ChatGPT for Teachers

The artificially intelligent chatbot known as ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. If you haven’t heard of this newly emerged resource, take a look, as it is posed to revolutionize information generation as we know it!

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a remarkable, conversational language chatbot designed to engage in dialogue with users by providing replies and responses to questions and requests provided in the prompt bar. It is a revolutionary and incredibly useful technology because it was developed, and specifically trained to look for meaning and context in the prompts. True to the name of artificial intelligence, ChatGPT demonstrates a near intuitive knowledge of what the user seeks. This is not some inaccessible technology, this is a tool designed to understand the context and nuance of actual human conversation.

Artificial Intelligence, as a concept, is not a new one. It has been around since the mid-fifties as scientists discovered machines as a source of generating knowledge. The concept of artificial intelligence was coined by John McCarthy an American computer scientist and pioneer. Since then, AI I has continued to evolve to the point that it is ubiquitous in our lives as teachers. From calculators to adaptive learning software, and even Siri or Alexa, the idea of AI is not so foreign as we’ve used computers and technologies to aid our instruction for quite some time now.

Limitations

There are many known limitations of ChatGPT, many of these limitations are self-proclaimed on the opening page of the platform. These limitations should be considered when interacting with the bot. Most worthy of mention is the fact that ChatGPT can (and does) return inaccurate information at times, so it is important to review the material that it generates. The second mentionable fact is that content may contain bias. The bot was trained by humans, as such, some of the content may reflect inherent bias of the trainers. Finally, ChatGPT lost access to the internet in November of 2021 therefore any reference to events after that date cannot be made. Nonetheless, ChatGPT could quite possibly be your new best friend when it comes to creating content for your classroom.

Getting Started

If you haven’t tried ChatGPT, the best way to get started is to dive right in and dabble. To access ChatGPT, head on over to https://chat.openai.com/chat and sign up for a free account. You’ll need to enter your email and phone number to gain access to the platform. Retrieving information is quite easy as the bot is designed to engage in dialogue with you right from the beginning. Typing a phrase or request in the prompt bar will return information based on your request in the form of a conversation.

Teachers are discovering that ChatGPT is great at providing information, ANY type of information. Simply making a request in the prompt bar returns surprisingly thorough and accurate information; much better than a typical search engine. In Artificial Intelligence to Streamline Your Teacher Life: The ChatGPT Guide for TeachersArtificial Intelligence to Streamline Your Teacher Life: The ChatGPT Guide for Teachers we go into great depth examining how to effectively prompt the machine to retrieve content more effectively, but even just as you begin interacting with the bot, you can immediately retrieve helpful content!

The ChatGPT Guide for Teachers

Ideas for Use

There are several features of ChatGPT that I’ve found to be extremely useful in any classroom. Below are some suggestions that you might want to consider to support your instruction.

Lesson Planning: ChatGPT can generate a lesson plan with step by step suggestions on how to implement the plan.

Standard Alignment: Curious about how your existing lesson aligns with standards? Input the content you plan on teaching and ChatGPT will return the NGSS standards that align with your material.

Creating Lists of Information: Looking for a list of vocabulary words that correspond with your content? ChatGPT excels in retrieving lists of terminology.

Defining Vocabulary: Looking for easy to understand definitions of vocabulary words that you’re using in your unit plan? ChatGPT can return definitions AND can also pair those definitions down into understandable vocabulary dependent on the grade level you teach.

Generating Examples: Looking for other examples of material to illustrate or demonstrate a concept? Ask ChatGPT to be your brainstorming machine. Enter a concept into the prompt and ChatGPT will help generate examples for you to use in your class.

Writing Reading Passages & Generating Questions: Have ChatGPT generate a reading passage based on your topic. Additionally, prompt it to generate multiple choice, true/false or fill in the blank questions based on the passage it just wrote.

Grading Rubrics: Need suggestions on ways to grade student work? Have ChatGPT generate a grading rubric for you. Enter the type of rubric and the point values you require and ChatGPT will generate the categories and performance levels descriptors for you.

Once you get started using ChatGPT you’ll see that the possibilities are limitless. ChatGPT just might be able to lift a little of the instructional load in your classroom!

As always, thanks for ✨Using Your Smarticles✨

Among Us Classroom Door Decoration

 Hybrid teaching is TOUGH!   I'm sure this isn't news to you.  It's draining, it's a lot of work and it's difficult to connect with the students!!!

Among Us is a new video game craze.  If you haven't heard about it...you will.  In some ways, it's helping me connect with my students!!  I started playing last week and it's FUN!!!!

The game isn't complicated, for the most part it's 10 crewmates on a ship (the skeld) and among the crew members are up to three impostors who have to sabotage the ship and potentially kill off the crew.  The goal is to either identify the imposter through a series of group 'meetings' or if you ARE the imposter, survive the votes, sabotage and eliminate the crew.

My students are CRAZY about this game!!  While I haven't played with them, my interactions with the game on my own have given us a common set of experiences to share thus, I decided decorating my door in a FUN way would be a great use of my time, so below is an image of the design and some steps (and resources) for you to do it as well!

Among Us Classroom Door Decoration

and the students went CRAZY!!!!  The LOVED it!!!!

Creating This Door Design

#1.  Cover the door in black paper

#2.  Print these words onto black paper.

#4.  Here's where I found the black Among Us Logo

#3.  There is no shortage of character clipart out there.  You'll find it!!  Print out characters add to the door.

#4.  I dabbed white dots of paint onto my door to look like stars.

#5.  The Shhhhhh logo I found here.  I then uploaded it to https://rasterbator.net/ and enlarged it.

Good luck!  Hopefully you'll have fun

Lowering the BOOM on Middle School!

In the midst of exploring distance learning tools to engage students, I stumbled across Boom Learning. My first impression was that it was WAY to babyish for Secondary students (Middle through High School) as many of the early adopters of the platform focused on Elementary topics. However, after a little exploring, I discovered MANY developers and users on the site that are creating content PERFECT for Secondary Educators.

The BOOM platform features interactive flash cards that allow for self-correcting, interactive features such as fill in the blank, drag and drop, click to respond and multiple choice. I have found them to be the perfect compliment to Hyperdocs and great for use in supporting your curriculum, expanding understanding, use as a supplement/homework assignment and PERFECT for distance learning.

✨Check out BOOM Learning✨

✨Try out a set of BOOM Learning Cards in Fast Play mode.✨

What really had me hooked was the ease of getting my class set up in BOOM.  Boom Learning talked nicely to my Google Classroom so I was able to import all of my students.  They logged in and accessed their first assignment with just a click on the class URL.  The student reporting on Boom is great!  I can see who attempted the cards, how many attempts made, time spent and progress towards mastery.

I encourage you to give BOOM a try. There are SO many card decks to choose from, but the best is CREATING YOUR OWN! (Warning, it CAN become a little addicting!)

 

This week we are studying Magnetism, here's the card set we are using:

My favorite set it this one on Newton's Laws of Motion:

My newest set features Electromagnetic Waves

Whatever you discover, I hope you like BOOM as much as I do!  I can honestly say that the feedback from my students was terrific.  They thought they were fun and a great way to learn!  (Those were THEIR words, not mine!)

As always, thanks for

✨Using Your Smarticles✨