WN #15

Breathing New Life into Old Material

Author

Kyler McClary
February 04, 2024

Breathing New Life into Old Material

Before I became a teacher, for some reason I had this vision in my head that I was going to teach the same course year after year, compiling material and replaying the hits with each new group of students. Once I had a few years under my belt, I thought, I’d really be in a groove. I didn’t really account for having to get my foot in the door by teaching a little bit of this and a little bit of that, some over here and some over there, then moving schools and filling a slightly different role with completely different students and the latest new approach to curriculum, then taking on that elective that is currently teacherless, giving me a 3rd prep but really a 4th if you count my honors section. Even if you’re lucky enough to start off in the job you want and stay there, the rapid evolution of technology, pedagogy, sociopolitical context, and student dynamics means that you are constantly iterating, updating, adding to, or subtracting from your course. Then comes a pandemic…

You get the point. Keeping up can be draining, and it can be easy to feel like you are constantly having to reinvent the wheel. The emergence of generative AI seems to be ushering in the next cycle of tear it all down and build it back up, but at least this time it offers a helping hand in the process. And while our minds might first go to generative AI’s ability to create new material, don’t underestimate its ability to unlock and revitalize what we already have.

In your haste the create everything anew, don’t forget to tap into all that has already been created.

Sometimes in our haste to create something new, we neglect the old—a foundation created by years of experience, hard work, and dedication to the profession. A trove of material often neglected because it’s “out-dated,” “won’t work for my students,” “doesn’t really fit with how we do things in my class,” or is even “slightly problematic”—all of which may be true… in its current format. But often mixed among the things that wouldn’t work are the bones of things that do, and AI is great at breathing new life into them.

To start, you’ll need to input the old material into an AI tool. That could be as easy as copying and pasting it into ChatGPT, but of course not everything is copy pastable. You can upload it as a text document or PDF to a free tool like Claude, or as an image to a tool like Copilot or Bard. Personally, I subscribe to ChatGPT Plus so I can do everything in one place with the best AI model, but if you aren’t trying to pay for anything, here’s a chart that breaks down free and premium features for some of the top AI chatbots.

Once you’ve given AI the material you will be working with, there are several ways to go about giving it a makeover. Here are a few ideas:

Critique the Material - Have AI do a critique of the material and point out opportunities for improvement; Review it for any outdated information or methods; Check for biases and other inaccuracies

Edit and Repurpose Documents - Update and refine content to match current educational standards or trends; Repurpose old lecture notes, text-heavy documents, or PowerPoint slides into more interactive and accessible formats; Make the material more relevant and inclusive

Content Generation and Expansion - Generate additional content, providing fresh perspectives or updated information; Create new questions, assignments, project ideas, scaffolds, or extensions; Add AI-generated images to provide a visual element to anything

Rubrics and Instructions - Generate and enhance rubrics, instructions, or guidelines for old projects and assignments; Clarify, simplify, or add helpful context; Provide differentiated versions

Exemplar Creation - Generate exemplars at different levels, or for different sections of a task; Analyze them through the lens of a specific criteria, or the rubric as a whole; Digitize a handwritten example

Translation and Localization - Translate old materials into different languages for accessibility and language learning; Make material more relatable to your specific group of students and community

Cross-disciplinary Alignment - Draw connections between different disciplines or frameworks (“How can I integrate ________ into this lesson?”); Take a lesson that works well in another class and make it work for the context of your class

Image Transcription and Analysis - Let AI describe and/or analyze existing images, diagrams, or artwork for creating engaging discussions or critical thinking exercises, or to provide additional accessibility; Transcribe handwriting to digitize material once confined to pen and paper

Image Editing and Enhancement - Isolate, add, remove, and enhance elements of images, diagrams, etc.; Redesign old presentation slides, handouts, or graphics (Canva for Education is free for teachers and has some great AI tools for this purpose).

Student Collaboration - Put students in groups and encourage them to use AI to help revamp old materials themselves!

Though these ideas only scratch the surface of what is possible, hopefully they provide some inspiration to go back and explore material through a fresh lens. Remember, generative AI isn’t just about creating anew—it's a gateway to redefining the old, standing on the shoulders of past efforts to build something better. It unlocks endless possibilities to enrich and elevate what we've already accomplished, saving us valuable time in the process.

A Video Introduction to GenAI in the Classroom

If you are looking to introduce yourself, your colleagues, or your students to the topic of generative AI in education, Vox Media has a pretty good introductory video (17 min.) that provides an overview, key issues, pros/cons, and varying opinions from students and educators. It’s a good starting point to spark some valuable discussions.

AI Pioneers in Higher Ed

Arizona State University is the first higher education institution to announce an official partnership with OpenAI. The school will have full access to ChatGPT Enterprise, which includes no usage caps, faster speeds, opportunities to build custom tools with the GPT-4 model, and prioritizes data privacy. Among ASU’s plans are to create personalized AI tutors for students and expand their popular prompt engineering course. Ferris State University in Michigan is leaning into AI in a different way, creating two AI students and enrolling them as freshmen, with the goal of studying their performance and decision-making to gain greater insights into the student experience.

Students Turning to AI for Social-Emotional Support

A study out of Stanford University highlights the proliferation of students using AI chatbots for social-emotional support. The study focuses on the AI companion chatbot Replika, finding that 90% of participating student users reported loneliness. Many found Replika to be a helpful friend, therapist, or “intellectual mirror,” and 3% even credited it with helping them avoid suicide. This follows a report I mentioned a few weeks ago showing that, of students who used generative AI during the 2022-23 school year, just 23% said they used it for academic purposes, whereas 29% said they used it to help deal with anxiety or mental health issues, 22% for issues with friends, and 16% for family conflicts.

📌 AI x Podcasts

Curio now lets you create custom, AI-generated podcasts based on fact-checked articles from leading publications. Just type in what you’d like it to create. In other podcast news, it looks like an upcoming iOS update will be including AI-generated transcripts for shows in the Apple Podcasts app, including the ability to search through the content.

📌 PowerSchool Gets AI Upgrade

PowerSchool is introducing a new AI tool, PowerBuddy, to help with various tasks throughout its SIS and LMS platform. It’s easy to make a cool-looking video, but I’m curious to see if it’s actually useful. That part is harder to execute. Expect lots more in the way of AI features being added to existing edtech products and platforms in the coming months.

📌 New ChatGPT Features

ChatGPT is rolling out a couple of new features. The first aims to provide greater personalization by carrying what ChatGPT learns from one chat to the next, allowing it to become more helpful over time. The second gives Plus users the ability to summon custom GPTs by including an @ mention in a conversation. This allows you to pull custom tools into existing threads, and gives you the ability to essentially call a “team meeting” of various helpers if you want to incorporate multiple GPTs into one conversation.

Remember Thesauruses?

Remember thesauruses? 😂😂 We’ve come a long way. But we need to teach students how to use the tools available to them.

Here’s GPT-4 helping me with a word choice question on a previous newsletter:

“(insert sentence here).” What other words can I use in place of "(insert word here)?” Make a list of 5 options, and for each word explain why it would or wouldn't be a good choice for my sentence. Break down the subtleties, then give a final recommendation.

More Ideas…

University professors give some helpful advice on adapting to AI in the classroom. Relevant to K-12 teachers as well.

That’s all for this week! If you appreciate the content in this newsletter, consider subscribing for free, or sharing with people in your network who may find value in it. If you are looking for more, feel free to check out the archive to catch up on any editions you may have missed.