[Chris Hickson]

PART 1

As an educator, I see AI as a transformative tool, but not a replacement for good pedagogy. Here’s how I plan  integrating it into my teaching.

Personalised Learning: AI can analyse student data to tailor exercises and provide targeted feedback, ensuring everyone progresses at their own pace.
Engaged Learners: Interactive AI tutors can explain concepts in different ways, catering to diverse learning styles and keeping students motivated.
Empowered Teaching: AI can automate tasks like grading quizzes, freeing up valuable time for more creative and interactive lessons, and the administrative aspects of education.
However, it’s crucial to remember, AI is a means, not an end and it does have its limitations. The human aspects of education – empathy, critical thinking, and fostering a love of learning – will always be irreplaceable, and indeed they will be required to get maximum benefit from the use of AI, and there will always be a place for the special connection between teacher and pupil.

 

PART 2

Subject: History

Learning Objectives:

Students will be able to identify key features of ancient Egyptian civilization.
Students will be able to analyse the role of the Nile River in shaping Egyptian life.
Students will be able to create a multimedia presentation showcasing their understanding.
AI Tools:

Research Assistant: Monica AI
Interactive Quiz Maker: Quizizz
Virtual Reality Experience: Google Expeditions
Lesson Procedure:

Introduction:

Briefly discuss what students already know about ancient Egypt.
Introduce the lesson objectives and highlight the use of AI tools.
Activity 1: AI-Powered Research:

Divide students into small groups and assign each group a specific topic related to ancient Egypt (e.g., pyramids, pharaohs, hieroglyphics).
Introduce Monica AI as a research assistant. Guide students on how to use it to find credible sources and gather information on their assigned topics.
Students work collaboratively to research, taking notes and creating outlines for their presentations.
Activity 2: Interactive Quiz and Review:

Use Quizizz to create a short, interactive quiz based on key facts about ancient Egypt. This can be done before or after the research activity, depending on your preference.
Students participate in the quiz individually, using their phones or tablets.
Review the quiz results together, using them to address any misconceptions and reinforce key learning points.
Activity 3: Immerse Yourself in Egypt :

Introduce Google Expeditions, a VR experience that allows students to virtually explore ancient Egyptian landmarks.
Provide students with VR headsets and guide them through a curated expedition focused on their research topics.
Encourage students to take notes and observations during the VR experience.
Activity 4: Create and Share:  Follow up Lesson

Students return to their groups and use their research, quiz results, and VR experience notes to create a multimedia presentation on their assigned topic.
Presentations can include text, images, videos, and incorporate creative elements inspired by the VR experience.
Assessment:

Participation in research and group activities.
Accuracy and depth of information presented in the multimedia presentations.
Use of visuals and creative elements to enhance the presentation.
Differentiation:

Provide additional scaffolding and support for students who struggle with research.
Offer students with advanced research skills the opportunity to delve deeper into specific areas of interest.
Allow students to choose the format of their presentation (e.g., slide deck, video narration, infographic) to cater to different learning styles.

[Chris Hickson]

The application that I’m going to comment on is Chat Gpt. I realise that it may seem a little obvious to choose that one, but what made me choose this was the aspects of module 4 that dealt with bias highlighted by the two very different pieces of writing from two different prompts. At the level I’m teaching we often do work on seeing things from the perspective of others. However, these are usually lessons which have their basis in English fiction work or in Religion. The fact that something as fact-based as the 1916 rising could be presented in such contrasting ways would be quite an eye-opener to pupils (and probably many adults too). The English scheme that I used with my class had sections on reports. I remember in particular that there were reports based on France and Spain. Having seen module 4 now, I’m curious what sort of report one would get if you asked Chat Gpt for a report based on a prompt where the author doesn’t like France/Spain compared to someone who did. Or, a comparison between a report from someone who lives in the countries as opposed to someone who had just gone there on holidays.

[Chris Hickson]

Part 1:
I like the uses of Microsoft Copilot Image Creator shown in the module. I think I could use it to really improve the children’s language development whether it be in being more specific and precise in their vocabulary or being more descriptive. Showing the picture and looking for the most accurate description to match is a very clever way of using the tool.
Magic School is probably the tool that has the most potential uses for me as it covers many different subject areas. Even from the homepage, the wide variety is obvious allowing you to create worksheets and different types of assessments e.g. multiple choice.

Part 2

In addition to what I’ve written in part 1, in this section I’m going to focus on the Microsoft accelerator tools, Reading coach, Search coach and Speaker coach.
Reading coach is a useful tool for assisting children in reading and literacy activities. The feedback that it gives can be used to guide the teacher in selecting the follow-on content for the pupil. Search Coach probaby touches on one of the most important aspects of using AI tools in school which is undertaking a critical analysis of the findings of a search. Pupils will need to learn that not everything produced by the first attempt at a search is necessarily exactly what they are looking for.
Speaker coach as the audio said is likely to be as useful for school staff as it is to pupils and I think it would b good for pupils to see teachers using it simply for them to see that it isn’t a tool that is designed to catch them out. I agree that for pupils I would keep its use towards the upper end of the primary school as I think it could discourage sensitive, younger learners by drawing attention to areas where they need to improve their presentation skills.

[Chris Hickson]

For the last few years I have been teaching second class and as is the case with every class different pupils have different strengths and weaknesses in subjects and even within subjects. Reading has often been one of the areas where there are significant gaps between the more capable and the weaker students. Although there tends to be no one solution for those pupils who need support with reading, I really do think that the options within the immersive reader tool could be beneficial to many pupils. This year I had a pupil in my class who had a special screen to put over the text to make it easier for him to read and the background colour changing feature of the immersive reader would be able to do something very similar.
As a class this year, we read about Spain and France in our English books and devoted a day to each of them where foods from each country were brought in. I think with the AI tools it might be possible to go a bit more in-depth on this and possibly create a menu of all meals, (breakfast, lunch, dinner and a school lunch) and not just in relation to these two countries but others too.

[Chris Hickson]

Although this is only the first module, it showed me that there are so many potential uses of AI in the classroom. This module gave some very good examples of poetry writing and I think this is obviously something that could be done in school. Many pupils get concerned that their poems don’t rhyme and AI could allay that concern for them in the initial stages before they might progress to writing a poem independently.  The party menu examples show how important it is to be precise with the words and terminology at the input stage to get good results. The choice of words used in many languages is important and it is worth reinforcing with pupils that AI output will only be as good as the initial input.

From a teacher perspective, the point has been made that AI tools would help save time and they clearly can do that. The tools also allow you to create more interesting looking and more subject-specific resources.

For assessment I think it can offer a good alternative to pupils who don’t present very successfully in the traditional way. For example, if they have very poor handwriting, but they have good ideas they could get their text presented in images or in video format instead.

 

• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by Chris Hickson.

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