EDUC 5313 Week 4 Blog Assignment

 

EDUC 5313 Week 4 Blog Assignment

 

Lesson Plan Link: https://app.magicschool.ai/tools/lesson-plan-generator?share=6f3f6b2b-8b08-4d37-911c-79654a9cf390

 

Part 1:

The Magic School artificial intelligence lesson plan tool generated activities that were not sufficiently rigorous however, the lesson was aligned with only the content area objective and standard. The ISTE standard Creative Communicator, indicator 1.6. a. which states that students is to choose the appropriate platforms and tools for meeting the desired objectives of their creation or communication. (ISTE, 2017) was not addressed nor included in any of the activities for the students to be engaged with digital resources.    

There is a need for more creative and stimulating ideas to be generated and included in the lesson plan, especially the anticipatory and independent activities. This would have allowed students' interest to be aroused. The activities did not provide a means for the collaborative efforts of the students nor did the lesson content have any form of differentiation learning experience thus catering to the diverse learner population. The tool given information is not one hundred percent accurate because at the end of the lesson plan it deviated from the original standards and outlined other sets of content standards that stated that they were addressed in the lesson hence there is a need for consistency.

In my opinion, the Magic School’s artificial intelligence tool is not useful for creating rigorous lesson plans. Rigor involves engaging students to think critically and develop skills that they can connect to the real world beyond the classroom.  Also incorporating technology to engage, enhance, and extend learning to ensure it is a student-driven experience were not evident in the lesson plan that was generated.

Research studies have shown that a rigorous curriculuwasm challenges students at all levels to think in innovative ways and develop more sophisticated understandings of important ideas (Sztabnik, 2015). Without a curriculum that engages them in new and interesting ideas and requires them to work to maintain high grades, students are more likely to become unmotivated, unengaged, and achieve less academic growth (Gentry, Rizza, & Owen, 2002; Little, 2012; Marzano & Toth, 2014; Williamson & Johnston, 1999)

Part 2:

The other AI-powered tool that was perused is the Depth of Knowledge Questions (DOK) which generate questions based on topic or standard for each of the four Depth of Knowledge (levels). This feature is effective because it is an efficient way to tier questions based on depth. Using the tool to create higher-order questions develops students' strategic and extensive thinking skills to solve problems and creatively transfer knowledge across content areas.

Depth of Knowledge questions three and four can be created for use in instruction delivery to have interactive students-led discussions in the form of Socratic seminars, partner talks, four corners, and conversation roundtables where they justify and defend their reasonings for their given responses. Differentiated questions can be created for exit tickets and independent practice to assess students learning based on their abilities.

In addition, a study has shown that improving students’ higher-order cognitive skills enhances the learners’ abilities to identify, integrate, evaluate, and interrelate concepts within a given problem domain and thereby make the appropriate decisions to solve a problem (Bagarukayo et al., 2012).

 

Part 3: Reflection

Magic School artificial intelligence is a resourceful tool I would use with caution with my students and share information with my colleagues. Initially, I was overwhelmed by the many features, but after perusing it over I became familiar with the tools that educators can use to maximize efficiency in accessing material and ideas.

The MagicStudent tool could be used to engage the students with features such as writing feedback, creating skits, and language learning tutors. This would improve the learning experience of the students and provide opportunities to take ownership of their learning. Multilanguage learners would benefit from using mostly the language tutors and translator features which are also generated with audio. Educators also have a variety of features that they can use based on preference that produce relevant and current content.

Some of the benefits that I noted from incorporating the use of MagicSchool are it is efficient because it saves time, it tiered content, and generates content aligned with standards. In contrast, these tools may not generate accurate and relevant content hence the educator will have to make the necessary adjustments to the content, and it cannot produce actual diagrams, graphics, or video. However, the tool will give ideas of what to do which impacts on timing to retrieve the resources.

I have experience using ChatGPT to unpack the standards for lessons which allows me to examine the content that I will teach and plan effective lessons and assessments. It also gives me an insight into what students need to know and do. ChatGPT can also generate ideas that can be incorporated into the lesson once it is imputed. I have also used Diffit to differentiate lesson activities for multilanguage learners. This tool can tiered long literature chapters based on the ability of the learners, interactive slides are generated with activities based on the content and videos.

MagicSchool and other artificial intelligence tools are useful resources that can be used to lessen the workload of the educator but will have to be used in conjunction with the instructional curriculum and it cannot be used solely on its own.

 

References

 International Society for Technology in Education. (2017). ISTE Standards For Students: A Practical Guide for Learning with Technology. p.7

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zMEIfOW8gm6aoiXSQ6l1YQ5Rt7aKWTff/view

Ragonis, N., & Shmallo, R. (2022). The Application of Higher-Order Cognitive Thinking Skills to Promote Students’ Understanding of the Use of static in Object-Oriented Programming. Informatics in Education, 21(2), 331–352. https://doi-org.ezproxy.se.edu/10.15388/infedu.2022.10

Tinkel, D. (2022). Underchallenged and overly bored: Why rigor is important in the middle school classroom. Phi Delta Kappan, 104(2), 11–16. https://doiorg.ezproxy.se.edu/10.1177/00317217221130626

MagicSchool. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://app.magicschool.ai/tools/lesson-plan-generator?thread=20463971

 

Comments

  1. Thank you for your post. I had a similar experience with accuracy - there was an error in one calculation. It will be up to the educator to critically evaluate any assessment for solution accuracy. I like how you closed your post in that an AI tool is a resource (not a sole source) and to be used in conjunction with curriculum instruction. If we balance the potential for AI (as a time saver) and integrate it in curriculum in a measured way, then we can offer students another gateway to learning. Well done.

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  2. I absolutely agree - caution must be used. With the simple fact that large language models (like Chat GPT) sometimes completely fabricate incorrect responses that are passed off as "true." Just like any tool, the user definitely needs to have a strategy on its use, otherwise some undesirable results may occur. Great thoughts!

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  3. I completely agree with your view on this and think that AI is a great tool to provide a jumping off point, but that there are still a lot of elements of lesson planning that it overlooks. It feels like the things the lesson plan was missing were the stops along the way in a lesson that come with experience. I do think it's possible to creatively collaborate with AI, however to save time and create a stronger overall product.

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