image created at Dall-E2

Oftentimes I get requests for creative projects during the last couple months of school. Usually it is because assessments are over and teachers are feeling a bit freer with their time. Whatever the case, here are 4 platforms that support creative projects. 

Use Flip.com for posting questions, collecting thoughtful video responses, and giving everyone a voice. Flip, known as Flipgrid in the past, now has an AI assistant built in to help you come up with topic ideas. It is called “Topic Copilot”. Once you log in with your Google account and create a group, you can click the + button and click on Topic Copilot. Insert a few key words like “historical speeches by presidents of the United States” and it will generate several ideas to post. From there you can tweak it and make it work for your desired outcomes. Another feature of  Flip is its immersive reader tool. This tool will read text to struggling readers. For example, if you load a text to go along with your video it will read the prompt aloud to your students. Because Microsoft now owns Flip it has all the fancy features you might expect from Microsoft. 

Use Garageband for audio recordings with students. Have students record audio clips for things like book talks, science project results, opinions on historical events, or investigative reporting ideas. All of our students have access to Garageband on their laptops and the sets of ipads throughout the middle school. The best audio clips are between two and three minutes. It truly could not be easier to create and share these recordings. One of the easiest ways to share the clips is to post them to a Padlet. Our students love recording themselves. If you’d like support with Garageband or need a rubric for these projects please contact me!

Get into coding simple projects using Scratch.mit.edu. Scratch uses basic block coding. Students could create a digital story, teach a concept or create an interactive game. In the past, students have used Scratch to replicate a cell and label its parts. They have also created simple mazes for other students to play. There is no limit to what they can create with this platform. All of our students have used Scratch starting in 4th grade. It would be super easy to use in your classroom. You do not have to be an expert with Scratch to bring it to your students. I am happy you get started if you decide to use this platform.

Have your students use Thinglink.com and Canva.com together to make their thinking more visual.  Have you ever shopped online at IKEA and seen the little “hotspots” you click on for more information? That is what Thinglink does for digital content. Now, Canva is built into Thinglink as a design tool. Here is how I have used it for creating interactive content. I go to Thinglink and create an account and from there use the built in Canva tool to create the first layer of information. Then I save it to Thinglink and add in the hot buttons to add more information over the images or text on the Canva poster. This is a great way to get a lot of content on one page that looks amazing. Here is an example. 

This is the perfect time to try out a new technology platform without any stress. If any of these ideas spark some interest in you do not hesitate to reach out and we will make it happen together. Happy creating!

This is the third installment of how educators can use OpenAI to their benefit. You can check out previous posts here and here. This post is all about how you can use OpenAI for lesson planning and for creating supplemental materials.

Using OpenAI’s Chat GPT tool can help in creating new or improved lesson plans. You can type in the search query something like, “Give me a 45 minute lesson on how to teach perspective in writing for 6th graders.” This is a lot faster than scouring the web looking for a trusted source or youtube video. Think of the time involved in traditional lesson planning. Now, I know what you are thinking. Is it even a decent lesson? It will be decent enough that you can take what it spits out, tweak it with solid pedagogy, and go from there. It is faster and more efficient than older models. 

Consider also creating supplemental materials to go alongside existing lessons. Mrs. Ruf, a Language Arts teacher, was able to create a simple vocabulary quiz. She had a list of vocabulary words for her 8th grade classes and wanted to create fill-in-the-blank sentences for her quiz. This task could have taken her upwards of 45 minutes to an hour to complete. Making sure to include enough of a context clue that students could figure it out, but not so much that it completely gave it away- this requires some brain power! She realized that ChatGPT could probably help get her started and eliminate much of the work. She put in the prompt, “Write sentences for the following words…” and included the list of words separated by commas. The result was ok, but many of the sentences lacked enough context to function as fill-in-the-blank sentences. She gave it a bit of feedback by adding, “include context clues in the sentences”. This time the results were nearly perfect! Only a couple of sentences needed revision. What could have taken an hour ended up only taking about 10 minutes.

Here are three tips for getting useable lesson plans or supplemental materials.

Ask very specific questions with clear parameters. The more detail inputted, the better results outputted.

Ask for what type of lessons you’d like. For example, you could ask it to give you some ideas for a project based learning activity on a particular topic.

Consider solid pedagogy when using what it gives you. For example, you may discover that it gives you solid outlines of the lessons but it might not be interactive enough for your teaching style. Feel free to ramp up whatever it gives you and go from there.

I’d encourage you to consider the time consuming tasks of being a teacher and discover if Chat GPT could be your new assistant. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take having a smart assistant any day! Please share with me how you are using Chat GPT so we can discuss this further. Thank  you to Mrs. Ruf for contributing to this post! The image above was created using Dall-E2 at OpenAI.com using the criteria “abstract painting of artificial intelligence”.

Artificial Intelligence is now embedded into our daily lives in ways that we do not even realize. AI is built into our smartphones, cars, and online experiences. AI is having a moment in the creative space now as well. A platform called DALL-E 2 is now a free open-source image generator site. DALL-E 2’s algorithm is created in a way so that hate images are prohibited. In essence, the programmers never taught the algorithm to recognize hate speech, racial slurs, and or key words linked to harmful images. Thus making it safe for students to use. I had my students consider how coding requires a moral responsibility to the world and then we dug in and created some super cool images based on the word combinations they came up with. Students had to have clear nouns, adjectives, adverbs and also explore different visual styles, such as realism, water color, cartoon, and even styles using Van Gogh. Here are some examples of what we were able to have DALL-E 2 generate for us.

The elephant image had these words as input; “an elephant wearing a crown in the ocean”, and the tiger input was “a tiger riding a skateboard with the style of Van Gogh”. The pig used the statement “a pig on a rollercoaster” for the input. These images are super cool because they are one of a kind and student imagination is the only barrier. You can also upload student artwork and modify it in the style of other famous artists. 

As I explored this site it occurred to me that there might be some ways to include this into our existing curriculum in a quick and seamless way. For the arts, students can visualize their completed artwork in a variety of artistic styles. DALL-E 2 will also transform an image using its algorithm or finish the surrounding space of an image. 

I also thought that using DALL-E 2 might be a great way to make student thinking more visual. Images can be downloaded and used for digital sketchnoting. Another curriculum connection might be teaching parts of speech and the importance of using descriptive language in writing. 

Users must be 18 years or older so this would be best suited as a whole group activity with you, the teacher, inputting their words and then sharing the images with them either with email, G- Classroom or Apple Airdrop.

You can learn more by listening to this podcast with the creator of DALL-E 2 from the New York Times.

You have a full subscription to the NY Times as an Ensworth employee. Want more information? Reach out to me any time!

A Teacher Feature

Students in Mrs. Ruf’s 8th grade classes read The Outsiders. Being a character-driven story with characters not much older than eighth-graders, this was the perfect opportunity for them to take a deep dive into character study. They examined character motivations, changes, effects of characters on other characters, and ultimately how they impacted the overall theme of the story.

Mrs. Ruf challenged her students to create social media profiles and posts to retell parts of the story and to demonstrate their understanding of the main characters. Students used a variety of tools from Google Drawings to Canva.com. 

Mrs. Ruf shares her story and experience with this integrated activity.

I knew I wanted students to do some deep literary analysis with The Outsiders, but they were growing weary of writing essay after essay. I also knew I had some incredibly talented and creative students. I am not the most talented graphic designer, and tools like Canva often overwhelm me. I was not sure exactly how this would play out. I toyed with the idea of creating templates and asking students to use those, but ultimately decided to leave the creative choices up to them. I set some requirements for what they needed to include (photos, screen names, bio statements, captions, etc.). Then, I got out of their way. What they were able to create was astounding! Even better, I was able to listen in to their conversations as they made choices about what profile picture Ponyboy would choose or who might be “following” Cherry Valance on Instagram. The level of thinking and analysis required was at least as high as what an essay would have required and they didn’t have the pressure of writing a huge paper.

My 8th-graders loved this assignment. I was able to see a different side of them as they came into class truly excited to show off what they had created. For my students who do not necessarily excel in writing, I was able to get a much clearer picture of their comprehension and analysis skills as well. As adults, it’s easy to see social media as a negative, but it is a reality and it isn’t going away. Embracing it in a safe way allowed me to harness student creativity and give them some autonomy in the classroom, ultimately deepening their understanding of our anchor text. Stepping out of my comfort zone with a project like this was intimidating, but the payoff was worth it in the end.

Mrs. Ruf used Padlet as a place for students to post their creations. You can see some examples of what students created here. 

Kudos to Mrs. Ruf for deviating from the norm, for taking a small creative risk with her students and for being brave enough to get out of their way and let creativity happen. The beauty of this lesson is apparent. Students reached learning goals and were able to show their comprehension in a relative way. Need some standards to support this type of activity? Look no further than ISTE standard 1.1 and 1.2. Finding ways to engage our students with relevant technology is always a win!

We’ve all heard about a growth mindset vs a fixed mindset. By now we should have a pretty good understanding of the difference between these two concepts. But how can we bring an innovative mindset to our classrooms and why is this important?

Individuals with an innovative mindset are always looking forward and leaving the past in the past. That sounds kind of nice! They are also super creative and collaborative and love the process of making mistakes and trying again. 

Growth mindset individuals also love a challenge and aren’t afraid of failure. They view their own personal talents and intelligence as an ever evolving set of gifts that with practice will grow over time. Consider the research supporting 10,000 hours by Malcom Gladwell necessary to become an expert on a certain skill. 

The largest difference between the two mindsets is the curiosity into what is coming up right around the corner. The future matters to people with an innovative mindset, and we as educators need to set our students up to practice working towards this mindset. 

“But how?” you ask? By following closely the ISTE  standards for students.  ISTE stands for International Society for Technology in Education. These standards provide solid guidelines and a common language for technology integration.  

The following ISTE standards for students can help you move your students toward a more innovative mindset. Each of the standards below are linked to a short YouTube Playlist that demonstrates these standards during implementation. You will notice that student choice is a recurring theme throughout these videos.

• Empowered Learner
• Digital Citizen
• Knowledge Constructor
• Innovative Designer
• Computational Thinker
• Creative Communicator
• Global Collaborator

The easiest way to increase opportunities for an Innovative Mindset in your classroom is to design lessons that are project based, require collaboration and incorporate student choice. This path will ensure that you are moving in the right direction for our students and their required skills for their future.

Ever watch what happens when you put a video in front of students? It is magic. The room falls silent. It is what we all want when we are standing in front of our class and giving directions. Being able to show a video that you’ve created captures student attention and can set the stage for ownership of learning. I’ve written about this strategy in the past, and I call it “team teaching with myself”. I’ll create short instructional videos or show an example of what we will be doing together and post it to google classroom. You might be thinking to yourself, “doesn’t that take the place of more personalized connections?”. I have never found this to be the case. Students are amazed that you even know how to make this content. 

six reasons why I love team teaching with myself

• Videos can be referred to again and again by your students who need extra support or repetitive information. – Especially when organized in your Google Classroom 
• You can create accurate and reliable content. – You will inevitably make errors when making content and this allows you to get it right before sharing it out.
• It truly catches your students’ attention by tapping into their visual and auditory learning styles.
• Videos make the best sub plans when you cannot be there in person.
• It eliminates repetition for you as the instructor.
• It streamlines future years of teaching if you already have the content created.

My favorite recording tools are Loom.com and the screen recorder on my iPad. The iPad screen recorder is available in your control center. This way I can record anything I am doing on my iPad. All the videos I create either live in my Loom account online, or I load them to Google Drive and share them through Google Classroom. 

tips for quality videos

• Keep videos between 2 and 5 minutes. Ideally 3 minutes is the sweet spot. You can always create several shorter videos to create small chunks of information.
• Be sure there is no weird background noise. Use AirPods or headphones to help your sound quality.
• Watch your own video from start to finish.
• Limit talking over text.

Check out this super helpful article from Edutopia.org about making solid instructional videos. If you are interested in creating GIF’s or more creative videos to capture student attention, check out this video from an Apple Creative about using Apple’s Clips app for video creation.

If you want to determine how your students are engaging in your videos use Edpuzzle. Edpuzzle.com is a great tool for taking videos to the next level. It will collect data and it creates a structure for watching videos. Remember that we all have the full edpuzzle accounts if you log in with your google account. 

In the days of post Covid, you might want to put instructional videos behind you. Let’s not forget that students are looking at screens to learn new skills outside of school all the time. They watch TikTok to practice a sport, cook something new, or learn a new hair braid. We can tap into these habits and empower our students to learn new skills at school through our own teacher creative content.

Do you find yourself standing over the copier with your latest worksheet for your students? Do you ask yourself, “Is there a more engaging and creative way to have my students demonstrate their mastery?” If your answer is YES!, then read on. Creativity excites our students to learn, practice risk-taking, support emotional growth, and sets our students up for success in their future lives. Here are 3 ways you can easily increase creativity in your classroom.

• Have students engage in sketchnoting with iPad and an app like Notability or Explain Everything. You’ll be amazed at what you can learn when you see visually how your students interpret content. Take it one step further by allowing them to add their own audio thoughts to the file. Imagine doing laundry and hearing your students explain long division. You will know right away if they understand the concept or not! Talk about useful information. Remember that you have access to 40 iPads and stylus pens in the Middle School. 

• Allow students to create a beautiful webpage on a topic they are studying as a formative assessment using Adobe Spark. This site is similar to Canva, but is a slimmed down version. I also love the availability of a report template for student reports, journaling, how-to’s, etc. Let’s seek out opportunities to allow students to use the skills they will need in the real/digital world that they will undoubtedly inhabit in their future professions.

• Have your class document growth over time by taking one snapshot a day of a work sample, science experiment, or use time lapse videos for projects over time. Being able to document learning in real time is unlike any other data. It allows for multiple learning modalities, reflective practice, and discussion points. If you are uncomfortable allowing students to use an ipad for this there are some amazing apps like One Second Everyday, Apple Clips, BeReal that you could use on your phone and then share the images/videos with your students in class. 

These three ideas are methods that anyone can try out quickly. With a little guidance, most students already have the skills to create beautiful content as well as demonstrate learning using multiple modalities. Remember the key to this success is to be able to share this content back to you. One simple work flow is to have everything saved in either Google Drive or through Google Classroom. If you want an even faster way to have them share what they create there is always Airdrop on mobile devices and laptops. As with everything I share I am here for you to make these ideas come to life. Always reach out! 

https://www.iste.org/explore/5_Reasons_Why_It_Is_More_Important_Than_Ever%20_Teach_Creativity