S3-04: Using AI and ChatGPT in K–12 classrooms

In the latest episode of the Science Connections podcast, we explore using AI in the classroom and its impact on our students.  Listen as I sit down with teachers Donnie Piercey and Jennifer Roberts to discuss ChatGPT and how we can use it to build science and literacy skills in K–12 classrooms while preparing students for the real world. 

And don’t forget to grab your Science Connections study guide to track your learning and find additional resources!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
If a kid graduat from school without knowing

(00:01):
that AI exists, they're notgonna be prepared for what they
face out in the world.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Welcome to Science Connections. I'm your host Eric
Cross . This season of thepodcast, we're making the case
for everyone's favoriteunderdog science. Recently
we've been highlighting themagic that can come from
integrating science andliteracy. So if you haven't
checked out those recentepisodes, definitely go back in
your feed after you're donewith this one. This time

(00:28):
around, we're going to deepdive into what artificial
intelligence means for literacyinstruction, and how science
can be a force for good. Inresponse for exposing students
to ai . To help me out, I'mjoined by two extremely
accomplished educators. JenRoberts, a veteran high school
English teacher from San Diego,who among many things runs the
website lit and tech.com . AndI'm also joined by fifth grade

(00:53):
teacher Donnie Pearcy . Inaddition to being Kentucky's
2021 Teacher of the Year,Donnie also has an upcoming
book about bringing AI into theclassroom. Whether you've never
heard of chat, G p T or whetheryou're already using it every
day , I think you'll find thisa valuable discussion about the
intersection of science,English, and technology. Here's

(01:13):
Jen and Donnie . So first off,welcome to the show. It's good
to see you all. What I wanna dois kind of start off , uh, by
introducing both of you. And so, uh, we'll just go K-12. So
, Donnie .

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Donnie goes first.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Donnie's gonna go first. Donnie out in Kentucky.
Um, it's a little background.
What do you teach? How longyou've been in the classroom,
and , uh, what are you havingfun with right now?

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, so my name is Donnie Pearcy . I'm a fifth
grade teacher from , uh,Kentucky Live and teach right
here in Lexington, Kentucky,right in the center of the
state. I'm the 2021 KentuckyTeacher of the Year. Um, but ,
uh, I mean, I've been teachingelementary school for the past.
I think this is year 16 or 17.
I don't , it's long enoughwhere I've lost count and like

(01:59):
I've run , I can't even counton fingers anymore. Um, my, my
friends like to joke that I've,I've taught long enough where
now I can count down, you know,I count. It's like, all right ,
only so many more years left.
But , um, yeah, teach allsubjects science definitely is,
is one of the subjects that Idefinitely, you know, don't
just try to squeeze into myday, but make sure that it's
not even a devoted subject, butone that I definitely try to ,

(02:24):
um, don't just have that settime, but also try to do some
cross-curricular stuff with it.
So , um, definitely the rise ofAI in these past few , uh,
months, which feels like yearsby this point, has definitely
played quite the role , um, in, uh, not just changing the way
that I've been teachingscience, but really all my

(02:45):
subjects. So excited to chatwith y'all about it.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Nice. I'm excited that you're here. Uh, and Jen ,

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Uh, hi, I'm Jen Roberts. I teach ninth grade
English at Point Loma HighSchool, and that's where I
usually stop when I introducemyself. But for your sake,

Speaker 2 (03:00):
I will keep intro , I will keep introducing you if
you stop there. .

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Um, I am nationally board certified in English
Language Arts for earlyadolescence. I am the co-author
of a book called Power Up ,making the Shift to One-to-One
Teaching and Learning fromStenhouse , uh, with my
fabulous co-author Diana Nebi .
Shout out to Diana. I blog edlit and tech.com about teaching
and technology and literacy andthe intersection of those

(03:24):
things. And I'm looking forwardto talking about how AI is
showing up in my classroom andthe fun things I'm doing with
it.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
And one of us is actually secretly a robot, and
you have to guess which one.
Have to guess

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Which one. Yes ,

Speaker 2 (03:37):
That would be super meta. And you were the q
computer user educator,outstanding teacher or
educator, whatever, either oneof

Speaker 1 (03:45):
The year I was the Q 22 Outstanding educator. Yes.
And , um, I've won a few otherthings as well. And the gaming

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Backpack.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
I've won a gaming backpack recently. Yes. I once
won an iPad in a Twitter chat.
What ? Um ,

Speaker 3 (03:58):
It's a gaming backpack. Hold on. We can talk
about that.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
We will talk about that. But , um, and
then , uh, I was once a , afinalist for county Teacher of
the Year. That's as close as Igot to Donnie . Donnie was the,
you know, Kentucky teacher ofthe year . He got to go to the
White House and stuff. That wasexciting.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
. I mean, to be fair, there's only 3 million
people in Kentucky and aboutwhat, 50 million people that
live in California . Soodds are definitely stacked in
my favor, I think .

Speaker 1 (04:23):
So you're saying we're even there? Is that, is
that what

Speaker 3 (04:24):
You're going for ?
Yeah, evens out. Evens out.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Okay. So I've been looking forward to talking to
you both for a while now, andtalking about artificial
intelligence. It's like the bigthing. And both of you at
different ends of the spectrumand and in my life have
contributed to this. Donna ,you've been doing it, you've
been sharing so much greatinformation online about how
you using AI in elementary. Jen, you are the reason I got into

(04:49):
education technology years ago,right? When I was becoming a
teacher. And so being able totalk with you both about it
excites me a lot. So first off,for the listeners who may not
have any experience with it,and that's, there's still a lot
of people out there who are,have not been exposed to it,
haven't got their feet wet withit yet. I'm hoping we could
start off maybe with anexplanation of, and we could do
AI chat, G P T, I know that'sthe big one. Um, but simply

(05:13):
explaining kind of what it isjust for the, the new person.
Um, and whoever wants to startoff can kind of , kind of tell
us about it. Or maybe we'llstart, we'll , let's actually,
let's do this, let's continuegoing like K-12. So Donnie,
maybe you could , like, what'syour, what's your kind of like
pitch to the new person of,Hey, this is what it is?

Speaker 3 (05:31):
All right . So , um, ai, artificial intelligence ,
uh, probably the way that mostpeople are exposed to it, at
least, you know, since Novemberwhen it launched, is through
chat G P T. Um, where if you,if you Google it, you know it's
made by a company calledOpenAI, the best way to
describe what it is, when yougo there for the first time,
make an account, it's free. Um,you have like a little search

(05:53):
window, looks like a Googlesearch bar. Um, and instead of
searching for information, youcan ask it to create stuff for
you. So for example, like onGoogle search, you might type
in a question like, who was the19th president of the United
States? We're on chat G P T.
Instead of just searching forinformation, it creates stuff

(06:15):
for you. So you could say, youcould ask it to, Hey, write a
poem about the 19th presidentof the United States, or write
a short little essay comparing,I don't know, Frederick
Douglass to Martin Luther KingJr. And it would do that for
you. You know, that's mostpeople's first exposure to ai,

(06:36):
at least in these past, pastfew months. Um, instead of, you
know, it's artificialintelligence, but it's not just
chatbots. There's lots of other, um, AI that exist out there.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
And I think that's the thing is that people don't
realize how much AI is alreadyin their lives.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
For sure. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
You know, they just, they haven't seen the , the,
the term that I see being useda lot now is generative ai.
Mm-hmm . AI thatcan produce something. It can
produce writing, it can produceart, it can produce a script,
it can produce a character. Butthe AI that has been helping
you pick what to watch next onNetflix and the AI that's

(07:14):
helping Google help you getwhere you wanna go on Google
Maps faster, those are forms ofartificial intelligence as
well.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah. I mean, even those, you know, when you get
that g that message in Gmailand instead of having to type
out that response that says,yeah, that sounds great, you
can just click the littlebutton that says, yeah, that
sounds great. I mean, that'sbeen in Gmail for years, but
that's artificial intelligencetoo.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Mm-hmm.
a Absolutely. Sowhy is it important, do you
think, for educators to, to befamiliar with it? Like, why are
we all so excited about it?

Speaker 1 (07:47):
So , um, educators need to know what, what kids
are into, and kids areobviously into chat , G P T and
anyone who's an educator rightnow has probably already had
something cross their desk, ormore likely their computer
screen that was written by AIand passed off as a student's
own work. And that is, ofcourse, the great fear among
teachers everywhere that thisis what kids are just gonna do

(08:08):
these days and they won't beable to catch it and children
won't be doing their own workand this and this. Um, but I
think the big reason teachersneed to know what's going on is
because teachers need to befuturists. Our, our clientele
will live in the future. Weteach kids, kids will become
adults, adults will live in theworld. And so if we're not

(08:28):
thinking about and trying topredict on some level what's
gonna happen 5, 10, 15 yearsfrom now, we might be wrong,
but it it , what if we'reright? And if we're not at
least trying to think aboutwhat is their future world
gonna look like, then we're notserving our students. Well, I
did a whole night talk on that.
So I think chat g PT is part ofthat. I teach seniors. I am, I

(08:50):
had this moment of realizationI felt a few months ago. I'm
like, this is gonna be theworld they graduate into. They
need to know what this isbefore they leave me. If I
don't teach them how to usethis well and not the way
they're using it, which is tocopy and paste the teacher's
assignment and drop it intochat G p T and take whatever it
spits out and turning that inwithout even looking at it. But

(09:10):
if I don't teach 'em how to useit critically, if I don't teach
them how to write effectiveprompts, if I don't teach them
how to use the AI as a tool, asa collaborator, then they're
gonna graduate into a worldwhere they lose out to people
who do know how to do that. AndI think the advantage goes to
kids who have access andknowledge of what's in front of

(09:32):
them and what's available, andcan use all of the tools at
their disposal. Because whenyou're writing in school and
you write with a collaborator,that could be considered
cheating. But when you do thatout in the adult world, that's
considered doing a good job.
being a team player, , you know, adults
don't work alone for the mostpart. And adults are expected

(09:55):
to churn out, you know,beautiful, perfect content no
matter how they got there. Soif I'm not teaching my kids how
to use this, they're not beingready. They're not gonna be
ready to be the adults that Iwant them to be. A

Speaker 3 (10:07):
Hundred percent agree. A and I also believe, as
you know, I teach elementaryschool, I also don't think
anybody is saying that on thefirst day of kindergarten, you
hand a kid a Chromebook andload up an AI chat bot or chat
G p t and say, Hey, thisthing's gonna do all your work
from you for , for you for thenext 12 years, just coast

(10:28):
through life. You don't have tothink it creatively. You don't
have to learn how to develop aparagraph or learn how to, you
know, write a speech or developan idea. Like, I , I don't
think anybody's saying thatbecause as an elementary school
teacher, you know, there's manydays when I'm like, y'all,
we're just putting theChromebooks away today and
we're just gonna go old school. We're just gonna maybe just

(10:48):
jot down five quick ideas andstand up and present those
ideas to the class. Um, becausewhile ai it , it definitely
will, like you were saying, Jengoing to play a significant
role in the lives of ourstudents who are, I mean, not
just graduating, but the 10 and11 year olds in my classroom
this year. Um, a a significantrole in their lives. It's also

(11:13):
really important to recognizethat we're not saying that this
means that hey, kids don't haveto work anymore. Like they ,
they still have to, to putforth that effort. There's
still, you know, one of theways that you become a good
writer is by trial and error.
And sometimes that trial anderror comes through talking to
a teacher or talking like youwere saying to a peer or

(11:34):
collaborating with a peer andsaying to them like, well, you
know, this sentence here, thisparagraph here really doesn't
make sense. And I do believe,like one of the ways,
especially as AI starts tobecome more fine-tuned and um,
starts to be embedded more andmore in tools like Google Docs
and Microsoft Word is, it'salmost going to be a tutor to

(11:55):
students. Mm-hmm .
, where I , Icould very easily see in a few
years, or maybe a few months,who knows what Google or any of
these other big companies hasrolling out where a student
could highlight a paragraphthat they wrote simply, you
know, and then say, Hey,proofread this for me, or check
for coherence. Or even just aska simple question, does this

(12:16):
paragraph make sense? Becauseyou can already do that. You
can copy a paragraph over intoa chatbot and say like, Hey,
does this make sense? You know,rate my idea from one to 10 and
it'll do that for 'em . We ,

Speaker 1 (12:26):
We did that last week, .

Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah. Right. I mean, that's the thing. Like , that
technology exists now, it'sjust not totally embedded yet,
but based on what I've read andwhat I've seen, that's gonna
happen sooner rather thanlater. And it's really, really
important that we teach ourstudents that, no, you're not
just gonna use this, this toolto cheat, but you can use this
tool to help you become a morecreative student.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
This is the use case in my classroom. Can I talk
about that? You , you ready forthat? Please. Okay, please. So
my ninth graders are, arewriting a comparative analysis
essay where I took them to thestudent art gallery and I made
them pick p two pieces ofcompletely unknown student art
and take notes on it so theycould go back and write this
essay. And as soon as we gotback to class, I said, can chat

(13:10):
t write this for you? And theyall kind of froze cuz I didn't
tell them what chat t was. Andthey weren't sure if they were
allowed to know or not. Andfinally one of them kind of
bravely raised his hand andsaid, no. And I said, why not?
And he said, well, the, the AIhasn't seen the art. How can it
write an essay about art whenthe art is completely original
that we just went and lookedat? I said, it's almost like I

(13:31):
planned it that way, isn't it?
And they laughed ne nervously.
Um, and then I said, does thatmean it can't help us with this
assignment? And they said,well, no, of course it can't
help us because it has not seenthe art. And I said, well, and
I open chat G P T, and I typedin what they were trying to do.
I need to write a comparativeanalysis essay comparing two
pieces of student art on thesereasons. And I need to choose

(13:54):
which one did it better,basically. Can you help me with
an outline and chat ? G p tproduced a lovely outline. And
I looked at that with mystudents and we looked at it
together and I said, this iswhat it gave us. Would this be
helpful to you? And they'relike, yeah, that would be
helpful to us. So we, I wasthe, to be clear here, I was

(14:14):
the only one using chat j PT inthe room. They were not
actually using it. Mm-hmm . Wewere using it together. I
copied and pasted the outlinethat it gave us and put it in
their learning managementsystem where they could access
it so they could use theoutline that the robot
provided, and then they coulduse that to make their own
writing better. So I then I letthem write for a little while,

(14:36):
and , uh, after they'd writtenfor a little while, I said,
does anybody wanna let me shareyour first paragraph with chat
G p t and see what it thinks ofhow you're doing? And a brave
student raised his hand and wetook his paragraph and we put
it in chat , G P T, and it spitback advice. We a , we said,
this is what I have so far formy first paragraph. Do you have

(14:56):
any advice for me? And we gaveit the writing, and the first
piece of advice he gave backwas very generic, you know, at
a hook, you know, like kind ofthing. But after that, it
started to get more specificabout things he was actually
doing in his writing. And itstarted to give him some
feedback. And we looked at thattogether as a class. And I
said, does any of that feedbackhelp you? And he said, oh yeah,
absolutely. I'm gonna go addsome revisions to my paragraph.

(15:18):
And other students did too.
They looked at the feedback hegot and used that to improve
their writing. And so everybodywent and revise. And I said,
look, if you take what therobot gives you and you copy
and paste it, and you turn itin as your own work, it's gonna
get flagged for plagiarism. Andthat's not gonna go well. But
if it gives you writing advicethe same way I would give you
writing advice and you decidethat advice is good, and you

(15:41):
take that advice and youincorporate it into your own
writing yourself, then therobot's making you better, but
you're still the one doing yourown writing. And the writing
they turned in from thatassignment was, was better. It
wasn't written by chat G p t,it was still about the student
art that they found in thegallery. Mm-hmm . But I showed
them a path, like, it can helpyou with an outline, it can

(16:01):
help you with feedback. Right.
These are fair ways to use it,that's gonna make you better.
And they really liked that.
They really like , no , no onehad shown them that before. The
idea that you don't just takethe teacher's prompt and give
it to it. Like this is, theseare new uses to students and
worked well.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
So right now you , like you , you both just laid
out almost these, these waysthat you're using it. And
anyone, and I do this withpeople that I'm trying to
introduce to chat G p t or ai.
Cause I get excited, likeanyone could write like a 500
word persuasive essay on theuse of color in the great gasby
or the outsiders, and they canget something back within
seconds. But for a lot ofeducators like it , it might

(16:41):
feel like the sky is falling.
Um ,

Speaker 3 (16:43):
Oh, understandably.
I mean , understandably. I meanthat , that totally makes
sense. Um, like what , whatwould

Speaker 2 (16:49):
You, what would you say to them? Donnie , go ahead.
Yeah. Well ,

Speaker 3 (16:52):
I feel like every teacher kind of goes through
the same experience when theysee like a generative chatbot.
I mean, all these majorcompanies are gonna start
incorporating , um, ai, thegenerative AI piece. Um, and a
lot of times when they see itfor the first time , uh, two
things, first they'll say like,oh , but I'll know that that's

(17:12):
not my, my students writing.
Which frankly I think is a goodthing because that tells me
that the teachers know theirstudents writing, you know,
they're , they're , they ,they've seen them write in
person , they've conferencedwith them one-on-one. And if a
student were to turn somethingin me who I know might be a
struggling writer, maybe it'snot their strength, and all of
a sudden they're turning inthis, you know, 10 page like

(17:35):
dissertation worthy thesiswritten at a PhD level. I'm
like, all right , man, you'renine. Like, can we talk about
where this came from? ?
Um, but I , but I also don'tthink that at like the heart,
like I don't feel like kidswant to, to cheat. I, I really
don't. Um, I feel likesometimes like kids are in a

(17:56):
situation where they're like,okay, I've got nothing left . I
gotta get this assignment done.
And when those kind of thingshappen, that's when we as
teachers, we have those, thoseone-on-one conversations. Um,
even, you know, when I showedmy students , um, chat, G p T
and even some of the AI imagegenerating stuff for the first
time, and I talked to themabout like, what do y'all think
about this? Because , you know,they're under 13. Um, in my

(18:19):
district , uh, chat, g p t,it's blocked for students.
Mm-hmm . , youknow, staff, we have access to
it. And that's just becauseone, it's so new and at the
same time, like we , we justneed to figure out like, what's
the best way they can go aboutusing this tool? But , um, when
we were talking about it , uh,as a class, you know, I, I
didn't want to ignore theelephant in the room, so I

(18:39):
asked them, I said, Hey, do youfeel like this is something
that you all would use to, to,I mean, I used the word I said
cheat. And to be honest, themajority of the students in my
class, they were taken aback.
They're like, what? You thinkwe just, we just would cheat
all the time. Right. .
Um, and I'm like, oh, wellgood. I'm glad to know that
integrity is still alive andwell. But yeah, so that ,

(19:00):
that's definitely kind of mythoughts on it as far as, you
know, not only the, the , um,the student integrity piece.
Like, I think that that's the,that's the big thing that you
need to just bring up with yourstudents. Um, because again, I
, I like to think that I'veseen my students right enough
that if they were going to turnsomething in that wasn't their

(19:23):
voice or it didn't sound likethem, like I could have that
conversation. And don't besurprised too if in the next, I
mean, I don't know, one monthto a year , um, these, you
know, there's lots of AIdetectors that exist. A lot of
them are kind of these likethird party things. You can go
ahead, but I would not besurprised if in the next year
or so, like you start to seethose AI detectors be built

(19:45):
into Google Docs, intoMicrosoft Word, into even
Canva. Um, and honestly, it's,it's just a , almost like a
fail safe button for teachersthat we could say like, all
right , this is telling me thatthis is 99% probably written by
ai. Um, so you can have thatconversation with a student
that way.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
I mean, if you're worried about it, like
formative right now will eventell you if, if something is
copy and pasted into the boxesthat they give you for students
to write in. Yeah . Um, I findthat kids who cheat are, are
desperate, you know, especiallyat the high school level.
They've just, they're panickedmode mode. And, and usually
their panic comes from, I haveno idea how to even start this
assignment. And so part of whatI wanna use chat g p T for is

(20:26):
to lower that barrier for them.
Like, you've got an assignment,you don't know where to start.
Tell the robot, tell chat g p tabout the assignment and ask it
for a list of steps. You know,ask it for an outline, ask it
for a time management plan. Isee so much tremendous
potential for this to help manyof my students with IEPs who

(20:48):
have executive functioningissues.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
Oh, a hundred percent, right?

Speaker 1 (20:51):
Yes, a hundred percent . This, this can be
their, their personal assistantwho, you know, instead of me
sitting with them one-on-oneand saying, you know, this is
the task you need to do, let'sbreak it down into these six
discrete chunks. The, theartificial intelligence can do
that for them. And it can dothat for teachers too. ,

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Jen , I was just thinking about like, I mean,
how long until we see like thephrase artificial intelligence
written onto a student's i e p, like, I could see that
happening very, very soon.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
Right? They, they, they should be able to use
that. Um, and then, and thenalso, of course, all of its
amazing beneficials forteachers. I had to completely
rewrite a unit of mycurriculum. I knew what I
wanted to do. I had some ideasof things I, I wanted to put in
there. And I resorted to, Iwent to , um, education

(21:40):
co-pilot dot com and typed inmy stuff that I had, you know,
what standards I wanted tocover, what outcomes I was
hoping for mm-hmm.
. And itgenerated a , you know, an
eight week unit for me. And Iwent, I actually told it then
to go back and do it as a 12week unit so that I'd have more
stuff in there to go and cherrypick to decide what I really
wanted to do. But it gave meideas. It gave me places to

(22:03):
start. It saved me an hour ofjust brainstorming. Um, and I
don't think that was cheating.
I still got to go in and decidewhich ideas were valid. And I
still got to, you know, I mean,I mean, I'm a teacher, can I
get accused of cheating? Idon't think that's a thing.
It's,

Speaker 2 (22:18):
That's collaborating. It's
collaborating,

Speaker 3 (22:20):
Collaborating . It's a feature. It it's a feature .

Speaker 1 (22:22):
It's Tony Stark talk , talking to Jarvis, you know,
they're, they're figuring itout together.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
Oh. Do you call your , when you use the ai,
Jennifer, do you call yoursJarvis? We call our, in my
class we call him js. Cuzremember ask g I think

Speaker 1 (22:33):
Eric calls it Jarvis. Yeah .

Speaker 2 (22:35):
I , I want, yeah.
Jarvis is gonna be the AI'sname when, when I can get that
fully functioning. Mm-hmm.
. Um, there aresome things that you had said.
I just wanna circle back on ,uh, Donnie , Jen . So you, what
I heard was like bestintentions. I , we , the part
you said about integrity instudents wanting to cheat , uh,
even the mindset that we go in,assuming our students, what
they would want to do andassuming best intentions really

(22:56):
kind of frames how you look atthis kind of technology. And
then Jen , you kind of wraplike why students cheat and
realizing that either theydon't feel equipped or, or , or
maybe it's time management orsomething else. But most
people, and I , I believe thisis an educator, most students
want to learn and they want to,they want to be able to perform
and achieve. And when they,they cheat , they, it's because

(23:18):
they didn't feel like theycould, for whatever reason,
whether it's it's outsidefactors, whether it's something
internal motivation, whateverit is .

Speaker 1 (23:24):
Or they were very disconnected and just didn't
care. Sure . This is just busywork the teacher's giving me,
so I'm gonna give it, you know,very little of my time and
energy. Um, but I, I think,yeah, it can be that. But , um,
if the kid cares about it, ifthey, if they wanna learn, they
wanna learn, you know? Right .
They'll learn, they'll, this isthe day of the internet . Any
kid can learn anything theyreally want to learn. And, and

(23:46):
we see that all the time in ourclasses. The kid who goes, who
has zero interest in what I'mteaching in English, but he is
an expert coder, and, andthat's what he wants to spend
his time learning. He's like,can I read this c plus plus
book cuz my independent readingbook? And I'm like, you know,
actually you can go ahead . You know , .

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah. And, and it , for both of you saying that
this makes content moreaccessible and I think Donnie
or, or Jen , you were , yousaid something about IEPs. I
actually put in having it rightan i e p to see what would
happen. I gave it a prompt fora student's ability level and I
asked it to create a plan andthen I asked it to create a
rationale. And it did. Yeah .

(24:21):
And it was good. Yeah . Like I, I went through and vetted it.
And right now I , I , you know,a lot of it is funny cuz uh,
the conversation I'm havingwith, with different teachers
is kind of like the Wikipediaone. Remember when Wikipedia
first got out and everyone waslike trying to discourage
everybody from using it because, well , it could be changed by
anybody. And now everyone'slike, oh, check Wikipedia and
then steal the sources cuzthey're already done for you.

(24:44):
Like, the mindset has shiftedsince then. And I was, I was
talking to, to someone and theysaid, well, I said, we have, we
can, we can use ai, it could bea tutor, these other things.
And they said , yeah, but whathappens? And then insert
apocalyptic scenario. Mm-hmm.
like, whathappens if you don't have
access to wifi ? And it , itreminded me of, for some
reason, cooking classes. So inthe 17 hundreds you probably

(25:08):
had to be able to farm to beable to generate your food.
Right? Like you had to get itfrom somewhere. But if you take
a culinary class now you, youjust go to the grocery store
and someone might say, well,but you should know how to farm
cuz what if there was thisworldwide apocalypse and nobody
could go to the grocery stores. And you're like, well
, balance of probabilitythough. You know, it's like

(25:29):
we've been really been livingin these iterations of life and
I think this next step for somefolks, like we don't even
realize even like somethinglike bank statements, right? So
many folks are paperless andthere's always a what if
scenario, what if you need it?
And the internet goes down. Butwe get so used to to to
technology advancing and makingour lives different. This kind

(25:50):
of seems like that nextiteration. And I , I wanna ask
you this question, are welooking at like the next
calculator, the next internetwith this, this tech? Or, or do
you think it's too early tosay? Well,

Speaker 3 (26:01):
I mean, so I've, I've seen a lot of people
compare chat G P T to acalculator. I , I've seen that
pop up on , uh, social media.
There's , oh well no, this is,this is like when the
calculator was invented , um,everyone was kind of up in arms
about how that's not what mathstudents should do. MASH should
be pencil and paper mash shouldbe this. However, like you can

(26:24):
give a kid a calculator and youcan give 'em a word problem and
they can punch in all thenumbers, but they could do the
wrong operation or they couldput the decimal point in the
wrong place cuz the student isstill the one who's controlling
what's on the calculator. Wherewith ai, all you gotta do is
just copy it and then paste itinto the bot and it'll spit out

(26:46):
whatever the question asked itfor. Whether it was , uh, you
know, 500 word rationale or ,uh, proof for something in
geometry, or if it's analyzingdata on a chart , um, like
it'll do all that.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yes. But it's not that magical. Yeah. It , it ,
it's back to what Eric did withthe I E P mm-hmm .
, he put in aprompt and then he knew enough
to ask for a rationale and thenhe knew enough about IEPs to
critically read the results hegot and make sure they actually
worked for what he needed.
Yeah. He had to know all that.
He was an expert using it to doan expert thing. My husband's a

(27:23):
computer scientist, he got chatPT to help him write an app and
it was, you know, a newprogramming language to him and
he could put in the data and hecould ask for things that I
would've never thought to askfor. But because he knows the
language of computer science,he knew what to ask for and
when it gave him results thatwere bad, he could see that and

(27:43):
he could say, yes, but do itagain. But without this or make
this part more efficient, heagain, knew what to ask for. So
I think the , the generative AIis, as a partner with humans, a
powerful thing. But if thehuman doesn't know what they're
doing, yeah. You're still notgonna get great results.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
and I , and I think that's why I'm coming
at this as from the elementaryschool perspective, right?
Because in K to five studentsare still learning, like, hey,
where does the decimal pointgo? They're still learning, you
know, if you're dividing by atwo digit number, you know, how
, where was the first digit goif you go in the old long
division algorithm? And sothey're still acquiring that,

(28:24):
that base level knowledge that,I don't know , maybe this is
similar to like, you know, inJurassic Park when Jeff
Goldblum says like, it didn'ttake any knowledge to attain,
you know, they stood on theshoulders of geniuses, that
whole thing. Like they had toacquire the knowledge for
themselves with this wholepoint. Um, and so I think like
that's why I don't think it'sexactly the same as the

(28:45):
calculator. It is definitelygoing to change things , um, in
a similar way that the , thatthe calculator did. But it ,
it's, to me it's, it's, it'sjust a whole new animal. And I
, I don't know if it's going tobe like the next internet,
Eric, if it's , um, you know,you're gonna get little devices
that have, you know, AI builtinto it, like a Star Wars kind

(29:06):
of thing, like a droid orsomething that falls you around
all that would be kind of cool,not gonna lie, but whether it's
something that you'll accessthrough the internet, something
that's, you know, built intoyour , your , your tv. That
part I don't know. But I doknow that there's a reason why
all of these apps and all thesecompanies are investing so
much, not just energy, but timeand money into it because

(29:29):
they're recognizing like, okay,this really has the potential
to, I mean, change things, butif used well , um, and use
safely to change people's livesfor the better.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
So it , I definitely hear that you both agree with
the statement that if AI chat gp t was used in the classroom,
it could be a force for goodand mm-hmm .
literacy development. And I , Iwanna shift gears a bit and
then come back to the ai. Sowith that said, and we're gonna
get into some best practices ina minute, in science
connections right now in thisseason, we're , we're making
the case for how science can domore in classrooms than in

(30:03):
schools. Mm-hmm. .
Um, and so I'm I'm curiousabout what both of you think
about the role in sciencefostering a better future when
it comes to AI and education.
And this season we're reallytalking a lot about literacy.
It it , you know, in schools sooften it's taught in a siloed
way. And I, Donnie you're doingmulti-subject Jen , you're
single subject English. Andwe've really been trying to
make this case for how sciencecan actually support literacy

(30:28):
and these skills that studentsare, are trying to develop. So
we're, we're going a little oldschool kind of diving into
your, your , your contentspecialty, but maybe even pre
AI or maybe AI has a componentin this, but Don maybe we'll
start with you. How have youseen, or how has science been a
way that has been helpful foryour own literacy instruction?
I know you do a lot of sciencebecause I see you're not ,

(30:50):
you're , uh, Google Earth stuffand the thing you did with the
solar systems back in the day,and I think, oh my gosh,

Speaker 3 (30:55):
Son , remember my , no, we built . Wow.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
That was amazing

Speaker 3 (31:00):
That we haven't not done that since the pandemic.
But we built a , um, I had mystudents go out and using
Google Earth. We, we , um,built a scale model. We what
each of the students, theypartnered up and they , uh,
planned out on Google Earth ascale model of the solar
system. They picked an objectfrom around their house and we
talked about like, don't picksomething bigger than a beach

(31:22):
ball or else you're , you know,your , uh, your neptune's gonna
end up like 10 miles away. Butuh, you know, they just picked
like a small ball, like abasketball, soccer ball,
something like that, orfootball for international
friends. Um, and then wecalculated the size of every
other planet and then on GoogleEarth, like using their front

(31:43):
lawn as where the sun was. Thenwe went and we uh, we
calculated where other planetswould be and then we actually
drove to those locations andlike held up the objects that
would represent like Neptune,Jupiter, Saturn and all that.
But it was a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
And is that still accessible? Cause I know you
have some websites that you putresources out there. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (32:03):
Yeah, I can , uh, I wanna say on my resources page,
resources.mr pearcy.com I'vegot a link on there to a couple
of student examples that I canshare. Um, and if not, when we
get off this call, I'm gonna goon and put them on there
. So if people can findit, I'll, I'll even throw on
there the, just the assignmentitself. So if you wanted to

(32:24):
copy that and do that with yourstudents, you could, I

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Donny the reason why I brought that up is because I
saw that, that you had postedthat or shared it a long time
ago and it , I just thought itwas the , the coolest thing
that you could totally do withmiddle school students or high
school students. Jen , when Ibecame a teacher, you said
we're all teachers of literacy

Speaker 1 (32:43):
. Yeah. You , you , I think we forgot to
tell them that I was one ofyour professors.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
Yes. One of, one of the, the people who've
definitely influenced andshaped my teaching. And that
statement has never left mymind that we're all teachers of
literacy. And I want to ask youlike at the high school level,
how can science educators, orhow can science have you, how
have you seen it or how does itsupport literacy when it's when

(33:07):
it's done right.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
I think we're, like I said, I think we're all
teachers of literacy, but, butI think literacy is bigger than
just reading and writing. LikeI don't think someone is
literate if they can't talksomewhat knowledgeably about
what's happening with climatechange. You know , I don't
think someone's literate ifthey don't know what's going on
in the world. And I think somuch of what's going on in the
world has to do with science.

(33:29):
We we're doing that all thetime. I , if I could teach
English just by giving kidsarticles about science, things
to read, that would make my dayright. Um, we would never read
another piece of fiction again.
It would all be , um, you know,what's happening to the ice
sheet in Greenland. Um, my, mystudents thrive on reading
non-fiction. And then wheneverthat non-fiction touches on

(33:49):
science is is even moreinteresting. And whenever I can
get them writing about data,particularly their own data
that they collected, you know,that is, I think that's
building those science literacyskills as well. So I think
science and English blendtogether very, very well. I
think the , the literacyaspects of that are fantastic.
There are more subjectspecific, you know, vocabulary

(34:11):
words, advanced vocabularywords in science and any other
discipline. And I don't see whythose shouldn't come up in
English as well. Um, you know,my seniors will do a unit at
the end of the year on the newspace race unless I replace it
with a unit about generativeai, which I'm seriously
considering doing cuz I thinkthey really need to learn about
bias in AI algorithms andthings like that. And I would

(34:32):
like to have them read a wholebunch about that stuff. And I
want , I wanna give them theopen letter that all those CEOs
signed that said that AIresearch should slow down and,
and make them part of that liveconversation about what's
happening in that field. Youknow, so, so science comes into
that. You know, when we readinto the wild, we start talking
about a whole bunch ofscientific concepts and when it

(34:53):
rains in Southern California,we pull up weather maps and
look at radar and, and talkabout that and how that works.
That's

Speaker 3 (35:00):
Like once every 10 years. Jen ,

Speaker 1 (35:02):
Well actually this, this year it was , it

Speaker 2 (35:05):
Saves

Speaker 1 (35:05):
A lot . It rained a lot in San Diego, which is,
which is actually very highinterest for them cuz they
wanna know is it gonna beraining at lunchtime?

Speaker 2 (35:12):
The Jen , you said something , you have your
students writing about data.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
What , what , can you tell me more about that?

Speaker 1 (35:19):
So , um, this is something we've done with the
ninth grade team for a longtime now, is writing about
their own data. So it startedwith a unit about stereotypes
and stereotype threat and theywould collect data, you know,
individually and then theywould enter that data into a
Google form and then we wouldgive them the spreadsheet of
the aggregate data from thewhole ninth grade. Um, and then

(35:40):
we did it, we morphed that unitinto one about academic honesty
and they, they filled out asurvey at the beginning of the
unit about their feelings,about academic honesty and
about experiences with academichonesty and cheating and
homework and things like that.
And then we would do the unit,we'd do all the readings in the
unit and they'd have these ahamoments about, you know, things

(36:01):
that were happening at otherschools. And then at the end of
the unit we would give themback their own aggregate data
and ask them to write aboutwhether or not, you know,
academic honesty was an issueat our school. And then to
support that answer with, youknow, evidence from their own
dataset. So they had thatspreadsheet to comb through and
figure out, you know, where amI gonna stand on this? We give

(36:23):
them the, the, the multiplechoice questions we gave them
as, you know, the graphs , um,in Google Slides so that they
could write about them and talkabout them too. So yeah,
getting kids to write aboutdata and the the sentence
frames we gave them weresentence frames out of, they
say, I say from the chapter onwriting about science and when

(36:44):
they as they write thisstuff, they're , they're like,
I feel so smart writing thisway. And I'm like, I know cuz
you're writing about bigimportant topics, right? Mm-hmm
. And writing about their owndata come to think of it is
another great way to make anassignment both very personal
to them, but also, you know,make it chat g p t proof , you
know, if you, if you're lookingfor something that kids can't

(37:05):
just hand to the robot , uh,the robot doesn't have that
data set .

Speaker 2 (37:08):
Absolutely. And Donnie , at the elementary
level, do you, do you makeconnections between science and
literacy? Uh, in , in yourclass I've , we , you talked
about with math, definitelywith the, the solar system, but
now I'm curious, what are your,your newer projects? What do ,
what do you do working on

Speaker 1 (37:23):
Lately? What's Donny ? Yeah,

Speaker 2 (37:24):
What

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Do you math I'm doing , uh, well, let me think.
I'm just trying to think ofsome fun projects that we've
done this year. Science that wecan tie in Literacy and also
some student creation. Um, orjust recently we had a , um, so
I've wanted to expose mystudents to famous scientists
that weren't just, you know,white dudes from Europe. So for

(37:49):
this year, what I did, and Iactually used AI for this , um,
I went into chat G P T and Iasked it to give me a, you
know, I , I just asked for 64famous scientists and it listed
them all off. Um, and then Iasked it and I asked like, how
many of these were white? And Ithink it said like 61 of them,

(38:10):
like, you know, it had likeNeil Degrass Tyson and a couple
of other , I was , I didn'tknow who they were. So I'm
like, all right , so we need tomake this more diverse and make
this more equitable cuz youknow, with the student
population in my classroom, tryto find equal, represent
representation to make surethey , they can see themselves
in some of these scientists. So, um, eventually got it
narrowed down to where I hadabout 64 scientists. Half are

(38:33):
women, half are men from allcontinents except the
Antarctica. I assigned thesescientists to my students. Some
got two, some got three. Andtheir assignment was to go in
one, do some individualresearch on, on this person,
find out what they were famousfor, what they were most well
known for, turn it actuallyinto a persuasive piece where I

(38:55):
said, Hey, you're gonna haveone slide and I'll tell you why
I gave him one slide in aminute. On that one slide.
You've gotta convince theperson who sees it that this
scientist is the most importantscientist since the dawn of
creation. I said, you could useimages, text, I don't care if
they were famous for like,something that you didn't even
understand what it was. Likeit's a persuasive piece. Like

(39:18):
you're 10, like go all out, addgifs, do that whole thing. This
is awesome.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
I wanna do this project.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
And if I picked up on the number 64, and I did
this in March. So what we didwas throughout the weeks of
March madness of the women'sand men's NCAA tournament,
whenever a game was going on,we had another round of voting.
You know , I just paired 'emup. We, we didn't, I was gonna
like seat them like one to 64,that's just way too much work

(39:44):
for me, . So I justkind of did random kind of
thing. But , uh, all thestudents had to do, they just
saw the slides side by side andthe only question they had was
based on what you see here, whois the most important
scientist, this person or thisperson. And it eventually came
down to Carl Sagan going upagainst Marie Cury . Okay. And

(40:04):
, uh, okay, that's a goodmatchup. Yeah, well the mur ,
the Marie Cury slide, like,they just like the radium
piece. So like, they added likesome, you know, like some green
glowing gifs and I said , guys, it doesn't always grow glow
green , but whatever. Um, butuh, anyway, eventually Carl
Sagan, in case you wanted toknow, according to the 10 year
olds in my classroom, is themost important scientist in the

(40:25):
history of the world. So Idon't know if I agree with that
per se, like I think maybeNewton or somebody else might
had something else to say aboutit. But fun assignment, like it
was a u unique way to , um,expose my students to a bunch
of ideas. Like, I remember thestudent that I assigned Newton,
they, you know, the only thingthat that she knew about Isaac

(40:45):
Newton was didn't he get hit inthe head with an apple? And I
said, well, that's not exactly,I think you might have read or
maybe seen too many like oldschool cartoons or whatever.
But , um, she ended up doingsome research. She's like, oh,
I've heard of that before. Thatequal an opposite reaction
thing. Didn't know what itmeant. I had another student
that just got really, you know,like if you've been on one of

(41:06):
those YouTube kicks where it'sjust, you go like nine levels
deep onto like, what does thistheorem mean? Student sits in
my back in back of myclassroom, like I walked by one
day and he's just watchingsomething on like the fifth
dimension and what it might be.
And I said, oh, your scientistgot you started on that. So
definitely was a lot of fun,unique way to combine reading,

(41:28):
writing, but also expose mystudents to some ideas. Um, and
we're definitely gonna do itagain. I've actually done this
assignment before. I picked 64random elements on the periodic
table, but , um, their onlyslide that they have to make is
what's your element? What is itused for? And then why is this

(41:48):
the most important elementsince the dawn of creation? And
uh , you know, the stu there'salways that student that gets
hydrogen, they're just likesweet, right? They get excited
about that one.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
Explosions.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Yeah. But then , but then there's, you know, and for
that kid who likes a challengeor that student with like the
gifted label, like you givethem like einsteinium or
Palladium, you know, some ofthe more challenging ones and
even , you know, they go allout with this. I didn't use AI
for that one, but it was kindof fun and I figured it'd be
neat to share an idea thatanother teacher could try.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Well you , you probably have at least two
teachers right now that aregonna go and try that and we're
both looking at you. So go forit . Thanks for that idea. I'm
imagined my students coming inwith jerseys with like neon Oh
yeah . neon on it. Justall eighties out.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
The game behind it too is you tell kids like, hey
again, this is just so the 10year olds in my class don't get
their feelings hurt , but I saylike, Hey, and if your element
gets knocked out, you just haveto start cheering for whoever
beats you in the tournament.
Right? So by the end, you kindof got half the class cheering
for one and half the classcheering for whatever.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Okay. So the only thing I got outta that, that ,
that , that whole story that I,that I've got for you is , um,
as a child I met Carl Sagan.
That's all I got. For

Speaker 3 (43:02):
Real, for

Speaker 1 (43:03):
Real.

Speaker 3 (43:03):
So did he talk with that cadence and tone? Yes .
Like in real life? Wow.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
Yes . Uh , my father was one of the cinematographers
on the original cosmos, and Igot to go to the set a few
times and that's incredible. I, I did not appreciate what I
was seeing as a child, but asan adult I'm like, that was
cool. I was there.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
You can see my shadow off in the distance. You
,

Speaker 1 (43:23):
I mean maybe that's part of why I've always had
sort of like an interest inscience. I've always had
fantastic science teachers.
Every science teacher I everhad was amazing.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
I credit mine to Mr.
Wizard. I don't know if youever watched Mr. Wizard and
Beakman's World Beak Prince's ,

Speaker 2 (43:36):
Remember Mr. Wizard?
Yep . Yep . I definitelyremember Mr. Wizard, Beakman's
World, all those that was whatNickelodeon back in the day.
Like I had to get up early towatch that one, but , but
there's a YouTube video. Yeah , , it was, it was super
early, but there was one Don ,I don't know if you see this on
YouTube, but it said Mr. Wizardis mean and it's just clips of
when he's like, he yelled a kidchastising or, or, or being

(43:58):
really direct. It's just oneafter another.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
He always asked him a question and he , you know,
if the kid got it, you know,didn't answer it right, he'd be
like, well, you're not right,but you're wrong. You know,
whatever ,

Speaker 2 (44:14):
I have to make sure I'm not subconsciously saying
Mr. Wizard quotes when I'mtalking in the classroom when ,
when , when things arehappening. But yeah, that ,
that video's hilarious. So Ijust want to kind of bring us
back to AI and ask thisquestion. Do you, do you think
science has a special role toplay when it comes to teaching
kids about AI responsibly? Doesdoes science have a special

(44:35):
role on that?

Speaker 1 (44:36):
I think what I, the responsible piece of AI I wanna
teach my students about is, isthe part about the bias and the
algorithms and the bias and thetraining. And I want them to
understand how it works wellenough to make informed
decisions about how it impactstheir lives.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
Hmm .

Speaker 1 (44:57):
Because I, I do have concerns about a tool that was
trained on the internet andthe, the answers it gives you
is the average of the internet.
And do we trust the internet?
And the answer, you know, fromkids is always, well sort of no
. Um, so I, I want themto understand the social
science behind that.

Speaker 3 (45:18):
Yeah. And uh , just along that same point , um,
having the students recognizethat just because, you know ,
you copied and paste a questionin and the answer that spits
out might not always becorrect. Um, so just like you
would with a , you know,teaching them that just like
you would with a source thatyou find , um, about a topic

(45:41):
that you're researching, you ,you've got a fact check . It's

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Just like being a good scientist. A good
scientist wouldn't alwaysaccept a single result or the
first result. You know, youwould look at multiple angles,
you would try things differentways. Uh, last week I took the
article, my seniors werereading about victim
compensation after nine 11 andI gave chat in front of them. I
gave chat G P t I said, do you,are you familiar with this

(46:06):
article by Amanda Ripley AndChat ? G p t came back and
said, oh yes, this was writtenin the Atlantic in 2020 and
it's about these things, blah,blah blah. And my students
looked at that and went, that'snot the article we read. And I
said, I know it got it wrong.
That's amazing. Yeah . And Iwas so happy that it got it
wrong. Um, cuz I wanted them tosee that happen. And I

Speaker 3 (46:22):
Guess the, one of the big science questions
there, or one of the bigscience components there is
study of of inquiry, right?
It's almost like you have toteach students how to ask those
deep questions about what AIspits out. All

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Of those tips are great. And it , and it leads me
to where this last question Iwant to ask is new teachers
that are out there, it actuallydoesn't even matter. New
teachers, experienced teachers,all of us are gonna kind of ,
are kind of new at differentlevels of this race. We're all
kind of starting it together. Imean, it , it hit mainstream.
We're all getting exposed toit. You all really dive into

(46:57):
it. You're the , when , whentech comes out. I, I know you
two really like, okay, how canwe use this to transform
education and, and do awesomethings for kids? I

Speaker 3 (47:04):
Usually, when New Tech comes out and said , how
can this make my life easier?
Is usually, usually thequestion, yeah. How

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Can I save myself time with this? Yes.

Speaker 3 (47:11):
How can this result in me watching more TV and you
know, less grading sometimes,but, and I,

Speaker 2 (47:17):
I start there like you, and , but then I also then
I end up more time that I fillwith another project and I
needed to learn how to stopdoing that. I'm like, oh , I
can be, I got more free time togo take on this other task.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
Oh , all of my tech adoption is, is driven by how
can I work less?

Speaker 2 (47:32):
So the, you're you're talking to a new
teacher, teacher's gettingexposed to this, they're
starting their the school yearor they're just getting their
feet wet with it. What advicewould you give them about AI
incorporated into content oreven just best practices, like
is where you're at right now inyour own journey and someone's
asking you about it. What wouldyou, what would you share with
'em ? And Jen , I want , Iwanted to start with you. So

Speaker 1 (47:53):
The first thing I did is I was in the middle of
grading, you know, 62 essaysfrom my seniors about Into the
Wild when Chachi PT became athing last November. And I
wanted to see what wouldhappen. So the first thing I
did was take the prompt that Ihad given my students and gave
it to chat g p t, cuz I hadjust graded a whole bunch of
those essays and my brain wasvery attuned to what my rubric

(48:16):
was doing and what I wasexpecting as the outcome. So I
could take what chat g p t gaveme as that quote unquote essay
and evaluate it critically. AndI was ready to do that. So my
first advice is take somethingyou're already asking students
to do and ask chat chippy t todo the same thing. So that as
you look at the studentresults, and you can compare
that to what chat chippy tgives you. If what you're

(48:37):
finding is that chat chip b tcan generate something that
would earn a decent grade fromyou, you might need to change
that assignment. And it doesn'tneed to be a big change, but it
might need a tweak or somethingso that it, it does re rely on
the student voice, the studentsto do something more personal.
I'm finding very helpful in myclassroom is, is having my kids

(48:57):
do projects where they arerecording themselves on , um, I
like flip. So they're writing ascene together and they're
having to record the scenetogether. And I'm emphasizing
more of the speaking roles thanthe writing roles necessarily.
So yes, first take somethingyou're already doing, paste in
to chat G p t, see what theresults are, see how that fits
with what your students aredoing, and then do that for

(49:19):
every assignment you give andjust sort of see what comes out
of that and see whichassignments are, you know,
failing and which assignmentsare working. Um, cuz that's
gonna give you a sense, whenyou do see one of those results
from your students, you'll beable to recognize it, but it'll
also help you tweak yourassignments and decide, you
know, how can I make this alittle more original or a

(49:40):
little bit more authentic formy students? And if the robot,
if the AI can't generate aresponse, what could the day AI
do that would be helpful toyour students? Would be the n
my next question. So can youuse the AI to help them
generate an outline? Can youuse the AI to help them
generate a list of steps tohelp them get started? And when
you're comfortable enough doingthat , uh, by yourself, then

(50:02):
don't be afraid to open it infront of your class if it's not
blocked at your school site,which I hope it's not, because
I think the advantage goes tokids who have access to this in
the long run. Or at least seewhat it is and know what it is,
right? Because if a kid graduatfrom school without knowing
that AI exists, they're notgonna be prepared for what they
face out in the world. So givethem a chance to see you using

(50:24):
it, model effectively using it.
I have a blog post about that.
I just wrote it. Littentech.com . You can check that
out. Uh, you know how to useintroducing ninth graders to
chat G p t how it went, right?
There's a chart there. You canhave, it's my very first draft
of this, but it, it seems to bevery popular. So, you know,
show students how it can beused as their mentor, as

(50:46):
they're , you know, if, if Ican't come read your paragraph
because I have 36 kids in myclassroom and I cannot stop and
read everybody's firstparagraph, can you, if you want
to give your first paragraph tochat g p t and ask for advice
and will that advice be helpfulto you? So showing students how
it can be used responsibly is Ithink something every teacher
should be doing right now. Anddon't hold back just because

(51:08):
you're afraid you're gonna beteaching them what this is.
They know what this is, right?
They know what it's ,especially if you teach high
school , um, they know what itis. I've had parents thank me
for showing them how to use itresponsibly, right? You know,
like, this can actually be areally useful tool, but if
you're trying to make it doyour work for you, it will
probably fail you. If you'retrying to use it to help you do

(51:30):
your work, it will probably behelpful sort of the way I'm
breaking it down for them atthis point. You want the great
metaphor? The great metaphor isif you build a robot and send
it to the top of a mountain,did you climb that mountain?
No. If you build a robot andask it to help you get to the
top of the mountain and you andthe robot go together, did you

(51:51):
climb that mountain? Yes.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
I like that. I'm, I'm thinking through this,
right ? I'm , I'm, I'mprocessing that , that now. Me
too. Yeah. I just imagine arobot holding my hand climbing
Mount Everest and I'm like,yeah, I did it.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
If I got a robot though, like I would have to
dress it like ArnoldSchwarzenegger in Terminator
two . Like I would just haveto. Of course, of course.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
Um , Donnie , same question. Advice, teachers
getting immersed into it. Tips.
What would , what would yousay?

Speaker 3 (52:20):
Uh, so , uh, I would definitely agree with
everything that Jen said. Like,just if anything else to
familiarize yourself with it.
Like, almost like pretend likeit's a student in your
classroom and it's answeringquestions just so that way you
can see what it can do andyou're kind of training
yourself like, oh, well, if Iever need examples, exemplars,
if you're in a writing pieceand you don't wanna sit there

(52:40):
and write out four differenttypes of student responses, you
know, advanced writer,beginning writer, whatever,
great way to to do that is youjust , oh yeah . That copy the
prompt in and say, give an a ,a beautifully written piece
that , uh, a fifth grader wouldbe impressed with. Boom. It'll
do it for you . Um, like in myclassroom, the way that that I
approach it is I kinda look atAI as almost like this butler

(53:03):
that I don't have to pay thatif I needed to do something for
me, it's just bookmarked. I canclick it and I just, I mean,
sometimes I just talk to itlike it's a, like it's a person
and it's almost like in thechat window. I'm just rambling
at it, what I'm, what I'mtrying to do. And it's almost
like I'm talking to a, like acoworker and I'm trying to like

(53:26):
hedge out some ideas for alesson. Simple example. Um, you
know, for a science lesson, youknow, if you're trying to come
up with, let's say you're likea , a fifth grade, or sorry, I
teach fifth grade. Say you'relike a seventh grade science
teacher and you're trying toteach the students in your
class about like Newton's thirdlaw of motions, you know, every
action equal and oppositereaction. Look around your

(53:47):
room, see what you have, maybelook around and you're like,
all right , I got a whiteboardmicroscope, I've got magnets a
cylinder, and you just copy allthis stuff in the chat. G p t
say like, Hey, I have all ofthese items, cotton balls,
peanut butter, whatever. Andsay like, I'm trying to teach
students to Newton's third lawof motion. Give me some ideas

(54:08):
of some ways I could teach itusing some of these materials.
And it'll do it, it'll give youlike five to 10 ideas

Speaker 1 (54:15):
And then tell it what your students are into.
Like, my students are reallyinto basketball. Can you work
that into this lesson? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:22):
They're into the Avengers. Hey, find some way to
tie Spider-Man into this. Youknow, that was a pun that
didn't go so well, but, youknow, figure out some way that
you could, you know,incorporate this and it'll do
it. And Eric, like you said, itwon't be perfect, right? But if
anything else, if you'restarting teacher and you're,
you're trying to brainstormideas, try

Speaker 2 (54:44):
It. And, and Donny , as you were saying that, I was
thinking first, I was thinking,I imagine Spider-Man shooting
cotton balls with peanut butterall over them. And then, and
then my mind went to havingstudents have these items, like
you were saying mm-hmm .
, and then theycreate labs working alongside
ai. Yeah . To do inquiry, to ,to create a lab about something

(55:06):
and then going and performingand collecting data. Okay ,
that's now I wanna go do thattomorrow.

Speaker 3 (55:10):
I mean, l listen, it is so easy to do if you have an
extra computer in yourclassroom. We were talking
about Jarvis and Ironman andTony Stark earlier. Make a new
chat in chat, g p t tell it. Iwant you to pretend that you
are Tony Stark only answerquestions as if you are Tony
Stark, or pretend you're Jarviswhatever. Um, stay in character

(55:32):
the whole time. I'm going tohave sixth grade students come
up to you and ask you questionsabout science or forces of
nature, whatever, and onlyanswer questions like you're
Ironman. And guess what? Youkeep that station in your
classroom. Students are workingon a project, you know, like in
elementary school, a lot oftimes will have that, like, ask

(55:52):
three before me. Like, you'resupposed to ask three friends
before you go and bug theteacher or whatever. Well,
maybe one of those three beforeme can be that little computer
station where they go up andask Tony Stark a question and
then it answers them as Jarvisor Ironman, whatever, right? I
mean, we're really justscratching the surface with all
this AI stuff. Um, and as moreand more companies and more and

(56:16):
more , um, um, just creativesare gonna start to realize like
everything that it can do,we're gonna start to see it
more and more. Um, andhopefully we as teachers can
really figure out how to usethis tool to, of course, help
students, but also help them ,uh, be creative and explore and
learn on their own.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
That's amazing. And just both of you are just
dropping gems right now. And Iwanna wrap up by saying, and
I've, I've said this before onearlier podcasts I've done, but
at this phase in my life, thepeople that I'm the biggest
fans of are teachers. And it ,it's true. I don't mean that in
a cliche way. Like when I watchcelebrities and things like
that, when I watch professionalsports, that doesn't fill me

(56:57):
like the way it used to when Iwas a kid. At , at this point,
as a professional, I getinspired by other educators who
are just doing awesome things.
And when I think abouteducators who are doing that,
you two are on that list ofpeople that make me better. And
when I get better, I can dobetter things for my kids. And
so one I want to thank you for,for staying in the classroom
and continue to supportstudents. They're so lucky to

(57:18):
have you both. The second thingI wanted to say is , Jen , I
wanna start with you. Where canpeople, and I know we said at
the beginning, but where canpeople find the stuff that you
put out? You got blogs, yoursocial, your book?

Speaker 1 (57:28):
I , I , I got lots of social. I got , uh, Twitter.
I'm Jen Roberts one on Twitter,and then my blog is lit and
tech.com . And then I'm on lotsof the new social too, the
mastodons disables the posts,the , those kinds of things.
Um, as just Jen Roberts,because I got in early and I
got my real name without a one.
Um, and there was some otherone I'm on recently that I

(57:50):
forgotten about. But there'slots of 'em . They're , you
know, they're , they're fun.
And I'm, I'm, I'm Jen Roberts.
You can find me there.

Speaker 3 (57:56):
A o l I'm Sergeant Pepper, D on a o l if anyone's
interested. If

Speaker 2 (58:00):
You want , if you wanna hit Donnie up on , uh,
aim ,

Speaker 3 (58:03):
Sergeant Pepper, d

Speaker 1 (58:04):
You know, speaking of rock stars and people who do
amazing things, I did write ablog post about using chat G p
T in the classroom, but I hearDonnie wrote a whole book.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
Oh yeah. So Donnie Donnie , let's, that's a great
segue. Thanks Jen . John ,Donnie . How , how do people
find out more? And can you tellus about this book you wrote,
like that's coming out in thesummer?

Speaker 3 (58:22):
Yeah, so book I wrote is called 50 Strategies
for Integrating AI Into theClassroom. Uh, it's published
by Teacher Creative Materials.
Um, you know, they reached outto me, they had seen , uh, some
of the stuff that I was doing,not just with chat G P T, but
also some image generating AIstuff. Um, you know, I've got
featured on Good MorningAmerica, which was kind of

(58:43):
cool. And they saw that andthey said, Hey, that looks
really neat. Reached out to meand , uh, asked me to write a
book. Um, and the idea behindthe book , uh, that launches
this summer, it's just 50ideas, 50 prompts, different
things that as a classroomteacher that you can do. Um,
so, you know, I I think there'sa so many AI books that are out

(59:05):
there now. A lot of them arebig ideas , um, which I think
are important. Definitelyimportant discussions that need
to be, have around , um, theethics of ai. What's the ,
what's the role that AI shouldplay , um, in the classroom.
But I just wanted to write abook, kind of like a discussion
that, that Jen and I were justhaving, which is like, can we
just share a whole bunch ofideas, different things that we

(59:27):
could try with our students? Sodefinitely check it out. And I
appreciate you , uh, giving mea shout out too. That was cool,
Eric. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Of course.
Definitely. And Donny , yourTwitter is again,

Speaker 3 (59:39):
Oh, at Mr. Pearcy, M R P I E R C E y ,

Speaker 2 (59:44):
Follow don Fagen .
Tons of stuff on there. Both ofyou. Thank you so much , uh,
for your time for talking aboutstudents and how we can take
care of them. Science,literacy, ai. I hope we can
talk about this again. I feellike even if in just six months
we might be saying differentthings in a year, the landscape
might completely change and ,and that makes it really fun.
But thank you both for being onthe show.

Speaker 4 (01:00:04):
Thank you for having

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Us, Eric . Thank you so much, Eric. We appreciate
it, bud.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
Thanks so much for listening to my conversation
with Jen Roberts and DonnyPearcy . Jen Roberts is a
veteran English teacher at SanDiego's Point, Loma High School
and author of the book PowerUp, making the Shift to
One-to-One Teaching andLearning. You can keep up with
[e-mail]. And DonniePearcy is a fifth grade teacher
from Lexington, Kentucky. Hehosts the podcast teachers

(01:00:32):
passing notes. Stay up to datewith [e-mail]. Pearcy
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