3-12, Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Teaching Tools

Tailored Teaching: How AI Lets Students “Choose Their Own Adventure” in Learning

Okay, y’all. Prepare to be. BLOWN. AWAY.

If you saw my recent post on how to create a Connections-like game, you know that I follow Shelly Sanchez Terrell on all of her channels and she is always sharing incredible resources. She recently shared a link to a blog post by Matthew Wemyss, and I bookmarked it like I do with practically everything she shares.

Today I had a little time to go back and take a deeper look at Matthew’s post, and to actually try his suggestion. It’s an AI prompt that you can copy and paste into your own AI tool of choice (ChatGPT, Bard, Claude, etc…) to create a “Choose Your Own Adventure” type game with generative text.

“Cool,” I thought. I’ve been keeping an eye on all of these tools, and I’ve seen a ton of uses for education, but this was one of the more creative ideas I’ve run across. So, I fired up ChatGPT, and pasted in the prompt.

Matthew’s prompt tells the AI to ask for the level of students, subject, and specific objectives. After some thought, I told it: 5th grade, Language Arts, Themes and Symbolism in The Giver by Lois Lowry. Within seconds, this was my response:

And then I could start playing the game. The story began, and I was given a scenario with 3 choices. All I needed to do was to type in the letter of my choice to proceed to the next part of the adventure. You can see the beginning of my game play here.

Keep in mind that Matthew’s well-crafted prompt means that you can tell the AI any student age, any subject, and any specific objectives. And, of course you can tweak the original prompt to suit your own specific needs.

Can you imagine all of the ways you can use this for your classroom?!!!!! Put it on the big screen so the whole class can play, or allow your “fast finishers” to play, or motivate students who are having a tough time getting engaged — the possibilities are endless.

In the ever-evolving landscape of education, the fusion of technology and creativity has truly redefined the possibilities within our classrooms. Leveraging tools like ChatGPT to craft ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ experiences not only enriches the learning process but also ensures that our students are actively intrigued and empowered. It can be overwhelming to see the way that AI is so quickly and dramatically changing the playing field, but finding ways to integrate it into lessons can not only continuously give you novel ideas for inspiring and motivating students, but also show them the responsible and creative ways that it can be used to increase learning.

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