement of online learning within our learning ecosystems than 20+ years of online learning development, COVID-19 may have done more to move our younger learners along the flexibility route that will serve them well in their futures. That is, with today’s exponential pace of change, we all need to be more agile and flexible — and be able to reinvent ourselves along the way. The type of learning that our K-12ers went through during COVID-19 may have been the most helpful thing yet for their future success and career development. They will need to pivot, adapt, and take right turn after right turn.
New York City Public Schools will launch an Artificial Intelligence Policy Lab to guide the nation’s largest school district’s approach to this rapidly evolving technology.
Kevin McCullen, an associate professor of computer science at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, teaches a freshman seminar about AI and robotics. As part of the course, students read Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots, by John Markoff. McCullen had the students work in groups to outline and summarize the first three chapters. Then he showed them what ChatGPT had produced in an outline.
“Their version and ChatGPT’s version seemed to be from two different books,” McCullen wrote. “ChatGPT’s version was essentially a ‘laundry list’ of events. Their version was narratives of what they found interesting. The students had focused on what the story was telling them, while ChatGPT focused on who did what in what year.” The chatbot also introduced false information, such as wrong chapter names.
The students, he wrote, found the writing “soulless.”
In the Wild West of generative AI, educators and institutions are working out how best to use the technology for learning. How can institutions define AI guidelines that allow for experimentation while providing students with consistent guidance on appropriate use of AI tools?
To find out, we spoke with Dr. Cristi Ford, vice president of academic affairs at D2L. With more than two decades of educational experience in nonprofit, higher education, and K-12 institutions, Ford works with D2L’s institutional partners to elevate best practices in teaching, learning, and student support. Here, she shares her advice on setting and communicating AI policies that are consistent and future-ready.
“If we want to use AI to improve education, we need more teachers at the table,” said Avery Pan, Class Companion co-founder and CEO. “Class Companion is designed by teachers, for teachers, to harness the most sophisticated AI and improve their classroom experience. Developing technologies specifically for teachers is imperative to supporting our next generation of students and education system.”
7 Questions on Generative AI in Learning Design — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly Open LMS Adoption and Education Specialist Michael Vaughn on the challenges and possibilities of using artificial intelligence to move teaching and learning forward.
The potential for artificial intelligence tools to speed up course design could be an attractive prospect for overworked faculty and spread-thin instructional designers. Generative AI can shine, for example, in tasks such as reworking assessment question sets, writing course outlines and learning objectives, and generating subtitles for audio and video clips. The key, says Michael Vaughn, adoption and education specialist at learning platform Open LMS, is treating AI like an intern who can be guided and molded along the way, and whose work is then vetted by a human expert.
We spoke with Vaughn about how best to utilize generative AI in learning design, ethical issues to consider, and how to formulate an institution-wide policy that can guide AI use today and in the future.
Canva’s new AI tools automate boring, labor-intensive design tasks — from theverge.com by Jess Weatherbed Magic Studio features like Magic Switch automatically convert your designs into blogs, social media posts, emails, and more to save time on manually editing documents.
To use Sherpa, an instructor first uploads the reading they’ve assigned, or they can have the student upload a paper they’ve written. Then the tool asks a series of questions about the text (either questions input by the instructor or generated by the AI) to test the student’s grasp of key concepts. The software gives the instructor the choice of whether they want the tool to record audio and video of the conversation, or just audio.
The tool then uses AI to transcribe the audio from each student’s recording and flags areas where the student answer seemed off point. Teachers can review the recording or transcript of the conversation and look at what Sherpa flagged as trouble to evaluate the student’s response.
Who decided that grading and assessment should be the exclusive responsibility of teachers? Why do we sideline students when it comes to assessment?
Self-assessment is a powerful strategy that encourages students to become more invested in their learning journeys. It is a process where students evaluate their work, reflecting on what they’ve learned, how well they’ve understood complex concepts, how much progress they’ve made toward mastering key skills, and where they may need to invest time and energy to improve their concept knowledge and skill set (Siegesmund, 2016). Self-assessment shifts the focus from a grade-centric perspective to a learning-centric one. For those of us who want to encourage students to adopt a growth mindset, believing they can always improve and develop with practice and hard work, self-assessment is a critical piece of that puzzle (Wang, Zepeda, Qin, Del Toro & Binning, 2021).
Redefining What High School Is Supposed to Look Like — from edutopia.org by Brittany R. Collins From restorative grading to paid internships, an equity-centered approach to education creates rich learning opportunities for all students.
We have a networking party with special tables and food, and the students have to stand and mingle. We emulate this sort of a networking party, because they have to learn how to do it. They have to dress the part that day, and I film it so we can watch it back to give them some feedback.
Digital Promise announced [on 9/26/23] the launch of the Digital Promise FutureLab. This cutting-edge initiative embodies Digital Promise’s long-standing dedication to innovation in education and aims to not only revolutionize the current state of education, but to reimagine a new world of learning.
FutureLab is funded in part by Digital Promise’s recent gift from MacKenzie Scott.
“Innovation is in Digital Promise’s DNA, and we are reaffirming our commitment to push the boundaries of what’s possible in education,” said Jean-Claude Brizard, President and CEO of Digital Promise. “We believe the Digital Promise FutureLab will be a catalyst for transformative change in education. It’s a significant opportunity to collaborate with visionary educators, technologists, and researchers to create a more equitable future for learners worldwide.”
Although there is no replacement for getting your hands dirty with finger paints, technology can offer many ways for students to be creative when making art. In addition to creativity, technology can also allow students to explore and learn about art in new and engaging ways.
Some of the best free digital art tools are those from Google that help educators and students with teaching, learning, exploring, and creating art. The wide range of tools and activities available provide nearly infinite possibilities.
Soundtrap: How To Use it to Teach — from techlearning.com by Luke Edwards Soundtrap is the recording studio for students and teachers that could help in class and beyond
Soundtrap is a music production tool that is designed for use in education. That means a full-on mixing and sound production studio experience, but one that is accessible for students grade six and up.
Since this is relatively simple to use and is available in app as well as web formats, it is highly accessible for both in-class and personal devices.
This tool offers a way to spark creativity in students and a method to help experiment with music that can inspire those new to this world, or enable more experienced students to create complex and explorative music.
Also relevant/see:
BREAKING: YouTube announced a suite of AI tools for creators! From a dedicated video editing app and AI language dubbing to AI video generation and ideation. Here’s the TL;DR:
1. AI Video with Dream Screen – Visually transport yourself anywhere by typing a prompt. This new… pic.twitter.com/fCPSc87IKq
15+ YouTube Shorts Ideas For Your Next Video — from buffer.com by Tamilore Oladipo If you’re looking for inspiration for your next short video, here are 18 YouTube Shorts ideas to help your content stand out and engage viewers in bite-sized bursts.
With more than 50 billion daily views, YouTube Shorts offers a unique opportunity for content creators to reach a wider audience, promote longer videos, and even increase subscribers.
For content creators and small businesses, Shorts can be a game-changer. Whether you’re repurposing old content, sharing clips from live streams, promoting exclusive content, or hopping on the latest trend, Shorts provide a versatile medium to engage viewers and potentially go viral.
From DSC: Perhaps there are a few ideas in here for your students — as they continue to develop their skills in creating multimedia-based communications and presentations.
Also relevant/see:
11 YouTube Shorts Creators to Inspire Your Next Viral Video — from buffer.com by Kirsti Lang A curated list of YouTube Shorts creators worth watching — both at the top of their game and on the rise — and how their content helps them stand out.
Short-form video is still thoroughly enjoying its heyday, due in no small part to YouTube Shorts.
The introduction of vertical, short-form videos to YouTube was a bold move for the Google-owned platform, and it’s paying off for both them and creators — 50 billion daily views is really nothing to be sneezed at.
It’s also ushered in a new wave of short-form video stars, many of whom are prioritizing Shorts over the likes of Facebook and Instagram Reels, and TikTok, with subscriber counts quickly dwarfing what it took years to amass on other platforms.
Calculus is a critical on-ramp to careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). But getting to those careers means surviving the academic journey.
While there’s been progress of late, it’s been “uneven” and Black, Hispanic and women workers are still underrepresented in some STEM fields. Traditional methods of calculus instruction may be knocking students off the path to these vital occupations, which is why advocates warn that getting diverse students into these careers may require instructional models more responsive to students. Meanwhile, the country is struggling to fill vacancies in related fields like semiconductor manufacturing, despite sizable investments — a feat that may require stabilizing the pipeline.
Good news: There’s mounting evidence that changing calculus instruction works for the groups usually pushed out of STEM. At least, that’s according to a randomized study recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Science.
Student Use Cases for AI: Start by Sharing These Guidelines with Your Class — from hbsp.harvard.edu by Ethan Mollick and Lilach Mollick
To help you explore some of the ways students can use this disruptive new technology to improve their learning—while making your job easier and more effective—we’ve written a series of articles that examine the following student use cases:
Earlier this week, CETL and AIG hosted a discussion among UM faculty and other instructors about teaching and AI this fall semester. We wanted to know what was working when it came to policies and assignments that responded to generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, Google Bard, Midjourney, DALL-E, and more. We were also interested in hearing what wasn’t working, as well as questions and concerns that the university community had about teaching and AI.
Then, in class he put them into groups where they worked together to generate a 500-word essay on “Why I Write” entirely through ChatGPT. Each group had complete freedom in how they chose to use the tool. The key: They were asked to evaluate their essay on how well it offered a personal perspective and demonstrated a critical reading of the piece. Weiss also graded each ChatGPT-written essay and included an explanation of why he came up with that particular grade.
After that, the students were asked to record their observations on the experiment on the discussion board. Then they came together again as a class to discuss the experiment.
Weiss shared some of his students’ comments with me (with their approval). Here are a few:
Asked to describe the state of generative AI that they would like to see in higher education 10 years from now, panelists collaboratively constructed their preferred future. .
Julie York, a computer science and media teacher at South Portland High School in Maine, was scouring the internet for discussion tools for her class when she found TeachFX. An AI tool that takes recorded audio from a classroom and turns it into data about who talked and for how long, it seemed like a cool way for York to discuss issues of data privacy, consent and bias with her students. But York soon realized that TeachFX was meant for much more.
York found that TeachFX listened to her very carefully, and generated a detailed feedback report on her specific teaching style. York was hooked, in part because she says her school administration simply doesn’t have the time to observe teachers while tending to several other pressing concerns.
“I rarely ever get feedback on my teaching style. This was giving me 100 percent quantifiable data on how many questions I asked and how often I asked them in a 90-minute class,” York says. “It’s not a rubric. It’s a reflection.”
TeachFX is easy to use, York says. It’s as simple as switching on a recording device.
…
But TeachFX, she adds, is focused not on her students’ achievements, but instead on her performance as a teacher.
ChatGPT Is Landing Kids in the Principal’s Office, Survey Finds — from the74million.org by Mark Keierleber While educators worry that students are using generative AI to cheat, a new report finds students are turning to the tool more for personal problems.
Indeed, 58% of students, and 72% of those in special education, said they’ve used generative AI during the 2022-23 academic year, just not primarily for the reasons that teachers fear most. Among youth who completed the nationally representative survey, just 23% said they used it for academic purposes and 19% said they’ve used the tools to help them write and submit a paper. Instead, 29% reported having used it to deal with anxiety or mental health issues, 22% for issues with friends and 16% for family conflicts.
Part of the disconnect dividing teachers and students, researchers found, may come down to gray areas. Just 40% of parents said they or their child were given guidance on ways they can use generative AI without running afoul of school rules. Only 24% of teachers say they’ve been trained on how to respond if they suspect a student used generative AI to cheat.
The prospect of AI-powered, tailored, on-demand learning and performance support is exhilarating: It starts with traditional digital learning made into fully adaptive learning experiences, which would adjust to strengths and weaknesses for each individual learner. The possibilities extend all the way through to simulations and augmented reality, an environment to put into practice knowledge and skills, whether as individuals or working in a team simulation. The possibilities are immense.
Thanks to generative AI, such visions are transitioning from fiction to reality.
Video: Unleashing the Power of AI in L&D — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman An exclusive video walkthrough of my keynote at Sweden’s national L&D conference this week
Highlights
The wicked problem of L&D: last year, $371 billion was spent on workplace training globally, but only 12% of employees apply what they learn in the workplace
An innovative approach to L&D: when Mastery Learning is used to design & deliver workplace training, the rate of “transfer” (i.e. behaviour change & application) is 67%
AI 101: quick summary of classification, generative and interactive AI and its uses in L&D
The impact of AI: my initial research shows that AI has the potential to scale Mastery Learning and, in the process:
reduce the “time to training design” by 94% > faster
reduce the cost of training design by 92% > cheaper
increase the quality of learning design & delivery by 96% > better
Research also shows that the vast majority of workplaces are using AI only to “oil the machine” rather than innovate and improve our processes & practices
Practical tips: how to get started on your AI journey in your company, and a glimpse of what L&D roles might look like in a post-AI world
The idea was simple: ask sixty community leaders to fan across the city’s public schools, follow in the footsteps of its youngest citizens, and report back on what they saw.
Fifty-nine said yes. What they found, Pickering says, “were kids with dead eyes. Kids not engaged. And kids who knew that school was a game – and the game was rigged.”
So the Billy Madison team used its findings to design a prospective high school that would actually produce what its participants said they wanted to see:
Let kids pursue their passions. Give them real work to do. And get them out of the school building, and in the community.
This thought-provoking discussion delves into the topic of system replacement in education. Is school transformation possible without replacing the existing education system? Joining [Michael] to discuss the question are Thomas Arnett of the Christensen Institute and Kelly Young of Education Reimagined.
In an educational landscape that constantly seeks marginal improvements, [Michael’s] guests speak to the importance of embracing new value networks that support innovative approaches to learning. They bring to light the issue of programs that remain niche solutions, rather than robust, learner-centered alternatives. In exploring the concept of value networks, [Michael’s] guests challenge the notion of transforming individual schools or districts alone. They argue for the creation of a new value network to truly revolutionize the education system. Of course, they admit that achieving this is no small feat, as it requires a paradigm shift in mindset and a careful balance between innovation and existing structures. In this conversation, we wrestle with the full implications of their findings and more.
From DSC: This reminds me of the importance of TrimTab Groups who invent or test out something new apart from the mothership.
The 2023 GEM Report on technology and education explores these debates, examining education challenges to which appropriate use of technology can offer solutions (access, equity and inclusion; quality; technology advancement; system management), while recognizing that many solutions proposed may also be detrimental.
The report also explores three system-wide conditions (access to technology, governance regulation, and teacher preparation) that need to be met for any technology in education to reach its full potential.
Bloom Academy is the first and only self-directed learning center in Las Vegas – microschooling as true, nontraditional and permissionless education alternative. 5 Questions with Microschool Founders Sarah & Yamila.https://t.co/RvxtwGXvkZ
Since last spring, journalists at The 74 have been crossing the U.S. as part of our 2023 High School Road Trip. It has embraced both emerging and established high school models, taking us to 13 schools from Rhode Island to California, Arizona to South Carolina, and in between.
It has brought us face-to-face with innovation, with programs that promote everything from nursing to aerospace to maritime-themed careers.
At each school, educators seem to be asking one key question: What if we could start over and try something totally new?
What we’ve found represents just a small sample of the incredible diversity that U.S. high schools now offer, but we’re noticing a few striking similarities that educators in these schools, free to experiment with new models, now share. Here are the top eight: .
What does it take to empower parents and decentralize schooling? Why is a diversity of school models important to parents? Are we at a tipping point? .
Several meta-analyses, which summarize the evidence from many studies, have found higher achievement when students take quizzes instead of, say, reviewing notes or rereading a book chapter. “There’s decades and decades of research showing that taking practice tests will actually improve your learning,” said David Shanks, a professor of psychology and deputy dean of the Faculty of Brain Sciences at University College London.
Still, many students get overwhelmed during tests. Shanks and a team of four researchers wanted to find out whether quizzes exacerbate test anxiety. The team collected 24 studies that measured students’ test anxiety and found that, on average, practice tests and quizzes not only improved academic achievement, but also ended up reducing test anxiety. Their meta-analysis was published in Educational Psychology Review in August 2023.
The End of Scantron Tests— from theatlantic.com by Matteo Wong Machine-graded bubble sheets are the defining feature of American schools. Today’s kindergartners may never have to fill one out.
There are several possible reasons why pretesting worked in this study.
Students paid more attention to the pretested material during the lecture.
The pretest activated prior knowledge (some of them are clearly doing a lot of prework), and allowed them to encode the new information more deeply.
They were doing a lot of studying of the pretested information outside of class.
There are some great spaced retrieval effects going on. That is, students saw the material before lecture, they took a quiz on it during the pretest, then later they reviewed or quizzed themselves on that same material again during self-study.
But this fall, a few educators are quietly charting a different course they believe could change everything: At least two groups are pushing to create new AI chatbots that would offer teachers unlimited access to sometimes confusing and often paywalled peer-reviewed research on the topics that most bedevil them.
Their aspiration is to offer new tools that are more focused and helpful than wide-ranging ones like ChatGPT, which tends to stumble over research questions with competing findings. Like many juveniles faced with questions they can’t answer, it has a frustrating tendency to make things up.
Then, I turned Custom Instructions on and gave it the same starting prompt. Here are a few of the responses (emphases are mine):
“Purpose:What’s the primary goal of the course? Is it to augment your existing offerings at Every, serve as a standalone product, or something else?”
“Content Depth: Given your love for detailed, intellectual writing, how in-depth will you go on each topic?”
“Guest Contributions: Do you plan to involve guest experts, perhaps even some of your writing heroes or team members like Kate Lee and Evan Armstrong?”
“Time Investment: Given that you’re already grappling with being too opportunistic and dutiful, how will you allocate time for this without sidelining your creative work or burdening yourself?”
AI for comics— from aiandacademia.substack.com by Bryan Alexander Exploring an entertaining new Hugging Face application
As generative AI grows, more uses appear. Beyond text and images, other domains for creation pop up as companies, groups, and individuals try out new functions.
Today’s case in point is AI Comic Factory from Hugging Face.* This service will generate a couple of comic book pages based on your text input. It gives you choices of comic style and page layout as well.
Items from Tom Barrett’ Promptcraft: AI for a better learning ecosystem
How many languages do you speak? Thanks to AI, that number could be as many as seven. Los Angeles-based AI video platform HeyGen has launched a new tool that clones your voice from a video and translates what you’re saying into seven different languages. If that wasn’t enough, it also syncs your lips to your new voice so the final clip looks (and sounds) as realistic as possible.
Microsoft and Project Gutenberg have used AI technologies to create more than 5,000 free audiobooks with high-quality synthetic voices.
For the project, the researchers combined advances in machine learning, automatic text selection (which texts are read aloud, which are not), and natural-sounding speech synthesis systems.
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