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Lesson Plan: Intro to Scratch (Ages 10+)
Goal:
Learn how to make a character move and make sounds in Scratch.Time: 45 minutes
1. Introduction (5 mins)
Ask: “What if you could make a cartoon character move and make noise?”Show a quick Scratch project demo.
2. Start Scratch (5 mins)
Go to scratch.mit.eduClick “Create”
Use the default cat sprite
3. Make It Move (10 mins)
Drag out a “move 10 steps” block (from the blue Motion menu)Click it and watch the cat move
4. Add Sound (10 mins)
Go to the Sound menu (pink)Drag out “play drum”
Connect it to the “move” block
Click the blocks together – the cat moves and plays a sound!
5. Try a Dance (10 mins)
Add more steps and soundsTry different drum sounds
Make your own short “dance”
6. Wrap-Up (5 mins)
Ask: “What did your cat do?”Say: “Next time, we’ll make it change color and react when you press a key!”
At the beginning of module 5 it spoke about the influence of AI on Special Education Teaching. I think that this is going to be a very practical and real way that I will integrate AI into my classroom.
Children that experience the most challenges in a classroom can have tailor made work for them generated through AI tools that meet them at their level. This was always one of the biggest challenges for teachers and has been made more accessible because of AI. With a school that has an autism class and are building on 2 more, AI will be of great benefit to the pupils and teachers in those rooms. The ABA technology, while maybe a step too far at the moment for the Irish system, in time could transform how we teach children who have the greatest needs. Teacher often don’t have the training to fully help these children but with the expertise of AI and the training that it has at its disposal, this may tickle down and help at the real coalface of primary education.
Yes, the Khan academy app is something that I am very interested in exploring more when I return to school in September. I like the idea of the step by step tutorials as there are children in my class that will benefit from these. Thankfully we have some ipads available in the room and effectively using resources like this can only benefit the pupils.
Module 4 Assessment Consider one of the AI application examples highlighted and explain how you would introduce this to your pupils. Post a reflective piece to the forum based on this (150 words min)
Khan Academy is a free AI based tool that promotes learning through spiral activities that focus on the child learning at his and her own level.
It grows with the child and give him/her confidence and motivation to learn through the app.
To set it up, you register your class and pupils and provide them with logins and passwords and from there the children are placed at their own level. It is really easy to use for both the child and the teacher. Children can use it at home, which means that AI and technology is used in a very educational way at home rather than children sitting there watching useless content as what happens very often these days.
I can see it being very useful during in class interventions like literacy lift off, or mata sa rang where there may need to be an independent station. Khan academy would be very effective way to have children engaged in differentiated learning activities at this time.
Elaine,
As you mentioned, there are some amazing opportunities for teachers to improve their planning and practice with the tools mentioned in module 3. Diffit and magic school as you said provide great opportunities for teachers to enhance lessons, reduce planning time and allow teachers to spend more time working with pupils. Really exciting times ahead!
Anthony
Enhancing children’s writing skills in a creative writing class to develop keys skills is a fantastic way to use GenAI. As Seamus outlined in his piece, the more descriptive your prompts are the more accurate the images are created on copilot image creator. This is highly motivating for children and a practical way to use AI in your classroom. Inverting the process and getting children to describe the image is also a clever way to enhance child’s skills using AI.
Microsoft Reading Coach sounds like an excellent tool to assist pupils is developing reading skills. The fact the the tool can listen to the children read, provide instant feedback and also provide individualised activities targeted at the children’s identified needs. The teacher is then able to monitor overall class performance through their insights page and allows him/her make decisions based on that data to help the child. This is something that can only benefit the quality of teaching, learning and assessment in the classroom.
There is no doubt that AI can only assist the teaching, learning and assessment practices in schools over the years to come. What is currently on offer, which apart from the Chatgpt ang gemini tools, I wasnt aware of is, astounding. I can see Magic for instance becoming an almost one stop go to for teachers in how they provide content. It is amazing, and like many of the other tools like gamma and diffit, need to be embraced.
The Chinese experiment is unnerving to say the least and hopefully does not continue and become widespread practice.
I agreed that google forms has endless posibilities from the point of view of quizzes and making learning fun. Children love that instant sort of feedback from self-correcting quizzes and should be encouraged in schools.
I have no doubt that in time, more reflective activitives will be assessment through rubrics created by AI that will almost enhance the feedback that pupils receive from their teachers.
As I said in my previous post, personalised learning for each student is just an amazing aspect of AI and for me as a teacher the most transformative. During the module, it spoke about
It discussed many ways of how learning can become more interactive and engaging for pupils with many text books having interactive activities included. There was a huge amount of applications including Mathia, Century AI, Teachable Machine, Minecraft Education and many more than have endless possibilities in classrooms. The immersive reader was on particular tool from microsoft that captured my attention. As a google school, I am immediately wondering to google have a similar free tool.
Bias and privacy are two significant concerns. Schools have to comply with GDPR regulations and all schools need data protection policies that ensure privacy for all statekholders.
Bias mitigation training is required as biases from the developers can be reflected in content. Given the political situation around the world, bias mitigation is a concern and needs to be taught to teachers and pupils alike. Resourcing this in schools would be a serious obstacle and needs careful consideration. .
Hi Áine,
I really admire your confidence in using AI for pupils. As of yet, I have been really suspicious of introducing the notion of AI to my learners as I am worried they will overly rely on it for their research and creativity. I guess that is one of the reasons I am doing this course. Teaching the repsonsible use of AI is certainly the way forward and is something that we all need to embrace.
Part 1 • Watch the Ethical guidelines on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and data in teaching and learning video and consider the main takeaways.
Educators need to be aware of the risks that comes with using AI and be prepared to tackle them in the classroom.
The European commission have created a set of guidelines for teachers to make aware of possible risks. These guidelines propose guiding questions that will help teachers understand the benefits and possible risks of using AI in the classroom such as bias or data breach.
Part 2 • Reflect on the potential classroom use of AI tools and how this can impact on future teaching, learning and assessment. Post a reflective piece to the Module 1 forum (150 words min).
Saving time and improving content for teachers and learners are 2 ways that I see AI majorly impacting on classrooms. Teachers can plan lessons more efficiently tailoring content to the needs of individual groups of learners. To be able to take a text that may be targeted for the average learner within a room and then be able to differentiate it up or down for the variety of learners within the classrooms is going to be transformational for learners. Added to that, assessment and questions can also be adjusted to suit the learner is just mind blowing.
The creator of Khan academy showed the curve that having that personal assistant available to both teacher and student can shift the traditional bell curve 2 standard deviations to the right, is somewhat plausible if the power of this technology was harnessed in the correct manner.
Teachers are going to need training to use this technology in a positive and responsible way as this may be even more important over the years to come than any other curricular enhancements that are planned.