AI Assistants: A workflow for educators

Generative AI has revolutionized the way teaching and learning was happening. On average an educator working hours are 49.5 (2019). 21.3 spent on teaching 28.2 spent on other tasks such as marking, creating resources and planning. Moreover, middle school and secondary school teachers don’t get teaching assistants. The good news is!… generative AI can become the teaching assistant for every educator. Educators can spend their time on other tasks like personal well being and mastering the craft of teaching, while this assistant is at their service creating some of those repetitive and laborious tasks.

Let’s build our workflow:

STEP 1:

SETUP ChatGPT (LLM — text)

• Go to chat.openai.com
• Email and phone number
• Set up 2 Factor Authentication

SETUP GOOGLE BARD (LLM — text)

• Sign in to Bard
• Go to bard.google.com.
• At the top right, select Sign in.
• Sign in to your personal Google Account.

AIs are great at generalized stuff and you can train them to be good at some specialized tasks.

STEP 2: Develop your persona

PERSONA: When you interact with ChatGPT/BARD, it is important that you ask it to take on a specific personality. You can set the tone and boundaries of your interaction for each chat.

TEACHER PERSONA
Think of this persona as your starting point whenever you plan lessons with ChatGPT. You can modify this persona according to your lessons or project of query. The more explicit the information, the better response your AI assistant will generate.

“ You are a grade <grade level> <subject> teacher teaching a unit about <unit overview>. You believe that students should <your beliefs about how children learn best>”

EXAMPLE PROMPT: You are a grade 8 teacher teaching an Algebra 1 Module 1: Relationships Between Quantities and Reasoning with Equations and Their Graphs connected to the Common Core Standards for mathematics. You believe that students should acquire mathematical knowledge, concepts, and skills in real-world contexts and that maths should be a creative, collaborative subject powered by Building Thinking Classroom by Peter Liljedhal. You believe that introducing new concepts should follow three stages: constructing meaning, applying with understanding, and transferring knowledge to real-life situations. You will use this persona throughout the chat as we interact.

RESPONSE FROM BARD:

RESPONSE FROM CHATGPT

STEP 3: CREATING LESSONS

Create a generalized plan for 6 to8 weeks using ChatGpt or Bard.

Let’s create a lesson based on the persona we have developed.

EXAMPLE PROMPT: I would appreciate it if you could kindly develop a 6 to 8 week lesson plan for Module 1 based on these standards < Insert the standards here> create the plan that builds conceptual understanding, add some problem solving and critical thinking aspects and include reasoning and communication content as well. Please add some activities and group work activities in the plan. Create the plan in table format.

ChatGPT response

Once you have created a general lesson plan, it’s time to get some details about Week 1.

Now take the plan of week 1 and create a plan for 3 sessions. First session is 45 minute long and the rest of the two sessions are 80 minute long. Create activities for these three sessions, show me the timings. Lesson should be based on the details mentioned above with a study guide for the students, exemples from the syllabus, one think-pair-share activity. One small project or poster activity to develop problem solving skills. A challenge question with real world connections. A short formative quiz to assess their knowledge.

ChatGPT will start writing a detailed plan for week 1 for the sessions mentioned in your prompt. You can ask the AI assistant to create content for the slides and exercise questions, challenges and formative assessments for week 1 and then continue with all the plans and activities for each week.

PROJECT IDEAS

I try to give my students projects, posters or presentations for almost every unit. The ideas for math projects are very limited and most of the time I have to spend hours and hours in search of a good project that is logical and doable in a classroom environment. So the next component of the workflow will be creating a project to develop a deeper understanding of solving linear equations.

EXAMPLE PROMPT(contd.): Please develop a plan for week 3, create three different projects that helps students understand the concept of solving equations. This should be a 3 day project, one session is 45 minutes and the other two sessions are 80 minute long.

RESPONSE FROM BARD: Bard came up with these three project ideas, now I like the idea of a comic strip. I want to get into more details about the comic strip idea. I will ask more information from the AI assistant. We are in the same chat and I can continue the conversation until I am satisfied and done with the planning.

Project 1: Equation Match up

Project 2: Equation Scavenger Hunt

Project 3: Equation Comic Strip

EXAMPLE PROMPT(cont): I really like the idea of the comic strip, provide an example of how can we create such a project.

Response from BARD:

Check the content for accuracy, sometimes these AI tools are not producing accurate information. You as an educator are the expert and the authority in the room. You have to use the Human Intelligence to improve on what AI has generated for you.

STEP 4: Check and Counter Check

Can we rely on the information generated by the AI? We cannot fully rely on the content created by the AI assistant. It is always advisable to check the validity of the information generated by the AI, there have been instances that it is making mistakes. I asked the same question from chatgpt

Two important Websites for Educators

You can carry out the lesson plan workflow using these two website as well. They have everything that chatGPT or BARD are offering in the form of separate tools.

Magicschool.ai

I came across an amazing website named magicschool.ai. This is a one stop shop for the ELA, Math and Science teachers. Now again, you are the expert who has to channelise these powers. These tools are sometimes generating nonsensical and false information and you as a teacher and as an expert in your field has to train these AI assistants. Once they are trained by the experts they will learn how to generate the correct information.

Eduaide.ai

Another power tool for educators is Eduaide.ai, it has an amazing assessment builder besides the other tools. You just write the keyword and click on “Enhance”, it will create a beautiful statement for your question.

• Select the type of assessment
• Generate questions — you can adjust the difficulty level as well.
• You can edit the questions as well.

At the moment, AI is a vast playground and its getting difficult to keep up with all the tools and apps that are available. We as educators have to start with what is our objective and based on that, work on finding out which technology is best suited for our line of work. Then adopt that technology, create your own workflow based on your philosophy of education and master it before implementing it in your classroom.