AI In The Classroom

However, the potential for AI to enhance learning is particularly relevant in inquiry-based classrooms where students learn by asking questions, exploring, and discovering new information. This is why teachers and students should embrace AI in inquiry-based classrooms.

Inquiry-based learning is a student-centered approach that allows students to take an active role in their learning process by asking questions, exploring, and discovering new information. AI can be used to support this approach by providing students with personalized instruction and feedback, helping them to progress more quickly and achieve better outcomes. For example, AI-powered chatbots can provide students with immediate feedback and guidance, while intelligent tutoring systems can use data on student performance to adjust the level of instruction and provide personalized feedback.

Furthermore, AI can also be used to analyze data on student performance to identify areas where additional support is needed. This can help teachers to identify students who may be struggling and provide them with the extra help they need to succeed. By using AI to make data-driven decisions, teachers can improve student outcomes by identifying areas of weakness and targeting instruction to address those needs.

Moreover, AI can also lead to better student engagement and adaptive learning, which can improve motivation and interest in learning. With the help of AI, students can be provided with a personalized and interactive learning experience that adapts to their learning pace and style.

We will dive deeper into the potential of AI in inquiry-based classrooms and explore the various ways in which teachers and students can embrace this technology to enhance the teaching and learning experience. We will see how AI has the power to transform education and improve student outcomes in inquiry-based classrooms.

For Fun, I Gave Some Questions to ChatGPT and Here are the Responses.

Question: Explain ChatGPT

Response time 10 seconds

ChatGPT is a natural language processing (NLP) model trained using the GPT-3 (Generative Pretrained Transformer 3) architecture. It is designed to generate human-like responses to text inputs, allowing it to participate in a conversation or provide answers to questions. ChatGPT is a large language model, meaning it has been trained on a massive amount of text data and can generate responses to a wide range of topics and questions. It uses advanced machine learning techniques to generate coherent and relevant responses, making it a useful tool for a variety of applications in the field of natural language processing.

Question: Book review - The Lotus Seed - 200 words

Response time 30 seconds

The Lotus Seed is a novel by author Sherry Garland that tells the story of a young Vietnamese girl named Nguyet. The novel follows Nguyet as she navigates the challenges of growing up in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

One of the most striking things about The Lotus Seed is the way it brings to life the struggles and hardships faced by the people of Vietnam during the war. Through Nguyet's eyes, readers are able to see the devastating effects of the war on everyday life, and the ways in which people are forced to adapt in order to survive. At the same time, however, the novel is also a story of hope and resilience. Despite the challenges she faces, Nguyet remains determined to make the most of her situation and to find a way to thrive in the midst of adversity.

Overall, The Lotus Seed is a powerful and thought-provoking novel that offers a unique perspective on the Vietnam War and the resilience of the human spirit. It is well-written and engaging and will leave readers with a deep appreciation for the strength and determination of the Vietnamese people. (Actual length 190 words)

Question: Explain Personal Inquiry

Response time 10 seconds

Personal inquiry is the process of exploring and examining one's own thoughts, beliefs, and experiences in order to gain a deeper understanding of oneself and the world around them. It involves asking questions, reflecting on one's experiences, and using critical thinking to gain new insights and perspectives. Personal inquiry can be a valuable tool for personal growth and development, as it allows individuals to better understand their own motivations, values, and behaviors, and to make more informed decisions in their lives.

• Teaching in the Age of AI |Vanderbilt University | Feb 2023 | The arcticle covers: What dilemmas does generative AI pose for our courses and assignments? How might it change how students learn to write and learn through writing? How might we respond with effective educational strategies?

• How Will AI Like ChatGPT Change Education for Our Children? | Parents | Aug 2023 | Kids and teens are flocking to AI technology like ChatGPT, but what does that mean when it comes to schoolwork? One thing is for sure: AI is here to stay.

• AI in Education: Can AI Change the Way We Study in the Near Future? | StudyCorgu | Dec 2023 | The article covers the key pros and cons of AI tools in education and provide examples of how you can use AI for your studies.

• Everything you wanted to know about AI – but were afraid to ask | Guardian | Mar. 2023 | From chatbots to deepfakes, here is the lowdown on the current state of artificial intelligence

• AI For Education Webinars |Tom Barrett | A series of webinars that discuss the pros and cons of AI use in education.

• Generative AI in the classroom: From hype to reality?  [Direct Download]The report explores how generative AI could enhance teaching and learning in 5 key areas: providing feedback/support, encouraging interaction, engaging with content, supporting socio-emotional development, and transforming practices. 

• 7 Essential Questions About AI for Teachers to Consider [Edutopia] Teachers—and students—can use these questions to explore how learning will change with access to generative artificial intelligence.

• The University Student's Guide To Ethical AI Use: This comprehensive website, tailored to university students but applicable to individuals of all ages, explores the ethical, equitable, and legal use of AI. It examines the present landscape of EdTech concerning this innovative digital resource, delving into its integration into learning, available tools for immediate student use, and recommendations for maximizing AI's benefits during academic pursuits.

1. ​Read the following articles and podcast. They are a great primer to help you understand this technology better than most people.

• Teaching in the Age of AI

• Teaching and Learning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (54 min)

• How will AI and Machine Learning Change Education as We Know It?

• How Will AI Like ChatGPT Change Education for Our Children?

• Everything You Wanted to Know About AI – but Were Afraid to Ask

• ChatGPT is Just the Beginning: Artificial Intelligence is Ready to Transform the World

2. Read the OpenAI (which powers ChatGPT) Guide for Educators with considerations. It is a good starting point to understand the implications on teaching and learning: 

3. ​Signup and Use ChatGPT for Free. Use it for things that you do in your daily job like writing emails, answering questions, crafting plans, researching policy, etc etc - then you'll understand why there is so much potential upside (and downside) to this technology.

4. Try out Various AI Applications/Tools

5. ​Join a group like our LearningTools.ai community, where educators and sharing and check out new tools daily. Be a part of the discussion or just watch and listen.

6. ​Check out UNESCO's Guide to AI Ethics - this may impact your job the most as so many ethical considerations have to take place when using AI tools.

7. Familiarize Yourself with the Terms You Need to Know to Keep up in the AI Hype Age.

Do those SEVEN things (which should only take you 3-4 hours tops) and you'll have a really good idea of where we've been, where we are now, and where things are headed.

Additional Reading: 

Bringing AI to School: Tips For School Leaders: Artificial Intelligence is having a major impact on education. Whether you are excited or concerned about AI, as a school leader you have a responsibility to ensure AI is approached thoughtfully and appropriately in your school community and informs your vision for teaching and learning. This guide will help you quickly gain the background you need as a learning leader in an AI infused world.

While ChatGTP is a useful tool, it is important to preview and edit all generated information, inquiry questions, prompts, etc. before giving to them students to make sure they fit their/your specific needs. 

Inquiry/Conceptual Understanding

Clarifying Concepts: ChatGPT provides explanations for limitless concepts and could help students by providing detailed explanations. This could be especially helpful for homework or other situations where a teacher is not available to answer questions. It is able to explain various grammatical, mathematical, scientific, and historical concepts and ideas. For example, it detailed the different situations one would use a semicolon or a comma, explained how to find the slope of a line with examples, and described the difference between mitosis and meiosis.

Adapting for a Specific Audience: ChatGPT can adapt text for different ages. This could be especially helpful with complex topics if students are having a difficult time understanding the concept. The teacher/student could ask ChatGPT to explain it for a younger audience or simply rephrase and give alternate examples. 

Provide project-based learning scenarios. Scenarios anchored in local and authentic contexts help prevent misuse of ChatGPT. Students can use GPT to inform their work, just like they use the web now, but would need to think through the ideas and extrapolate to their own contexts.

Ask ChatGPT to suggest activities. You can ask it to generate entire lesson plans if you provide it with the standards and grade level. If you don't like what it gives you, you can prompt it to regenerate another one, this time with games or activities built into it. Go ahead, play with different prompts, and have fun with it.

Consider the use of a "flipped classroom" model, which allows you to offload instructional videos as homework while freeing in-class time for discussion and performance assessments so that you have a better understanding of where your students are and the progress they are making.

Research

Generating Examples: ChatGPT can generate various examples/summaries to illustrate a topic or concept for students and create additional opportunities for practice. It can generate sentences to illustrate examples in all subject areas.

Use ChatGPT as a starting point. Have students generate answers on GPT and then work from there. GPT-generated essays are sometimes "surface" level analyses and can be boring and sometimes redundant. Teachers can use this to work with the class to think through how they can improve the essay and build in deeper analysis.

Focus on the process instead of the final product. Using tools like Google docs that track the development and evolution of the student product can help you be sure that it was not a copy/paste from GPT.

Discussion

Discussion Prompts: Teachers can use ChatGPT to create discussion prompts for students based on a piece of literature, topic, event, concept, etc. This could allow teachers to quickly provide engaging questions for discussions on multiple topics. This could be especially helpful if students could benefit from an individualized prompt.

Literacy

Ask ChatGPT to generate articles on topics at your students' reading level. You can also give it your existing articles and ask it to rephrase them to, say, a second-grade or 12th-grade reading level so that you can provide the same content for different students at varied reading levels.

Vocabulary Boost: Use ChatGPT to create personalised vocabulary lists for your students. Just input a list of words and the tool will generate sentences using those words, giving students contextual examples to help them understand the meanings. 

Collaboration in Learning Grammar: ChatGPT provides interesting avenues to make learning grammar a more interactive process. Start by sharing an unedited piece of writing, riddled with errors, with your students. Have students edit this piece in small groups. Next, take the unedited document and input it into ChatGPT for editing. Once the edited version is received, have students collaboratively compare their responses with those of the program. At the end of this activity, take some time for corrective instruction to help students better grasp grammatical nuances as well as the limitations and capabilities of technology. 

Writing Prompts: Need a fresh idea for your writing lesson? Use ChatGPT to generate writing prompts based on a specific theme. Just input the theme and the tool will churn out a variety of prompts related to that theme. This is a great way to get your students thinking creatively and practising their writing skills. 

Storytelling Magic: Use ChatGPT to help your students develop their storytelling skills. Input the beginning of a story and the tool will generate potential next steps, allowing students to continue the story in their own words.

Writing Feedback: ChatGPT can provide helpful feedback on students’ writing and could be included in part of the revision and editing process, especially if there is not sufficient time to provide individual feedback to students. When different samples of student writing were analyzed t was able to give specific feedback about grammar, suggestions for improving structure, instances where more details were needed for clarification, and situations where more concise language would improve the readability. It also checked for consistency!

Vocabulary Practice: ChatGPT is a helpful tool to help students learn new vocabulary words or expand their understanding of a new word. For example, if you ask it to “help me learn the word …” it will provide the definition and multiple examples. It is also a useful tool to study new words. When given a list of words and asked it to quiz me on the words, it created multiple choice questions for all the words to test my knowledge.

Reading Comprehension Made Easy: ChatGPT can create personalised reading comprehension questions based on a passage you provide. Simply input the passage and the tool will generate a series of questions to help students better understand and retain what they have read.

Language Translation: ChatGPT is a great tool for your EAL learners. It allows students to easily translate texts from one language to another, providing them with a valuable tool for comprehension and communication. Whether they’re reading a story in Spanish or writing a letter to a pen pal in French, Chat GPT is a reliable and accurate translation tool. It’s like having a personal translation assistant, without the added cost and hassle.

Math

Practice Problems: Need to give your students some extra practice outside of class? No problem! Just have ChatGPT generate a never-ending supply of math problems for them to work on. 

Explanations: Got a student who’s struggling to understand a concept? No worries – have them ask chatGPT for a step-by-step explanation. It’ll be like having a virtual math tutor right at their fingertips.

Quizzes: Want to review material in a fun and interactive way? Have ChatGPT create a customized quiz for your class. 

Interactive Lessons: ChatGPT can be used to create interactive lectures or lessons. For example, you could have the chatbot ask questions and have students respond with their answers. This can be a great way to keep students engaged and involved in the material.

Group Work: You can use ChatGPT to facilitate group work by having it generate math problems or questions for students to work on together. This can be a great way to encourage collaboration and problem-solving skills.

Differentiated Instruction: If you have a diverse class with students of varying skill levels, the chatbot can be used to provide personalised instruction to each student. For example, you can have the chatbot generate more challenging problems for advanced students and easier problems for those who need more support.

Gamification: You can use ChatGPT to create math games or challenges for your students. For example, you could have the chatbot generate a series of math problems and have students race against the clock to solve them. This can be a fun and engaging way to review material and encourage competition.

Assessment

Providing Targeted Feedback: Use the tool for providing targeted feedback. Envision using this tool as part of the revision and editing process; for example, teaching students how to use it to gain targeted feedback based on a particular assignment. This has the potential to increase equity for students who all have different levels of writing support at home and at school.

ChatGPT Can Support Students’ SEL

ChatGTP could assist someone with social and emotional skills. For example, it gave answers to all the questions below, and when asked to “regenerate the response” was able to provide additional quality responses.

This being very helpful for anyone who has a difficult time in social situations, is nervous about making friends, is conflicted about how to handle a particular situation, etc. While it would likely always be better to get advice about some of these things from a human, not everyone has a human in their life to ask these questions.

• • What are some questions I could ask a new friend?

  • What advice do you have for someone starting a new school and wanting to make friends?

  • What are some suggestions for how to say no if a friend asks to copy my homework?

  • What are suggestions to explain to someone what they said or did hurt my feelings?

  • What are small talk suggestions at a party?

  • I am nervous about my test tomorrow; can you give me some relaxation strategies?

  • I want to motivate my group members to help with our project; what are some suggestions to help motivate them?

  • I made the soccer team, but my best friend didn’t make it, I feel bad and don’t know what to do. Do you have any suggestions?

  • I want to practice being kind in the new year. What are some specific ways I can show kindness to others?

• Use ChatGPT in Google Workspace | GPT Workspace | The GPT Workspace AI add-on is a tool that allows users to access ChatGPT's AI capabilities directly within Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, and Gmail. This add-on enables users to generate human-like text, summarize long documents, and translate text into different languages, among other features. Free plan available.

• Ways to Use ChatGPT to Save Time | Edutopia | Mar 2023 | Teachers can use the artificial intelligence tool to effectively automate some routine tasks.

• What Educators Need to Know About ChatGPT | ASCD | Mar 2023 | Monica Burns, the author of EdTech Essentials, offers tips on getting started with ChatGPT, the new artificial intelligence-driven writing program, and discusses both the challenges and opportunities that new AI tools present to educators.

• For Educators, ChatGPT Poses Big Questions—and Big Possibilities | ASCD | Feb 14 2023 | In the short-term, the article provides are six ways schools can start to adapt, integrate, and perhaps dabble with ChatGPT intriguing new technology. 

• How ChatGPT Is Fast Becoming The Teacher’s Pet | Forbes | Mar 25 2023 | Despite worries that the artificial intelligence program could make cheating easier, half of K-12 teachers report using it. 

• How AI could influence Learning Across Subjects, While Becoming a Crucial One Itself | The Hill | Feb 25 2023 | The chatbot ChatGPT has caused shockwaves through the education industry over concerns about cheating and how students will learn, but the importance of AI in technological education has also been highlighted in the discussion. 

• Debate: ChatGPT Offers Unseen Opportunities to Sharpen Students’ Critical Skills | The Conversation | Feb 20 2023 | We are aware of the widespread worries about the loss of creativity, individual and critical thinking. This article  demonstrates a shift in perspective from the ‘output’ to the ‘user’ may allow for some optimism.

• A Framework for Learning Through the Purposeful Use of Technology | A Principal's Reflections Blog | Feb 19 2023 | Technology has the potential to transform teaching and learning in a number of ways. 

• ChatGPT Threatens Education at All Levels - Here's How it Can be Stopped | teachradar.com | Feb 11 2023 | Maybe the issue of ChatGPT’s use in academic dishonesty actually shines a light on the broader problem within the education system itself, namely: why are students willing to cheat and use ChatGPT to do their work for them in the first place?

• Unlocking The Power of AI: How It Deepened My Students’ Thinking | Medium |Jan 30 2023 | One Year 5 teacher's journey using AI in her classroom.

• ChatGPT is changing education, AI experts say — But How? | DW Global Media| Jan 24 2023 | Experts say artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT are changing the way students are taught and study. These "language model" AIs can write flawless-looking academic essays. Is it a threat or opportunity, or both?

• If You're Not Already Doing These 10 Productivity Hacks in ChatGPT, You're Definitely Missing Out | Inc. | Jan 23 2023 | Here are 10 different ways you can use ChatGPT to do work for you and increase your productivity.

• 19 Ways to Use ChatGPT in Your Classroom | Education Week | Jan 18 2023 | Ideas about how to use ChatGTP in the classroom.

• 7 Ways to Get the Best Results From ChatGPT | MUO | Jan 16 2023 | Not getting the responses you want from ChatGPT? Here's how to get the answers you need!

• ChatGPT in School: How AI is Changing the Future of Education | Educraft | Jan 14 2023 | AI's impact on education is and will be enormous, altering how people teach and learn. Will these changes be good or bad?

• ChatGPT: Educational friend or foe? | Education Plus Development | Jan 9 2023 | The latest challenge to the creative human intellect was introduced on November 30th, 2022 by OpenAI. Used in the right way, ChatGPT can be a friend to the classroom and an amazing tool for our students, not something to be feared.

• ChatGPT: Teachers Weigh In on How to Manage the New AI Chatbot | Education Week| Jan 3 2023 | How might artificial intelligence-powered tools like ChatGPT are going to affect K-12 schools, and what are practical strategies teachers can use to respond to them?