Craig Sheil

STEM AI Playground for Meeting

I was asked by the Dean of the Stem Department, Doctor Martha Pond, if I’d be able to attend her after school department meeting and give her teachers an opportunity to participate in an AI playground. I was thrilled that she wanted to include me in this activity. Seeing as though there were about 30 different staff members with all different skillsets with generative AI, we thought it would be best to provide staff with choices to explore on their own, rather than me do demonstrations. We wanted staff to have an opportunity to try themselves, and not just absorb information. By this point, staff have attended several trainings on generative AI.

I asked Martha to help me find true resources that are already being used in the Bedford High School curriculum as a way to help teacher see the power of when generative AI can help support their existing work. Martha did just that, asking staff for examples of Science Labs activities, curriculum maps for courses, guided note presentations, assessments, etc. I then used these resources to help model different situations where generative AI can help either enhance support or supplement.

Update to Google Classroom Guardian Summaries 2024

Google recently changed what parents and guardians can now see if Google Classroom Guardian summaries are turned on through Google Classroom. In the past, parents were only able to receive an email that indicates what assignments were pushed out with whatever description was added to the assignment. Now in the new view, parents are able to actually see most files that are shared in the classroom page. Parents have the ability to select a class and see the classworks page in view only mode – based on their students profile and what is shared with them. The parent is able to actually click on files to get a greater understanding of the assignments if they find value in that. Google is doing a better job now of mimicking what students years ago were able to do when a parent said “show me what you are working on in class – and the student would take out the papers that were handed out”.

In an effort to help teachers in my school, I created two different videos walking them through what this new process looks like on the parent/guardian side.

The first video focuses on sharing Google Docs with students and testing out the different permission settings of files to include what it looks like if ‘make a copy for each student’ is used for an assignment.

The second video focuses on sharing out Google Forms as well as Canva resources. Teachers can see the difference between locked mode and non-locked mode of a google form, as well as different ways to share out a Canva product.

For those that need a reminder, a teacher can activate Guardian Email Summaries through the settings gear menu on the top right corner of any Google Classroom. If parents email is not already tied to the student, one teacher in the school domain must invite the parent. Once this is done once, no other teacher needs to invite the parent (who is using guardian summaries).

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.

And that is my Spiel…

Exploring Generative AI in the Classroom

It’s been awhile and thought it was time to add something to the #SheilSpiel.

Our school district was fortunate to participate in a pilot program with SchoolAI for the past three months. Since our district started this generative AI journey back in April of 2023, we have had a mindset of always making sure that we are being thoughtful and deliberate with infusing generative AI into the educational setting. In February 2023, the district made a decision to formally test out an approved generative AI tool for students, called SchoolAI.

Teachers had the opportunity to join this pilot program district wide. We learned a lot throughout that time – in many instances it consisted of trial and error. What I learned the most was that teachers were happy to be given the opportunity to create spaces that were thoughtfully designed for students. Teachers could determine how students should interact with a chatbot and not worry of the potential ‘wild wild west’ with tools like chatGPT. For some students, their initial reaction was trying to get SchoolAI to just tell them the answers to question prompts, like they can with ChatGPT. We had to remind students that the point of these teacher created chatbots was to help them learn information, not necessarily just tell them the answers to questions. For teachers, there was something about being able to access students’ interactions that helped ease some worry as well.

2023 AI Reflections

What a year 2023 has been. So much learning. So much exploring. So much thinking. It’s been a year full of investigative work with artificial intelligence, more specifically generative AI. I feel like daily I was either having conversations with others on generative AI or exploring around with how it can potentially be used in the educational space.

Back in the Spring of 2023, I found myself attending different webinars or trainings to learn from others. At staff meetings, the administration team at my high school gave me the opportunity to share learnings and discoveries to help guide staff in what was happening in 5-10 minutes. Trying to make sense of what was really happening. The Digital Learning Specialists and Librarians in the district were trying to get as far ahead of things as best as we could. It sure was an ‘AI race’ that we were experiencing.

Magic Switch with Canva

It seems as though everyone is talking about generative AI, to some degree, these days. This blog post is not meant to talk about what generative AI is or how to come up with the best prompt. Rather, I want to talk about what Canva is calling Magic Switch.

In this short 2 minute video, I quickly show how one can take an existing Canva Presentation and have generative AI take that text content and convert it into a different format. For instance, Jess Gilcreast (high school librarian) and I had a 50 slide presentation that we gave to all high school teachers at the beginning of the school year as a base line for what generative AI is. It was the districts goal for all staff to be knowledgable.

With the announcement of Magic Switch a couple of weeks ago, I decided to take that presentation and ask generative AI to convert it into a poem. In about 3 minutes, a Canva Doc appears with a lengthy poem. I have to admit, I was amazed at what I saw. I felt as though the message was right on point with what we were sharing with our staff.

This has my mind going in a couple of places:

Perhaps this could be helpful for sharing out information to students or staff a different way to better connect with certain learners.
My brain is more on the math and science side of things. I love numbers. As a result of that, I would not necessarily spend time putting content in a poem format. However, if I could get some brainstorming ideas, why not dive in and give it a try.
This could also be helpful to just ask Canva to create a summary of text. Again, this could be helpful for some learners who just need to see the content in a different format. There are times where differentiating content is necessary or helpful. Here is a tool to help assist with just that.

Back in Spring 2023, I would we talking to staff about how we will be witnessing an “AI Race”. We are certainly living it. But regardless of that, it is important that we are finding appropriate uses of generative AI in education while always keeping in mind to never include PII (personal identifiable information). There is a time and place where generative AI can help assist with our work. There is a time where it can be meaningful. It is also important to remind one self that human intelligence should always be included and infused with generative AI work. I look forward to seeing more use cases of Canva generative AI tools in the future.

If you have any questions, or you want to talk more about how some of the magic tools in Canva can be used to help you as a teacher, you know where to find me.

And that is my spiel…