AI into for staff
AI possibilities - A quick share with teachers
AI Enters Stage Left
The purpose of the session was to simply introduce the current state of AI and give a glimpse at some of the ways that it could be used by a K-8 educator. It was not a session to tell teachers what they should be doing, and there were no prescribed expectations for teachers. It was a very quick look to hopefully give them a familiarity with some of the terms, and some of the processes that they can currently use to access AI tools.
In the session I covered a timeline of AI with the introduction of chat GPT a year ago. Then demoed Microsoft Bing and Google Bard lumping those together as the big three at this time.
Specific use AI Tools
I did a look at more education focused wrappers of AI that I’m hoping some of my teachers may explore and become familiar enough with that they may use it to their advantage. The first four were, Conker.ai, Curipod.com, Tome, and Twee.com. The first one is a standalone assessment generator the next two are presentation generators and the last one is specific for English teachers, or anyone teaching reading and writing.
Full Meal Deal Tools
The next four I highlighted were in a category that guy titled, Full Meal Deal. Each of these have extensive stables of options for teachers to tap into from their daily needs all the way to their annual needs. These span, composing emails, to creating a IEPs, to developing lesson plans and unit plans, to the creation of rubrics, songs, jokes, images, and the list goes on. Hence the, Full Meal Deal title. The offerings were, MagicSchool, Eduaide, Schoolai, Canva. From my fairly limited perspective, it seems that these and other AI offerings in the education world are simply on a mad tear to be the “chosen one”. They are all fairly similar at this time and Eduaide and SchoolAi seem to fit with my way of working a little better than MagicSchool in Canva. I have a number of teachers who are already using Canva, so I’m hoping some of them will explore that with success. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next year with these offerings and see who rises to the top or is bought out by larger companies.
Reflections
Much of the staff seemed attentive with lots of questions and astonished eyes as it appears that many of them have avoided any interaction or researching any information about AI possibilities in their classroom. A few of them were trying out chatGPT as I was presenting, and shared some of their products near the end of the meeting. Lots of fun for them to experience it and for me to see them already beginning to explore on their own.
From this meeting I am hopeful that some of the staff begin to explore on their own and gain some confidence with a few of the tools so that they can share with others when they meet in smalls groups in the new year.!