Denver – In Zach Kennelly’s Senior Civic class, students are building custom chatbots with artificial intelligence.
One student is working on a chatbot that better curates film and television program recommendations based on the audience’s recent clock history.
The other is ironically creating a chatbot that will help you put into practice your communication skills, such as coming up with a conversation starter.
Other students are brainstorming chatbots that can support mental health, improve financial literacy and provide resources to immigrants, according to Kennelly co-teacher Gianna Geraffo.
Soon, students will improve their ideas and eventually develop into an app with one class selected.
It’s a similar trajectory to one of Kennelly and Guerafo, following the previous semester, when students finally built and launched. Vote for Coloradothat app Help people It also helps you to register for the vote and break down the various candidates and measures for the vote.
“We thought it was going to be a massive failure pretty early on,” says Kennelly, who had the project last semester. “But it became a huge hit. The students loved it. They were like, ‘I ran to the second term to build this thing.’ ”
The class project was then and now again – part of an effort to help students understand and apply AI in real-world ways in school and life.
“It’s not AI-driven. Kennelly makes it clear: “It’s driven by our students, their expertise, their passion.”
Kennelly and Guerafo are part of a small team at their school in Denver at DSST: College View High School. School Team AI Jointa one-year pilot initiative in which more than 80 educators from 19 traditional public and charter schools across the country experiment and evaluate AI-enabled instruction to improve teaching and learning.
The goal is to help some of the earliest recruits in AI education integrate ideas, share ideas, and ultimately help them and their US colleagues lead what they and their US colleagues can do with new technology.
“Advanced instructions” using AI
The collaborative study, co-led by two national nonprofit organizations, leading educators and learning accelerators, kicked off in October, with an in-person gathering of various school teams here in Denver.
Nonprofits – Both focus on “progress” rather than indiscriminately promoting AI, says Jin-Soo Huh, a partner in learning accelerators, has made generative AI extremely ripples in education. After seeing him look at this idea. Early days.
Already, many teachers are looking for ways to use AI to build lesson plans and improve student feedback. I know that more and more teachers are looking for these examples, whether this year or next year. ”
Huh adds: “Can we raise the promising practices: ‘Who’s teachers already do incredible jobs with AI?’ ”
Since the kickoff event last fall, participants have effectively met about the projects they are working on, the lessons they are learning, what they and their students are inspiring about technology.
Traci Griffith, executive director of Eliot K-8 School of Innovation, part of Boston Public Schools, has found the cross-school collaboration to be cheered up.
Just a few weeks ago, she says during a conference on the AI joint research of the school team, her four school teams were in a breakout room with another team in California. Everyone rang the call, excited about what other coastal colleagues were doing.
“It shows the power to bring together educators,” says Griffith. Griffith uses Claude, an AI assistant developed by humanity to provide pre- and post-accusation feedback to middle school students about writing assignments. (Part of the challenge is that teachers must first learn how to train Claude, adjust guidelines, and fine-tune word choices.
Collaborative says it is “deliberately platform-independent.”
In Denver, students use a platform called PlayLab. It describes it as “a safe sandbox for learning, adapting and creating educational AI for your context.” PlayLab allows students to easily switch between different AI models.
So far, students in Kennelly’s class this semester have not yet been impressed with the possibility of AI, he admits.
“They’re all over the board,” he points out. “They’re scary. They’re excited. They’re confused.”
But that’s still early on.
His co-teacher, Geraffo, recalls the students in their final semester experience a major change from beginning to end of their term.
Kennelly believes that such empowerment is important as AI is already here and that it is virtually inevitable that it will become a part of his student’s career and life.
“People who don’t understand this technology are “the most likely people to be exploited by it,” he added.
A practical approach
They say that cooperation is based in a way on a specific pragmatism about AI. It could stay. So, what are we going to do about it and what are we going to do about it?
“We’re here, AI is the solution, it’s the end, it’s everything,” he says. “I think there is healthy skepticism in our group.”
All involved have some excitement and hunger to understand and use AI, but are committed to “being responsible and effectively” integration into schools and classrooms.
“This group sees the possibilities and possibilities of AI,” says Magiera.
This collaboration helps people create communities where they can share victory and dead ends, express their enthusiasm and fear, ask questions, and answer them.
For now, the group is set to peak in the summer after the school year is over. But already, Majiera can imagine her team continuing the conversation and is working beyond that time.
“This definitely isn’t the end,” she says. “These schools say, “Do you have 2.0?” They want to continue the momentum. ”
