Chatgpt and other AI tools are controversial in the education community right now. Questions about AI-generated answers from students are arising and many are worried that students will turn to Chatgpt to write their essays and answer questions for them. Instead of blocking a tool that is not going anywhere, maybe we consider using Chatgpt to help you teach.
AI Lesson Plan Generator
1- Chatbot for Lesson Planning Ideas- Are you stuck on how to teach a concept to your students? Type in Chatgpt “lesson plan ideas for____” you fill in the blank. Need more ideas? Type in “more ideas” and watch it go. Obviously, not all of these lessons and activities will work for your classroom but grabbing some ideas from a free AI service can’t hurt!
Take it a step further and ask for a formal observation lesson plan on a topic and see what you get.
2- Video Suggestions– No matter what subject you teach, it is helpful to have a bunch of Youtube videos and Netflix movies that are relevant that you can use in a pinch. Maybe you have to be out sick or you have a meeting. Ask Chatgpt for a list of 10 videos for students about a specific topic.
Here is some of what I got after asking for 10 videos for students on food:
3- Use Chatgpt for ESL Students- I mean, this is great! You can copy and paste your instruction into Chatgpt and it will translate it into Spanish or any language for you. It works so quickly and can even be a tool that students use on an iPad or Chromebook for each class so that they can translate information quickly. Additionally, students can ask ChatGPT to say words or sentences and then repeat them, to work on their pronunciation and accent.
4- Chatgpt for Research Assignments- have students use a chatbot to help them research a topic and create a slideshow about it. For instance, in your Global Foods class, assign each student a country and have them create a 10-page slideshow with an overview of the most popular cultural foods. Let them use Chatgpt to find the information they need. Ask them to always use the tool as a guide and not to cut and paste. It is fairly easy to tell when it has been copied because it has a very sophisticated “voice”.
5- Create Worksheets with Chatbots– If you are teaching a content-heavy course such as social studies, Chatgpt can help with slideshow presentations and worksheets. If you need to know the history of something, ask and you will get a brief history. Read it over, use other sources, and your work is cut in half. Using it to cross-reference is super helpful as well as to help you re-word a paragraph that just doesn’t make that much sense. I love that tool because sometimes when I am typing out an explanation to something I know that it can be worded in a better way. I just copy and paste my text and say “reword this:”. It is definitely a pick-and-choose type of tool where you are not going to use everything it generates.
AI is here to stay and can be a powerful tool for the classroom. If we can teach students how to use it in an ethical way, it can work better for all of us in the long run. There is no need to fear new technology because it is the future and there is no way to stop it. Check out our blog post on instructional strategies for the secondary classroom!
