Blogpost #5: AI
AI is a tool that has the potential to make simple tasks easier and streamline the many small tasks teachers and librarians do everyday. In the past year or so, I have gotten better about using AI (mainly ChatGPT) as a tool to use for different things. Outside of work, I have used it to make lists for movies I wanted to watch, or books I wanted to read by a certain author. It makes gathering that data so much more simple and usually requires very little thought about what goes into the question. If it does make a mistake, I just tell it what is wrong, and it fixed it easily. I have experimented around with having it give me lesson ideas but never really went further than that.
When play around with it for this post, I decided to focus on it ability to write. One part of my job as teacher that I absolutely hate doing, is parent communication. I have never liked messaging a parent over anything. Now that I am my schools librarian, i'm sure i'm going to have to do even more, since sending home paper overdue notices only go so far.
After watching the AI presentation by Ethan Mollick, I went to his website that had a lot of these prompts on it to play around with them. The one that caught my eye was the teaching assistant blueprint. After I copied that prompt into ChatGPT, I decided to have it come up with a simple template that I could send when a child has an overdue book. Here is a copy of the prompt that I used:
Goal: In this exercise, you will work with the user to create a code block teaching assistant prompt to help them invoke or create a teaching assistant for a specific task they would like to speed up.
Persona: You are an AI teaching assistant prompt creator, helpful and friendly and an expert at instructional design.
Step 1: Initial questions
What to do:
1. Introduce yourself to the user as their AI Teaching Assistant creator who will help them create an AI teaching assistant for a specific task. You are here to create a prompt that will create a repeatable process for them. Explain that the more details you have the better your prompt will be; for instance, do they want an AI teaching assistant to regularly write lesson plans about a specific topics, or letters to parents, or grading rubrics, or create low stakes quizzes.
2. Ask the teacher to name one thing that they would like to speed up or automate
3. You can then ask 3 additional questions about the process or task they want the teaching assistant to take on. Remember to ask only one questions at a time.
Then, create a prompt that is in second person and has the following elements:
1. Role: You are an AI teaching assistant that helps the teacher with [task X]. First introduce yourself to the user.
2. Goal: Your goal is to help the user complete [the topic]. Ask: describe what you’d like done or what you need to accomplish specifically. Wait for the teacher to respond. Do not move on until the teacher responds.
3. Step by step instructions for the prompt instructions: Given this information, help the teacher by doing the task and providing an initial draft.
A reminder: This is a dialogue so only ask one question at a time and always wait for the user to respond.
It asked me a few clarifying questions like what I wanted included in the notice and the overall tone of the notice. It gave me a short list with everything it would include, then asked me to give it the information needed to fill out the notice, like the students name, book and due date. I didn't want to input any kids names, so it gave me the option to create an example.
Here is the notice that it gave me:
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| A screenshot of a ChatGPT window with the overdue notice template given from a prompt. |
I am pretty pleased with what it gave me. I could see myself actually using it, maybe with some small modifications and tweaking. But this would allow me to just input the correct information, copy and paste it into a message and send it on to the parent quickly and without much thought. As I get started this year, I may look into using AI more for work. My coworker told me about the Magic School AI site a few weeks ago, and how she made sure that our district IT people were including it on the approved sites list.
References:
Mollick, E. (2024). Co-intelligence: AI in the classroom. Global Silicon Valley. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FnOkxj0ZuA
Hey, Adam! I think this is a super neat activity to try with ChatGPT. Anything that makes our jobs a little easier is worth trying. I have also looked at ways I can implement AI usage in my daily lesson planning this year. I love that we can just get a point to jump off of, even if we don't use exactly what ChatGPT provides us. I also think it would be super cool for you to use that letter template in this upcoming school year. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Adam,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you that contacting parents can be a little daunting. I often wonder if I'm wording my emails respectfully enough or if I am coming off as rude. I love the fact that you can change the tone of the messages that you ask it to come up with as well. You can be friendly or more professional depending on what you want to convey. That can be really important, especially in a library, because I personally want to make sure that the kids find me friendly, approachable and easy to talk to. An email home to a parent that sounds stern or hostile could derail all the work that I put into developing a rapport with my students. I also love that the AI is able to change and adapt what it presents based on your clarifying prompts, and doesn't have to start over with each new request. This makes it much easier to customize the work, making it sound less formulaic and more like something you might have written yourself. I think the problem that so many people have when they say that AI doesn't sound authentic or doesn't accomplish goals you make for it is that they expect the first response to be exactly what you want, when it really always needs to be tweaked. What AI is really good at is giving you ideas to work with. Then you can make adjustments to get exactly the results you want. Even if the end result from the AI isn't exactly what you want, it gives you a much better idea of what you want to do than if you were just brainstorming with your own thoughts. I haven't really ever used AI before this semester, but I am finding it very helpful, not for doing my work for me, but for inspiration and finding better ways to say what I have to say. For example: I just ran that sentence through chat GPT with the prompt "make this sound better" and it gave me (I hadn’t really used AI before this semester, but I’m finding it incredibly helpful—not to do the work for me, but to spark ideas and help me express my thoughts more effectively.)
Hey Adam,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all... I never thought about using AI to create a list of books I want to read. I have my books saved in a Google Doc but now I want to go play with AI and create a list!
I also do not like parent communication. I have had some bad experiences with phone calls so I tend to use Class DOJO (our whole school uses it) as much as possible but with that comes the need to be professional in my replies at times. THere are some parents I can be informal with but the majority of them get the professional side of me and I don't always know how to say what I want to. After exploring I also realized that AI could be used for this. I am excited to try it out this year!
Hey Adam, thank you so much for your post. I, too, would be glad with your results here. I have never thought about using it to create a list either. In my experimenting, I used it to provide me with a visual, and it was not as successful as you. I appreciate how you mentioned using it outside of the educational world as well. Honestly, I didn't think too much about how it would be helpful to me, but I have given it more thought now that I've learned more about it. For my family, it would be fun to make a list of fun weekend activity ideas. I tried it just for fun after reading your post, and it worked great (lots of new suggestions)! -Katie Moody
ReplyDelete