Using AI to Help Make Summary Pages for Students

The other day my coworker showed me how he was using AI in meetings.

When he started talking, I was kind of bored. Oh, yeah, you're talking minutes with AI. Cool. 

Then, as he kept explaining, I realized he was onto something. 

He is the"action coordinator" (or something along those lines) for our PYP program. He meets with PYP teachers during their units to help coach them about how they can add action to their units. 

It sounds like a cool job. 

Back to AI and meetings. 

When he meets with the teachers, he records the meetings. He then takes the recording and puts it into AI and asks for a summary, the main points, and action points. 

When I heard him explain this to me I knew I had to try it. 

Students miss information so the time. 

Students miss class. 

Students forget what was said. 

When I work with teachers I tried to help them understand that students are not listening for the full time that they are in the class. Much of what they say is missed and will need repeating in some way.

Often when a teacher starts to lecture, especially if the lecture is not interesting or if the teacher talks for too long, students will tune out and they will miss information. I tune out and miss information.

This is why I think that either flipping or blending your class is a good teaching strategy because it gets them the chance to review information. 

My coworker had this idea for the meetings and I saw its usefulness in lessons. I saw that students could get a quick handout after each class highlighting the main points and giving them some vocabulary to think about and giving them some questions to look into - promoting inquiry and giving them a little more ownership in their learning.

Below is my first attempt at this. 

I asked for a summary of the lesson. 

I asked for the five takeaways. 

I asked for some key vocabulary. 

I asked him some action points.

I plan on version 2, or version 2.0, to change the action points to some questions that students should find the answers to after the lesson. Hopefully this will help them build background knowledge.

Funny enough, when I showed this to the teacher, she said that the action points are exactly what she is teaching next.

Rethinking Assessments Workshop Reflection

*This post was written with voice typing. I then went back to edit it but I may have missed some things.

Today I went to a workshop at OYIS called Rethinking Assessments. It was geared towards PYP teachers but was accessible to teachers of any program.

Interesting Reactions

Accountability

Self Control

In the beginning of the workshop, we were put in groups; parents, teachers, and students. The question for each of the groups was why do we assess?

I understood this was that we were to answer what is the purpose of assessment for parents and I said accountability. I got a laugh from other teachers in my group. One colleague of mine says that I was being too critical of teachers. 

But from my point of view, if they're paying money to the school, they want to know that their child is getting the best education that they can get.

Don't they want to know that teachers are doing their jobs?

It is entirely possible that I misunderstood the prompt or the directions which is why I said that the prompts and directions should be written on the slides. When a student doesn't hear what is being said they can look at the slide to see what they should be doing.

There were a few times in this workshop where I felt like I was a little off from the other participants. The way that I understood what to do was different from others. My answers sometimes felt very different.

Another time was when we were asked to reflect on an activity that we did we were in a group and we were talking about something. There were a few people in my group and when I wanted to say something I held back. I let others share and then I missed what I was going to speak about, the topic had changed.

When we were asked what skills we used, I said self-control. Everyone thought that was a joke. It wasn't a joke. I actually had to be patient while other people were talking instead of me because I didn't want to talk over them.

And that brings me to my next reflection.

Reflection on Myself

I learn differently

I don't know what it was about this workshop but I what's a little off. My thinking was going in a different direction from the other participants I don't know what it was.

Also, I need time to process. It would be good for me to take a breath once and a while to allow myself time to think.

Reflection on the Environment

The desks were in the same haphazard way they were when the school day ended the day before. 

It made me realize that the room, or environment, should be intentionally set up for each activity. 

Reflection on the Workshop

Allow for more modality

I had to sit in the back of the room because I could not see the whiteboard very well. A lot of the font on the slides was hard to read. There were two problems; 1) it was too small, 2) the colors were not contrasting. I think a lot could be done for readability if the contrast had been better. 

Another thing that could have made the slides better was for the props to write the prompts on the whiteboard or the slide because sometimes I could not hear what was being said and I had no way of knowing without asking another participant. That was not always possible because sometimes others were working or talking with someone else. Instead, teachers can give students or participants a lot more agency if you write the prompt or the question on the slide. 

Another thing that might be good is to add a timer to the slide. That way the timer can be visible for the participants or for students. They don't have to wait or rely on the teacher or be surprised when the timer goes off.

How can I apply this?

When planning lessons I can think through the following questions:

How many students are like me? 

How many are too far from the front? 

How many need time to think? 

How many can't read the screen? 

How many get lost in the directions?

How many have other things going on in their lives?

The Generic Effect of AI

Yesterday in the Japanese Ab intio class I am supporting, students were asked to write a diary typical day. The directions were sparse. It just it just said right about your day and add thoughts and feelings and what you did. This is why I advocate for putting some sort of objective on all assignments - it helps the students and support teachers!

I'm knowing these two students and knowing that Japanese is progressing and knowing that they needed something, I knew they needed something a little more. Putting thoughts together is not always easy in a foreign language.

I opened ChatGPT and put in the assignment and then asked it to make a vocabulary list as well as sentence stems for this assignment.

It was pretty good, but it definitely needed a little bit of work. I wish I had had more time to spend on this. With a little prompting with a little experience these will get better.

But this is also a problem with AI. This kind of generic, generalization for an assignment is not helpful unless done in a pinch.

For this case, my students relied on me more than for this scaffold. 

One thing I didn't do - that I'll do next time - was add furigana to the kanji.

Take a Pause when Things Get Nuts

Photo by Adam Birkett on Unsplash

In the beginning of my career, my default classroom strategy was from a les of power. I was the teacher, the students were students, they should listen to me. End of story.

Now that I am further along in my career, I would love to write that I have all the answers, but that's not true. I do have a tendency to resort to that dictator when I am stressed. This happened a few weeks ago.

When this happens, I feel awful. It is also not effective. I find that students at this school at this time are less likely to respond to that way as well. - Well, when it comes from me. It's not my nature to be like that.

One thing I have found to be effective is to open my computer and start writing a behavior note. I usually look up at the student while I am doing it and sometimes they notice, but more often, they calm down when they notice they are not getting a response.

This morning I listened to an episode of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast that talked about a similar strategy. 

I should use this more.


The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast - EduTip 23: Calm an out-of-control class with a notebook.

How We Collect Student Data

At OYIS, we use a Google Form to collect data about students with concerns. This helps admin, coordinators, learning support, and teachers to see, as a community, which students are coming up on our collective radar. It shows us frequency of submission and why the submission was made. This can inform how we talk with teachers during our collaboration meetings.

On the form we have teachers fill out, we have a field asking for more details on the concern. This field includes the following, and this was recommended by our Head of Inclusion when she came to our school.

This allows teachers to quickly choose one by clicking a button. If there is a need to add more context, the teacher can add a comment at the bottom.

I experimented a little last year with making the categories a little more dynamic. The idea was to analyze the data every month and then put the most frequent responses in the list for the next month. 

That hasn't happened yet, but as I write this, I wonder if that is the best approach. 

I Made an IB Testing Accommodations Timer

I get really confused when I am dealing with time. I don't know what it is, but it gets me every time. 

Many students taking the exams qualify for additional time. Because of this, we write the starting time, when there is 30 minutes remaining, 5 minutes remaining, and the ending time on the whiteboard.

On top of my own deficiency with adding numbers, there is sometimes more than one student taking a test at a time, and now that there are even more tests happening, sometimes there are different tests happening with different students who might all have different accommodations. 

It gets complicated. 

So I thought about how technology could help me here. I knew I needed a timer, and I needed it to find the times for 30 min left and 5 minutes left and the end time based on the start time and the accommodations time.

So I turned to Claude to help me. It wasn't easy, but after 8 prompts, I came up with the following app. 

https://claude.site/artifacts/3db52944-61db-4d82-9434-5dbf0a7cb157

If you try it, let me know how it can be improved.

Talking to your child about Artificial Intelligence

Since November 2022 when ChatGPT was released to the world, it’s seemed that AI has been everywhere in the news. Since then, AI has become a force in technology and has taken the world by storm. We have already seen examples of its uses in different fields from history, archaeology, and law enforcement. More urgently, universities are starting to partner with AI companies, which will further their adoption.

image created with FreePik.com

As AI continues to grow, it is important to have conversations with young people about their relationship with AI. The MIT Technology Review offers some guidance for parents with 6 points to talk about:

• AI is not your friend,
• AI is not a replacement for search engines,
• You might be accused of using AI even though you have not used it,
• Systems are designed to get you hooked and might show you bad stuff,
• Use AI safely and responsibly,
• Don’t miss out on what AI’s actually good at.

AI is not your friend

AI technologies have been programmed to sound human. In their answers they look back at their programming and predict the next most logical word. These AI models have become scarily good, so it is important for children (and adults!) to keep this in mind when using AI tools. This is especially important when using a site like character.ai where you can chat with different personalities and users can even make their own.

AI is not a replacement for search engines

There are only a few AI tools that are connected to the internet, so when asking for information about current events. AI tools are programmed to please the user, so when answering, they might hallucinate, or, make things up.

When talking with young people, remind them to check the information they read. Can they find other stories about it with a web search? Have they heard adults talking about it? Verifying information is more important than ever.

You might be accused of using AI even though you have not used it

If a student produces a piece of work that does not match their performance in the classroom or their past work, teachers look for answers. With AI being prevalent, that is the first thought many teachers have. This is why is is important to have notes or draft work that shows your work is your own. If you can show that, most teachers will be appreciative. It might also help to show your teacher your work throughout your process. This can be as simple as asking a teacher to help, even when you do not need help, to show the teacher what you are doing.

Systems are designed to get you hooked and might show you bad stuff

Talk to your child about algorithms and how these technology tools are designed to be addictive. Companies like YouTube use powerful algorithms to give their users recommendations that keep them on their platform for a longer period of time. After understanding that this is how these companies make money, and that time on site equals greater profits, I imagine more children will become mindful of their habits.

Use AI safely and responsibly

There are many kinds of text-based, image-based, video-based AI tools. With images, come potential risks with inappropriate content. Some AI tools without guard rails can generate images you might not want them to see. Talk to children about using AI responsibly.

Don’t miss out on what AI’s actually good at

AI is better at some tasks than others. AI tools can create essays and articles, but the writing can be a little redundant. AI tools are better for brainstorming, organizing, finding connections, and finding out what ideas you might be missing. After telling AI my problem, I sometimes ask it to tell me what I might be forgetting or missing. Doing this helps me to use AI more as a thought partner than a blunt tool.

It’s a matter of having a trusting relationship

At OYIS, we believe in having open and honest communication about technology from an early age. These conversations should start when children are young, but can begin at any age. Have frequent conversations with your child about technology and model for positive ways to use technology for your children.