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One challenge we face in our school is the creation of SESE resources and lessons based on our local environment. All curricula in relation to SESE subjects will focus on starting with your immediate environment- teach the children first about the world they live and broaden from there. We are blessed to be located in an area rich in potential SESE resources that we are not taking advantage of. There are local aspects to all major historical events, e.g. monastic life, plantations, age of revolution, presidents of Ireland etc. etc. In terms of geography and science we are located beside a bogland, a woodland, a stream, an SAC, 2 km from a salmon-rich river, 5km from a mountain range and 8km from the seashore. However we have very little in relation to that in our school plan and what we do have is haphazard. The reason we haven’t tackled into this in any organised way is the size of the task- we almost have too much on our doorstep. We’re overwhelming by the mamoth task of getting all this into plans and lessons. That’s where the potential of AI is enormous- gathering and organising information and creating age-appropriate plans, lessons, field trips and assessments around this. Tools referred to in this module such as Mash+, CoPilot or ChatGPT have the potential to be enormously helpful in meeting this challenge.
I am very interested in using AI for differentiation too, from using its power to analyse students work to identify their strengths and weaknesses and what instruction/ activities they would benefit most from through to using resources you mention like Magic School AI and Diffit to create appropriate activities.
I don’t work in a class. My role is in admin so the most beneficial aspects of the course to me is the insight into using the likes of CoPilot, Gemini etc. I am only beginning to see their potential in taking the donkey work out of the many administrative tasks that I can be burdened with. To give a simple example, I have always written quite detailed agendas for meetings. The reason for this is that it makes it easier to convert the agendas into minutes, particularly if I leave a good deal of time between writing the agenda and writing the minutes. However, despite the detailed agenda, it still takes a good deal of time to covert everything into the past tense. I’ve discovered that AI will do this time-consuming task for me in seconds. I’ve also used Gemini recently to produce a research document that would have taken me a day to put together. As emphasised on this course, the quality of the prompt was essential in minimising the amount of editing I had to do afterwards. I realise I’m only at the start of the journey into discovering the many ways in which AI can support me in my role. This course provided a good introduction and overview in relation to that.
In terms of teaching, I run a film-making class and have picked a lesson topic that I’ll be able to use with my students.
Lesson Title: Creating a film schene using CoPilot and Pika
Class Level: 5th/ 6th class – adult
Curriculum Link: Literacy- Use writing as a tool to clarify and structure thought and to express individuality
Resources: iPad or similar, CoPilot, Pika
Aim: To enable students to create a short film clip by using CoPilot and Pika
Introduction: Explain to students that we can now produce film clips that were previously impractical or impossible to shoot via the use of AI. Ask the students for examples of ideas they wouldn’t be able to film. Ask why we couldn’t film them (I am looking for Setting, Characters, Costumes etc.)
Organisation: Students work in small groups.
Lesson outline:
Brainstorm some film scenes that it wouldn’t be possible for us to film because of the setting, costumes or characters would be too difficult for us to recreate. We don’t need a full story, just a scene from a story.Create a mindmap to illustrate your idea. The mindmap should show Setting, characters, dialogue/ action.
Explain your idea to CoPilot. Ask for help in producing a prompt on Pika to recreate the scene. Include as much information as possible- Setting, Characters (and their appearance), action and dialogue. Study CoPilot’s response. Provide further information if requested or add in further detail if you feed that the prompt can be improved.
When you are happy with your prompt, copy and paste it into Pika. Pika will produce a film clip to reflect the prompt.
Look at the film clip produced by Pika. Is it exactly what you imagined? If not reprompt, i.e. edit your original prompt to better produce the film clip you require. Repeat this process until you are happy with your Pika Film Clip.Conclusion/ Feedback: Students present their film clips to the class, explain how/if their original prompts had to be further editing and give feedback/ advice arising from what they have learnt from the process.
I think Scratch is a lovely tool for learning to code. BeeBots are also really good for younger classes. You can get children to create muliple lines of instructions together (essentially code) to guide the BeeBot through a particular task or journey. I think there it also links in really well with developing an understanding of algebra in maths.
I am interested in film-making and run a film-making club for children in our school. It’s a great outlet for creativity, is very closely linked to the writing process and film projects draw on a range of subjects- drama, art, literacy and music. We make films for the Fresh Film Festival in Limerick. In recent years, there has always been a note on the application form re. informing them if any element of the films were made using AI. I didn’t pass much heed to this until I tried out one of the websites mentioned on this course- Pika. It is fantastic. It opens up all sorts of new imaginative avenues for film-makers. Up to know, our film-making has been confined to the realities of what’s available to us in terms of location, cast, costumes and video editing effects. Pika and similar AI video generation tools adds a fantastic new dimension to what we can produce. If it can’t be filmed, just give Pika the prompts and it will produce what you need. It is quite creative too in that the better and more creative the prompts, the better Pika is at reproducing what you have imagined. Here’s an example of a film clip I have in mind for a project where I want to film a crow trying to move a (too) heavy rock. I need the scene to take place in a woodland, in evening light and to be shot from underneath the crow. By the way, Microsoft Copilot or similar will guide you in putting together the prompts- https://pika.art/video/9ffdb227-36be-46d0-9cae-48d6f37e5c1e
I think Speaker Coach would also be of benefit at the top end of the school to promote the development of oral language. Children can be very shy and mumbly when giving presentations at that age. Speaker coach could give them lots and practice and individualised feedback when they are working on and practicing their presentation, increasing their confidence before presenting to their peers.
Part 1- I liked this module- loads of practical uses of AI specifically for schools. I’m not up to speed with Microsoft tools and though Microsoft Reading Coach was very good. Really good for differentiation and pupil-directed learning. I immediately sent the link onto the SET teachers. Of the others, MagicSchool looks very good. It has a package of really useful tools for teachers and school administrators. I signed up straight away. I haven’t done much with it yet.
Part 2
There appear to be more and more tools becoming available to teachers. I wasn’t familiar with any of the tools in the presentation- Twee, Gamma, Diffit. I see MagicSchool is free for the basic package but pricing comes in at some point. The other tools are similar and pricing is an issue for schools, particularly subscriptions, which can mount up in a school budget. I know the companies have to make money but it’s important to ensure the school is definitely going to use the tools when shelling out for them. Frequently, companies break the cost down into a ‘monthly fee’ but it is collected up front for a year. So if you stop using it after a few weeks, you’re out a full year’s subscription. That’s all fine if you are definitely going to use it and get value from it. Ultimately we’ll have to make decisions on what we go for and choose the ones that we’ll get most use from.A good point made here about the availability of IT, particularly in a primary school context. I know alot of secondary schools make it compulsory for a child to have a laptop of similar device and all books and resources are then put on the device. There are great benefits to that but a big concern around children constantly being on devices both at school and at home and the negative implications of that. As a parent of children of 11 and 13, I’m very concerned about that. While I welcome that benefits of technology and the potential of AI for better use of technology, I want my children to spend as little time as possible on devices. I want them engaging with teachers and peers face to face, building up their social skills and friendships. I’d like to see really effective and discerning use of technology to enhance learning for short periods but also have technology supporting teachers by taking the laborious work our of analysing data and preparing content, freeing them up to focus on quality teaching.
Although I’m not a classroom teacher, I am interested in seeing how children can use AI creatively. I got caught us with a few of the resources mentioned (which shows how stimulating they are) but am interested in compiling a list of resoures like Pictory to share with class teachers interested in bringing AI into their classrooms to promote creativity.
I enjoyed the first module. I’ve just spent a lot of time playing around with different resources mentioned- ChatGPT linking in to Canva and Pica. I have used the basic chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini before to perform time-consuming tasks quickly and they are great for that. They’ve created documents, particularly document that require research, in seconds saving me hours and hours of work. There’s still the need to edit those documents but the work is minimal in comparison to doing the whole thing from scratch. These are documents for my own use- I’m aware of the ethics around the creating of documents using AI and there was good emphasis on that in the module. The element I enjoyed most as referenced above is the use of AI for the creation of images and video. I’m involved in creative projects and these new developments offer alot to me. I created a nice project on Canva with instructions provided by CoPilot. It still took considerable time- although CoPilot was able to storyboard the project and provide instructions, it couldn’t do the project for me. It can’t link in directly with Canva so you have to painstakingly assemble the project which is a pity. A half hour talk could be done by AI in seconds if this were possible. Pica didn’t really work out for me. ChatGPT helped me construct an appropriate prompt for quite a complex video idea. Pica started to create a project but it balked on 90% completed. Again, the fact that ChatGPT and Pica can’t work in unison and I’m the middleman is creating issues. But overall, it’s been fascinating and a really good opportunity to take time to experiment with these resources.