AI Advocates

S4 E2: AI as a Thought Partner for Educators

• Lisa Dieker • Season 4 • Episode 2

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0:00 | 9:37

Lisa Dieker and Maggie Mosher discuss how artificial intelligence can act as a thought partner for educators as they navigate planning, problem solving, and everyday decisions. They explore ways AI can help with tasks like brainstorming lesson ideas, organizing materials, and creating classroom resources, while keeping the teacher’s expertise at the center. The episode includes examples of how educators can use AI to increase efficiency, personalize learning experiences for students, and reduce workload without sacrificing quality or creativity. Throughout the conversation, Lisa and Maggie remind listeners that AI works best when it supports human insight rather than replaces it, encouraging educators to approach AI with curiosity, optimism, and a focus on student learning.

Resources:
NotebookLM - https://notebooklm.google
Gemini - https://gemini.google.com 

Social Media:
X - https://x.com/KUFLITECenter
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/Center-for-Flexible-Learning-through-Innovations-in-Technology-Education/61563791019174/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/aai-flite-center

Lisa Dieker:

Welcome to AI Advocates. I'm Lisa Dieker.

Maggie Mosher:

And I'm Maggie Mosher.

Lisa Dieker:

And Maggie, we're excited this time to talk about, kind of spotlighting all those amazing things we keep seeing from educators who are using AI and kind of what we've seen as best-case use.

Maggie Mosher:

I love that. I was going to ask you, what is your favorite and surprising best-case use, because I think that that there's some things that have been really surprising to me. What is yours?

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, so I've actually seen a couple of new things in general that weren't even AI driven, but really have become an AI friend going back to that second brain idea we've been talking about, I fall in love with a couple of teachers that are using Explore Boards quite often. I've used choice boards before, but for those who aren't familiar with an Explore Board is, let's imagine I'm going to be taught teaching about Ben Franklin. We're going to be talking about, about what is a noun, a verb at anything. And instead of giving the students, here's what you're going to do, you give them multiple choices of things on the Explore Board. They explore the concept on their own. They have a rubric that they have to make sure they know these things. And then the teacher kind of acts as a guide on the side, and I've seen a lot of teachers using that concept in a small cluster I'm working with where they're doing multiple Explore Boards, and AI is generating the rubrics. AI is generating the ideas. Like, I want four videos, I want four books to read, I want four historical references on the concept of Franklin, and so now they can really customize their Explore Board. And that's been one of my favorite and kind of surprising uses that you think, Oh, the Explore Board is already kind of novel, but AI has made it even more efficient.

Maggie Mosher:

I love that and I think one of my most surprising and exciting ones was I was working with a middle school teacher who has great data on her students and what they are and are not learning. And she had great data from the year before, and we took her data and found something that she taught that students didn't seem to get. And so she loved the lesson. She was like, it's my favorite lesson, but it just isn't teaching what I taught. So we I had her put the lesson in AI, and she did some amazing things with it. All we told AI to do was, this is the lesson. Here's what we need students to learn from it. Make it more interactive, make it a game. Make students have to be kind of designers of their own learning, and do this in a way that would be really motivating for students. And it took her lesson, kept all of the pieces she loved, so she's still doing the relational piece in that lesson, but it made some great things that started with a joke that the students loved. It immediately got them relating their past knowledge to this knowledge by sharing in small groups like what they learned. They had games. They had a monopoly game that it created for them. It was impressive. Every small group had something like one small group was doing, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, kind of a version. Somebody was doing a Monopoly version of this game, and the results at the end. I don't think a student got any of the questions wrong, and I thought that was such a great way. She had a rubric. It created a rubric. It created exit tickets for her. She pretty much had it create the entire unit for her after that, for her next course. But she what, what I loved about it is she didn't have to lose the lesson she loved, but that wasn't effective, like it was a lesson she loved, and she loved teaching it. And you want students to see your passion, so that's great. She loved it, but can we make it effective? Yeah, it's about you loving it. It's about the two students learning it. So I loved that.

Lisa Dieker:

That's funny. Well, I'm going to go with I've got just two others. I'll share one in in kind of a social studies area and in math. But, you know, we have a friend that both of us know well, Kenneth Holman. His dissertation was, I think, exactly where we want to see it go. And I've seen teachers now using that concept, where he personalized all of the word problems to be about students area of interest. But that's what I'm really seeing is, you know, I've got a student who's only interested in Bluey, and we're studying, you know, the concept of the Constitution. Then let's figure out what Bluey would say about the Constitution. And again, you know, that's what's really fun with NotebookLM the new video and the podcasting. We just had a young friend who wrote a story on a possum, and they were reading the fable about the possum and why it plays dead, but we took his story and had it make a video, and he was just blown away. So, you know, I think it's that holistic, not just personalization, like we talk about that all the time, and differentiation, but it's, it's where I want to learn and and again, I know you're big on kids doing that for themselves, but a lot of the friends I've seen haven't been able to do that for themselves. And the teachers realizing that engagement that can come when you really make it customized to that kid, it's kind of like, it's kind of like getting, you know, the t-shirt you wanted at the at the store that, you know, says your name or your remember the key rings we used to buy, but that's where I think AI is taking us, that you don't have to spin the little rack and get what you want. It just comes immediately. And I think it's that immediacy of that personalization that is just so powerful.

Maggie Mosher:

I agree. Speaking of that, one of the other ones I really loved was students using the Nano Banana pro in Gemini when you're on the Gemini classroom, it's safe for students to use. It doesn't leave their computer. But that Nano Banana Pro, we have done so much with students writing very explicit, wonderful stories, and the picture is better the more descriptive they become. So we've had third graders with the most descriptive stories I've ever seen them write in their lives, so that they could get a really cool picture. So we got to have them, you know, write each of the characters, but be so descriptive about them that you could feel and see them and the images based on a really descriptive one versus a non-descriptive one. It's making them such better writers, because they get to see the image of their story through Nano Banana in seconds if they write a really good script. And I even did one with KU students, and had them, they're all holding up fingers based on what they want. They're all wearing Jayhawks, and they're with, I'm teaching a course for Johns Hopkins. And so I had them talking and conversing with Johns Hopkins engineers. And it did a great job. The more explicit I was on what everyone looked like, what they were talking about, who was animated, who was upset, and how the better the picture. And so I think that that's a good way to get our kids writing really descriptive, wonderful pieces.

Lisa Dieker:

Well, I'm going to go old school, and you're going to completely laugh when I tell you, but one of my favorite things I've seen is using it for coloring. And so I had an elementary teacher that I was showing how to make they were studying like, you know, police officer and how we could use it to make a rubric, and the kids could color as they understood each one. And this high school friend of mine goes, iook what I did, and he took his history concepts of the Constitution and actually made a coloring sheet for his high school kids, and they got to color when they could master it, and he could and then if they colored it, he got to orally give them the assessment. So his assessment was the kid colored, and then they got an oral check off. And if they didn't, he would say, Here's a new sheet. You have to learn again. So so he said they learned really quickly not to color something just because they like to color. They had to understand the concept. But I love that. It was a rubric, but it was a coloring rubric. And we know Adult Coloring is really cool right now. And he said, By the way, you made me cool. I said I didn't do anything. You did all the work.

Maggie Mosher:

I love that. Well, I will say my last one, because I know we're gonna have to wrap up soon. My last one, that I really thought was impressive and creative in the way in which it was used is the way in which we assess students, just taking away all paper pencil assessments whatsoever. I had one teacher that was like, I just want to do away with paper pencil completely. I get they're going to have to take the SAT, ACT, but maybe by the time they're there, we'll have come up with something better. But I I'm just ready for them to be real life for once. And so that teacher had, AI make all of their assessments even exotic is everything real life, something that they would do in an employee or position. And one of the things that AI decided was one of the things they'll have to do in real life is debate the topic they just learned with each other, to see who has the best argument, and then also compare with each other, who has the best, whatever. So for example, on this one piece of information they were learning was Spanish class, and they were learning certain verbs and tenses and something I didn't even really understand well, but every student at the end of that class had to make a song about that specific verb, intense, and how to learn it. And the person who made the best song, the teacher put it in Suno in the next morning, on whatever kind of genre they want, they had to put that on their page, what kind of genre, male, female voice, how long they wanted it to be. The person who won. The next day they came into class, that was the song that would be playing, and they'd have their name up on the board. I thought that was such a cool way to highlight. You know, we always talk about the kids who have the best grades, or the kids, but these are the kids who are creative that often get left behind because we're not talking about their grades. We're not talking about, you know, their awesome writing, but now we have something we can celebrate for them as well. And I thought that was really cool.

Lisa Dieker:

I love it. Well, we're glad you joined us for this classroom spotlight. We can shine spotlights all over the world. We know teachers are doing great things, so we hope you might even like list some of those things out there as we talk about our podcast, because we'd love to hear more ideas from you too, but we hope this helps you save some time and some ideas.

Maggie Mosher:

And money.

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, and money. Thanks for joining us.