A road map for using AI in the new school year
a few approaches to consider
For many teachers the new school year has already started; for others, they head back to the classroom in the next week. And with the new year (and new students) there tend to be two competing interests: make significant changes to last year’s teaching practice, or keep things largely the same. In my experience, we (teachers) tend to overcommit to change at the start of September while settling into the familiar routines and teaching style once the shine is off the new year. I think it’s good to remember that the school year is a marathon, rather than a sprint; so pacing yourself is highly recommended. I suggest using this year to implement SOME AI strategies in one or two classes, rather than diving completely into AI in all of your teaching (which I think might end with disappointment, given my 25 years of big plans and waning follow-through). So let’s think of ways to start using AI in a slow and methodical manner, in a sustainable way that challenges and excites your students, and in a way that supports the direction that your board or school is taking on AI.
The first thing is to include AI as a discussion topic in your back-to-school staff meetings, and you might include the following:
are teachers already using chatbots (LLMs) in their work? Give examples of where this AI makes your planning or assessment work easier, or better, or differentiated, and where AI just complicates your life as a teacher.
is your school adminstration ready to open up AI access to students and jump into the deep end of the pool, or do they want to test with several staff members and have them report back on successes and challenges in their classes (ie: start in the shallow end).
technologically, are you prepared to open up access to the LLMs for students (by allowing them to sign on with Google or Microsoft accounts, for example), OR are you prepared to block access to chatbots sign-on, or at your router or content filter? If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice (with thanks to Neil Peart of Rush).
in my talking with teachers, the biggest worry is that students will use AI to complete their homework assignments. How will you address the worry that teachers have, along with the temptation that students face? Know that even if AI is blocked at school, students will have access at home, at the public library or coffee shop, and by using their mobile data. I think there is a huge opportunity for schools to get in front of the AI wave by proactively helping students and colleagues navigate this new landscape by allowing the use of AI for brainstorming, for writer’s block, for editing, for reinforcement, for analogy-making, and for background research. I’ll expand on many of these in future posts - sooner if you ask for specific topics!
The second thing, assuming that your school and administration wants to take a careful, deliberate approach to integrating AI, is to begin making changes in one or more of the courses you teach:
use LLMs to brainstorm weekly journal topics or to give ideas that are good for students who rarely write outside of class assignments. A sample prompt which gave really good ideas for me: I have a group of tenth graders that don't like to write in their journals. I want ten ideas for journal topics that are interesting and that are easy to write about. Ideally these ideas will intersect with the life of tenth graders (age 15) and have widespread appeal to both writers and non-writers.
think about the writing process, where you typically teach all the required skills in class and then have students finish their drafts and final versions at home. Consider flipping some of that work, so that the final assignment is written in class, while AI tools might be used at home to develop plot, characters, or setting. As a teacher, I would ask them to submit their prompts and AI responses through Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams, so that there is accountability for using (or not using) AI.
teach students how to use follow-up prompts to refine the AI responses. Just as their first kick at the can on an assignment is unlikely to be their best work, focus on how they can get much better responses by asking for clarification, examples, analogies, counter-arguments, and citations. In my thinking, this is like having students do peer-editing (which is still essential - please don’t get rid of student-student or student-teacher interaction!) But it is another tool that you can use to increase student performance.
a LOT of the data suggests that the users who benefit the MOST from AI assistance typically perform below the median of that group (whether in business or in school). I think that means your best students might see very limited benefit when they start to use AI; however, students scoring well below average will see substantial improvements if they are taught HOW to use AI to their advantage. See my previous post on Bloom’s two sigma problem for more detail.
I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that as a teacher I was surprised to see some of “definitely not my best work” still in use years after I stopped teaching a course. At the time I pulled an idea out of my back pocket and spent an hour creating an “okay” assignment. What about taking one of your older assignments and doing an AI refresh? Here is a prompt I created for a 12th Grade Functions course: I have a math assignment in which I ask students to model temperature and daylight hours using a sinusoidal function. That assignment needs a refresh! Can you give me other options and related sources of data so that students are using sinusoidal functions to model DIFFERENT phenomena? I want the data to be already accessible on the internet, rather than having students experiment to create the data set. Responses included polar ice cap yearly variation, changes in rainfall or temperature for a specific region over last 50 years, planetary orbit distances from the sun, tidal levels for specific locations (ie: Bay of Fundy), El Nino oscillations, sunspot activity, and more!
use the unit planning prompt from last week to revise ONE of your courses for the coming year. You already know which topics seem to drag on forever (if not, at least your students will know!), which topics you never have time for, and which themes or big picture ideas you want to emphasize. And like you will have with your student work, don’t be so easily satisfied (or disappointed) with your first try. Ask follow-up questions to further refine the AI responses, ask for a sports or business analogy, ask to explain like you’re a ninth grader, ask for suggested instructional or review/assessment activities.
If you have ideas you’d like me to help explore, or that you want me to write about, please contact me at guetter@gmail.com (or hit “reply” to this newsletter). Wishing you well as you start a new school year!
That’s all for now,
Cheers,
-Rick