Season 8 Episode 119
Check out this episode as we discuss AI in Education- one of the hottest topics in education today and one you won’t want to miss!
Show Notes:
Episode Summary:
Artificial Intelligence. What was once the subject of science fiction books and movies has now entered our lives in ways we might never have seen coming. Some people love it, some people hate it and some people fear it. However you feel about it, AI is here and we are not going to put that genie back in the bottle any time soon. Stay tuned as we talk about AI in your life and work.
In this episode:
These show notes provide a summary of the episode with key topics of discussion. This is not a word-for-word transcript. For the best experience, we encourage you to listen to the podcast episode.
Introduction:
We are happy to welcome our guest today, Melissa Emler, or Missy as we know her. Missy is a relentless advocate for learning. She wears many hats in the education world, including 20 years in public education, through teaching, and school administration. She is an expert in and passionate about Universal Design for Learning. She is also the Chief Learning Officer at Modern Learners Media, where she facilitates dialogue around learning and creating impactful, joyful learning experiences. If all that isn’t enough, she also owns a beautiful independent book store.
Opening:
We could talk about many issues in education, but we’ve chosen to focus our time today on AI.
Missy was one of the early adopters of AI. We know most of our listeners are interested in learning more about AI and how to use it in both their work and home life.
Missy learned about AI through Linked In. She was immediately curious and created an AI account that day. She watched what people were doing and saw how people were exploring. She watched and then just jumped in. As a former English teacher, she put in a prompt from her English content about Romeo and Juliet. She learned that AI was capable of creating content and quickly learned that AI could change things.
She began to think about how she would use AI in Education. The first thing that often came up in discussions was cheating.
She tried to use Chat GPT personally first. She used it to help her with a project in order to gather some information. It clarified the project she was working on and she was immediately aware that there were many possibilities of how to use AI.
She realized that it wasn’t just a Google search, it had the potential to help her clarify her thinking.
What are some ways AI in education is being used now?
How you ask the question and the perspective you look for makes a huge difference. You need to learn to ask the right prompts and manipulate what you ask it to do. Giving you information is the simplest thing AI can do, but potential it can go much deeper. For example, Paula used it recently to take three sets of learning standards and combine them into one set with the standards overlapping put together. That is a synthesis type of task.
AI can do administrative tasks that save time. Paula gives an example of uploading a syllabus and creating a document for students with a weekly email with all the assignment and due dates that could then be sent to parents and students.
AI can learn to write in your voice, style, and tone. In the paid version, you can feed it examples, and it can save your information. Missy pays for the personalized version and it gets better and better at mastering what she wants to do.
Deepening understand of what AI can do:
In the first iterations of technology, teachers learned that if the students can Google it, you need to ask different questions. Melissa shares that the shift in AI is that we shouldn’t be focusing on the questions we ask of students, but on the questions that learners want to know. The learner can use AI to drive individual learning based on their interests and what they want to learn.
Melissa believes that liberal arts skills of thinking and perception shifting are crucial for using AI today. The end result for her is the sense making ability, the clarity and the way AI can help her understand. She finds herself continuing to go back and forth in discussions with AI. It is not a quick fix.
Michele gave an example of using AI for unit planning. Using many good prompts will help you add in multiple peices of information that will help you adapt the based on your needs, your styles, your standards, and your specific curriculum etc.
Alone, unit plans or lesson plans would be impersonal and possible inaccurate. With back and forth chats, you can tailor it to your specific needs. This is not necessarily a quick process and it involves thinking and analyzing.
AI can give you examples for how to differentiate for different students. The more you can tell it about what you want it to, the better your results. AI can take away some of the cognitive load.
There is actually a cadence of questions you can ask in order to design plans that do everything you need the lesson to do. It is an interaction with AI. Compare it to a built in coach. You can get information, but you have to know what the good pieces are. That is where critical thinking comes in.
Teachers still need skills to understand how to write lessons and what to include in these lessons.
Missy suggested teacher education students could be given a prompt of a lesson and then use a series of AI prompts in order to find adaptations and variations. Ask, “what would you do to re-prompt this?”. That would help them understand how to use AI to plans that meet their needs and the needs of students.
Comparing AI with Universal Design:
Missy compares teachers using AI to the process used in Universal Design. In Universal Design, there is a distinction between lesson planning and the student experience of the lesson. The end user of the lesson plan is the teacher. The end user of the lesson design is the student. We need both. Chat GPT could help you with both of these end users and creating lessons that meet the needs of both teachers and students. Prompts could be something like, ” Give me the experience of the student with this lesson. ” or “Give me more engaging games or activities” etc.
What are some ways you could use AI in your life out side of work?
Here are some examples:
- Headshots and photo editing
- Take a picture of what is in your refrigerator and upload it. Tell it what food you have in your pantry. Ask Chat GPT for meal plans and recipe suggestions that work with what you already have in your house.
- Meal planning and preparation
- You can use AI to compare brands or anything that you buy.
- Travel planning
- Financial planning and budgeting
Essentially, we all have a personal assistant in our pockets now. It will be overwhelming and underwhelming. We need to learn to use the technology. There will be consequences that we don’t even know yet. There will be limitations and we need to discern what and when the technology is helpful.
It is going to become a much bigger part of our life that we realize. We need to decide how we should and should not use it.
Conclusion:
If our audience walks away with just one message or takeaway from this conversation, what would you like it to be?
Missy’s mantra in life is: I’m not asking you to change, I’m asking you to learn.” That is what AI is going to challenge us with. It is our opportunity to learn about it and decide how we want to use it. We are going to resist change and be stubborn about it. Ultimately, it will be worth it.
Contact Missy:
You can contact Missy at modern learners.com . If you are in southwestern Wisconsin, you can find Missy at her bookstore and shop, Potosi’s Hub: People, Pages, Parcels. You can email is missy@modernlearners.com.
Quote:
“I’m not asking you to change, I’m asking you to learn.”
Melissa Emler
Connect with the Inspired Together Teachers Community:
Website: https:www.inspiredtogetherteachers.com
Instagram: Inspired-Together-Teachers
Facebook: Inspired Together Teachers
Inspired Together Teachers Network Facebook Group
Linked In: Inspired Together Learning
More About Inspired Together Teachers:
Are you a teacher struggling to balance your best work with your best life?
If you are dedicated and caring but often overwhelmed and exhausted, join us at Inspired Together Teachers. We’ll give you inspiration, strategies and tips that help you navigate life’s challenges as a stronger, more confident, and more joy filled person, both in and out of the classroom.
Inspired Together Teachers will give you practical tools to experience more of what matters most in your life.
Co-hosts Paula Schmidt and Michele Vosberg are award winning educators with the experience and skills to help teachers thrive in life and work. They’ve taught at all levels, worked with thousands of teachers, and conducted workshops around the world. They are also the authors of the #1 best-selling book The Inspired Teachers Journal: A Weekly Guide to Becoming Your Best Self.
Paula and Michele would love to have you to join them on their quest to live inspired lives
