Embracing AI for Teacher Preparation

Presenters:

Julie Stanley ,Assistant Professor, East Carolina University

Dr. Julie Stanley is an Assistant Professor of Elementary Education at East Carolina University, specializing in social and emotional development in pre-service teachers. With a research focus on nurturing students’ socio-emotional growth, Dr. Stanley is dedicated to innovative teaching methodologies. Dr. Stanley has presented research findings at national conferences, contributing to the discourse on teacher preparation and student well-being. As an advocate for holistic education, she continues to inspire educators to prioritize social and emotional learning for a more empathetic and resilient future generation. An advocate for holistic education, she leverages artificial intelligence to prepare new teachers, fostering technologically-enhanced pedagogical practices for future educators.

Christine Picot, Assistant Professor, University of South Florida, Sarasota

Dr. Christine Joseph Picot is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the College of Education at the University of South Florida, Sarasota.  She earned her Ph.D. from the University of South Florida in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Childhood Education Literacy Studies and a cognate in Elementary Mathematics Education. Her research interests include disciplinary literacy with a focus on academic vocabulary and mathematics instruction. This disciplinary literacy focus has led to the development of numerous publications, conference presentations, global work, and professional development. Her work with pre-service and in-service teachers includes coaching and mentoring in cross-curricular connections for teaching and learning.

Jessica Lyons , English Teacher, Southport High School

With over two decades in education, Jessica Lyons has dedicated herself to transforming education one AI chat at a time. She is a classroom teacher with a masters degree in Curriculum Writing and English, alongside an administrator’s license. Her passion lies in leveraging AI to revolutionize education, streamline tasks, and enhance learning experiences.

Kimberly Smith-Burton, Professor of Mathematics Education, Fayetteville State University

Dr. Kimberly Smith-Burton is a tenured Professor of Mathematics Education in the Early Childhood, Elementary, Middle Grades, Reading, and Special Education Department in the College of Education at Fayetteville State University in Fayetteville, North Carolina. She received her BS in Mathematics from North Carolina Central University, an MAT in Mathematics from Fayetteville State University, and PhD in Mathematics Education from North Carolina State University. Since joining Fayetteville State University, in 1994, Dr. Smith Burton has received the distinguished Fayetteville State University Teacher of the Year Award twice (2006-2007 and 2020-2021 academic years) and most recently she was awarded the 2022 UNC Board of Governors’ Award for Excellence in Teaching. Her areas of research emphasis include test preparation, using academic language to build teaching capacity in STEM, remote learning best practices in higher education and P-12 learning, preparing future K-12 STEM educators, in-service K-12 STEM teacher professional development, using standards-based and practice-based teaching strategies to teach mathematics and increasing achievement in a middle/high school by changing the culture and environment.

Transcript:

Pete Morgan:

We’re incredibly excited to have this group with us. This is going to be phenomenal. I hope that you’re excited to hear what’s happening here. To get things kicked off, let’s start this way. I am going to have my team on the background drop a poll for everyone here. The poll question for you that I want you all to consider as we get started here is, do you use AI in any of your teaching processes? It’s a pretty broad question. But if you all could take a moment and start to answer that, we want to see from this group, how many of you are some of the maybe early adopters of AI and super excited about it. How many are a bit apprehensive about the AI portion? There’s so much to consider here. We want to see what everybody is thinking and the way that you would vote on this poll question.

Pete Morgan:

Give it just a moment. Take a peek as everybody is starting to list and post things there, and then we’ll see our results here in just a moment. Okay. Let’s see. Okay. Here are our polls. I was wondering when those were going to pop up. Okay. So I love this type of statistic, that it’s not like we’re completely swayed one way or the other. There is a lot of mix in between and for good reason. There’s a ton that we’re going to learn about here today, talk about, especially around some of those features that especially feel like AI maybe doesn’t mix or from the outset that we feel like it doesn’t exactly have its spot. So this is going to be great. We’re going to have a really good time here together there’s a lot of information. As teachers involved in many different subject areas, all of our panelists here, all of you have been incorporating AI in really interesting ways.

Pete Morgan:

So first question, and I’m going to point it out in between each of you because I want to hear from each one of our panelists here. But how would you sum up your approach to general philosophy of AI? Julie, maybe we’ll kick it off with you.

Julie Stanley:

Okay. So my take on AI is that it’s all about using technology to boost teachers’ superpowers and making learning awesome for students. So instead of seeing AI as a replacement for teachers, which I know is a big fear of a lot of folks out there, I see it as their trusty sidekick helping them out and making their lives easier. So when it comes to training future teachers, I’m all about showing them how to tap into AI’s potential, to personalize lessons, cut down clerical responsibilities, cut that time down and keep families in the loop through good effective communication. It’s all about creating classrooms that everyone can shine in and allowing AI to be the helper along the way.

Pete Morgan:

Gosh, Julie, no wonder we kicked off with you. That was phenomenal. Hey, Christine, your take.

Christine Picot:

My take on AI is very similar to Julie. So we collaborate closely and often. We’re involved in a lot of research together. So Julie comes to me with a wealth of knowledge. She’s actually the one that introduced me to AI. And once I started dabbling with the different types of platforms that AI offers, as well as the different types of prompts that you insert into AI and the different responses that are generated through the algorithms, it just seemed to me like this was just this world that was opening up as far as think about it, similar to utilizing a calculator when calculators were first invented. It’s like, wow, we have this tool that’s doing all of this for us very quickly and efficiently, but we have to put in the right numbers. We have to put in the right understandings in order for that tool and that technology piece to work.

Christine Picot:

So my philosophy is that I truly and honestly believe in my heart of hearts that the more we explore this box, maybe we can call it Pandora’s box of learning, I think the better we’re going to be for it. And I think the more we can add to our understanding and our knowledge of AI and how to use it appropriately, ethically, still preserving the integrity of assignments and projects.

Pete Morgan:

Almost like this is the next technological learning curve to enhance the offering going forward. Great. Jessica, I’m really interested in your take here. What about you?

Jessica Lyons:

Well, I am on the same bus that Julie and Christine are on. When I talk about AI in the classroom, I talk more about how teachers should start using it as their personal assistant. It’s that PA you always wanted, but you could never afford because a teacher. And I love the analogy of the calculator, because I used that too. This idea that what if we had never gone to calculators or what if we had never libraries gone from the Dewey Decimal system to online ways to look things up. So yeah, I’m on the same way. I think that my experience has been people are scared of it until you talk to them and show them what it can do, and then once they see it, they’re like, “Oh my gosh.” And then I always just as a teacher, the amount of time I have saved in the classroom in my life, right there, that sells it for me. So yeah, it’s my PA, it’s my personal assistant and that’s my philosophy on it.

Pete Morgan:

Phenomenal. Kimberly, what about your take? What are you seeing in your world?

Kimberly Smith-Burton:

Well, in my world, I’m using AI to help my students, my graduate students with their research methodology. So it’ll help them leverage their research ideas, hone in on what the methodologies are, help them with their writing, because a lot of times they read articles and things of that nature, but they’re scared to write their papers because we’re mathematicians and scientists so we don’t think we’re good writers. So I use it to help them hone in on their writing skills to give them more feedback, to show them you can say it this way. Also, in my classes, they do a lot of action research projects that they do within their own classroom. So they have data that they have to analyze to talk to them about how are they doing their teaching approaches and how they can tailor their methodologies to the research that they’re actually doing within their own classroom.

Kimberly Smith-Burton:

So I use it as a tool for that, and then I use it personally to help me give them feedback on their assignments. So you really have to be a very precise prompt writer to get really good feedback, and they take that feedback and make changes to their papers or whatever I have them working on.

Pete Morgan:

Yeah. Fantastic. Now, you touched on a very interesting point with the writing portion as well. Through the chat, it’s already coming through in my world for the enterprise users that I work with in the partnerships. Writing is becoming suspect in a lot of ways because of AI. And I know we’re going to touch on that towards the end. But your point of utilizing this as an enhancement to the writing portion, whether it’s in the math and sciences space or for a few of the topics that we’ll touch on later here for the English space and literacy, we’ll get there. So for everybody that’s listening, we have great topics for that. But that’s a really interesting component of thinking about AI to enhance those things instead of everything being suspect because of AI Now.

Pete Morgan:

So as a very first intro here, we have a number of different questions that we want to be able to get through. But maybe where I want to begin is thinking about soft skills and AI, durable skills and AI, upskilling this way. Now I’m going to start with Julie and Christine. We’ve got this dynamic duo, this awesome energy between the two of you. So I’m going to kick it off with the two of you, and I want to open it up in this way. You’ve both done a lot of research into prioritizing social and emotional learning in pre-service teachers as a way to teach more empathy and resilience. Now personally, when I think about AI and a bunch of data, I don’t necessarily put AI and empathy and resilience into the same box together. They don’t necessarily mesh in my mind out of the gate. So talk to me a little bit about how these seemingly contradictory things work together in your world.

Julie Stanley:

I’ll start and because Christine takes a slightly different pathway than I do, so I do a couple of things. My main course that I teach is, well, I teach two main courses in the spring, which is classroom management, which I teach all year, which is a big thing, and that’s where that social emotional comes in. But then I really press my teachers. I challenge them to bring that social and emotional lens into their planning when I teach my social studies methods class. So those are the two, that’s kind of my world that I’m in. So it’s important to recognize that, no, AI does not have emotions itself, but it can be programmed and utilized in ways that does support and enhance the development of empathy and resilience in individuals, including pre-service teachers. So I do teach undergraduate level, so I’m getting them ready. They are in their year long internship when they’re with me in their senior year.

Julie Stanley:

So couple of ways I do that with AI is AI can be designed to provide personalized feedback and support to create opportunities for them before they get into the classroom to reflect on their interactions and to consider perspectives of diverse classrooms. And it can help build that empathy and those communication skills that are still important. So one way I use AI to generate real world based classroom scenarios that cover a range of emotional responses. And then now I could do that. I could sit, pour over this for many, many minutes or hours sometimes to generate really good quality scenarios, or I could get AI to do that. And then I take what AI generates, and then I go in with my own professional experience and I can add to, I can enhance, I can fill in some gaps, I can push it in a different direction. But it just quickens my work so much.

Julie Stanley:

So we take those real world based scenarios that AI helped me generate. And then in class we can engage in empathy building activities such as role-playing exercises, perspective taking challenges and scenario analysis. And these activities encourage pre-service teachers to step into the shoes of others and practice empathetic responses. And these scenarios can then be entered into AI, and AI can help analyze to generate personalized feedback, recommended actions or responses and explanations. And of course I can do that. And I do do that as a professor, but this is just another layer of support that they get. And this cultivates a deeper understanding of emotional nuances and diverse perspectives. And pre-service teachers become more attuned to the feelings and the needs of their students, and that fosters that supportive and empathetic classroom environment. Second, sorry.

Pete Morgan:

What a power statement around efficiency for accelerated development, my goodness.

Julie Stanley:

Yes.

Christine Picot:

I was just going to add on to that Pete and Julie that was perfectly stated. I think the key here is programming. We know that it doesn’t have this emotional sense to it, but if you program within your prompting, you’ll definitely get the sense that there is this very empathetic type of response that the model will generate for you. And Julie and I, like Pete mentioned, we’ve worked extensively within AI and more so aligned to our teacher workshops. So what we want to do is give our participants within our workshops our pre-service teachers, that type of experience where they’re really immersing themselves into some type of literacy-infused arts-enhanced assignments so that they can really comprehend what this looks like.

Christine Picot:

So for example, we would search for mini-lessons, create a mini lesson that has an arts focus with third grade students who are struggling with friendship and so outcomes this amazing lesson plan, step-by-step with a mentor text involved. So of course you’re going to search to be sure the mentor text is not a hallucination. So you find the mentor text to make sure that you can order that, you review the mentor text as well. So for example, I have one here, which is a color monster. And the art supplies that are needed, the mentor text is by Anna Lee Lintz, and you talk with the students after doing that read aloud, and then you create an emotional wheel. And I thought this was just so brilliant where it’s this wheel based on emotions and the students spin the wheel, they talk about the emotions. And then I said, well, what if I wanted my pre-service teachers to just have a scenario where they do this reader’s theater aligned to a scenario where they could use the emotional wheel.

Christine Picot:

So boom, out comes this great script for three students, and I said, make it for two partnerships, three sets. So here we go, two partnerships, three sets. So it just gives us this really amazing efficient and effective way to utilize, I think, our time and resources that are out there, some of that creativity that we really need to facilitate within our classrooms. And then that immersion that we want students to have with arts and literacy. That’s the way that I’ve been using it within our cell work. So we’re teaching our students as well how to use generative AI within their lesson planning. Let’s integrate a social emotional strategy within adding two digit numbers, and then here’s an incredible arts engaged, arts enhanced lesson with two digit numbers. So it’s items like that and prompts like that that I think really help us to enhance our work and our craft of teaching.

Pete Morgan:

And I so much appreciate from the two of you this focus on the programmer that obviously the AI right out of the gate is not going to have any sort of, dare I say, personality, empathy, any of those things. But it’s almost a reflection of the programmer and what’s it be able to be outputted. How is it able to provide those things and be supportive and dynamic and insertive that way, but all as a reflection of what the programmer is telling the AI to do and how it can perform those tasks. Really interesting that way and being the owner of the content still, even though AI is helping in the efficiency to provide development. Super-

Christine Picot:

You know what I also think Pete, sorry to cut you off quickly.

Pete Morgan:

Oh yes, please.

Christine Picot:

I think it starts to understand you and your work because it does start to generate these responses based on historical data that’s connected to your responses and your prompts. So it’s an interesting language model because it does grow and mold with you in the things that you’re trying to generate. So that’s been a very interesting piece for us, almost like a, wow Julie and I just said today, it’s almost like this model is understanding us and getting to know us a little better.

Pete Morgan:

Fantastic point. So perfect. Now I’m going to shift to Kimberly here because as we think about efficiency to support development, I want to talk to you Kimberly and ask you around, you think that there’s a certain use for AI that makes teachers feel more supported, especially in your area as we think about professional development, mathematics, science. In that context, is there a way that AI is going to help us feel or help teachers feel more supported?

Kimberly Smith-Burton:

I do believe it does, and I’m just going to tell from a professor point of view from higher ed. I also teach an undergraduate math course for our education majors. So a number of them are elementary ed and they really do not like math that much, and they don’t feel very confident in their abilities. So one of the things that I do is I create feedback to them. For instance, they have a group discussion board where I have 40 students in my class. I have 10 discussion groups. So there are about five people within that group. So they’re given a riddle that they have to solve. And once they put their solution in there, then they’ll see my solution. But I usually give them feedback after I see that they’ve uploaded their solution and then they’re helping one another within the class or within their discussion board group.

Kimberly Smith-Burton:

But my feedback that I give to them, I use AI to help me with my feedback. So what I will do is I will write the prompt to give them specific feedback, be very gentle with them, giving them pointers on how they can better answer the question. If they answered it correctly, I’ll give them really glowing feedback about what they did well. So AI, I believe helps foster their confidence in being able to teach math. And I do get a lot of really good glowing recommendations or comments on my final evaluation about how supportive I was of them, how they feel more comfortable solving the math problems because they can actually see where they went wrong. And this is all done online. This class is taught online. So it can be very daunting for someone who’s not good in math. So I think that that’s how AI can help support professors or teachers to give very positive, constructive feedback in a way that makes the student build their confidence in that particular content area in which you’re struggling.

Pete Morgan:

If we talk about a superpower, that feedback of being able to be more engaged, better feedback, how much more they receive from you as the instructor, it almost feels like this is or could lead down to something like a steroid. You’re able to do more with less time and feel that much more engaged and your students are receiving the benefit of all of that on the backend.

Kimberly Smith-Burton:

Absolutely.

Pete Morgan:

Jessica, let me turn it to you. Jessica, talking about fostering engagement. Tell me how you measure engagement with your students and how you’ve used AI to improve that engagement.

Jessica Lyons:

Sure. So being in the classroom, you’re inundated with all these different things you’re supposed to think about to see how your kids are engaging in your material, anything from the vibe of the class. And I know when I first started, I fostered under that idea of, they’re engaged. I can tell. They’re all getting it. I can see. I can see they got it. And never really brought myself to focus more on really quantitatively and qualitatively looking at what they’re doing. So once I fell into the AI where I could use it to look at my analytics, it can analyze deeper that I, I’m not a math person. I’m an English person. So I in spreadsheets… But I put that stuff into my AI and it can analyze much deeper for me, more data points than I could ever do. It can synthesize the data for me, and it just gives me a much more holistic understanding of where the kids are.

Jessica Lyons:

I always say data is not a feeling, got to have the evidence. So that was my evidence for what I’m doing. Is it working? Then through that, I can raise the engagement because if your kids aren’t engaged, then it doesn’t matter what you do. They’re not going to be clocked in or listening. But I’ve been able to use AI to gamify lessons, to make it more engaging that way, full so I have a low on and above level. And each kid gets their whatever level they need to be on, especially if it’s through Google Classroom or Canvas or something where I can just specifically assign it. So I think that I’ve been able to greatly raise engagement because I’m presenting information that the kids aren’t scared to participate with. They can read what I’m giving, even if they’re on the lower level or even if they are not fully understanding English correctly, they can still be part of the classroom culture.

Pete Morgan:

Definitely. So obviously for the topic of soft skills, durable skills, these cross broad skill horizon, there’s a ton of information that we’ve drawn there and maybe as we funnel down into some of the specifics of this conversation, the next step that I want to take is being able to go into specific discipline and the use of AI within that space. This is funneling in the way that I would hope it would, but Christine, maybe if I start with you. I want to point back your direction. Your research particularly has a disciplinary literary focus. Tell me a little bit about that.

Christine Picot:

So my research is along the lines of content area literacy, so literacies in math and science. So thinking about my work with Julie, it’s now literacy within social emotional learning topics or health. So within those literacies, the vocabulary is key. I mean, when we think about domain specific academic vocabulary as most of you know. Many of our students especially our K-5 learners will only utilize that vocabulary within that specific learning block within that 40 minutes of time. So if you think about the vocabulary, let’s say for instance, within the math block, students aren’t going to utilize Pentagon and acute angle and some of those domain specific terms in the lunchroom or out in the PE court or at home. So we really need to be very intentional on how we’re utilizing the vocabulary in our classrooms and the rigor with which that occurs. So listening, speaking, reading, writing, viewing, visually representing, utilizing those terms and really making sense of that content through the vocabulary.

Christine Picot:

So my research lies specifically within vocabulary more so, and the oral and written discourses that follow. And using the generative AI within that space, I’m able to share with my pre-service teachers the important of vocabulary and the creative activities that you can do with vocabulary that’s also maintaining some of the content that you’re teaching within so that it’s not isolated. So often our teachers will utilize terms, but they won’t utilize them during instruction with fidelity so sharing that in a lesson plan, what that looks like in a step-by-step focused lesson plan with a vocabulary emphasis. So I think the AI models have been fantastic for that. And it has really helped my students to see the ways that they can use the vocabulary. We have these mock sessions where students will teach one another and I’ll moderate and say, “Well, what’s another term that you can use instead of minus? Subtract, yes. That’s the term that we’re using. Great. So go ahead and restate that and use subtracting now.” So just a real safe space to explore some of this terminology.

Christine Picot:

We’re also engaging in puzzle problems, so historical problems from the past, like toothpick puzzlers, matchbook puzzlers, and we’re doing some work with AI and creating our methodology section with using historical prompts to build pre-service teachers content knowledge, build their efficacy in solving problems. So we’re seeing how the impact of doing these puzzle problems will actually transfer into the solution strategies and just the self-confidence of entering into regular word problems because we know that’s a tricky area for them. So we’re hoping to see some growth there. So yeah, really exciting stuff.

Pete Morgan:

I think the only time that I, now that you’ve said it in the very beginning of what you’re talking about. The only time I’ve ever used acute outside of a math class is when being young and trying to flirt. You’re a triangle because you acute.

Christine Picot:

That’s right.

Pete Morgan:

Yeah, my goodness.

Christine Picot:

Never call someone obtuse, ever.

Pete Morgan:

Exactly. Buy being deliberate and specific there. So perfect. Such a great point. Now Jessica, I know this is a topic on a lot of people’s minds. We’ve already seen it through the chat. I’ve obviously brought it up, but many of the people that are here are wondering, especially in the poll that don’t utilize AI in some way. There’s a fear because of AI that students won’t learn to write or when they do it, it’s going to be something of plagiarism. They’re just going to copy something. So Jessica, I’m going to lean on your expertise here. But as an expert in curriculum writing and English, what do you say about that?

Jessica Lyons:

Gosh, nobody’s ever asked me that before, just nobody’s interested in that. No. I always start with, look, if you’re concerned about plagiarism, we’re going to talk about that first. They’re going to do it. I’m sorry. And unless you just do pen and pencil, they’re going to do it. Even if you are in the classroom watching them type, they’re sneaky. They’re sneaky little people. So they will do it. So I tell educators all the time, if that’s all you’re concerned about, then just do pen and pencil. But as for this concern that kids won’t be able to write or struggle with writing, and I get it, I understand that. And like I said before, it is a lot of just fear of the unknown. Once you start showing them how things work, it makes a little bit more sense. Like I said, it’s a supportive tool rather than a substitute.

Jessica Lyons:

So I usually start by saying writing’s not just stringing words together. It’s a complex process, requires critical thinking, creativity, communication, and yes, AIs can help with proofreading, corrections, generating ideas. It’s not able yet, I say yet to replicate those nuanced thought processes and especially voice. So that’s what I tell my kids a lot is, your teachers have been reading your papers. We know what words you know and if you give me a paper and there’s words on there I know you don’t know. It’s not your voice. I don’t hear your voice coming through it. And you have to start to understand that when I talk about writing using AI, it’s your landing space, it’s your brainstorming platform, but it’s not going to be able to replicate the student’s voice in it, which a lot of the time is the driving force of all that you do with writing.

Jessica Lyons:

So I use it to enhance student writing. We will use ChatGPT for, I call it robot feedback instead of peer feedback. But yeah, you have to understand and either embrace the calculator or whatever the new tool is, or you can bury your head in the sand but we have to find a way to understand that one, you can’t take the teacher out of it, obviously. And if we did take the teacher out of it, everybody would just sound like machines when they write. So it’s all about finding the voice and then allowing the AI tool to support, to help. It’s not that kids won’t learn to write, kids would learn to write like a machine if we took the teacher part out of it.

Pete Morgan:

Interesting. And I appreciate that you brought back up the calculator topic, because that’s where my mind goes. There was a fear and an apprehension of the calculator, but when designed and when the curriculum is supporting the correct usage of the tool at hand, it’s an enhancement and a really incredible enhancement. But it does have to be done correctly. There has to be some design there and an ownership from the instructor. The same effort the student’s going to put in to have their own voice, there’s an ownership of work there that will help to eliminate some of those variables. Really, really well put. Kimberly, let’s shift the tables to you a little bit. You are incredibly involved with preparing future K-12 STEM educators. So what would you advise to all these new teachers when it comes to AI in STEM fields?

Kimberly Smith-Burton:

One of the things that I would advise to them is to use it to help them support their diverse learners that they have in the classroom. Since a lot of the students may have IEP, a specific IEP, they can take that IEP, put it in AI to ask them, how can I support this student when teaching this particular learning objective? And it will create activities, lesson plans. It’ll give you all kinds of ideas that you don’t have to sit there and think about. And it can also help you with your co-op teacher, because you could put in there, how can I get my co-op teacher to help me within the classroom? That person might not be a math person.

Kimberly Smith-Burton:

However, you and she can use AI to help you develop, especially ChatGPT, because now ChatGPT has all these different types of plugins if you have the paid version of it. And you can use Canvas, it can create PowerPoint presentations, different things like that. It can help you create worksheets and so on. So I would say to my K-12 teachers in STEM to help them or have them use AI to help them with their diverse learners that they have in the classroom.

Pete Morgan:

Definitely. Now, you use a very key phrase in the very beginning of that that I’m going to cue off of for this next question. Talking about creation and the help to create really dynamic instances. Julie, we talk about superpowers, steroids, and the transition into creation. You’ve been experimenting with leveraging AI to innovate instructional design, assessment, and delivery. So first off, wow, how much of that can you do, but without the superpower and without the steroid in your back pocket? Give us an example of what that is in and talk through a little bit for us.

Julie Stanley:

Well, it was a great segue from Kimberly’s because that’s exactly what I do as well and I teach them. They do have a special ed class in their program, but there are a lot of needs in the classroom and they don’t have a special ed background. They have, like I said, one class or maybe two. So being able to tap into AI, and AI has a wealth of knowledge of research-based strategy that is right there at their fingertips. So they can absolutely differentiate in a single lesson to meet a vast array of needs. So that is one way, as Kimberly talked about, she did a great job with that. So I’ll pause there. The other thing that, I don’t know, I mean I don’t think it’s unique to our students, but I mentioned before that I teach social studies methods, how to teach social studies. And then I will speak for North Carolina and that our people don’t know social studies because for many years it has not been taught because it’s not tested.

Julie Stanley:

So as they start to try to create this great lesson, they don’t know where to start. Let’s say for example, I have one right now. She created a wonderful lesson, but she utilized AI and she put the standard in, and it’s about how modern technology has changed the geography of the United States. So that’s the standard. And at first she was really thinking this was quite a boring standard. Like, “Oh my gosh, what can I do with them? Am I going to talk about trains, planes, and automobiles?” And through AI, she actually, it’s a two-part lesson, and the first part is looking at the Rural Electricity Act as we were pulling out of the Great Depression where parts of the country, including North Carolina still didn’t have electricity. So part of the new deal and how the geography had to change to bring electricity, I didn’t even think of that.

Julie Stanley:

And then we said, okay, how can we make this really hook their attention? And AI generated another idea and said, well, you could start your lesson by turning off all the lights, close the blinds, no light, give them just a tea light candle and something to read and have them try to read something by candlelight. And just try to hook their attention and just take it up to the next level. Again, we might could have put our heads together long enough to come up with that idea, but she, without the background knowledge would’ve struggled a lot more and that lesson would not have been as engaging. The second part, she goes from electricity to the internet. And the current crisis that we have, well, I won’t say a crisis, but the current issue that we have, we have Biden trying to get internet access to all, including rural communities. That is a current issue. And it does require changing the geography to make that happen.

Julie Stanley:

So these were great connections that AI made that really upped the ante of her lesson plan. And then it could help generate the assessment. It could differentiate that assessment. It put it all together. From a management perspective, once I had kids start using AI, they’re not allowed to copy and paste what AI generates. It is a starting point. But once I had them start using AI, they have seen their management problems during a lesson drop dramatically because kids are engaged. Because kids are connecting, they see the relevancy, they’re differentiating the plan, so all the kids’ needs are being met. So they see the management perspective through this as well. So it really all comes together really nicely. And again, they can’t copy and paste from AI.

Julie Stanley:

I actually have them, and I know we’ll probably talk about boundaries, but in ChatGPT and OpenAI, you can share the actual chat in a link, and I have them turn that in. That’s how I check that they didn’t just copy and paste, they could start the idea and then they have to add to it. They have to personalize it. If they need it to generate the content understanding because they lack the background knowledge themselves in social studies, then they also they can cite that they could put the link. But then they have to also give me three to five resources where they go, and they just checked that accuracy and reliability of what AI generated. So in that worry that, oh my gosh, if we let AI do it, we’re not teaching teachers how to teach. That’s not true. There are definitely ways that we are using right now that it just pushes their game to the next level but they are absolutely still learning how to teach.

Pete Morgan:

And from what I’m hearing you say, if we take it back to the foundational aspects of AI, thinking that AI is a really incredible resource for the objective measure, the data-driven portion of this, but it gives the ability for the human side to own and run and sprint with the subjectivity. A starting point in success gives us a direction to do incredible things with and garnish the inspiration to do or create better lesson plans to go deeper than we would have on our own, and quicker to be able to enhance those pieces, even from the student perspective. I love that you included that. That it’s not just a starting point for the instructors, but when the students can leverage those same things, it gives them the ability to run down that path with a perfect starting point and have a better direction and trajectory that way. Really, really love that. Christine, I see you coming in. Bring it.

Christine Picot:

Yes. I have to add on to this because it’s a resource. It’s like curriculum materials. It’s like a teacher-paid teacher. It’s like a Pinterest. It’s everything that we just we go to. We teach our students as we ourselves, we’re critical consumers of what we’re pulling from online, from our teacher editions, and then we’re teaching our students. So I agree with Julie that this is just not a copy paste. It is definitely something where we are consuming it critically based on our audience which changes every year or every semester.

Pete Morgan:

Great. Perfectly said. Now, I do want to leverage some time. I know we only have about four minutes left in the actual presentation, which is great. We’ve had an incredible discussion. But I want to preserve a little bit of time at least to play or let all of you play devil’s advocate. There is not all positive to everything that comes through in technology. So let’s focus a bit on disadvantages and things that we need to be careful around. So disadvantage of AI, where do you think people need to be careful, need to have boundaries like what Julie was just talking about? And I’m going to kick it off with Kimberly. Let’s start with you.

Kimberly Smith-Burton:

Well, I would say that they need to be careful of the bias and the fairness of AI, because there can be AI tools that you’re using that are inherently biased or pulling from biased sources. So they have to be really good editors of the information that they receive out of AI. So I would say that, and of course the data and privacy and security of what you’re putting into it.

Pete Morgan:

Definitely.

Kimberly Smith-Burton:

Yeah.

Pete Morgan:

Now for Julie and Christine, I’m going to have you separate a little bit, but on that topic, earlier we talked about how the AI starts to mirror the developer, mirror the person that is doing these things. So maybe Julie first, is there a way that we can help to make sure that our own implicit biases that are being mirrored through the AI are not being pushed towards users?

Julie Stanley:

We just have to be very… I in my class, we talk about our own bias and that we all have them. I mean, it’s not a judgment. We all have them and just being cognizant of what those biases are and understanding that as the programmers of the AI, we have a lot of control and our biases can definitely filter through. Also, if you’re using AI for content generation, like I was just talking about, there are historically silenced voices. You’ve got to bring that human side into and double check, even if you’re just generating content and being very cognizant of this, very intentional about this and saying, okay, what voices are missing from this content outline? Are any of my own biases being put into this prompt? So we spend a lot of time on prompt writing and trying to identify where those biases may pop up.

Pete Morgan:

Yeah. I know we have an order here, but I’m going to switch it just a little bit. Christine, on that topic, where would you build quickly on that from your perspective on disadvantages?

Christine Picot:

So Julie and I have had some discussions on this and we thought a rubric would be a great space for doing some of this work and just identifying some of these key indicators that we want our students to really focus on and be cognizant of, such as biases, such as the research-based practice behind this. So I think in including a few prompts, Julie, I think it was you and I, it could have been my other colleague, just a few prompts at the end of a rubric. Having students just to be aware of this consistently and have it measured I think is really important for us. So rubrics are always great for that, and I think it does eventually get you into the habit of thinking in that way.

Pete Morgan:

Now, since we’re in the last minute of this, Jessica, I’m actually going to preserve your answer for a question that’s come through the chat, and if any of the rest of you want to build on that in that last 30 seconds we’ve got, please feel free to. But Jessica, a question for you from the chat coming which is, do you have any recommendation for a professor to educate themselves on how to use AI? What’s your best suggestion there?

Jessica Lyons:

Don’t be scared and experiment. Play with it. I have a very torrid love affair with ChatGPT. That’s what I present on and that’s what I talk about and I just learn by playing around with it. What Julie was saying, there is an art to writing the prompts, and it all comes down to the prompts. And absolutely, I know that the ChatGPT, I call him Bumblebee because GPT stands for Pre-trained Transformer. So in my head, an ’80s kid, it’s Bumblebee the transformer. I am telling you, he gets my sarcasm now. And when I will write that and it comes through, it starts to slowly sound like me. So there’s this art to writing the prompts and then just don’t be scared and try it and see and play around. There’s all sorts of books, but the best way I found for anybody is listen and then see what works for you. Some of it might work, some of it won’t work. Some of it you’ll love and some of it you’ll hate and that’s I think the best way to really get your feet into embracing and leveraging AI.

Pete Morgan:

And some of our panelists too through the webinar chat, have also been adding in there. First and foremost, jump in, try, do, experiment. But then also any trainings that are offered from your district or institution, Magic School AI from Julie, something else to help promote in training. Hopefully those are a couple of good answers that have come to you for that poll question. Now, for the rest of us as here, we unfortunately in a discussion that could probably go another hour and a half. We are at the end of our time. We appreciate you all so much for being here. Our panelists, you are absolutely incredible. That was a phenomenal discussion and we appreciate you all.