I want to thank @MsABahri for sharing the link to these free Women in STEM posters on Twitter (still not calling it the other name, sorry not sorry). There are nearly 100 free downloadable posters on this site from Ingenium Canada, and I am sorry to say that most of the names are new to me. Fortunately, each poster in the series has an image as well as a caption to help us all learn more about each of these amazing people. In addition, you can go to this page for lessons that can be used with the posters, and 3 of the posters have been made into coloring sheets that you can download.
Don’t forget to check out the STEM videos, the interactive Timeline, and the other educational resources while you’re on the site. If your students are studying the ocean, there is also an #OceanDecade link that has specific posters and lessons for that topic.
You can also take the “Implicit Association Test” to get an idea of your own implicit bias when it comes to men and women in different careers.
One of my most recent workshop additions is one on using podcasting in the classroom. The title is, “From Script to Sound: Engaging Student Learning Through Podcasting.” During this three hour PD, participants learn how to use podcasts as a tool to help with reading and listening comprehension as well as to develop critical thinking skills. In the second half, they learn how to create podcasts using Canva (yes, it can be done!).
One of my favorite ways to start students off with creating in any kind of media is to use a “mentor” piece, whether it’s text, songs, poetry, video, or podcasts. In this case, we use a podcast called, “The Big Fib.” This is one of many productions suitable for kids that you can find on the GZM classroom site, an excellent resource which I blogged about earlier this year.
Choose an episode of the podcast that has a format your students can emulate for a topic you’re teaching. I chose “The Big Fib” because the premise of the show is that two people are being questioned, an expert and a fibber. The listener is supposed to be able to discern from their responses who is the expert and who is the fibber. There is a different topic each time, such as Ancient Egypt. The structure of the show not only supports critical thinking skills, but also easily allows for students to make their own similar podcast on any topic they are studying in class. (Though it’s not part of the GZM family of podcasts, another great “mentor podcast” is, “Smash, Boom, Best,” which you can read more about in this post.)
During the latest workshop, the teachers got to try out using the podcast planner which I’ve made based on “The Big Fib,” and to spend time working in Canva to make their podcasts. We didn’t have time to finish, but they got a good understanding of the steps, and I was completely floored by their creativity! One group chose the show, “Bluey” as their topic (which is apparently an extremely moving show despite being for pre-school kids), another was doing Edgar Allan Poe, and a third group — composed of an art teacher and two language teachers — had come up with a podcast they called, “Just Say It,” where they would ask a question and the two guests were supposed to respond in Spanish (but one would not be responding correctly).
The variety of topics from the teachers made it clear that this is something that could be done as a great assessment tool in most subjects because you could pretty much have students “show what they know” about anything with this activity.
If you’d like to make your own copy of the planning document they used (I made some modifications based on their feedback), click on this link. And, if you’d like to have me do this workshop with a group of teachers in your district, virtually or in-person, drop me a line at terrieichholz@engagetheirminds.com!
Since I’m no longer in the classroom, I don’t get the valuable daily perspective of young students about education topics that impact them, such as AI (Artificial Intelligence). When I do get the opportunity to ask students of different ages about how the subject of AI is being handled at their schools, most of them tell me that it’s either being banned or largely ignored. So, I was curious to see a video made by some students at a Code Ninjas location in College Station run by David Hendrawirawan. The students participated in a camp in which the teacher, Julia Weiss, helped them to learn more about Artificial Intelligence.
As these astute young people have concluded, there are some troubling ethical issues surrounding AI, but there are also some very exciting uses that can dramatically improve people’s lives. I would argue that it’s imperative for us to face the reality that AI will be ubiquitous in a short matter of time and that we will be doing our students a huge disservice by ignoring its potential impact.
In a recent presentation that I gave about AI, I included this quote:
We cannot stop AI. What we can do is teach our children what it is and how to use it ethically to solve problems. The good news is that there are lots of resources to help you do this that I’ve been collecting here, including a new page from Code.org specifically for teachers. And, there are some tools that can improve your life as educators right now by saving you time, such as Curipod. While we need to be wary of privacy and safety with AI, as with any technology tool, banning its use completely from schools is definitely not the answer.
If you are looking for a site that will pique your students’ imaginations and spark some creativity (especially for writing), you should consider Once Upon a Picture.
Those of you who subscribe to my newsletter know that I usually include a “Tik Tok Teacher Hack” in each issue. I know that there are various opinions about Tik Tok out there, but I honestly find a lot of wonderful resources for teaching on Tik Tok, and this is one of them. @jessicam.reid is a Tik Tokker who often talks about AI creation sites for teachers, but she thought this resource was so great that she did a short video about it.
The images on Once Upon a Picture are curated by a teacher in the UK named Sam as a passion project. They are digital photos, animations, and illustrations that are magical, surrealistic, and undeniably thought-provoking. According to Sam, each artist has given permission for the images to be shared.
Because Sam is a teacher, there are also questions that are listed on the page for each individual picture — questions that can be used to prod your students to dig deeper and imagine the stories behind each image. Here is one example.
There is also a challenge book that you can download for free as well as a Reading Comprehension handbook and some samples of student writing (all under “More” in the main menu.) In addition, Sam has created different collections of images such as “The Thinking Collection” meant to provoke philosophical discussions and “The Inference Collection” of images selected from Sam’s own work in the primary classroom.
If you want to try your hand at creating your own unusual images, Canva has a Text-to-Image AI tool that is kind of fun to try. I’ve had varying results. The image I am including below was downloaded from Adobe’s Beta Firefly program, (which is part of my paid subscription to Adobe). Note that Adobe is trying to be responsible by watermarking its AI created images.
I would have definitely used Once Upon a Picture in my GT classroom or any class in which I taught writing or wanted to encourage deep discussions. I hope you’ll find it useful, too!
MIT has posted its free materials for the 2023 Day of AI, and I feel like anyone, from children to adults, should take advantage of it. In fact, the home page of the website invites everyone to participate with, “Open to all. No experience needed” as the top. All you need to do is register to get the password, and you don’t have to be an educator.
Even though this isn’t the first year MIT has hosted its Day of AI, I think it might be the most important, considering how discussions of AI have dominated the headlines in the last couple of months. With these resources, for grade K-12, you can step in wherever you feel comfortable and learn more about what AI is and what it isn’t — yet. And if you are an educator, you can help your students to be more informed about this technology that is rapidly growing more and more powerful whether you are interested in using it or not.
In a recent discussion that I had with Socrates, we debated the benefits and dangers of AI. (Okay, it wasn’t really Socrates, just his AI persona on Character.AI.) We both agreed that AI will be dangerous in the hands of those who prize profits above ethics. And we both agreed that there will also be some people who have compassion and greater purposes who will wield AI in the effort to change the world for the better. But the latter is not going to happen if only a small group of people understand the implications of AI. Widespread education is vital in order to apply critical thinking to decisions that may seem to have nothing to do with AI, but could be directly impacted in the future.
Many educators have been visiting my posts on Conker.AI and Curipod because these tools can increase their productivity immensely. If you can take a moment with some of the time you’ve saved using those AI tools, I hope you will consider learning more about AI and guiding your students with these lesson plans, slide presentations, and videos that MIT’s Day of AI provides. There are even tutorial videos for the teachers in case you want a walkthrough. Though MIT is planning to officially celebrate Day of AI on May 18, 2023, you can incorporate these lessons any time (maybe a great idea post-standardized testing?). Still not convinced? Watch their intro video below, and then head on over to their page!
If you’re a STEAM educator who considers yourself a pioneer, early adopter, or just someone who loves to try new things, you are definitely going to want to sign up to be invited to try out CoCo by going to this page. Brought to you by a team at MIT in the Lifelong Kindergarten Research Group at the Media Lab (if you’re familiar with Scratch, Makey-Makey, or Lego Mindstorms, then you’ve had the pleasure of appreciating their projects), this new project is going to revolutionize students collaborating with each other on a global scale.
CoCo will allow students to code (block-based like Scratch or text-based like JavaScript), write stories, and create art together on its innovative platform. Children will be able to design their own projects, then publish and share them or work together as they create. The emphasis is truly on collaboration while discouraging comparison, as evidenced by the fact that there will be no individual user profiles, no way to collect likes, and no followers. In the screen shot below, you can see the distinguishing features of CoCo that set it apart from anything else students currently use in the digital realm.
It’s difficult to explain the potential of CoCo without showing it, so I encourage you to watch the video below to better understand just how ingenious it is.
For an extremely thorough explanation of the philosophy behind CoCo and its mission, you will definitely want to read this post on Medium by two of team members behind it, Manuj Dhariwal (manuj@mit.edu) & Shruti Dhariwal (shrutid@mit.edu).
I contacted Shruti to see if there is a timeline for getting invited to try out CoCo once you’ve submitted your email to the invite list. Shruti was prompt to respond, saying that invites will be sent out in phases as they want to continue to get feedback from educators before opening it up to everyone.
This is your opportunity to be part of helping to develop a game-changing educational technology tool from practically the ground up. I’ve had the pleasure of involving my students with others over the years (Osmo, Wonder Workshop Robots, Kodable, and more), and it has always been an incredible learning experience none of us will forget. Submit your e-mail now at CoCo so you and your students can take advantage of this opportunity!
