[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Claudia,

Thank you fir sharing your thoughts through this post. Your use of the terms ‘interactive’, ‘personalised’ and ‘fun’ are particularly striking for me. It is clear that these three words should categorise the majority of learning experiences in our classrooms. However, it can be quite challenging for us as teachers to continually come up with lessons that lend themselves to this. Having AI tools gives us the opportunity to pick and choose experiences that will lend themselves to these terms. Indeed, our own knowledge of teaching and pedagogy should allow us to tailor and adapt some of the ideas provided to us.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Frainc,

Thanks for your post and sharing such interesting insights and thoughts around Diffit and Gamma. It’s interesting to see how you have seen the potential of AI to enhance creativity and allow pupils to actively involve themselves in the learning process. Too often, we can see AI as a passive generator of information that simply provides us with a myriad of ideas and suggestions. However, being able to marry this with the creation of presentations and other media demonstrates the broader benefits of AI within education.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Máire,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the module’s content – it is great that you have found it helpful and useful. As you mentioned, assistive technologies can provide the avenue through which children with additional needs can access the curriculum. Building our knowledge of both what these tools are and how to use them will enbale us to make more informed decisions on how these may help the children we work with – discovering the use of Immersive Reader within Edge is a perfect example of this.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Lisa,

You have raised some very pertinent points in this course. While AI tools can help us with so much, we do need to thread carefully and use it judicially – our professional experience and expertise as teachers remains central to our work. Marrying our knowledge of pedagogy with the content and ideas generated from AI can be truly transformative and allow us much more time to connect with the children and identify the ways in which we can move their learning forward.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Shay,

Welcome to the course. You have hit on such an important point that we can sometimes forget and take for granted. It is through spending time and engaging with the children in our class that we can make the greatest difference. Using AI tools to remove some of the mundane and cumbersome tasks that reduce the amount of time we can be ‘present’ with the children is key and can actually promote the development of skills and promote more creative approaches to teaching rather than taking from them.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Michelle,

Thank you for your post. Unfortunately, I was unable to view the storyboard due to permissions but your description really outlines how you have managed to use and incorporate assistive technologies to make the task more accessible for children with different needs. The breadth of tools is wonderful to see – when starting out, it may be best to introduce them one at a time to ensure the child becomes comfortable using the tools and seeing their benefit, with this being a culmination of exposure to a variety of different assistive technologies.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Aisling,

Welcome to the course and thank you for your post here. I am delighted that sites like Magic School AI have assisted you in your work up to now. You make a key point around marrying the power of AI and the power that comes from a range of teaching experience. While AI can provide us with a dearth of information and suggestions, it cannot have the intuitive knowledge we have of individual children’s needs and interests and the pace at which the learning needs to happen. You have made an interesting point around the correlation between experience in the classroom and creating effective prompts.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi James,

Thank you for your post and for going ‘under the bonnet’ in your review of Immersive Reader. Whilst it may seem at first glance to be an effective readaloud, it is so much more and you have accurately described some of its key features. Parsing of the text into the relevant parts of speech is a very important feature and one which can really assist children in consolidating this learning. Everything around assistive technology centres on those small, strategic adaptations and enhancements, and this applies to both hardware and software which you have so accurately referenced in your reflection.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Annemarie,

Thank you for your post and for your engagement throughout the course. It’s clear that you are already well on the way with the introduction of Google tools in your school. I think we may have received the same digital portfolio CPD pre-Covid, and I can say it was what really gave us the push to move towards the use of online platforms for creating, storing and sharing samples of work. There are just so many tools out there to help us within the Google suite, many of which we are yet to discover. I wish you all the best and how you get on well with the ones you have listed.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Caroline and Sarah,

Thank you for your posts here. I agree with you around your reservations on student email addresses and feel that it is something that should be discussed with care. Luckily, your school admin can create ‘Groups’ – in my school I set up a group for students and one for staff. You can then control the access that each group has to the different Google tools. For students, access to gmail is turned off – therefore, their login details happen to be an email address but their account has no access to emails. Google are running an event for school Admins in September which I’m sure will go through so many other Admin tools – they’re currently advertising this event on their social media pages.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Seán,

Thanks for this post and for your engagement throughout. You have raised many fascinating points, and it is great that the course has prompted you to think about how the children are using technology in the classroom. We certainly want to move away from them using devices for the ‘sake of it’. As you have alluded to, progressing to active rather than passive use of the technology is crucial in developing skills and ensuring progress across different curricular areas. This is a process, and you have identified some key areas that you can get started with. Wishing you the very best for the year ahead.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Karin,

Thank you for this post and the clear overview of the Scratch programming tool. It is great to see, like many others on this forum, that you can see its potential for use in your classroom. I really like your ideas around allowing to children to work together as part of an overall challenge to allow them problem-solve in ‘real world’ scenarios.

I think the helpful videos on the Scratch platform you have mentioned sound great – I’m unfamiliar with these but feel they would be an extremely useful resource for us all on this course. Could you share the link to these with us please if you get the chance?

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Shane,

Thanks for your post and for sharing the work of these organisations in the Kildare area. You have touched upon the importance of children understanding what a refugee is and why people may need to leave their home countries. Education around this in general as well as current affairs globally is so important. Outlining how you have managed to integrate this into the SPHE and Geography curricula in your school is a great thing for us to see, as it can become something we look at in the integrated manner it needs.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Mairead,

Welcome to the course. You have raised some really interesting and pertinent points in your post. AI can be hugely helpful for work as an SET – careful prompting can provide you with a range of suggestions for personalising your lessons and picking and choosing activity suggestions to meet the needs of the children on your caseload. However, like you have said, the human aspect remains the central component of effective teaching. Knowing what the child needs, adapting in the moment and responding to their evolving needs is something AI can’t help us with – it is a great way of reducing work and providing us with a menu of suggestions or adapting content to suit us, but remains only one tool in the teaching and learning process.

[Eoghan O’Neill]

Hi Clodagh,

Thanks for sharing that story – it’s often when things are said in such an innocent way that we get a real insight into the thought processes of children. It’s clear that this opinion hasn’t been made up on the spot and has either formed by things the child has either heard or witnessed. In terms of gender roles the picture book ‘Amazing Grace’ touches on similar ideas – the notion that a girl could play the role of Peter Pan in a play is ridiculed in the opening part of the story before becoming normalised as they progressed through toying with the theme.

[Author]

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