To encourage dialogue and reflection about change, adapting, and the skills we need to learn, our question for the week is: How do you think schools and education will change in the next year? Skills to Adapt (Week of 12/3/23) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
Blake's Guiding Lights
Our Students
Blake's Core Values: Respect, Responsibility, Resourcefulness, Reflection
Our Essential Question: How can we cultivate and curate the progression of student learning and growth?
Our Mission: Blake Middle School believes in a living mission statement, based on the concept that our community seeks and respects knowledge, integrity, character, wisdom, and the willingness to adapt to a continually evolving world.
The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. - John Dewey
You cannot teach today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow. - John Dewey
I do not know if anyone else felt the same, but I sure felt tired Friday afternoon - it was nice to be able to relax a bit and settle into the weekend. As much as I love the sunlight and clear skies, the overcast weather over the weekend had an impact of giving me ‘permission’ to relax a bit more than usual (always an uphill climb!). It was a relatively quiet weekend with a little basketball and a holiday gathering with friends on Saturday night. Grayden and I enjoyed running in the Angel Run together on Sunday. With the rainy weather, we made the decision not to bring both dogs - yup, a new puppy named Cali has joined the family!
S1. Collaborates with others
S2. Engages in learning
S3. Meets expectations for work completion
S4. Makes connections to extend learning
The ‘shares’ below are ones that I hope will keep the dialogue present - responses from the end of meeting prompts from our staff, along with some podcasts of interest. As always, let’s continue talking the conversations.
Thoughts about AI…‘Brain Dump’
- AI is going to force us to rethink how we assess and what we assess.
- I feel as though there is a lot of potential for the creation of assessments through the use of AI.
- Can students use AI to their advantage to create study guides, process guides, and mini quizzes for each topic?
- There's potential for it to be a useful tool and aide....but like any other piece of technology we will have to be mindful of how we use it.
- There are so many possibilities for using AI! I think we need to teach students responsible use. Do we need to redefine cheating?
- So much to explore with AI. I see lots of time-saving tools to help educators that could free us up and provide more time to create new units, lessons, etc!
- Wondering how AI can help our most vulnerable learners. Can it be used to help "even out the playing field" in any way? Or will the reverse be true? How can we proactively shape this?
- Behavior Intervention Suggestion Generator on Magic School AI -- wow - this could be helpful for everyone!
- Exciting...scary....I would like more practice and figure out how to use it effectively. But also, guide students in using it appropriately as well.
- I can't wait to use it to write compelling and funny stories to motivate my students
- I think it is too early for me to know if AI is going to impede or encourage more creativity.
- I think AI, if used correctly, can be very helpful for students to practice/learn
- I believe embracing AI is the way to go.
- I see it as a tool we could use for the so called "initiation fatigue"
- I need to spend more time exploring how this would benefit my students...writing scripts for different social exchanges?
- It's exciting and a tremendous opportunity for teachers and students to think deeply/globally about any content without getting lost in the weeds - AI can do the weeds and we can guide it by our prompts
- I'm excited to continue to work with AI. I think it will help frame lessons and also (as a teacher of seniors) I would like to do a project that asks them to use it in some way as well. I like the "Relevance" feature on MagicSchool...in math, I think this could be really helpful.
- The IEP Generator on Magic School was fascinating! Came up goals and objectives based on just a few explanations. Then, I looked up 504 accommodations on Chat GPT....also fascinating! This could be a game changer for us. Why are we always trying to re-invent the wheel? If this could help us to write clear and concise plans to support students, then it's a win for us.
- I like the idea of using AI as a tutoring strategy. There is much to explore and do but there will be lots of difficulty and challenges along with the many benefits
- Willing to embrace this for our Health classes and curriculum. Topics and materials about students' health should be as relevant and up to date as possible. Utilizing AI can help us to deliver a modern lesson immediately.
- I saw a lot of opportunity on Magic School to level the playing field for students with reading challenges. It can often be a challenge to modify the work to meet certain students where we truly need to, and it looks like we'd have the opportunity to shorten/streamline really long texts to make it more accessible. It has me excited.
- Teachers can use AI to get new and creative ideas for lessons, helping to drive innovation in practice.
- I think we have to embrace AI and learn how to use it with our teaching practices (to enhance the experience for students). I also believe that we will be teaching students how to use it properly and get the most of AI. I believe that it will be used in all facets of life in the not too distant future.
- I am amazed at the ease of use of the software and the ease that one can move the information into usable forms like classroom and drive. I have been using AI to differentiate reading levels for kids this year but realize that this is only the tip of the iceberg.
- I think it is a bit challenging to use AI in world languages because some of them still can't provide resources in the target language, but it is still very resourceful!
- What does the future hold for us with regard to AI?
- AI seems like such a large hurdle, where do I even begin? What is a good starting point? How can we use AI to capture our genius?
- AI - I'm at the very beginning of exploring, but think the ability to help write concert program notes very helpful.
- What will AI do to independent thought and communication if it is used too much? Are parameters needed for students and educators when working with AI?
- AI offers that force that can assist and push learning in so many ways. It's a matter of finding what works for you, for students.
- Will the ability to easily access information create students who have no interest in the journey of building skill? Will they become uninterested in engaging in activities that have no answers in AI (playing an instrument, singing, physical activity)?
- Also I just found out that Shakespeare was referred to as the Bard (maybe I should already know that) and that is because he was and amazing poet...he was in the Renaissance and google just called their ai tool Bard...I wonder if that will give people a chance to use tools to help with their genius work…
- In terms of students, maybe AI will be the great leveler in education. All students can grow and learn with a bit of help from a "genius."
- I wonder if the use of AI will prohibit creativity in some people. Will they rely too heavily on it for ideas and not look within?
- AI is very interesting to me and I love playing with it. I have used it often for my own writing and I think it is helping me become a better writer. I have not used it yet for classwork for my students, but certainly will in the coming weeks and months. I know how irritating is to me to "speak" to AI chats when I have a question about something like an appliance. I want to speak to a person and I think our children often feel the same way.
- AI can be a really great tool when developing lessons and content for our students. I can see how I would be able to put in specific prompts to create assignments that are geared to the needs of specific students or groups. Rather than recreating the wheel or digging around for the perfect piece of curriculum, AI can help teachers to differentiate lessons and content as needed. Voila!
- In what ways can we give ourselves permission to let go of some aspects of our teaching/learning practices and see where some of this might take us?
- I can't wait to play with it!
- AI has the potential to be used to enhance our teaching. I think it can be used as a good starting point and it will be interesting to see how it improves over time.
- I agree that understandings about AI are exploding. Trying it in small bites, mostly for planning and some differentiation of instruction. Following the news on this - or trying to!
- I did have this same conversation the other day about creativity and authenticity, especially about generating images through AI . You can create this original and creative work of art BUT what about that inspiration that just hits you and having that original thought and completing the WHOLE creativity process of brainstorming and failing! The possibilities are endless and it can help us get started and to use as a frame!
- Using AI as a "Teaching Assistant" can save SO much time! It's true about dead ideas - when you have that idea and just don't have the time, or don't know exactly how it would work with your classes/grade level/subject matter - a well-developed prompt can provide the framework for your own ideas!
- I'm curious if AI will enhance a student's creativity or diminish it.
- A.I. can be a terrific tool. Here are some specific thoughts: 1) Students should be upfront when they are using it for writing. 2) We can use its power to create a multitude of examples, leaving out critical thinking and time available for more in-depth pedagogical approaches (less busy work). 3) We should consider how AI development can be a mirror to what humanity has been, and therefore a challenge to what we can be.
- The output for teachers - quizzes, lesson ideas, etc. aren't necessarily perfect but it can be helpful to spark an idea or save some time for the teacher who can edit something instead of creating it from scratch.
- Similar to the description in the video, I worry that an unstoppable wave of something is coming with AI. I think of the times we taught A Christmas Carol and studied what a massive shift the industrial revolution brought to humanity. It is unclear to me what AI might bring in terms of massive change. I heard a speaker once quote a poem that he has memorized. He finished with, "Now isn't that worthy of committing to heart and mind". With whatever change occurs, I do not want to lose the value of intellectual curiosity just because an AI bot can do it too.
- Every time I have played around with AI I have been impressed at the speed at which it can bring up information in a concise format. I have not found it to provide any true novel ideas yet (haven't played around with it very much yet). I think it has great applications for helping our English Language Learners and students who could benefit from more challenging texts and questions or more supportive texts or questions. Great applications for differentiation.
- I'm interested to see how we can use AI to help further our teaching!
- Many possibilities with AI! I hope to have access for different learning and teaching!
- So, I made a connection in our previous meeting (dept chairs) that I think is loosely connected to Gilbert's idea too. I was thinking about the film Radical and how this one educator flips an entire system, community, and town by "trying" something different. I was thinking that this is a connection with AI too because that is essentially what AI does. Then, when I saw this clip, I kind of think there is a connection as perhaps according to Gilbert the teacher/ Sergio was being "chased." It seems like AI might give "regular" people who don't see themselves as creative the tools to become creative.
- So many ways to use AI - I just need to begin! Both MagicAI and Diffit have so much to offer. Lesson plans, differentiation, translating to other languages, changing grade levels, creating new material, revising our old material - it's almost endless what we can do with this technology. The challenge will be to keep up with what's new every week. I feel with all of us collaborating, we could collectively keep up with the technology.
- It would be a worthy endeavor to consider how to tap into (and create time/space) for more creative projects/activities/experiences that would allow students to share other aspects of music beyond playing right notes and rhythms.
Podcasts of Interest
AI as a Mass Extinction Event for Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning? with Cynthia Alby
(31 min) from Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning
Over the past few months, Cynthia Alby (Faculty and Staff Directory - Department of Teacher Education | Georgia College & State University), Professor of Teacher Education at Georgia College, has been focused on developing practical solutions in teaching and learning in response to the sudden emergence of generative AI. Through this work, she has realized that AI has, in one fell swoop, rendered an entire constellation of dead ideas in teaching and learning officially obsolete. The ideas that she has advocated for throughout her career, and in the book she co-authored, Learning That Matters: A Field Guide to Course Design for Transformative Education (2020), are becoming increasingly essential, and she believes that change is imminent. In this episode, Dr. Alby discusses why she believes AI will be the catalyst for the extinction of four big dead ideas in teaching and learning and how that will happen.
How AI Could Spark Fundamental Shifts in Education
(52 min) from EdSurge Podcast
The rise of generative AI technology such as ChatGPT could rapidly reshape knowledge work in the next few years. A trio of education researchers recently sat down to map out what those changes could mean for education — and what steps should be taken to bring out the best of the tech while avoiding pitfalls.
Higher Education Is Broken. Can It Be Fixed?
(47 min) from People I (Mostly) Admire
Economist Michael D. Smith says universities are scrambling to protect a status quo that deserves to die. He tells Steve why the current system is unsustainable, and what’s at stake if nothing changes.
Higher Education's Resistance to Change
(30 min) from The Harvard EdCast
Brian Rosenberg addresses the cultural and structural factors that impede significant transformations in higher education.
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: What are you wondering about these days? What do you want to learn more about?
- I have been wondering about AI and how it can support my teaching practice in order to free up more time spent at home with my family.
- I wonder about A.I. and its potential roles.
- Embracing my creativity and learning about weaving!
- I want to learn more in school and keep pushing myself to learn more
- Are there other planets that humans could live on so one day going on vacation could mean going to a different planet?
- I am wondering why we were created
- I want to learn more about science
- The cycle of life
- I am wondering about if there are different types of life on other planets and in the after life, will we become one of those?
- Why is middle school so hard
- I would like to learn how to make a difference in my community, and how to make a change.
- I would like to learn more about more WW 2 history.
- I want to learn more about how I can help others in the community.
- I want to know more about math
- I am wondering about space.
- How can I write the best book/story possible
- I am wondering about how I will fit in society. I want to learn more about psychology.
- nothing much
- I'm wondering about the holiday stroll.
- The science behind solar cookers
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Take care.
Nat