Week 4 Blog Assignment
Part One
Until this week, I had never heard of the Magic School AI site and upon accessing it for the first time, I was quite overwhelmed with all the tools available. In the Lesson Plan generator, I was able to create a lesson for my English 3 class focusing on narrative writing. In conjunction with the class' reading of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, I wanted my students to write a narrative in the form of a blog post from the perspective of Christopher McCandless on the night before he embarked on his journey along The Stampede Trail. In addition to the narrative writing piece, they would be using what they have read thus far to create a digital map of his journey prior to April 27, 1992 after he graduated from Emory University in May of 1990. While the lesson is well aligned with the objectives and ELA standards I inserted into the generator, it is highly vague and while I enjoy the openendedness of the structure, I think I would have appreciated a bit more detail. I did, however, enjoy the extension activities included at the end to accommodate those students who may finish earlier than others or need differentiation based on their academic status. I did ask the generator to make a few adjustments in addition to asking it to provide me with more resources related to narrative writing which gave me a few interactive tools to use as well. I think asking the generator questions and to clarify or adjust the lesson based on information or skills you want to include is the best way to use the AI tool. As far as the lesson aligning with the ISTE standard I selected, I believe that in order for it to do so, I would have to expand my lesson to include the exploration of the digital tool options for the students to use in order to complete this assignment. I don't truly believe that this lesson that was created by the Lesson Plan Generator reflects the readings that we have had in class the last few weeks - though I believe with the addition of a human touch and some additional adjustments, it could be molded into Kolb's Triple E planning model. The only connection I can see is present in the Extension Activity of creating a visual representation which aligns itself with one of the learning strategies (Summarizing and Drawing) in Chapter 5 of How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures.
The link to the lesson plan and adjustments as seen on Magic School is posted below:
Part Two
Interacting with an additional AI powered tool on Magic School AI was a bit less than satisfying. I was super excited to see a tool labeled Presentation Generator which touted to be able to create a presentation based on a YouTube video. After several attempts, I was give a list of 5 slides with an outline of information from the video. Yes, that would be helpful to be able to just easily put that information into a Google Slides presentation but I really was hoping for something more or a little more involved. This caused me to move on to the Exemplar/Non-Exemplar tool which I found to be quite effective. I put in a prompt that I recently used in my English 3 course regarding the character archetype most fitting to John Proctor in The Crucible and the Non-Exemplar was a perfect example of what not to do when writing an Open Ended Response. I can definitely see myself using it on occasion to at least give me some ideas of a direction to take in certain lessons and to possibly help me create performance rubrics for my Public Speaking and Theater Arts classes.
Part Three
As I said above, Magic School could definitely be an overall resource that I would use on occasion and as far as sharing it with colleagues, I did mention it just this afternoon to a fellow English Teacher while explaining my current assignment in this class. She decided to sign up on there and began exploring the tools along with me. As far as challenges go, I am a bit distrustful of AI as I do know that there are tendencies for information to be incorrect at times, so it definitely is important to fact check. I haven't used AI in the past in the classroom but have more for personal use - information searches and such so I definitely wouldn't rely on Magic School (or any other AI tool for that matter) as a sole resource but would rather use it as a jumping off point for lesson ideas in the future.
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Hi Stephanie, you made a great statement about wholely dependeing on Magic School since it was an AI platform. I have used it while encorporating various other platforms like invideo, Prezi and even Peardeck. The mixture keeps my students a little more engaged than just the same old powerpoint slides.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Stephanie for this clear and concise explanation. I like it when you said " I did ask the generator to make a few adjustments in addition to asking it to provide me with more resources related to narrative writing which gave me a few interactive tools to use as well", which clarifies using this AI tool in an interactive way.
ReplyDeleteAdding a personal touch, not depending on this tool totally, the fact checks, using the tool for ideas and structuring rubrics are all ideas well said in your post,].
Very interesting to see a fellow ELA teacher's perspective on MagicSchool! I used the academic content generator tool, and had it create a reading on Bastet - it was interesting, a quick read, and hit the high points about the goddess, but it was a bit vague. It was good to see that I am not alone in feeling that way - seeing your description of what it generated for you, and your mention of it being vague. I agree, the lesson plan it made for me was also quite bare. I also agree about the human touch. It is my biggest complaint and improvement to what I explored with it as well.
ReplyDeleteA very clear and organized post. It’s also my first time using the Magic School tool. I thought it made things easier, but I see it’s mainly useful for brainstorming not something to fully rely on. Asking the generator to make a few adjustments and provide more resources was a great idea. I didn’t think about making any edits. I just read what the generator created and felt that many things were missing or maybe it’s just the difference between our writing and AI writing. I feel this tool is helpful when writing a lesson plan for the first time, but it should not be something we depend on.
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