AI - We're living in the future

 Exploring AI in Education: Enhancing Learning and Efficiency

I jumped on the “Magic School” Bus of AI immediately when I began reading about it in newsletters from DitchThatTextbook and AJ Juliani and receiving some PD from the Illinois Learning Technology Center over the past couple of years, so my journey with artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t brand new.  I’ve been actively integrating it into both my personal life and professional work for quite some time. From brainstorming new ideas to streamlining everyday tasks, AI has become a tool I rely on for efficiency. After learning some, I quickly understood its ability to help teachers save time on tasks.  I particularly love this quote to capture that idea. 

 

I’ve even had the privilege of leading professional development sessions, helping other educators harness the power of AI in the classroom. This exploration, however, allowed me to dive deeper.

A Deeper Dive

For this post, I wanted to build on what I already know starting with Arizona’s Guidance for K-12 Educators. This document provided an excellent framework for teachers who are new to AI, outlining both its potential and the ethical considerations that come with using it in schools. One aspect that stood out was the emphasis on student data privacy, which, coupled with concern about accuracy of information seemed to be the first two items teachers asked questions about when learning the basics. Teachers must be aware of how AI platforms collect and use student data to ensure they’re protecting their students while reaping the benefits. 

I also explored AI and Student Data Privacy. This resource helped highlight the need for strict safeguards around how student information is stored, shared, and used to avoid FERPA violations.  It’s clear that while AI has the potential to transform how we tailor instruction, it requires robust policies and practices to keep student data safe that are being grappled with at the school, district, and state levels.  As we have conversations about what our AI policy in our school will look like, the buck continues to get passed up the line. “Let’s see what the district says before we create policy” turns into “let’s see what the state says before we create our own policy.”  However, state policy can sometimes move at a glacial pace, which hopefully won’t be the case with AI as it’s advancing at what seems to be light speed. And as we know from many types of technology, students are on the forefront much sooner than teachers or district administration, but such is the nature of policy creation. 

Affordances and Constraints of AI in Education

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In terms of affordances, AI offers the ability to enhance learning by personalizing the educational experience. For instance, AI-driven platforms like SchoolAI, MagicSchool, and Diffit, can analyze student performance and adjust lesson plans or content in real-time. This kind of adaptability is a game-changer for differentiation, making it easier for educators to meet students where they are. Moreover, AI can automate repetitive tasks like grading, providing feedback, brainstorming creative ideas, and writing parent emails - freeing up more time for teachers to focus on instruction and student engagement.

However, AI in education comes with constraints as well. The most obvious concerns as mentioned earlier are student privacy and accuracy of information. The more AI systems are used, the more data they collect, raising questions about how that data is stored, who has access to it, and how it is ultimately used. As outlined in AI and Ethics, the ethical concerns extend beyond just privacy; there are also issues related to algorithmic bias, i.e. the AI will carry the implicit biases of whomever programmed it and the bank of resources it uses in it’s Large Language Model (LLM) to provide it’s responses. We just need to continue to move at a pace that each one of us is comfortable with and double checking all work that comes out of it.  The 80/20 rule is a good one to live by.  Let AI do 80% of the initial work, but we must check it’s work to make sure it’s accurate and achieving the goal we wanted it to. 

Continuing with AI in the Classroom

I absolutely see myself continuing to use AI in the classroom and in any role I have as it’s simply the direction the world is headed.  The same question could have been asked of Wikipedia when it was initially introduced.  10 years ago, educators scoffed at the idea of allowing it due to it’s potential unreliability, but now, it’s one of the first sites Google will provide when searching for information on a topic. 

Ultimately, my exploration of AI has reinforced its potential and challenges in education, like any new piece of technology.  It’s similar to social media where we have to find the balance and use it to our own level of comfort. We can’t simply shun it, for we’re missing out how to use it with the students we’re responsible for connecting with and educating.  While the potential for personalization and efficiency is huge, it’s essential to be cautious and informed. 

Course Reflection

I would consider myself an “early adopter” in the world of educational and instructional technology. I was quickly convinced in my first few years of teaching in the early 2010s that students, in general, preferred to use technology to complete assignments. As digital natives/residents, they naturally took to it and it was a comfortable space for them. I fought and worked hard to raise money for 1:1 devices for my classroom before they were ubiquitous, and I saw the benefit it offered my students in terms of engagement. This course helped fine tune my background knowledge, classroom skills, and philosophy of why I believed what I believe about technology in the classroom. While many of my current understandings and values were confirmed, I also got to dig into areas of new learning that helped me shift my beliefs as well.

SAMR and the technology framework module helped me understand the different levels of support teachers need in implementing technology. Instead of throwing project based learning tech projects at those who weren’t ready for them or simply asking students to create slide decks to support presentations, I was able to picture more concretely the ways to support teachers where they are at. Some might need baby steps to have kids collaborate on a Google Doc while others are ready to offer choices that students are naturally ready to take, such as creating a website project to show their learning or a screencast to teach others what they have learned.

As a proponent of engagement first, the Active Learning module really hit home. I would love an entire course on interactive learning and a student centered classroom where we can learn the different leaders and designers of interactive learning strategies like Responsive Classroom, Kagan, Facing History, etc. I’m a lover of resources and plug and play options and believe that the more tools teachers are equipped with, the more choices they can offer students to keep their attention, commitment, and engagement.

I particularly appreciated the focus on Accessibility and AI. I believe the core idea of technology is to make life more efficient, not make more work - see escalators instead of stairs. Working with sub groups of students like neurodivergent thinkers, those with IEPs, and multilingual learners has always been an area of growth for me. I’ve leaned heavily on their case managers as making class engaging and effective for the whole group is a task worth a full time job, while modifying and differentiating assignments and activities felt like another job unto itself. However, we can leverage the tech space to help those students access the core through assistive technology that is now on each of their Chromebooks ready to go for them. We can use AI to help brainstorm, modify, and translate materials. We can make our lives more efficient to give us the time we need and lessen our cognitive load so we can spend it working directly with students and being creative.

However, I would say that the part of this class that changed me the most is the indirect encouragement to take advantage of all the good things the internet has to offer. As I wrote in multiple posts, my relationship with social media really started to wane as I interacted with it more and more, but I’m now encouraged to try to extend my PLN and to be less of a visitor and more of a resident in some spaces. As my personality tests demonstrated, I am someone who loves continuous learning and gathering new ideas to try. If my current role and network isn’t offering me the chance to explore those as much as I like, there is an entire world out there of people who are in a similar boat as me. There are people out there ready to help and encourage and keep me motivated. Plus, I’m in my 40s now with nearly 15 years of experience in the field. Perhaps, I need to understand that I, too, have ideas to offer to support and motivate the next generation of folks who were just like me 15 years ago. Being a new teacher is hard and having tips and tricks to make the job easier and more enjoyable can be a game changer.

My first GIF was one that was more of excitement. My final GIF is more of confidence and a more concrete, foundational understanding of my beliefs. I got this.

via Tim Robinson on GIPHY

Digital Tattoos: "I am Adam Wolf" and so is he, and him, and him....

 Background

I am a Major League Baseball player! I have my own video game named after me! I’m also a lawyer, physical therapist, accountant, and acclaimed french horn player! Wait a second…

I grew up in the small town of Sandwich, IL, population 6500 as the sign reads.  Having my name, Adam Wolf, was fun.  “It’s a strong name,” my parents told why they selected it, and I was the only one around me that I knew of.  It was a fun last name to have that lent itself to some neat animal related nicknames e.g Wolfy, Wolfman, The Wolf, etc.  I thought I was an individual and it was specific just to me.  As I grew, went off to college, and moved to Chicago, I started to learn, I wasn’t the only one.  The first close, Jewish friend I made taught me at 22 years old (not much diversity in Sandwich as you might have guessed) that I was third Adam Wolf that she knows and that Adam Wolf is a very popular name in the Jewish community.  It turns out, it’s a very popular name regardless of the community that you’re in.  I had a hard time finding a lot of specific information about me.  Google Images doesn’t even have me in the first page of over 100 images. 

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ClustrMaps.com tells me there is 207 people in their records with the same name as me, and 16 of them are in Illinois. Not to mention, the last name Wolf can be spelled at least four different ways, which makes it even more ubiquitous. 

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Many of the websites I did my data dive in showed me many of the same, free reports confirming my immediate family members and my address, but there were little specifics to be found, which I’m glad about.  

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My salary is posted with the rest of the public employees of Illinois, but that was to be expected. 

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I dug in a little deeper to try and locate my online presence more specifically by adding some professions and activities I participated in such as teacher and improv comedy (I spent 10 years or so in the early 2000s performing around Chicago).  Turns out, I’m not even in the top five for those results either, which says something about the fame, or lack of, that I achieved. It also proves that I wasn’t very good about getting my name out there for people to find me, but that was never really my goal. 

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What I Found and How I Felt About It

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The only time I actually found relatable information to me was when I included an address or my current place of employment, and this pleases me.

However, Truthfinder.com did give me a reputation score of 2.89-4.04, which piques my interest a bit, but I also believe this may be a solid attempt at getting me to buy my “Reputation Profile,” which, based on my lack of findings everywhere else, I’m not interested in.

I’ve done a good job at keeping my personal life off the internet, and I haven’t had anything happen in my life with enough significance to garner online attention, which I’m OK with.  Although, as I type that sentence, it does give me a bit of a mid-life crisis feeling that I haven’t done much with my life, but in this case, I’ll take the “no news is good news” approach.  

Digital Literacy and Teaching It To Kids 

However, I wasn’t raised in today’s world that values and seems to require a social media presence.  When I was a kid, Digital Literacy and understanding our Digital Tattoos wasn’t necessary. Today, it absolutely is.  I believe that all students beginning in middle school should receive a course in basic social media use and your Digital Tattoo.  The two places I see this making the most sense are in a Technology “specials” classroom or from the school libarian/LMC specialist.  I’ve actually worked as an instructional coach with our school’s current librarian in beginning to research what a course on this might look like using lessons on your digital footprint from commonsense.org. 

Professional Use

Now that I am in my current role and have a part in the interview process of hiring new teachers, it’s one of first steps I take in checking the background of potential candidates, especially those under 30 who have spent their entire lives on the internet and social media.  I instruct those I meet who are seeking a new teaching job to make sure to do their best to “scrub” their social media accounts so they’re professional presence is clean.  I’ve had a good friend run into some issues from a picture that was posted of them in college.  It took some serious explaining for him to be hired, and he has since wiped those from the internet. It could have been worse. 

Personal Use

I use the same tactics now that my children are getting older.  When they ask to go the house of a new friend and we don’t much about them, when they get a new coach on their teams, or when I’m simply curious about a new neighbor, all it takes is a quick Google search to find out a bit more about them.  I’m learning that most adults don’t understand the concept of a Digial Footprint and how much information is about them online. 

Luckily, having worked in a middle school during this day and age has made me aware of this and how someone’s digital tattoo can follow them for years. Thus, my wife and I made an explicit decision to try and keep our children’s pictures and life experiences off of social media until they’re old enough to make that informed decision themselves.  One never knows what path they might take in life, and if a future path they take requires them to have a clean digital record, we don’t want to have been the ones to handcuff them, whether it was intentional or not. 

In Summary

I’m glad I went through this data dive on myself to confirm the fact that I’m not spread over the internet in places I didn’t really want to be, at least not without paying for information.  So, in the meantime, I’ll just let people think I’m a Major League Baseball player - that’s kind of fun alter ego to have and story to tell.

UDL - Making Learning Accessible for Every Learner

What is UDL? The Dinner Party Analogy

How do you plan for a dinner party? In her book UDL NOW, Katie Novak lays out a wonderful metaphor for explaining what Universal Design for Learning is and why it is so important, which I’ve featured in this UDL resource for teachers.   She goes to explain that when we have guests over and we’ve committed to feeding them, we make sure to find out a little bit of background.  Are they vegetarians? Do they have any allergies? Are there foods they try to avoid or simply don’t like? Sure, we could just put out a casserole, but what about our gluten-free or lactose intolerant friends, or those who simply don’t like casserole. When we create the menu, we create options of getting to the end goal of making sure everyone is full and enjoyed their experience. If the metaphor didn’t spell itself out, UDL is about designing learning ahead of time so that our learners' brains feel “full” and hopefully they enjoyed their experience with having choices to choose from. 

                        

UDL can be a bit of an overwhelming concept for teachers, especially those who have been accustomed to teaching towards the middle.  Sometimes, our thoughts jump to breaking down a skill for 25 different little learners in 25 different ways, and that seems impossible.  However, UDL doesn’t ask us to do that. It asks us to consider the types of learners in our classrooms, the barriers some of them might be facing (like language translation, executive functioning, reading comprehension, etc) and how we might be able to provide multiple access points for those who need it to access the learning in a different way.  When we start to visualize planning like this, we can see that certain supports we are adding in for some students actually might benefit more than just the ones we intended.  

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Example 1 - If we have two students who have an IEP and require graphic organizers prior to writing, perhaps we offer the graphic organizer printed on the backside of our assignment directions. This way our other students who struggle with executive functioning, who may not have an IEP, have access to it.  A dinner party analog to this could be that the vegetarian lasagna offered probably will attract more takers than just our vegetarian friends.  

Example 2 - We have two newcomer students who don’t speak much English.  If we’re delivering slides of how to complete a science lab, we know we need to adapt our presentation each step along the way, so our non-English speakers can access the lesson to the best of their abilities.  Perhaps we try things like: adding images of each step of the lab, highlighting key vocabulary words in a different color font, and having a final slide that lays out only the most important steps.  Guess what?! Adapting our slide deck like that just provided options for other learners to access the learning as well, not just our EL friends.  What benefits some, may end up benefiting others as well.  

Image Source: Jenn Harth

Differentiation vs UDL

One of the hardest concepts to overcome is how UDL is a slightly different mindset than Differentiated Instruction (DI).  The simplest way to think about it in my head is that UDL happens first and is a proactive approach which puts the learner at the center of the learning process. DI comes after the overarching planning is done and is more “teacher directed.”  When we approach a new skill from a UDL lens, we think about multiple ways for kids to access it (video, reading, podcast, etc) and the multiple means they can show us what they learn, or as CAST puts it, their “expression.” We program the lesson with those options available.  While that learning is happening, we differentiate for small groups of students on a needs basis. We use the data to tell us who might need a small teacher group pulled aside, a leveled text for reading, One is not better than the other, and they both can work in tandem to help students access learning they once may have struggled with. 

Image Source: Jenn Harth

Start Small

In the end, UDL can be a mindset shift for some, so I’ve created a slide deck with adapted materials mainly from CAST, Katie Novak, and Jenn Harth, a former colleague of mine, that help set the stage.  It is my hope to present it to small groups of teams of interested teachers at my school. I completely understand the concept of so much "student autonomy" can be hard to swallow for some who are measured on student learning around very particular standards that they need to make sure students have mastered.  Without proper training and understanding of what UDL is and how it can help our students access learning, it would be easy to cast it aside. 

That being said, my recommendation for those once they’ve learned a bit about the principles of UDL is to start with one lesson or mini-unit.  Experience what it feels like to offer some choices for exploration of new learning to students and see how they react.  If you want to host a dinner party but you don’t know how to cook, try just hosting a few friends first.  Offer one or two extra options.  Over time, skills and confidence will grow.  Great teachers become great over long careers not over night, and UDL is one of the vehicles that can take them there.