What does the literature say about what AI looks like in the classroom?

Additional Resources from Presentation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLNvD5TDA6Q

References:

Boubker, O. (2024). From chatting to self-educating: Can AI tools boost student learning outcomes? Expert Systems with Applications, 238, 121820. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2023.121820

Casal-Otero, L., Catala, A., Fernández-Morante, C., Taboada, M., Cebreiro, B., & Barro, S. (2023). AI Literacy in K-12: A Systematic Literature Review. International Journal of STEM Education, 10(1), 29. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-023-00418-7

Javaid, M., Haleem, A., Singh, R. P., Khan, S., & Khan, I. H. (2023). Unlocking the opportunities through ChatGPT Tool towards ameliorating the education system. BenchCouncil Transactions on Benchmarks, Standards and Evaluations, 3(2), 100115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tbench.2023.100115

Photo by 青 晨 on Unsplash

This first term of the M.Ed. program has come on the heel of some big life events for me which has been both amazing and also very challenging at the same time. 

After getting married at the end of July and jetting off to Japan for 3.5 weeks we came home and had two days to settle in before our homestay student arrived for the year, and then I jumped right into the school year. I started the school year taking on two new courses and a homeroom class, and just like every other school, the beginning of the year was jam packed with activities, and school outings that kept me on my toes. Simultaneously, starting our first weeks of class.

All this while trying to find time in my week to continue my marathon training. 

Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash

SPOILER ALERT:

 If you don’t want to commit to spending 4 hours every Sunday going for training runs rain or shine (and trust me there was A LOT of rain some days…), don’t commit yourself to a marathon. 

With all of this happening in my personal and professional life I was really struggling at the beginning trying to balance having school thrown into the mix as well. 

One of the things I noticed to be the most challenging for me was the reading.

Not because there was too much of it, but because I was out of practice when it came to reading for an academic purpose. I’ve spent the last 2 years rediscovering my love for reading, and I couldn’t figure out why I was struggling with my required readings. Turns out, it’s because it’s not a mindless read. 

Once I was able to make the mental shift of distinguishing my academic reading from the reading I do as a hobby, it became easier. I started practicing the skills I teach my students every day, which in turn has gotten me to reflect on my own teaching practices and how I teach these skills. 

The next challenge I faced was working with a partner in a group presentation.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I had a GREAT partner. We worked really well together, had similar ideas, and agreed on the direction we hoped to take the presentation. The challenge for me was learning how to work with someone who was not readily available to work on a project together when I might have time. All my experience in group projects has been done when we are physically together, and I didn’t think about how working on it together digitally and never actually meeting in person would be a challenge for me. This also left me to feel like I was constantly in a balancing act with my own calendar and what I need time to do, while simultaneously making sure I’m not letting my partner down with the rate I was working at. 

As we move into the next semester I hope for a couple of things:

• I hope that I am able to find and settle into a good routine.

• I hope to create a schedule that incorporates all of my professional requirements alongside school requirements to help me stay balanced. 

• Finally, I hope that as I continue to learn, and grow, that I find ways to share what I learn with others in my life.

Life is busy, I don’t want to feel like I have to put things on hold in my personal life, in order to complete all of my professional requirements and school work, but in order for this to happen I need to refine how I balance my tasks.

Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash

When it comes to organization, over the years I have tried countless strategies, and methods varying in complexity to try and keep my work and research organized. 

If something is too complex, it might work great in the beginning, but I inevitably fall off the wagon when things get busy, and I end up with an unorganized pile (physical, and/or digital) not able to find what I need. If it is too simple, things get lost in the shuffle, I forget where things went, and I end up not able to find what I need. 

It has taken until now, 4 years into my teaching career, for me to have a system in place that I feel works well. It is simple enough that I will always automatically put things where they need to go, but detailed enough that I know exactly where to look when I’m searching for something. 

You might be wondering, so what does this strategy look like? 

I currently work at a G-Suite school (and I don’t plan on leaving any time soon). This means everything I do is on Google Drive, and most things are created with google products (Classroom, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms etc.). My Google Drive is organized in two different ways depending on the category. 

Firstly is by school year. Anything that is not course specific, that I won’t be reusing year after year in the same capacity goes into this folder. It could be things like my folder of report card comments, or track and field rosters, practice schedules, meet dates etc., or my TOC plans folder. It is still accessible for me if I need to find it again, but it isn’t floating into the ibis of my Google Drive. 

Secondly is by grade courses. For every course I teach I have a folder, and each folder has a number of subfolders with a breakdown along the following lines:

• Course
  • Term
    • Unit
      • Unit Outline Document – within the document is a unit plan with everything linked directly within this single document
      • Lessons
        • Numbered lessons, and corresponding resources
      • Formative Tasks
      • Summative Tasks
      • Section Specific Documents
    • Older Resources Prior to *specified year*

I find using this system to be fairly seamless as I know where to expect things to be when I go searching for them. Is it perfect? No, I don’t think anything ever is, but it has worked really well for the last year and a half since starting at my current school. 

Because of how the Google Suite works, I can open up the folder I want a document to live in, and create it right inside that folder. There’s no drop down menus to click through to find the right folder, and I can easily move its location if I need to. 

How is this going to help me when I begin engaging with the research and educational technology?

Simply put, I plan to use the same system, within my Google Drive, but also in Zotero. I have a folder in my Google Drive called M.Ed., and inside is a folder for each year, which has each semester, and finally a folder for each class within the semester. I will create folders for each task that requires multiple documents, and keep a running document with things linked when required.

Inside Zotero, I have folders for each course I am enrolled in, which will be placed into the appropriate semester folder, with course readings, and project reading separated into their own subfolders. For each article I try to attach a note, summarizing an article’s Origin, Purpose, Content, Value, and Limitation (OPCVL). That way when I revisit a resource I can quickly scan not only the abstract, but also a summary of my own takeaways, and comments. I also use the tags function to make articles easily searchable, although currently most of my articles are about similar things, so they all share many of the same tags. 

I know myself, and I know that as I embark further on this journey I need to remember to take things slow. It’s easy for me to get excited and dive right in, but I need to stay focused on the here and now, and what is needed at this moment in time so I don’t find myself getting overwhelmed later on. Using a similar system to what I currently use everyday at work, will help me stay organized, and not get overwhelmed when I have countless resources saved. 

With all this being said, I am a lifelong learner. I constantly am trying new things, and searching for innovative ways to do things. So I am sure I will continue to try and experiment a little bit in how I organize things to find a better, more efficient system. BUT, and I know that’s a big but, I also know that the system I currently use works, and I can fall back on it anytime a new system doesn’t work the way that I hope it will.

Recently, I completed a group research presentation on the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the classroom, focusing on chatbots like ChatGPT, and how students should learn to use this tool.

What we found in our research is that there are so many different ways we can use ChatGPT in an educational setting, for both educators and students, but there is an undeniable fear surrounding how we are going to teach students to use ChatGPT as a tool in an ethical, and appropriate way. 

We found that with the countless different ways students could use ChatGPT to support their learning they needed to perceive the tool as easy to use, and useful in order to “buy-in” on using it. The easier it seemed for students, the more useful they felt it was, which led to them being satisfied with it. As satisfaction grew, the more useful they felt it was, and the cycle continues (Boubker, 2024).

When it comes to teaching students how to use ChatGPT appropriately we venture into a new type of digital literacy skills called AI literacy. What we found were two broad thematic categories, each with their own group of subcategories:

1. AI learning experiences focused on understanding a particular AI concept, technique, tool, or platform to illustrate some AI concepts
   1. Learning to recognize artifacts using AI
   2. Learning about how AI works
   3. Learning tools for AI
   4. Learning for life with AI
2. Initiatives for implementing AI education through developing guidelines, curriculum design, or teacher training
   1. AI literacy curriculum design
   2. AI as a subject in K-12 education
   3. Student perspective on AI literacy
   4. Teacher training in AI
   5. AI literacy support resources
   6. Gender diversity in AI literacy

(Casal-Otero et al., 2023).

You can find more details on our findings in our whole presentation, linked here. 

I’d like to focus further on the idea of AI literacy. How are we going to teach our students about using this tool in an appropriate way, and how are we going to ensure that everyone is getting the same level of education or understanding of how to use this tool? 

Because ChatGPT is so new, having landed in our world in November of 2022, the literature is still fresh, we are still learning about it. When we approach the idea of AI literacy, we need to come up with a curriculum, but be open to the changes that are inevitably going to occur as the technology continues to evolve and we find new ways to use it. 

Finally, I’d like to briefly touch on my thoughts about the Turning Teacher (Pelaez et al., 2022). I don’t think we are in the place where we as educators are going to be completely replaced by an AI teacher in the K-12 system, not yet. I think we should embrace and adapt to the new technology and use it as much as possible, because the human connection we as educators have with our students isn’t something that can be replicated by AI, and I don’t think it will be any time soon. So let’s spend our time and energy focusing on providing our students this connection and let AI do the other work. 

I will leave you with this short video clip from Sinead Bovell, who focuses on these very ideas. 

Sinead Bovell – Why ChatGPT Won’t Ruin Education. 

References

Boubker, O. (2024). From chatting to self-educating: Can AI tools boost student learning outcomes? Expert Systems with Applications, 238, 121820. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2023.121820

Casal-Otero, L., Catala, A., Fernández-Morante, C., Taboada, M., Cebreiro, B., & Barro, S. (2023). AI Literacy in K-12: A Systematic Literature Review. International Journal of STEM Education, 10(1), 29. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-023-00418-7

Pelaez, A., Jacobson, A., Trias, K., & Winston, E. (2022). The Turing Teacher: Identifying Core Attributes for AI Learning in K-12. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 5, 1031450. https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2022.1031450

Photo by Arthur Lambillotte on Unsplash

Picture a classroom where students seamlessly navigate using Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as chatbots, in order to deepen their understanding of the world they live in. With every screen you look at, students are using a chatbot as their own personal assistant. 

This is what I hope we can achieve one day soon. 

When it comes to education technologies, there are so many new exciting things that seem to be launching all the time. But with every new technology released, it feels like something else is getting left behind. The thing with AI is, I don’t think it is going to be one of these technologies that gets left behind. 

Before becoming a teacher, I rarely heard about the newest technologies being used in the classroom, and I think the reason for this is because these technologies were created specifically for an educational setting. If you weren’t a part of this setting, the technology probably wasn’t being used in your daily life so it didn’t have a very large impact on you. 

AI, like chatbots, are being used by people and professionals across the world. If you have been on the internet, or watched the news at all in the last year, you have heard about chatbots. It is a tool that can be used in countless different ways, and settings, and because of its ability to cast such a wide net, and be useful for anyone, it is unlikely to slip away any time soon. 

It is an intriguing topic for me because of all of the different aspects that need to be considered when thinking about using AI in the classroom. It is a tool that has the potential to be useful for both educators and students, but with this potential comes the question of how do we learn how to use it? 

Here are some of the ways I use chatbots on a regular basis as an educator:

1. Lesson planning.
   1. You can ask a chatbot to create an outline of a lesson plan that is specific to subject, learning outcomes, grade, and/or length of lesson. Is it perfect? No, but it is a great starting point if you are stumped for ideas!
2. Changing a text to be an age appropriate reading level.
   1. You can copy a text into a chatbot and ask it to rewrite it at a specific reading level, which is great for differentiation!
3. Creating paragraphs for comprehension reading and the questions to go with the paragraph.
   1. Again, it isn’t perfect but it gives a great starting point.
4. Asking for a list of resources (with links!) for a specific topic to jump start research.

How can students use chatbots on a regular basis?:

1. Proofreading their work.
2. Breaking down a task into a detailed step by step list.
   1. They can copy task instructions into a chatbot, and ask it to break down the task into more manageable chunks. Some chatbots will even give estimations of how long each task should take to complete, which helps with time management!
3. Creating a basic outline to help them get started on a task or writing prompt. 

In a world where everything is changing so rapidly, understanding a technology that can help carry the burden of the menial tasks we all have to do everyday, will allow us to focus on more complex issues. Our students trust us to do the right thing for them every single day, so we need to do the same and trust that they will do the right thing when it comes to using AI in the classroom.