A Resource to help teachers make more informed decisions in relation to Digital Education Content (DEC)
Teacher Time is Precious – a New Resource to Help
Teachers typically split their working time at school engaging in Teaching Time and Non-Teaching Time, as captured in the following OECD diagram. Teachers are busy professionals and we know they spent a great deal of time engaged in lesson preparation, sourcing curriculum materials, correcting assignments and tests, collaborating with their peers and engaging in professional learning. This time is typically referred to as “non-teaching time” and it can take-up a sizeable amount of their time each day.
The European Commission has just published a new resource to help teachers use their time more effectively with the publication of their digital education content guidelines, Making informed choices on digital education content, EU guidelines for teachers and students. The Guidelines are designed to help teachers to plan their lessons and to consider if digital education content (DEC), should be part of the mix.
Dip in and out
The Guidelines are designed in a modular ways, so that users can dip and out of the text, to address any DEC related issues or topics. So users can go to a specific section without having to read the entire document. In this post we will take a deep dive into Section 3 and an example of how a primary school teacher used GenAI to support his English lesson, which was based around the novel Charlotte’s Web.
Creating engaging DEC
Section 3 of the Guidelines presents six key activities that teachers typically engage with around DEC and these should be viewed as a cycle of actions, and it allows the user to identify the activity they are interested in and then go off and explore that section.
Before you delve into to Creating DEC, the Guidelines suggest you pause and consider the following:
While teachers often have access to a wide range of teaching, learning and assessment resources, they often find it challenging to locate resources that are tailor made for their context and thus they have no choice but to create their own materials. Undertaking such actions can be time consuming, but GenAI tools can greatly reduce the time needed to develop engaging DEC that is designed for their setting.
The Guidelines then go on to present a typical scenario, where Manuel a primary teacher, uses GenAI to support a lesson for primary school pupils based on the novel Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White.
This is one of six scenarios that were developed by the Expert Group, some of whom are teachers, and is based on a real classroom use case. It showcases how AI can be used to engage primary pupils to enhance their creative writing. This example showcases the creativity of the teacher and shows how teachers can embed AI literacy and/or data literacy into their lessons seamlessly.
Final Thoughts
The classroom scenario illustrates what is possible and one can only imagine how excited and engaged the children in Manuel’s classroom were when they engaged in this innovative learning task using GenAI. I am sure they were excited and motivated to participate, and in the process, they got a chance to use cool ‘new’ tools, which they surely discussed with their parents and friends after school. All in all, a rich learning experience for them and one they will probably remember for some time to come. Their teacher made a range of decisions that resulted in a creative fun lesson where children actively developed their creating writing skills, without even realising it. No doubt the focus of subsequent lessons was on editing and redrafting their texts, using digital tools. As noted earlier, they also developed their AI or in this case GenAI literacy skills under the knowledgeable guidance of their teacher.
Teachers are asking for more examples, similar to the one cited above, that can be shared with teachers everywhere, because they showcase the ‘agency’ and ‘professional competences’ of the teacher to design meaningful learning activities that engage learners, while also creating the conditions for effective learning experiences. Teachers want guidance on how to use these tools legally, ethically and effectively in their classrooms. The Guidelines provide a good starting point for schools to collectively consider how DEC can enhance learning in their school, and there is scope for schools and/or subject associations to customise elements of the guidelines for their context. So, if you are looking for some structures to help you or your school locate and use DEC in the coming weeks, make sure you check out the guidelines at Digital education content: guidelines for teachers and interoperability framework .