Can Artificial Intelligence Help Us Empower Students?
When I was in high school I spent most of my time playing sports (football and basketball) and worrying about my so-called social life. In school, I rarely was allowed to explore my interests, and thus set up a mental block against “caring” about anything academic. Even when we would do something fun or exciting in class, I would never fully allow myself to embrace the activity or follow-up on my own time.
In this pre-Google world, if I wanted to explore an interest it would require finding (and reading) a book/article, and then possibly continuing this search online. This seemed like a lot of work to the 16-17 yr old me…(a bit lazy), so my wall stayed up and I went through the motions in school as so many students do.
Mr. Flynn was one of my favorite teachers, who just happened to teach one of my least favorite subjects: Math. Math had never come easily to me the way many English and Social Studies classes had, and so I often retreated from trying and just did enough to get by. By all accounts, Mr. Flynn should never have taken an interest in my learning journey. I spent most of his Pre-Calculus class passing notes or laughing at others goofing around.
Then one day we came into class and Mr. Flynn was lying down on the back table. It seemed like a joke, but eventually, we found out he had seriously hurt his back. He taught the rest of that class period lying on the back table, pointing to the chalkboard and using a yardstick to make changes.
Everyone thought he would be gone the next day, resting up at home, but sure enough, when we walked into class, Mr. Flynn was lying on the table again, ready to teach. There are certain moments in life where your mindset switches. I still didn’t “like” Pre-calculus class, but I wasn’t going to goof around anymore while this teacher in obvious pain was coming in every day to teach, instead of staying at home like so many of us would have done.
This lasted for over a month before Mr. Flynn was back up again teaching us from a standing position. One day he came over and asked me if I’d like to take computer programming next year. He had been teaching it for a few years, but enrollment was low and wasn’t sure the class would run again. I didn’t know what to say. I was shocked that he thought I would like this class but told him I’d think about it. A few days later I signed up, thinking I’d at least have a great teacher even if I didn’t like the class.
I took a computer programming class during my junior year. It was so different.
I’ve never been a math or numbers person, but this gave numbers and formulas power. Instead of getting a “right answer” on a test for getting a formula correct, this set things in motion. We learned Pascal and Basic programming languages. It wasn’t that hard, but it was challenging enough that I had to focus and pay attention during class, and could spend some extra time at night or during study hall to get better.
As a semester course, time was also limited so we had to hurry through the beginning curriculum in order to create our own projects. This (in my mind) is always a plus. It calls for urgency in the learning process, which makes learners and teachers more effective if they are on the same page.
My final project was using this programming language to build a “football” game that looked and functioned similarly to the famous Nintendo Tecmo Bowl. I spent a lot of time on this (so much that I did not realize how much time I spent). In the end, my football game was not fully functional (there was no end of the game, let alone halftime or quarter), but had many of the same features and abilities as Tecmo Bowl. My classmates and I were able to play it. It was awesome.
I went through the rest of high school still worrying about the same things; but, my outlook on learning was changed forever. When I got to college I spent more time on “side-projects” than ever before, and it led me to become the type of learner and teacher I am today.
I tell this story because too often we fail to let students or employees “scratch an itch.” I would never have learned the math or formulas needed unless I had to program that game. It was the interest and final product that had me learning on my own time at a rapid pace.
Mr. Flynn never worked to “engage” me during programming class. Instead, he let the creative process fuel my work and empowered me to be a maker, instead of only a learner.
ENGAGING MY STUDENTS
I’ve always remembered how Mr. Flynn’s actions of going “above and beyond” engaged me as a student in his math class. It built our teacher-student relationships in ways a conversation never could. I had the ultimate respect for that man and what he brought to class every day.
In my first year of teaching at Wissahickon Middle School, I had the opportunity to work with an amazing veteran teacher (Jen Smith), who literally took me under her wing. One of the best things about working with Jen was her consistent goal of making learning engaging in our classrooms. We both taught English Language Arts on the same 8th-grade team, and when we would meet to plan Jen would often say: “So this is how we did it last year, but I want to make it better. Any way we can use technology or some other idea to make it more engaging?”
This was design thinking and the LAUNCH Cycle in action. Jen would ask for us to Look, Listen, and Learn (Phase 1) before we started to Ask Questions (Phase 2). In one particular situation, we were struggling with Literary Devices. We began to empathize with our students before asking questions like:
Why would our students care about literary devices?
What would be the best way to learn the devices?
What would be the best way to assess their learning without regurgitation?
How can we engage the students in understanding their purpose and use in the real world?
As we answered these questions and looked at the work from previous years, we began to Understand the Problem (Phase 3). Literary devices had always been seen as boring. They were never presented as something exciting, but just something to check off the list of having learned in 8th grade (and needed on the State standardized tests). We started to brainstorm and Navigate Ideas (Phase 4) on how we could teach the devices in engaging ways. One of our co-teachers offered a piece of advice. She noticed that popular songs always had lit devices in their lyrics. With that we started to Create (Phase 5) our very own rap song called, “Welcome to Your Lit Device Education.” We had so much fun. As a team of teachers (most well into their careers) we created “Rapper names”, wrote a song script with lit devices, and I used a few beats from Garage Band. Then we worked for hours fixing the lyrics and song (Phase 6). We recorded it and then put it online.
Finally, we shared it with our students (Phase 7 – the LAUNCH) and watched as they not only laughed hysterically at us as teachers but also began to put the song on their iPods and listen to it at home. Here’s the song, and even though I’m really embarrassed, it’s fun to look back on this experience of solving a problem by collaborating and creating with colleagues:
Empowering Makers In My Classroom
Our students were engaged, they were focused on literary devices, but Jen wouldn’t let us stop there. Our students now wanted to use programs like Garage Band, YouTube, Audacity, and others to make their own podcasts, songs, and videos.
This is the jump.
For a while, my only focus was on engaging students. We did this as teachers by making the learning meaningful, relevant, social, and human. We made connections with our students and challenged them at the right levels to see high attention and high commitment.
But, when we allowed our students to make their own podcasts and songs, made time for them to create and fail along the way, supported their work as a guide, and then praised the effort and process…it empowered them as makers.
When our students went through the LAUNCH Cycle themselves and used the design thinking process as a framework for creative work, they were not only engaged in what they were learning but enthusiastic about what they were making for a real audience.
Using Artificial Intelligence As Your Empowered Learning Partner
This is where Artificial Intelligence can be such a tool for facilitating learning. It is the perfect learning partner and guide for creative work.
Need help writing a script or opening for a podcast/video? ChatGPT can help with that.
Need creative ideas around color schemes and visuals for your project? DALL-E can help with that.
Need to spend more time on making the podcast/video and less time on the audio cleanup? Cleanvoice.ai can help with that.
Need background music to add to your podcast or video? Beatoven.ai can help with that.
This type of learning assistant can help students cut through the noise, and focus on the making, creating, and designing parts of the learning experience.
It also cuts down on the TIME needed to do creative work in our classrooms.
No one is complaining that we don’t need to go to the library, make copies of pages in books, and actually cut/paste them into our writing pieces. We don’t need to do that anymore because word processing and the internet made it possible to do it quickly and efficiently.
Artificial intelligence is here to save you and your students time because we know that is a valuable resource when doing creative work!
ARE YOU WILLING TO MAKE THE JUMP
Mr. Flynn had already won me over as a student when he taught for a month with a bad back on the table. But it was the lessons and activities and projects we did in computer programming class that really made me appreciate him as a teacher and guide.
Similarly, our students thought we were hilarious and appreciated the time and effort we put into making that song about literary devices. But when we empowered them to make, create, and build their own podcasts and songs, the learning transformed.
The LAUNCH Cycle provides the structure and process for this type of creative work. It allows for mistakes. It supports trying new things. It gives teachers and students the purpose of making with an audience in mind.
Artificial Intelligence tools now offer some practical ways that we can expand our “navigating of ideas” and “creative prototyping” to go through this process with an AI Partner!
In our book LAUNCH, we share stories and practical examples of how this type of work can be done in any classroom, with any grade level, and any student.
We followed LAUNCH with Empower and continued to explore what it means to move from engagement to empowerment.
My hope is that we can all have moments like Mr. Flynn where we empower our students on top of engaging them, and ultimately that we can impact our students’ lives the way he impacted mine…often without even knowing it happened.
I’d love to hear your stories of empowering students in the comments.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A.J. Juliani is the author of 8 books about learning, including best-sellers Empower, Launch, and Adaptable. He’s worked at every level of education as a teacher, coach, administrator, and UPenn GSE PLN. A.J. speaks around the world about learning, goals, and innovation.
