User Generated Education

I had the opportunity to present AI Tools in the Gifted Education Classroom at the UCONN national gifted conference, Confratute 2023 (and more recently in person at the New Mexico Association for the Gifted conference). My session description (originally written by me and tweaked by ChatGPT) was:

Incorporating AI tools into the gifted education classroom can offer new and exciting opportunities for both teachers and students. By embracing these tools and learning how to use them effectively, we can prepare our students for the future and stay ahead of the curve. This hands-on session provides examples of how AI can be used in the classroom. Machine learning activities, creation of chatbots, AI art and stories, and a pledge for using AI will be demonstrated. Participants have time to explore and develop AI-driven activities for their own work settings.

Slide Deck

Here are my slides and activities (note: it was geared for gifted education but there are lots of AI tools and activities for a general school population):

Agenda

The agenda for this hour long session was:

• Warm Ups/Sampler
  • Music + Voice Generated AI Intro
  • Would You Rather (generated by Auto Classmate)
  • Adobe Express – Animate 2 Truth
  • AI for Gifted Students
    • Slides generated by AI – gamma.ai  
    • Information: Canva, ChatGPT, Character,ai, Codebreaker’s chat
    • Interactive by Curipod

• Student Activities
  • Code.org AI Activities
  • Machine Learning – Rock Papers Scissors
  • DIY Chatbots (using Scratch 3.0)
  • Using ChatGPT Student Pledge
  • Story Writing by ChatGPT/Dall.e

• Teacher Production Tools
  • Prompt Development
  • Lesson Assisters – Curipod, Magic School, Auto Classmate, Codebreaker Chat

• Issues
• AI – Background Information

Video Highlights of Live Presentation

Reflection

• Overall, it seemed to go well. I chose to start with simple AI activities that required very limited technology and AI background knowledge since I believed this would fit the demographic of conference attendees.
• I began with a “Would You Rather” activity from Auto Classmate with the prompt of using AI in the classroom, humorous version. My gifted students love “Would You Rather” activities and I was thrilled when I found this on Auto Classmate – https://autoclassmate.io/tools/would-you-rather-question-generator/. It generates questions on any topic for any grade. I think the session participants enjoyed it. I did 6 out of the 10 questions, but given that the session was only an hour long, I would have only done a few.
• Next I demonstrated Adobe Express Animate – https://express.adobe.com/express-apps/animate-from-audio/?isEdu= animating my avatar to play my two truths and a lie game. I then asked the session participants to make their own. This is a very quick tool, and believe it was worth the time to have the participants make their own. I had a few participants share the ones they made. Again, due to my limited time, I would have had only one participant share.
• Next, I gave them a 3 minute block to explore information about the benefits of using AI with gifted students through AI generated content creation tools, Gamma.ai, ChatGPT, Canva’s Magic Write, Character.ai, Codebreakers’ chat,
• This was followed by an interactive slide show via Curipod (think Peardeck or Nearpod). I had good engagement but would have liked to have spent more time on it.
• Because of the limited time (and I knew this would happen), I gave them a choice between seeing the student activities or playing with the teacher production tools. I was happy they selected the student activities. I had done and documented several AI activities (Teaching Machine, Language Translators, Chatbots, Art Creation, Pledge for Using AI at School) with my students as I had begun teaching them about AI during Spring, 2022.
• I really love AI, was thrilled to do a PD session on it, and hope to get future opportunities to do it again.