Artificial intelligence presents many new opportunities for teachers. It can improve efficiency for small, routine tasks, but can it help with higher level tasks such as lesson planning and creating newsletters? Let's evaluate AI as a teacher's aid.

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General AI Tools

Teacher-Specific AI Tools

Instructions:

One activity to determine how to best use AI as a tool in your teaching practice is to compare a lesson plan or newsletter that you create to a lesson plan or newsletter that AI creates.

To start, let's jot down some ways we see AI being used in teaching on this Padlet.

Let's try asking an AI to create a lesson plan or newsletter for us using a well-designed prompt. 

📃Writing an AI Prompt

Here are some tips for writing the prompt for AI:

--Specificity--be as specific as possible

--Product--what you would like the AI to create, such as a lesson plan or newsletter

--Examples--reference an example that is similar to what you would like the AI to create, such as "create a lesson plan similar to this one I found on the internet" or "prepare a newsletter that has a children's cartoon feel to it".

--Audience--define your audience such as "3rd graders" or "parents of first graders"

--Don't's--what you don't want AI to do or use in its repsonse, such as "create a lesson plan about oceans but don't talk about sharks or stingrays"

--Tone--such as professional, playful, formal, technical, "write a newsletter with a playful, chatty tone"

--Activities--for lesson plans, describe the instructional strategies or activities you might like the lesson to includes, for example "have students do some kinesthetic activities"

--Standards--in the case of a lesson plan, what standards or goals you are teaching to

--Feedback--give the AI feedback on its product, refining it until it meets your needs

🤔Compare and Contrast

After the AI creates a lesson plan, compare and contrast it to your lesson plan or newsletter taking into account:

--Alignment with standards

--Customization to the grade and student needs

--Amount of time and effort spent on preparing the lesson plan

--Practiciality of the lesson plan

🏫Philosophy of AI in Education

Please write one short paragraph summarizing your ideas about the use of AI in teaching on this Padlet.  You might consider questions such as:

What roles can an AI be entrusted to perform?  What roles should a teacher perform?

How can a teacher balance the use of AI with their own creativity and knowledge?  Is an AI a coteacher or a tool?

Teachers will likely be training students in the ethical use of AI as described by Carnegie Learning.  How can teachers themselves model the use of AI for students?

Should teachers be transparent with students and parents when they are using AI? (hear arguments for and against in this Education Week article)

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