RBERNing Questions

Unlocking the Power of Custom GPTs for Speaking Practice w/Jennie Kim, Gina De Anda, and Alayne Flores

• Yasmeen Coaxum • Season 3 • Episode 16

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Episode Summary:

How can AI redefine the way we teach and support multilingual learners’ speaking progress? In this episode, three dynamic presenters from the TESOL 2025 Convention: Alayne Flores, Gina De Anda, and Jennie Kim discuss the practical use of AI chatbots to provide that much-needed speaking practice outside of the classroom. Tune in to hear about how they are integrating AI tools like Custom GPTs and Chatty Bot in their instruction for all levels of multilingual learners. Discover the challenges they've faced, the innovative solutions they've implemented, and the future possibilities for AI in curriculum planning. 

RBERNing Questions for this Episode:

1- What influenced your decision to focus on Custom GPTs, and in particular, Chatbots? 

2- What are some advantages and disadvantages to using AI as a conversation partner from both your and your students’ point of view?

3- What are the implications for using AI Chatbots in curriculum planning and how do you see this potentially advancing in terms of future applications in or out of the classroom? 

Guests’ BIOS:

Jennie Kim is an Assistant Professor of ESL at  San Diego College of Continuing Education (SDCCE). She serves as the CATESOL Technology-Enhanced Language Learning Interest Group Coordinator and is also the Co-Chair of the GenAI Literacy for ESL Committee at SDCCE. With a strong passion for integrating innovative technologies into language education, she focuses on how tools like generative AI can enhance learning experiences for English language learners. 

Alayne Flores is an adjunct instructor of ESL/ELAC at the San Diego College of Continuing Education. She began teaching English in 2006 for salmon farming companies in Chilean Patagonia. Her career also took her to Thailand, Peru, and Honduras before returning to her hometown, San Diego, where she taught at UCSD Extension before finding her teaching home at SDCCD. Most recently, she helped write curriculum for a course called Advanced English for Parents Online, which she has also taught for two years. She loves her diverse colleagues and students in her exceptional community college district. 

Gina is an ESL educator with experience teaching high school students, adults, and learners abroad. Known for her collaborative spirit, she’s passionate about building community-driven classrooms, promoting digital literacy, and creating accessible content. As a Spanish and French speaker, she brings the empathy of a language learner to her teaching. Outside the classroom, you’ll find her journaling, trying out new tech tools, or hosting cozy backyard gatherings with friends.

Resources:

Websites/Social Media:

LinkedIn: 

www.linkedin.com/in/jennie-kim-6260b08

http://linkedin.com/in/ggddaa

Mentioned in this episode:

GPT:  https://chatgpt.com/g/g-LaNuFjXVr-english-for-newcomers

To find out more about Mid-State RBERN at OCM BOCES' services, listen to season 1 of the show with host Collette Farone-Goodwin, or to receive CTLE credit for listening to episodes, click here: https://midstaterbern.org/


Yasmeen:

So I'm gonna go back to this whole idea of speaking and speaking practice being needed, and ask what you think are the implications for using AI chatbots in curriculum planning, and how do you see this potentially advancing in terms of future applications, in or out of the classroom. Welcome to RBERNing Questions, a professional learning podcast where we answer your most compelling questions about teaching, serving, and supporting multilingual learners. I'm your host, Yasmeen Coaxum, and through our talks, I look forward to bringing the methods, philosophies, and stories behind teaching multilingual learners to light. Let's get into the show. So hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the RBERNing Questions podcast, and today we are really excited to have with us three of the presenters from the TESOL 2025 Convention this year. So they all presented together on AI, and actually it was custom GPTs, which I found to be just a really interesting take on the topic of AI. So before we jump into their wonderful presentation, I'm gonna let them go ahead and introduce themselves. We can start with you, Alayne.

Alayne:

Hi, yes. My name is Alayne Flores and I'm an Adjunct English as a Second Language Instructor at the San Diego College of Continuing Education in San Diego.

Gina:

My name is Gina De Anda and I'm also an Adjunct Faculty Professor at the San Diego College of Continuing Education, Grossmont College and MiraCosta College.

Yasmeen:

Okay, great. And then Jennie please.

Jennie:

Hello, my name is Jennie Kim and I am an Assistant Professor at San Diego College of Continuing Education. I teach ESL to low beginners and intermediate and advanced students.

Yasmeen:

Okay, great. Now I am going to ask you a little bit about your inspiration for becoming educators of English language learners and multilingual learners, and this time we can go ahead and start with Gina. How did this start for you, your interest in coming into this field in the first place?

Gina:

Uh, so I've always been interested in languages. I speak Spanish thanks to family and then studied French throughout high school and college and went abroad myself. So I had the opportunity to be a second language learner myself, and my parents also used to host exchange students. So I think from having students hosted at my house growing up, I loved sharing language and phrases with them, and that continued on to teaching abroad, teaching first generation students here that were ESL students. And it just gained momentum, continued onward, and now I love working with the adult population.

Yasmeen:

Okay, great, Jennie.

Jennie:

For me, it was by accident. I first started teaching English in Korea as a way to save money for my tuition. I was a student at FIT, which is a Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and I was just saving up and I realized I had a knack for teaching, and I was good at it. I kept getting teacher awards in my twenties and I thought, oh, I'm pretty good at this. And I just decided I wanna pursue a Master's in TESOL I went to, Columbia University's Teachers College, and from then on I've been teaching ESL.

Yasmeen:

Okay. And Alayne, what is your story?

Alayne:

So I wanted to be an actress. So I went to college in New York. I went to Sarah Lawrence College, and I had this driving passion for theater until I spent my junior year abroad in Italy. And it was my first international experience and I became obsessed with being immersed in another culture. I just loved it. I loved learning Italian and living there, and so after college, my goals just really shifted and it became how can I travel and see the world? But I'm not independently wealthy, so I need to make some money. So I had this idea to become a teacher so that I could generate income as I traveled. And, that's how I got my start in ESL.

Yasmeen:

Great, and I think you've taught in some really tropical, exotic places. I think this is Thailand, and

Alayne:

That's where, yes, that's where I did my teaching certificate in Thailand, and then I decided, okay, now I have my certificate. I'm gonna go stay with a host family in Mexico for a few months and brush up on my Spanish. And then I took that teaching certificate and that Spanish, and I took my first job in really far south, Chile in Patagonia. And, then I went to Peru and I had a short stint teaching in Peru. And then I spent a summer teaching in Honduras. So I had a few.

Yasmeen:

Right, I was quite envious looking at a lot of those locations. Okay. I am gonna dive right into the information with regard to your presentation, which was titled Custom GPTs in the ESL Course: A Semester Study. Now, I really love that you started off, during your presentation, with the timeline of the project from submitting the proposal to TESOL in June to beginning this study last fall, and you said that the main goal of the presentation was to share classroom experiences and practical tips for implementing generative AI chatbots. So I found this to be, like I said earlier, really like a more novel approach to presenting on AI, and I actually also attended a podcasting conference earlier this year where I was exposed for the first time to this idea of Custom GPTs, and so I really found them fascinating and it was great to find this presentation on the schedule in my other field of TESOL. So what influenced your decision to focus on Custom GPTs and in particular chat bots? Whoever would like to take that?

Jennie:

I can take that. Chat GPT when it first came out, I'm sure it fascinated many of us, some of our teachers, and Alayne and I, last January, we started a AI in Higher Education course. It was a graduate course and that's how Alayne and I got even closer. And, that kind of sparked our interest in AI. And around that time, I just kept researching AI and Chat GPT was just really fascinating, and I found that this would be a great tool to use, but it was a little bit too difficult for my low beginner level students to use, even though they're adults. My students who don't speak English, it just seemed a little bit too farfetched. So then I found out that there is such a thing called GPTs that came out later, maybe around March. I'm not really exactly sure about the time, or maybe it came sooner, but I discovered it in March, and GPTs. It seemed like it fit the bill so that I can customize the GPT so that it would use a lower level language such as, the CEFR A1 A2 level for my students, which is the Common European Framework that ESL teachers use, and so I was able to lower the level of the GPT language so that it fits with my level. And then at the same time I learned about voice chat that became available. At first it was only paid, and then within a month or so I found out that OpenAI changed their subscription method and they allowed it to be free. So, that's how I decided I wanted my students to be able to use Chat GPT, but in a customized lower level, and I added the feature of voice chat so that my students can practice speaking outside of the classroom. So that was the initial interest. Yeah.

Yasmeen:

It's interesting that you said it was difficult for the students to use because I feel like a lot of times educators were hesitant with Chat GPT to bring the experience into the classroom or for student use initially. So I'm wondering, Gina or Alayne, what was your experience with this? Were you immediately trying to, incorporate the students in terms of, Chat GPT and using it? Or were you using it on your own as educators and then deciding, okay, now I'm ready to bring it to the students? How did you kind of decide on that?

Gina:

Uh, I can say I had been using it as an educator and in my personal life already, and had a learning curve myself in becoming familiar with it and becoming comfortable with it. And then when I joined Alayne and Jennie on this project, I loved the idea of making this accessible to students because it's truly a tool and a resource, and I did have interest in it myself, and I loved the idea of making it more accessible for students, teaching them how to use this tool, and again, like Jennie said, having the ability to customize it for specifically my students, it was a way to make the AI work for them as well for my students.

Yasmeen:

Okay. And Alayne, did you have anything you wanted to add to that in terms of your uh method for approaching the use of Chat GPT.

Alayne:

Really, I brought me into her idea and shared the technology because I wasn't even aware at that time that the voice feature existed. I hadn't played with the voice feature, so I'm really thankful that she introduced me to that idea and her concept of how we were going to implement it in class, and we all implemented it differently, but really having the collaboration of the team, of the colleagues there to support me and answer questions is why I tried it because it would've been really easy for me to just think, oh, I'm so busy. I'm gonna keep using AI for teacher material creations, but I'm too busy to implement it with my students and create those assignments. So I think Jennie really prompted me with her project idea to just get it going in the classroom with the students in a way that I hadn't yet.

Yasmeen:

Okay, and I may not be remembering this correctly, I think, did all of you take a specific training for AI with your school or did you just learn on your own separately?

Alayne:

Two of us did. Jennie and I took the class together a year ago last spring, and Gina, I personally didn't have a personal relationship with until Jennie said, I think she'd be perfect to collaborate on the project with us, and then she joined the team.

Yasmeen:

Okay, so oh, were you gonna add something?

Jennie:

I wanted to add to what Alayne is saying, so the class, some people may think, oh, what kind of class was it? Because it was not a practicum where you're, it's a, it's not a workshop where the teacher teaches you how to use AI or explore different AIs. That component was missing actually. We were learning the philosophy behind how are using AI ethically, biases we have to be aware of, literacy so, like separately on our own, everybody had the freedom to use AI, and some people explored it more and some people didn't. Some people were really focused in the classroom and learning about the philosophy, but it was really up to everyone in the class to explore AI on their own. And that was why they started those classes so that teachers get that spark.

Yasmeen:

Okay. Thank you so much for adding that because I mean, that's kind of important to understand. I think that definitely both are needed, philosophy and hands-on type of teaching, but I mean, that makes the story even more interesting that you had a philosophy class and then you just took that and ran with it. So I really love that during your presentation, you incorporated video of the students using the chat bots, and you took us through some of the feedback from the participants in this study. You provided both positive and not so positive feedback from the students. So can you share this with our listeners? Okay. Maybe, Alayne, would you like to start this time?

Alayne:

Yes, yes. So all three of us teach different contexts and different levels. So we found that our experiences were similar but very different in certain ways too. My students are completely online. We do have a live Zoom component six hours a week, and then also nine hours a week of asynchronous Canvas component, and so my students, overall I would say really enjoyed the experience and felt that they benefited from it and had a lot of fun using chatbots, but the main negative feedback was a few students who were a little bit resistant to the technology and felt like, Ooh, I'd rather just speak with real people. And, so I would continue reinforcing, yes, I get that, but we're not taking away any real person interaction. We're not replacing human to human communication. We're keeping all the human to human interaction and then we're giving extra. So it's just the extra on top. And then I think the only other drawbacks from my students who are also advanced level, they're level six seven, which is the highest level in our college, so they're fairly proficient, fairly fluent in English already, but with the Custom GPT, using Chat GPT, there was definitely an interrupting issue, especially in the beginning when we were figuring out how to use it and how to best design assignments and best use the chat bots, so there was a little bit of frustration with,"It doesn't wait long enough for me to answer. It just jumps in." And our students need a little bit of time to formulate a response. So those are the two challenges that jump to my mind.

Yasmeen:

Okay, and Gina?

Gina:

For my student context, I during this project, and currently still, I'm teaching vocational English. So I found it extremely valuable for my students to gain additional digital literacy skills, and to learn how to use AI. So I was happy to guide them through the process. It was difficult for some, and all three of us did ask our students consistently for feedback and would adapt our materials and our tutorials, and my students did love that it was a low stakes opportunity to practice and they could repeat these dialogues or these vocabulary words or whatever assignments I created through these custom GPTs, and they would build their confidence, repeating this over and over and they were mimicking or modeling real interactions they might have in a job interview or job responsibilities, tasks, maybe being asked of them through a dialogue with a manager. In terms of the challenges for my students, they also did have that difficulty that Alayne mentioned with the interruptions, and that is one of the reasons that I ended up switching from Chat GPTs, Custom GPTs, to a different, chat bot that ended up working best for my students.

Yasmeen:

Alright, and then finally, Jennie.

Jennie:

Oh, I'll just add a few things. So for my students, I think the best thing was that there's mobility because you have a phone that you can use anywhere, and I keep telling my students this is not a tool that you're gonna be using in the classroom, so you're gonna be using it when you need to study for a test, a speaking test, a spelling test. You can work on talking with the chat bot on the bus, while you're in the car, while you're waiting at the doctor's office, you have your earphones on and you can hear it reading the same spelling words that I'm going to give tomorrow. So it's very customized for them. I think the mobility was great. Also that they have a speaking partner who has good pronunciation. It's not a robot-like pronunciation. It also has character, like a spunky personality that it doesn't seem like a robot. And now we even introduced them to Sesame AI, which is using AI agent, which is more human-like. I don't know if you have used Sesame AI, but that's the latest chat bot that is the most human-like so far, and it's called an AI agent now because it's even more advanced than generative AI. It also translates to your first language, pause a moment, or ask it in your first language. What does that word mean? So they can switch back and forth. The disadvantage is, adding to the ones that Alayne and Gina already mentioned, is the speed. It has developed a little bit, but at the beginning when we first started using it last March and testing it, it would not slow down. And I think OpenAI already knew that it would not slow down. It was not made for English language learners, but I know that they've heard us and they are doing things, and at the time I was doing tricks where in the prompt, I said,"If the student asks you to talk slower, you'll talk this way," and I would put like a underscore underneath each letter so that they could pause between the words. I said, use the words using these underscores. So then they would pause for a little bit and then talk. So in a sentence it would become like more enunciated and slower with little pauses in between. So, I had to do that at the beginning last year, but now, I don't think I'm doing that, and I think it does listen and it does slow down a little bit, but it's still not perfect. So we're still getting there. Yeah. So that was one thing.

Yasmeen:

That sounds like a lot of dedication,

Jennie:

Yeah.

Yasmeen:

to actually take the time to put underscores throughout these words. So wow. Okay.

Jennie:

So I, I'm not doing the underscore. I would prompt it to do it. So the chat, generative AI will know when.

Yasmeen:

cause I was picturing you like,"Say it like this",

Jennie:

yeah. No,

Yasmeen:

and then, like putting in Okay.

Jennie:

Yeah.

Yasmeen:

so

Jennie:

Yeah.

Yasmeen:

that eases my mind a

Jennie:

Mm-hmm.

Yasmeen:

little bit. Okay. I would like to go ahead and piggyback off of what Gina mentioned in terms of changing, and, during the presentation you described the trials and tribulations in terms of getting the project to be where you wanted it to be so that the students were satisfied and you were satisfied. Right? And one of those changes was from the custom GPTs to something called Chatty Bot. So, can you share with the listeners in each of your context how, switching to, first, what is Chatty Bot, but how switching to Chatty Bot made the experience better?

Gina:

I'll start. Yeah, so my students had a very low digital literacy to begin with, so I pretty much immediately in joining this project started using chatty bots with my students. And what worked for them well was that chatty bots allows, also a custom GPT, allows the students to push a button to listen to the audio, push a button again, to record themselves, push a button again to submit their recording, push the button again to hear again the audio. So it really helped with that interruption issue that we were facing. It would really slow down the process, give them time to think, give them time to practice before they recorded themselves, and it also provided me with their transcripts automatically, which, because my student context was low digital literacy, it was very difficult, and maybe would have been an additional step for me to teach them how to copy and paste or download the conversation they were having in Chat GPT or custom GPTs through chat GPT. So the additional benefit of just automatic transcripts being sent to me was fantastic for my student context particularly.

Yasmeen:

You said it's also a custom GPT? So it also was created under Chat GPT as a custom GPT, or is it like something completely outside of Chat GPT? Can you explain that a little bit for those of us, like me, who are not as savvy with this?

Gina:

Yes, it's a different interface. Also customizable, has a speaker that is customized by me, and I decide what it says, how it will speak to my students, and I can input vocabulary or conversation and set it to be the manager or the employee, and have my students join the customized GPT. So yes, it does use Chat GPT, but it is a different interface for a custom GPT.

Jennie:

So if I can just add, actually I went to a conference and that's where I met Ryan Detwiler, who, it's a conference called California TESOL So it's CATESOL.

Yasmeen:

Yeah. Yeah. CATESOL.

Jennie:

And, yeah, and that's where I went to one of Ryan Detwiler's workshop, and he is the creator of Chatty Bot, and this was at the time we were already destined for TESOL and we were gonna do our custom GPTs and we were struggling with it because some of the students, it was still fast. That was our biggest struggle. It was fast and we were having a hard time like slowing it down. Cause it would, Chat GPT would forget. We would tell it and then it would slow down a little bit and then next time we would forget again, and then it would go fast again. So that was our struggle. And when I went to this workshop, Ryan introduced Chatty Bot, something that he created and it seemed like exactly what we wanted. So he's using the LLM, Chat GPT LLM. I believe he's using a different LLM, he's using different ones, not just Chat GPT, but it had the same voice chatbot feature to it. but his was different because it has more of a privacy feature, whereas, some people may know that Chat GPT does not guarantee privacy, uh, with the data that they collect, and so that feature was great. Also, the fact that you can use a button and the student can control when I can speak and the student can interrupt the GPT, not the other way around. Yeah.

Yasmeen:

Okay.

Jennie:

That's why it was so great.

Yasmeen:

Okay. And just, for our audience, and because I blanked for a minute on this, LLM is Large Language Model. Large Language Model.

Jennie:

Yes.

Yasmeen:

And Alayne, did you want to add anything to this in terms of uh, the switch to Chatty Bot?

Alayne:

Yeah, so I also joined in the switch to Chatty Bot. I switched a little bit later, a few weeks after my colleagues because, I felt like for me, with my advanced students, I wasn't having the same severity of issues. For the most part, my students who were taking advantage of the chatbot assignments were mostly enjoying the assignments with Chat GPT. But I did make the switch, and one of the main things that appealed to me was that Ryan Detwiler created chatty bots to be completely embeddable in Canvas, and I really like that low barrier to entry. So a student who is a little bit less technically savvy or doesn't have the same amount of time maybe to explore different resources, they don't have to go download a new app and sign up for it, and they don't have to ever click outside of Canvas. They can stay right there in that same assignment and do everything in that same assignment. So that really appealed to me, and I also made the switch at my next class session, I used only chatty bots. In fact, I'm currently still using only Chatty Bot and not my custom GPT right now, and I think it's beneficial, especially for the lower literacy students and the lower level beginner, intermediate, even low advanced students benefit from that slower pace. But the disadvantage is that it doesn't mimic a natural conversation. So from for the more advanced students, especially the more advanced English language students who are also a bit more technically comfortable, they really benefit from the custom GPT more because of that natural back and forth, a more natural sounding voice. You don't have to do that unnatural pausing and clicking and starting and restarting. So there's certainly a place for a custom GPT still.

Yasmeen:

Okay. And you could have chosen pretty much anything to focus on with these custom GPTs, but you chose to specifically focus on speaking, on speech, on chatting. Can you tell us why this was your decision to focus on this area of English language learning?

Jennie:

So for me, the inspiration, because I teach a core class, which is all the different aspects of learning a language, but speaking was the area where I felt students had the least amount of practice outside of the classroom, because, I'm sure many of you have felt this way, but some of my students work and some of my students have been home raising kids, or maybe they're retired and they don't have anybody to talk with at home, but the people who work, their ability to learn English is so much faster because they're at work, they're immersed with people using English around them outside of the classroom. But some of my students who go home and then speak to their family members in their first language, they don't get that interaction in English, exposure to English. So for me, I felt, when I heard about the voice chat, I felt, this is exactly the, the panacea, or it was like the medicine that I was looking for my students. I wanted them to use this outside of the classroom, practice their English, get more exposure to English, just like the students who go to work and get English, even if it's just, rough English or short sentences, that's so much more, learning experience that they can get. Yeah. So that was for me, the reason, as an AI speaking partner.

Yasmeen:

And Gina, during the presentation, you told a story about these purple flowers, which were on one of your presentation slides. So can you share that story with our listeners? I thought it was just really interesting.

Gina:

So, before we can even begin teaching our students how to use these tools, we need to have a discussion with them and define what AI or Generative AI is, and so for my students, I introduced this to them very simply, and I do have artificial flowers in my classroom, so I started there. I said, what is this? Real fake? And so that started our conversation about what AI is, what generative AI is, just to help them understand that, wow, this amazing thing once they were introduced to it is, it's created by us still and the speaking partner, they knew that their teacher was creating these dialogues that we were practicing first in the classroom before they were then going home and having the ability to practice with their created and customized to them, speaking partner. So, the artificial flowers was my way to introduce the topic of and define what AI and Generative AI is for my students.

Yasmeen:

Okay, and it made lovely visuals as well during the presentation. So I'm gonna go back to this whole idea of speaking and speaking, practice being needed, and ask what you think are the implications for using AI chatbots in curriculum planning, and how do you see this potentially advancing in terms of future applications, in or out of the classroom. Alayne, would you like to begin with that?

Alayne:

Sure. I think it's a tremendous opportunity for ESL, EFL instructors, any second, third, fourth language instructors because that's what we're often missing. That piece that we're all searching for is that immersion. And like Jennie said, just because a student is living here and learning English in the context, quote unquote immersion living in San Diego, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're immersed in the language. If they're at home providing childcare, if they live in a tight-knit community of people who speak the same first language, they really may be living in San Diego, but still immersed in their first language. So. I think there's a tremendous opportunity for instructors to continue learning and expanding on what chatbots can do for English language learners, really any second language learners, and utilize it to, like I said before, not to replace any human to human interaction, but provide more of an immersion like experience for no matter what a student's situation is.

Jennie:

And if I may add to the future applications, I'd like to add something. So for me, I am looking at the future of how this will evolve and I think, it will definitely overall speed up the process of our students' listening, speaking and pronunciation skills, whereas it could have taken longer because it's just more intensive exposure if they practice and use these tools outside of the classroom. I also think, soon when, and that soon could be five years, I think AI agents and Agentic AI will bring about a lot of development in, not just a voice, but actually a video. So very soon we're gonna have videos of conversing with a voice. it's not a voice anymore, it's just a AI assistant or a AI tutor where you're gonna be practicing with that AI tutor as a visual, as a video. So I think that will be coming, very quickly. I can also give you some examples of Sora AI is already using video where you can, it's not quite there as an assistant yet, but you already know that they can make human-like avatars. Currently I'm using HeyGen to also use more visuals, and HeyGen is where you can make an avatar. You can use yourself as an avatar and using that you can actually make videos of yourself reading a script or teaching a student. That sounds a little scary, but I'm just saying it's already here and now it's just a matter of time, and I'm thinking about five years and this will all be more available. Right now it's not as available, but I think it'll all come very soon and students will be able to practice even more with a almost lifelike avatar.

Yasmeen:

This sounds very exciting. Not scary to me. Sounds very exciting, and does remind me of a cartoon that I used to watch as a kid, but I would really date myself by talking about it. Okay. The Jetsons. Okay, there you go. The Jetsons.

Jennie:

Yeah.

Yasmeen:

with all of these bots that we're doing every, everything.

Jennie:

Mm-hmm.

Yasmeen:

So HeyGen, how do you spell this?

Jennie:

HeyGen is H-E-Y-G-E-N, like generative, Gen? Yeah.

Yasmeen:

Ohh, cool. And then sesame that you mentioned earlier, is it just spelled regular, like sesame or is

Jennie:

Yes.

Yasmeen:

there some special spelling? Okay.

Jennie:

Sesame.com they call it Sesame AI,

Yasmeen:

Yeah.

Jennie:

but it's sesame.com. I believe.

Yasmeen:

Oh, okay.

Jennie:

Sesame AI was already taken by another company.

Yasmeen:

I see. Okay. And, Sora, I've already heard about Sora

Jennie:

Yeah. Yeah.

Yasmeen:

So that's really great. Finally, in terms of your presentation, at the end of it, you give some best practices for implementing these custom GPTs into instruction. So can you please share some of those ideas with us?

Gina:

So

Yasmeen:

Okay. Maybe Gina.

Gina:

Sure, sure. So definitely model everything multiple times repeatedly. Definitely important for students to see this process done, to have the opportunity to be guided through the process multiple times, and depending on the modality, it will be different, whether it is screen recordings, whether it is taking screenshots of your phone or snapshots of your desktop. If you're in person, if you have a document camera to model and have students come up to try in the classroom before you send them home to do it. If you're online, spend some time during class to, to show all the steps. So modeling is very important. I think we all asked for feedback continuously from our students to see what was working well for them, what they liked or didn't like, to let that inform which direction we went with our students. So the three of us did take different paths, and it was based on what our students' needs were and what their digital literacy skills were. So definitely knowing your student population and adapting for them. Working together, huge for accountability and for support. So I think a best practice is also definitely having at least one colleague to do this together with you. Yeah.

Yasmeen:

Okay. Would anyone else like to add to that?

Jennie:

I did wanna add that when Gina mentioned that working together, one of the great things were how we are three different teachers and we approach things slightly differently even though we also click very well, was that we were sharing a lot of, for example, Alayne was sharing how to use her phone screen recorder and showing us, oh, this is how I taught it. And then we would say, oh yeah, that's a great idea. And I had a very beginner level AI Gen AI presentation slide that I was using for something, and I said, I have this and maybe you guys wanna take a look at it. I also had surveys that I had made for my students and I shared it with everyone. Gina also shared how she was teaching the actual concept by using a fake flower. So all of these ideas we were sharing together, and I really treasure that.

Alayne:

Absolutely. I would just say all of those things contributed to our success, and probably the top two I would just repeat are to take it slowly, take it step by step with the students and have a colleague, accountability partner, because I don't think that I could have done nearly what I did on my own. And it was also really wonderful to get out of my teacher bubble. We get so used to working independently and doing our own thing, that it's very refreshing and invigorating to, like Jennie said, see how other people do it. Learn new ways to do it. Share your ideas and get that push to get some stuff done in a new way.

Yasmeen:

So speaking of the success of this collaboration, do you have anything coming up soon or anything we can look forward to in terms of you either working together again or maybe some separate projects that you're working on that have to do with AI, Custom GPTs, or something else that, to some people might be scary, but to me is exciting. What do you have coming down the pipeline?

Alayne:

We should, I think we absolutely should come up with a new collaboration. We're not there yet. We've still got our focus on the chat bot projects, and I think we're all continuing to implement the chat bots and thinking about the results of our experience this year and how we're gonna tweak those going into next year. So I'll definitely be pursuing another project with Jennie and Gina, but I'm also toying with lots of AI whenever I have time'cause this is all our spare time that we're using to research and learn all these tools. So the progress is sometimes slow, but I'm playing with other AI tools and sites and seeing how I can use those for guiding my students through other processes in my classroom as well.

Jennie:

Yeah. And Alayne, you should also mention the AI syllabus chat botter that you were working on. I think that was interesting and it ties in with this too.

Alayne:

Yeah, so I've been really looking for embedable AI. I was on a mission in a few of my deep dives into AI to find more embeddable tools, and I really couldn't find anything, at least as of a few weeks ago, that was like a chatty bot that you could embed and use with voice AI, but I did find a couple of interesting tools. One I've played with Pickaxe a little bit, like the mining tool, a pickaxe and I've used Pickaxe to make very easily embedable, custom chat bots that are text only. So those are nice to use for something, something contained, like Jennie said, that I can upload my syllabus into that Pickaxe custom chat bot, and the student can type in any question about my syllabus, for example, when does this class meet? Or what are the requirements for a course certificate? And get an answer from the chat bot about that syllabus. So that's one application of that chat bot, but I'm sure all the instructors out there can think of endless ways that you can make a Pickaxe or similar chat bot. you can do similar things with. And I've also been excited about another one called Playlab. You guys have probably experimented with Playlab too. That one's not embeddable yet, but it's nice because it's a free tool that's out there and it's very collaborative and you can make some really fun chat bots with that one too. And so I've been using that for a few tasks, like guiding students through writing an introduction paragraph. Not writing for them, but prompting them and encouraging them along the way to write those sentences step by step.

Jennie:

I do wanna, oh yeah.

Yasmeen:

Pickaxe is, that's P-I-C-K-A-X-E or P-I-C-A-X-E?

Alayne:

P-I-C-K-A-X-E.

Yasmeen:

Okay. Alright, great. Making

Jennie:

and I.

Yasmeen:

list here. My list for research. Yes. you wanted to add something Jennie?

Jennie:

I wanted to add something to what Alayne was saying. So she mentioned Playlab and Playlab is actually more accessible for California educators because it is something that the California Community College Chancellor's Office, we call it CCCO, they're providing it free for California educators. So it's not free for the whole nation, just to let everyone know that.

Yasmeen:

Okay.

Jennie:

So yeah.

Yasmeen:

Alright, then finally, Gina, anything upcoming that you wanted to make the audience aware of?

Gina:

I wanted to mention that ongoing, the three of us are co-chairs for a Generative AI Literacy meetup within our district. So ongoing, I think it's our goal to continue moving and transitioning through all the changes that AI and generative AI have, and having an opportunity, making a space for our colleagues to learn about all of these because even in this 45 minutes, we've heard so many names and we all don't have time to learn how to use all of these, so coming together, hearing about them from someone who has spent time, and sharing that time with others to determine if that would work well for their students or not, which is something we did get out of collaborating. We do have different levels and different student populations, and yes, we learned what works best for ours, but because we all got to work together, if I teach a level six-seven course in the future, I have Alayne's feedback now. If I teach a beginner course with more digitally advanced students, I have Jennie's experience now. So I think ongoing, we're trying to just stay informed, try new things or hear from our colleagues that are also trying new things, so that can best inform which directions we take or what we want to try next as well.

Yasmeen:

Okay, so I'm going to ask one final question that I ask all of the guests who come onto this show, and that is,"What burning question should today's educators consider in order to improve their service to the ELL and ML community?" And we can start maybe with Gina. Would you like to start?

Gina:

Sure. So I would say there are many times in my profession or in this space where I, knowing my students well think, Ooh, this will be challenging for them. I don't know if they can do this. And I would say when that burning question comes up, lean into it and instead of, I don't know if they can, reframe and ask, how can they also access this? How can I teach them to access this? How can I make this accessible for my students so that they also have this opportunity? And so with AI or Generative AI, I feel like that's something I got out of this working with my colleagues is I'm so proud of my students and I'm so proud that they've had the opportunity to experience Generative AI or know about this tool or learn how to use it. So, when you have that thought, that question, I don't know, can they? Reframe, and instead ask, how can I help them access this?

Yasmeen:

Okay, Jennie.

Jennie:

I have two questions that kind of come up to mind. One is, I think that this is what always makes me wanna find something that works better and it's,"Is my teaching relevant?" That's what I think a lot. I always think, am I teaching the same thing I taught 20 years ago or 30 years ago? Same book, same way of teaching something, or is it something that I'm teaching that's relevant to my students for now in 2025 when we are in a era where people are using AI and people are going to require people to use AI in the workplace? So is my teaching going to help them? Am I focusing on grammar too much when my students are going to be not using much of this grammar? I like to think instead of just following whatever you did or whatever worked before, always think about is my teaching relevant for my students? Another thing is, are my students being heard and seen? So it works with what Gina is saying, but make sure that they are being heard. If they find it difficult, make it less difficult for them. So those are the two big questions that I think about. Is my teaching relevant and are my students being heard and seen?

Yasmeen:

And Alayne?

Alayne:

So, nowadays we're all asking ourselves, what should my policy on AI be? Should I allow it? Should I disallow it? Should I be somewhere in between? And I feel like I am hearing story after story of educators who were absolutely on that,"No AI. They need to do the work themselves" side. And then as soon as they dip their toes in and they start learning, taking the time, putting in a little effort to learn about AI, they're switching sides. Maybe not all the way over to, I love AI, I wanna use it for everything, but going over more towards the,"Okay, I can see how AI helps me and I can see how AI helps my students," and personally I feel like I'm seeing less subterfuge less, sneaky AI use or unannounced AI use now that I'm using it just out in the open because that conversation is out there. So I think, what should my policy on AI be? I think we all need to learn about AI and experience AI and try using it in some different ways before we decide to forbid it or ban it in the classroom.

Yasmeen:

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, Jennie Kim, Gina De Anda, and Alayne Flores. Thank you so much for joining us today on the RBERNing Questions podcast.

Jennie:

Thank you, Yasmeen.

Alayne:

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Yasmeen:

Thank you for tuning in to RBERNing Questions, produced by Mid-State RBERN at OCM BOCES. If you would like to learn more about today's guest or any of the resources we discussed, please visit Mid-State RBERN's webpage at ocmboces.org. That's O-C-M boces.org. Join us next time where we hope to answer more of your burning questions.