Hour of AI Week Is Here! #HourOfAI #withSchoolAI

Happy Hour of AI Week everyone! If you are thinking, "Wait a second. I thought it was the Hour of Code Week." you are not losing your marbles. Code.org has shifted from the Hour of Code to the Hour of AI. You can find out more about this change here. 

I loved teaching the Hour of Code in the classroom to get students excited about coding and computational thinking. The Hour of AI is designed to do the same. Sometimes students think they know what AI is and assume it is in everything. They might not be far off in thinking that, but students do need to know about AI, how to spot when it is being used, and how to use if effectively in their learning. 

The team at SchoolAI knew they had to have something awesome for teachers to give to their students to help them explore AI in a safe way. There are a series of lessons for all grade levels to help students explore AI. As a teacher, we even did a full webinar on showcasing the lessons and what they would look like if you were the student. You can watch the recording here. 

If you want jump right into the lessons SchoolAI created, you can find them all right here. 

What I love about these AI Lessons is that they are designed to empower the student to explore AI with the guardrails needed to ensure that it is safe. It was important that SchoolAI made sure that all of these resources were made available to all of our users for free. Watching the Sandbox recording of how the Lessons can be used and rolling the lessons out to students next week is a great way to engage your classroom in AI. If you are new to using AI, it is a wonderful opportunity to explore AI with your students knowing that it will be safe for everyone. 

This partnership with Code.org really shows the commitment to a sound, pedagogical approach to AI instruction that is at the heart of what SchoolAI believes. If you want to know more about how SchoolAI can support you and your students, sign up for a free account. I hope you will share how you use the lesson with your students in our Community or on socials. Tag me @TheNerdyTeacher if you do so I can share with everyone. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP

International Dot Day #withSchoolAI #EdChat

As a high school teacher, I had not idea what Dot Day was and that it was a big deal is schools all over the world. When I taught Middle School, I started to hear more about Dot Day from students and it sounded like a really fun story and activity. Once I finally sat down and read the book by Peter H. Reynolds, I was blown away. It was the type of story I needed to read when I was starting school and feeling like everyone was better than me at everything. As an undiagnosed neurodivergent learner throughout K12, it was hard not to feel "less than" when compared to my peers. I never thought I would be able to "make my mark" in any meaningful way. A simple story can really change the narrative for a young student if we make the time. 

Working at SchoolAI, I get the chance to spend time building amazing Spaces to support the awesome work educators are already doing in their classroom. With International Dot Day approaching next week, I was wondering if there was a way to create a Space to support this important day in school. After some fun exploring different prompts, I put together a Space that will allow the students to watch a reading of the story and be prompted by SchoolAI's Dot about ways they have made their mark even when things were tough. Then, they get to create their own Dot using the Doodleboard PowerUp. Here is a screenshot of my Doodleboard. 

I hope you have a chance to use the Space with your students who are looking for a way to explore Dot Day and make their mark. These types of Spaces are perfect for launching and sharing with families at home so they can explore with their children. 

If you want to find more Spaces that are created in the SchoolAI Community, join the Champions Program and you will get weekly updates on all of the amazing things educators are doing to make school awesome. 

Win a Trip ISTE/ASCD 2026 & Magic Kingdom! #withSchoolAI

🌟 Join Season 1 of the SchoolAI Champions Program! 🌟

Season 1 runs from August 5 – October 31, 2025

Get ready to earn points, unlock exclusive rewards, and compete for the Ultra-Mythic Prize:
🎉 A trip to the ISTE/ASCD 2026 Conference in June AND a magical day at Disney’s Magic Kingdom!

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✨ How to Get Started✨

1. Join the Champions Program

👉 Fill out the form to officially join the Champions community.

2. Access Community Resources

💬 Join the SchoolAI Community and open the shared Champions Folder with:

• 🎥 Launch video

• 🏋️ Champions badge

• 📁 Seasonal challenge guides and other resources

3. Complete Seasonal Challenges

💡 Take part in fun, impactful classroom and community challenges to earn Champion Points.

4. Unlock Epic Tiers & Prizes

🏆 Points help you reach Rare, Legendary, or Mythic Tiers, unlocking:

• Exclusive SchoolAI swag

• Entries for the Ultra-Mythic Prize — the trip to ISTE/ASCD & Magic Kingdom!

5. Stay Engaged

📣 Share your SchoolAI journey, inspire your network, and keep collecting points!

Giving Students Space #EdChat #AIinEDU

One of the things that I learned during my time in the classroom is that giving students Space can be make a huge difference. You can be the most engaging teacher in the world, but some students will not engage. The have so much going on that the 50 minutes in your classroom is just not working for them on some days. Some teachers will drill down on those students and make sure they engage in some way, but all that does is make the students curl up tighter in their own ball of security. 

I think it is not realistic to expect students to be ready to go and engage and learn every class. The world around them is vastly different than it was for many of us growing up. They know far more about the world around them and have a wide range of issues that they are dealing with, that there are going to be days that they do not have the bandwidth to commit to school the way a teacher would like them to. 

I remember the first time I realized that my class is not the most important thing in the world for a student. I say this, because there are teachers who still act like their worksheet is the end all be all of learning and not completing it is a high crime. Anyway, I talked to a student after class to ask them why their paper is not completed and submitted. They looked at me and their eyes welled up and said they have been up late for multiple nights taking care of their sick sibling while their mom works the late shift this week. She wanted to get the paper in on time, but she just has not had the energy to commit to it. 

I felt like a grade A turd after that. Two things stuck out to me;

1. I have not created a classroom environment that allowed for this students to feel like they can ask for extra time. 

2. My class should never be more important that a student's wellbeing. 

I worked really hard to change the way that my class functioned moving forward. I also worked really hard to make my class as accessible as possible. It was a catalyst for me to move away from textbooks and use Evernote to store all class notes and readings so students could access them from their phones. I started to dive into EdTech to bring as much equity to my class as possible. As the tools changed, the goal was the same, how do I make sure all students feel like they can engage when they are ready to engage. Anytime, anyplace learning. 

I bring all of this up because there are plenty of conversations about AI in the classroom and I do not hear enough people talking about the value of AI when it comes to accessibility. There are so many students that benefit from using AI to help them learn when they are ready to learn and are in a place that allows them to learn. Sometimes, those places are not in a school. Sometimes, they are in their home, alone in their room, blocking out the noise from down the hall. Sometimes it is when they get to visit their friend and take a deep breath and let it out before diving into classwork with a peer they trust. There are so many reasons why a student will not be ready or able to engage in class, and space is the best think we can give those students sometimes. 

I look at how I started using AI in the classroom before I left to create content and to training for SchoolAI and it was always around accessibility and inclusion. Creating Spaces for students to help them when they needed help was a way to support their learning when they were ready and where they were. Does the student need to take a mental health day and cannot get to school? Well, the Space I created was there for them when they were ready to explore. Student have another doctor's appointment that had them miss their 17th day of school? There was a Space for them. Did a student have a hard time getting their writing started because their dyslexia makes them feel less than? I had a Space for them too. 

Using Spaces from SchoolAI allowed me to make sure that my students were able to get the access and support they needed when they needed and when they were ready to engage with it. You can use just about any AI tool out there to make a worksheet and the students can use AI to answers all of the questions on the worksheet. Using a Space that allows the students to drive the learning and focus on the parts they need to learn is all about personalization and differentiation in a way that was not possible for teachers before. 

The next time you are thinking about creating more busy work for students to engage them, take a moment and think whether or not Space is actually what they need to be successful.  

Hugs and High Fives,

NP

Support Young Writers for Be an Author Month #EdChat

 

Figma and Book Creator have collaborated on an amazing project that is worth checking out if you want to dive deep into supporting your students as writers. You can click the image to be taken to the book they created that provided all of the details on the event and contest.

As someone who has written a few books, getting started with anything can be very tough. As a student, I would stare at blank pages and know I have a story in me, but I had not idea how to get over the hump in my brain and let the words spill out. A teacher always told us to read when we were stuck with writing and the ideas would pour out of us onto the paper when we are filled with ideas. Sometimes that worked, but others times, I still had a blank sheet of paper in front of me late at night. Have taught ELA for over 15 years, I know that this is still true for students. Sometimes, students just need a little nudge in the right direction and the idea will flow. I was thinking about this when I saw the Be an Author Month posts and thought about how much I would have wanted to do this as a kid, but I would have been terrified on how to get started. I just needed something to get the ball rolling and I think I might have built something using SchoolAI Spaces that would have helped me tell the stories I wanted to tell. 

Here is a Space I prompted that can help guide students through the creative process to build their story without writing it for them. You can take my Space, remix it, connect your standards, and edit however you want to fit the needs for your students. This is a wonderful way to make creative writing more accessible to students who struggle take the ideas out of their head and getting them on paper. 

Utilizing AI to make various projects, assignments, classwork, etc. more accessible for our students is such a quick win. I highly encourage you to take the time and use the Space to help those students who have a story to tell and just need a little help to tell it. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP

Utilizing AI in the Library #TLChat #SchoolAI

I am really excited about the work I have been doing the past few weeks with the amazing Shannon Miller and SchoolAI. There has been so much content created to support classroom teachers to help make school awesome every day, but we did not want our amazing librarians and media specialists to feel left out. Working with Shannon, we created a couple of really cool Spaces that we think you will love. 

What Book Should I Read Next?!

One of the tough things for a young reader is to figure out what they should read next. There are so many options, it can be tough to choose if you do not know what might be perfect for you. The Teacher Librarian might be unavailable when the students needs to ask questions about their next book or the student is at home and wants to be able to choose their next book as soon as possible. I built a Space to help with this exact problem! Shannon took the Space to FETC and shared it with her workshop with over 100 librarians and they loved it! You can remix the Space and add any other parameters you want to meet the needs of your school. You can even add a csv file of your catalogue so it can only recommend books from your collection. If you want the Space to have a specific theme for a specific month to recommend certain books, you can do that too! Have some fun and play around with the Space and let me know how you made it your own. 

The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus Research Space

Many years ago, the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus took media literacy circles by storm. It was an amazingly silly resource that educators started to use to help teach media literacy using the Internet. This amazing collection of information put together by Lyle Zapato on his site, has helped thousands of students understand that, just because it is on the Internet, does not mean it is true. I think about the PNWTO often, which is admittedly weird, and how it was such a fun way to engage students in an important learning task. As I was thinking of ways to explore media literacy and AI, I thought about the PNWTO again and came up with a Space that can be used to help students understand that AI needs to be understood in a similar vein as basic Internet searches from years ago. 

I also used SchoolAI to create a worksheet to help the students prompt the Space and write down their answers. You can find the worksheet here and make your own copy as needed. If you want the prompt I used to generate this worksheet, you can find that here. Using the prompt will allow you tag any standards from your state that you might need. The overall goal of the Space is to engage students in using AI to research a topic and the Space will give more and more ridiculous answers to the questions until the students starts to question the accuracy. Once that happens, the Space will start to ask the student how they could go about verifying information they find online or through using AI. Let me know if you use this with your students and how it went. 

SchoolAI Librarian/Media Specialist Community Space

Lastly, I am excited about the launch of a space in the SchoolAI Community dedicated to librarians and media specialists. You spoke up and we listened! The contribution to edtech from these educators is immeasurable. They are having amazing conversations around AI in schools and we wanted to make sure they could continue to have these conversations and share their ideas in the community. As part of that, we had Shannon Miller on the SchoolAI Sandbox! Join us for an hour filled with important conversation on the role of AI in the library and schools as a whole. We are really excited about this partnership with Shannon Miller. Watch the recording here! The last time Shannon and I dove headfirst into a project, we organized The Epic Romeo and Juliet Project. If you do not know what that is, please check it out. 

We hope to see you in the new Community space to lead, innovate, and collaborate. 

As always, big hugs and high fives, 

-Nerdy

Citations in the world of AI #EngChat #EdChat

I encountered a great question about citing things students finding using AI resources. If students were using a Space in SchoolAI and they were given information they wanted to use in an essay, how might they go about citing that? Well, the folks at MLA and APA are one step ahead and have provided examples on how to do that. I was able to take that work and build a Space that will help students with their citation questions that you can use with your students. 

What is nice about this Space is that it will not only properly format their citations, it will provide help with in-text citation as well. In-text citation was one of my big focus points when I taught writing to my grade nine and ten students. I really drilled it home because I always viewed proper citation as a mechanical function that should be completed and checked during proofreading. I was probably a little too hard on it, but I feel like it payed off for students. 

I once had a former student visit the classroom during their Fall break and they told me their professor told them that they were the only one in the entire lecture hall sized class to have accurate in-text citations and they wanted to make sure to tell me. It made my entire week. It was even better because they came in and told me while I had my Freshmen with me, so they got to hear the story as well. 

Citation can be a tedious part of any writing process, but it is much easier than it has ever been. There are plenty of programs out there that will create citations for you and and you no longer have to worry about having too many spaces or not enough spaces in the citation. You do not have to worry about the punctuation in the citation. I remember being marked down for these thinks in high school. With the advent of AI, how the heck to you cite ChatGPT? I remember when we asked the same question about wikipedia and other websites. Well, MLA and APA do not let their writing community down. There are guidelines on how to cite chat conversations with AI. There are even guidelines on citing memes! 

To help cut through the noise, I built a Space that will help users with their citations. It is built to help with citing AI specifically, but I also built in examples and pdfs from MLA and APA to help with all citations types and to even provide examples to showcase what they user should have. I have also built the Space to NOT write essays for students, but help them insert in-text citation as needed. 

If you want to explore the Space, give it a look over and see how it might help you or your students. 

MLA and APA Citation Space

Make Moments with AI #EdChat #SchoolAI

Time. The most valuable asset of any teacher. Teachers have been asked to do more and more over the years, but the schedules have never allowed for more time. Added bus duty, recess duty, aftercare duty, etc. All of these take time away from all of the other little things that teachers need to do to do their job effectively. All this really means is that the time do these things gets moved to personal time. Longer days in the classroom or longer nights before bed are needed to complete many of these tasks. Worse yet, the stress of coming up with new lesson idea, assignments, projects, etc, can make it hard to create on the spot before tackling the numerous other responsibilities we have as adults. I wasn't sure what role AI was going to play in my life as a teacher, but when I opened the door to the possibility of AI helping me with the little things, I found myself reclaiming my time. 

One of my biggest issues when it came to lesson planning was Lesson Block. A cousin of Writer's Block, Lesson Block is when a teacher has some sort of idea, but they just can't put it into words or the format needed to roll out in class. Too often, seemingly awesome ideas would never fully develop because I could not get over Lesson Block. Sometimes the idea would finally fully form, but after that part of the unit has passed. I used to be able to pop into another teacher's classroom and bounce ideas off of them to help flesh out the lesson, but those windows of time are few and far between because all of us are so busy. I needed a thought partner and one that could be there for me when I needed to explore an idea. I turned to ChatGPT to see if it can help me. 

I first explored the free version of ChatGPT and then eventually turned to the paid version. I started with a casual conversation exploring what it knew about lesson plans, education, state standards, etc. I was impressed by what it knew and understood with my various prompts. I decided to give it a broad idea of what I was thinking for a lesson and I wanted to see what it would do. Well, it gave me a lesson that was amazing...for someone else's class. The lesson would not work for the students I had in the class and rolling that out would have been trouble. But, that failure of a lesson was helpful to me in the long run. It gave me a starting point for exploring a similar type of lesson that would work best for my class. So, similar to how I might go to my teaching partner and ask for their thoughts on my ideas, they might not have an idea that would work, but it could lead me to the idea that works for me. This conversation with ChatGPT was great in its failure to understand my class dynamic and that back and forth and the creation of the lesson took less than 10 minutes! 

After exploring multiple school specific AI tools because I was concerned about data security and model training, I settled on SchoolAI because it was fully COPPA and FERPA compliant and I just loved the UX more than the others. I can be a bit of snob about those things. Anyway, SchoolAI has an assistant called Coteacher that functioned in a similar fashion as ChatGPT, but it was designed to better understand classroom dynamics and the things that a teacher might need when requesting different solutions. It became one of my go-to tools to help me work through ideas quickly. There was even a time when I had an idea mid class that I was trying to articulate and I dropped it into Coteacher and it was able to put into works my jumbled idea to use in class and it worked! When I started to explore Spaces and how I can prompt a chatbot to support the students in class, that was a game changer. 

One of the first things I did with SchoolAI Spaces was to build a Space to help students building in Minecraft. The Minecraft House Builder Space was designed to help students with varied experience with Minecraft to build a house using the Design Thinking approach we covered in class. The common issue with this lesson was that the class has a wide range of experience with Minecraft. I had students who have never played Minecraft and some students that kill the Ender Dragon for fun on a Saturday night. I am somewhere in the middle of those two groups. I am either spending lots of time with the first time users or I am struggling to help the advanced student figure out how to do something beyond my experience. Either way, I am spending too much time on one type of student. What the Space does is support all students based on their skill level. It will help newbies explore Minecraft with basic steps on getting started and it will also help students use redstone in wildly creative ways. That frees me to engage more fully with the whole class and observe how all of the students are doing, not just the top and bottom of the experience ladder. That reclaimed time allows me to connect with more students. 

Being able to connect with students with the reclaimed time is a huge part of using AI correctly and effectively. By creating that Space to support students, I was able to focus on the thing that makes teaching so amazing; connecting with students and helping them 1-on-1. That is my hot take when it comes to AI. Using AI effectively can lead to more human moments, not fewer. Reclaiming 5 minutes here and there might not seem like much, but that student that you connected with during that time felt seen and heard for the first time all day, week, or month. Teaching is all about the moments. If AI can help create more opportunities to have those moments with students, then it is worth every bit of time spent learning how to utilize it in the classroom for yourself and for students. 

I'd love to hear how you are using AI in your class to create more moments with your students. 

Hugs and high fives, 

Nerdy

Note: All images are AI Generated using SchoolAI and do it that way saved me tons of time!

AI to Save Time #EdChat

There have been plenty of articles and posts on the use of AI in the classroom. I think there are lots of people that are asking important questions about using AI. The most common question I have received is how AI can save them time. 

Time is the biggest thing that can be given back with the use of AI. This year, I have been put in charge of technology coaching for all three divisions of my school. PreK12 support for one person can be tough. That has me supporting all of the students and all of the teachers. Simply, there is not enough time for me to help everyone and teach my classes and support my 6th grade advisory. I needed to think of something that can help me save time. AI can step in and give me time back. 

What I have done is create a Sidekick using SchoolAI that can help students and teachers with low level tech support to solve some of those simpler issues that would normally take time. Having students or teachers do some of the quick fixes with support from AI can save me minutes here and there. Those minutes add up and can allow me to meet with one extra teacher a day. That is a huge deal when you take a step back and think about what that means for the big picture. 1 teacher a day does not seem like much, but 20 teachers a month is a nice number. 

AI is not designed to solve all of our ills in education. It is meant to help start the creative process. It can give teachers the extra few minutes that can be used to make a difference. Don't be scared of AI, think of it as another tool to let you do the things that matter most. 

This is the example I created using SchoolAI to help save some time for students and teachers. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

The Nerdy Teacher

What Role Does AI Play In My Life As A Teacher? #AIedu #EdChat

AI is the buzzword right now in education circles. There are plenty of "experts" that claim to show you how to do AI right. I think it is a little early to declare yourself an expert on this topic. However, there are some teachers that are AI Explorers. I think of these people as teachers looking for ways to leverage tools to enhance the work they do and support the varied learners in their classroom. 

I think it is important for teachers to constantly think about equity in all parts of education, and that includes how AI can and will be used by students and staff. There are some great conversations going on about these issues. Dee Lanier and Ken Shelton have shared amazing things on these topics and you should check them out if you want to learn more. 

For me, I have explored lots of different uses of AI for myself and for my students. I'd like to share a few of the ways I have used two tools to help me in those areas. 

MagicSchool AI

I have used MagicSchool for most of the school year to help me create rubrics, level text, and create meaningful lessons. It is nice to be able to quickly create something like a rubric in a couple of minutes when it used take a full prep period. Being able to automate these types of tasks that require minor tweeks makes my job as a teacher easier and more efficient. I can spend the extra time providing more in-depth feedback to students and more 1:1 time with students who might need some extra help. Being able to quickly create multiple versions of the same article for students to read with the text leveler to help the wide variety of students with varied reading levels is a huge time saver. It supports inclusivity for all of the students so they can still read the article, understand the content, and participate in the group discussion. I love using these tools to make so many things, that once took so much time, easier to get done and allow me to focus on the students. 

SchoolAI

SchoolAI is awesome because I love to use it create Spaces. Spaces are ways for teachers to set up AI chatbots to support students with very specific projects. I have created one for every single project my students have done this last trimester. SchoolAI has helped students with their coding projects, design projects, and creative thinking. I set the chatbot up in a way to ask student's questions and push their thinking instead of just giving them the answers to the problems. This has been a great tool to help students learn how to best prompt chatbots to get the most out of a single question instead of having to create multiple questions over time. 

These two tools are awesome to use in the classroom and really help make my life easier as a teacher. Most importantly, when used correctly, AI tools can support inclusivity. AI can allow students and teachers to create items that meet them where they are and help them where they need to go. As a dyslexic, neurodivergent learner, I struggled in many of my classes because I could not get past the opening paragraph and would just give up. Having texts leveled for me and written in ways that can support how I take in and process information would have made school so much easier for me in the long run. Having a AI Sidekick to guide me though the toughest parts of my Math, Science, Social Studies, and other classes would have helped eliminate the anxiety I would feel. 

Be wary of the self-proclaimed experts and pay attention to the AI Explorers who are living and learning with AI on a day to day basis if you want to see how you can use these tools to support your students. 

Using @AdobeExpress for Generative AI Images #AdobeEduCreative @RebeecaLouHare

The integration of technology in the classroom is not just about the latest gadgets and gizmos. It's about enhancing our lessons and making them come alive for our students. I'm always on the lookout for fresh, innovative ways to make this happen, and I've found a gem in Adobe Express's generative AI feature. If you haven't given it a shot yet, read on to find out why it could be the tech boost your classroom needs.

Why Adobe Express's Generative AI?

Adobe Express, renowned for its easy-to-use design capabilities, has now embraced the world of AI. This tool takes your basic inputs and transforms them into stunning visual content. And trust me, it's a lot simpler than it sounds. So how can we, as educators, leverage this? Let's dive into some examples.

1. Elementary School: Story Illustrations

Every teacher knows the magic that unfolds when young minds weave tales. Imagine supporting those narratives with AI-generated images. After your students draft their short stories, use Adobe Express to create unique illustrations. What is nice about this, is that students can see the power of the words they use to describe. Does the image not match what was in your head? Then consider adding more describing words to the story. Express allows for multiple iterations of a single prompt, so you can search for the one that best matches your vision or you can add more words to help get the image you have in your mind. I think that writing, for some students, can be too abstract. They have a hard time putting to words what they see in their mind. Express can help with that.

On the other side of this lesson, you could create weird images and have the students write a story about what is happening or just describe what they see. Helping students with the writing process can be tough. As an English teacher, teaching writing is one of the hardest things I have ever done and it took me years before I felt confident that I was doing an adequate job. Express can help teachers and students with their writing in a fun and engaging way.

2. Middle School: Science Posters

Middle schoolers are at an age where they're delving deep into scientific concepts. Creating engaging lessons with interesting graphics can take lots of time and energy. Not all teachers are create at creating their own custom graphics or finding the best images to fit their needs. Express is awesome because you can create the image you need for the specific slide you have created. Below is an image of a desert biome that has different types of cacti. With a properly worded prompt, I was able to create the exact image I needed. Working with students, teachers could create other images of biomes based on what students learned in the their lessons or in their own personal research.

3. High School: Visualizing Geometry

Mathematics is all around us, and geometry is the art of seeing shapes and patterns in our world. Adobe Express’s Generative AI can elevate this experience for high school students. When diving into lessons about different geometric shapes or complex patterns, teachers can input terms into the platform and share those with the students to see if they can identify the shapes. 

For instance, just by typing in "hexagon" into the prompt, this awesome image was generated. Being able to quickly create all of the images you need to share with students will be a huge time saver. Asking students to explore these images in nature could take them on a journey where they start to see geometry everywhere they turn. Instead of wasting hours looking for the perfect image on the internet, the teacher can now create the image they want with a few descriptive words. 

Ready to Dive In?

Adobe Express's Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize your classroom activities. It not only brings lessons to life but also encourages students to think creatively and visually. As always, it's about blending our teaching methods with tools that amplify the learning experience. It is important to note that the AI feature is not currently available through student Adobe accounts. This will change in the future, so keep an eye out! 

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP

Beyond Paper and Pencil: Innovative Assessments with @AdobeExpress #AdobeEduCreative @RebeccaLouHare

One of the things that has had me excited this school year is really diving into the updated Adobe Express and seeing how it can be used for assessment. When I showcased Express to my teachers at the start of the year, there were plenty of "oohhs" and "ahhhs". Animate from Audio really got the foreign language teachers excited because they saw it is a great way to engage students who have been historically shy about recording themselves speaking and sharing it with class. Being able to choose a silly avatar represent their words should reduce much of their anxiety. I was thinking of other ways that content areas might use Adobe Express for assessment. 

Here are four ways you can tap into the power of Adobe Express to evaluate your students' understanding and skills in innovative ways.

1. Digital Storytelling: Narrate a Historical Event

Digital storytelling is an exciting avenue for students to connect with historical events, as they use visuals and narrative to bring the past to life. Using Adobe Express, students can select a variety of images, design elements, and text to depict significant historical events.

How It Works: Assign a specific historical event or period. Ask students to research and then construct a digital story that provides a visual narrative. Not only does this allow them to dive deep into historical context, but they can also explore themes, significance, and personal connections. As an assessment, you can evaluate their research skills, storytelling abilities, and their grasp of historical context.

2. Scientific Process Visualization: Detail an Experiment's Progress

Sometimes, the best way to understand a scientific process is to see it visually. Adobe Express provides a platform where students can design infographics or visual reports that detail each step of their scientific experiment.

How It Works: After completing an experiment, students can use Adobe Express to create a step-by-step visual report. This will demonstrate their understanding of the scientific method and the specific experiment they conducted. By breaking down each stage with visuals, students can clearly communicate their process, findings, and conclusions.

3. Literary Analysis: Visual Book Reports

Gone are the days of the standard written book report. Let's elevate the experience with visual book reports! Students can utilize Adobe Express to craft a creative representation of their chosen book, including key themes, character developments, and critical scenes.

How It Works: Students select a book they've read and use Adobe Express to craft a visual book report. They can include quotes, images representing key scenes, and their own designs. By juxtaposing these elements, students can offer their interpretation and analysis of the book, showcasing their comprehension and critical thinking skills.

4. Geometry in Real Life: Shapes and Design

Geometry is everywhere, and Adobe Express can help students see it. By tasking students with identifying and outlining geometric shapes in real-world photos, they can connect classroom lessons with their surroundings.

How It Works: Students take or find pictures of real-world objects or scenes. Using Adobe Express, they highlight and label the different geometric shapes they identify. This assessment not only tests their knowledge of geometry but also their ability to connect theory with real-world application.

Adobe Express has proven to be more than just a design tool. It's a gateway to interactive and immersive learning experiences, allowing educators to assess students in ways that are both engaging and insightful. By incorporating these creative assessment methods into your teaching approach, you not only evaluate student understanding but also foster skills like critical thinking, creativity, and technological literacy. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP

(Images generated using Adobe Firefly.)

The Nerdy Teacher and #AI #EdChat

Hey there, nerdy educators and lifelong learners! It's Nicholas Provenzano here, your favorite nerdy teacher. Now, as many of you know, I'm neurodivergent - I have dyslexia and Dyscalculia. This makes writing blog posts a bit more of a challenge for me. Imagine the words on the page being a complex puzzle - not necessarily the one you'd like to solve every day! But, despite these challenges, I've always believed that with the right tools and mindset, we can overcome any obstacle.

Enter Artificial Intelligence - my newfound sidekick in blog post creation. This mighty helper is an incredible tool for organizing ideas and proofreading for grammar and spelling issues. It's like having a personal editor who's always ready to lend a hand, helping me refine my thoughts and transform them into coherent, well-structured posts. It takes care of the nitty-gritty, allowing me to focus on what truly matters - delivering valuable content to all of you.

But it's not just about spelling and grammar. What's remarkable about AI is its ability to make connections that sometimes even I miss. It's like having a collaborative partner that can see patterns and links between concepts, offering insights that enhance the richness of the content. Using AI doesn't diminish my role as a writer; it enhances it. It's a testament to what we, as educators, already know - that learning and creating are always collaborative processes, and every tool, every person, every AI, has something unique to contribute. So here's to embracing AI in our writing process, and as always, stay nerdy, my friends!

Photo Created Generated by DALL-E 2

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP

Stop Freaking Out Over ChatGPT #EdChat

My feed has been swamped with all of these posts proclaiming that ChatGPT is great for education and that it will bring about the demise of education. Every take in between has been given as well. I've been around long enough to have seen this reaction with multiple tools over the years. There are plenty of people out there that are going to tell you how to use ChatGPT in your classroom or how to check and see if your students are using it to complete assignments. Much like the Force, it can be used for good or for bad. It is not all one or the other. 

Ugh.

Rather than spend a bunch of time coming up with a variety of reasons about why teachers should not worry about ChatGPT, I just had ChatGPT come up with the reasons for me. 

1. Lack of personalization: ChatGPT, as advanced as it is, cannot replace the personal touch that a teacher brings to the classroom. A teacher’s ability to understand individual student needs, emotions, and learning styles cannot be replicated by a machine. ChatGPT may provide a quick answer, but it cannot provide the human connection and personalized support that students need to learn and grow.

2. Limited scope of knowledge: While ChatGPT has been trained on a massive corpus of text, it is not perfect and may not always provide accurate or up-to-date information. Teachers, on the other hand, undergo extensive training and have a deep understanding of their subject matter and the curriculum. They are able to provide students with a comprehensive and well-rounded education that goes beyond just answering questions.

3. Importance of critical thinking and problem solving: Teachers play a crucial role in fostering critical thinking and problem-solving skills in their students. They do this by encouraging students to think deeply about concepts, ask questions, and engage in discussions and projects that require creativity and innovation. ChatGPT, while it may provide answers to questions, cannot facilitate the kind of hands-on learning that helps students develop these important skills. Teachers should not worry about ChatGPT as they provide a level of education and support that a machine simply cannot match.

I will throw in another reason why people should stop freaking out about ChatGPT. 

Teachers were very concerned about essay writing with the introduction of the Internet. There was this fear that students would not create an original essay every again. I always found this funny, because any teacher worth their salt can identify a plagiarized paper from a student they have had in class for a small amount of time. It is not that hard to see that a student who has written at or slightly below grade level is writing at the college level out of nowhere. While taking credit for the student's writing advancement would be nice, teachers know it came from somewhere else. Either too much "help" from a parent or from an online source. The way this was addressed in many classrooms was more in class writing assessments. Will some students beat the system and submit work they did not do? Of course they will. Students have been beating the system as long as there has been a system. The overwhelming majority of students follow the directions, do the work, and are honest about it.

The big issue that many teachers do not want to look at is WHY students would choose to be dishonest with their work. Finding the root cause might require teachers to look inward at their curriculum and overall classroom learning environment and that can be much scarier than the thought of AI taking over the teaching profession. Food for thought. 

I used AI to create an image of what AI looks like in a dystopian world. Here it is. Kind of nuts right?

Hugs and High Fives, 

Nick