NEWSLETTER
Denver – In the senior civic class of Zach Kennelly, students are building custom chatbots with artificial intelligence.
A student is working on a chatbot that better heals the recommendations of television movies and programs based on the recent watches of a spectator.
Another is to create a chatbot that, something ironically, helps members of the Z generation as themselves to practice their communication skills, as elaborating that the initiators of the conversation.
Other students, according to Kennelly's co-maestra, Gianna Geraffo, are making a rain of chatbots ideas that could support mental health, improve financial education and provide resources to immigrants.
Soon, students will refine their ideas and, finally, the class will select one to become an application.
It is a trajectory similar to that Kennelly and Geraphfo followed last semester, when their students finally built and launched <a target="_blank" href="https://vote.boxcar.ai/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”>Colorado votewisean application that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cpr.org/2024/10/29/denver-students-create-voter-election-information-ai-app/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”>Help people Register to vote and also helps to break down the various candidates and measures on the ballot.
“At first, we thought it was going to be a massive failure,” says Kennelly of the project last semester. “But it became great success. Students loved it. They were like, 'I ran to the second period to build this thing' “.
The class project was then, and now it is part, a part of an effort to help students understand and apply ai in a practical way in school and in their lives.
“It is not driven by ai at all. It is tied by ai, ”says Kennelly. “It is driven by our students, by their experience, by their passion.”
Kennelly and Geraffo are part of a small team in their school in Denver, DSST: College View High School, who is participating in the <a target="_blank" href="https://39700426.hs-sites.com/ai-collaborative” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow”>ai Collaborative School TeamsA one -year pilot initiative in which more than 80 educators from the traditional public and charter schools throughout the country are experiencing and evaluating the instruction enabled for ai to improve teaching and learning.
The objective is that some of the first education adopters of the AIs join, share ideas and eventually help to lead the path of what they and their colleagues in the United States could do with emerging technology.
'Advance instruction' with ai
The collaboration, co-direct by two national non-profit organizations, the main educators and the learning accelerator, began in October, with a meeting in person of the various school teams here in Denver.
Non-profit organizations, which focus more on “advanced instruction” than indiscriminately promoting ai, says Jin-Soo Huh, a learning accelerator partner, conceived the idea after seeing that the generative ai was doing waves in the education of your own education. The first days.
Many teachers are already looking for ways to use ai to build lessons plans and improve students' comments, HUH says: “We know what comes. We know that, either this year or next year, more and more teachers will look for these examples. “
Huh adds: “We wanted to identify,” who are the teachers who are already doing incredible job with ai? “Can we raise promising practices?
Since their starting event the past fall, participants have gathered virtually to discuss the projects they are working on, the lessons they are learning and what excites them and their students about technology.
Traci Griffith, Executive Director of the Eliot K-8 School of Innovation, part of Boston public schools, has found the collaboration between the stimulating school.
Only a few weeks ago, he says, during a meeting of the school teams of the Collaborative, his four -people school team was in a breakdown with another California team. Everyone left the call buzzing with emotion for what their colleagues in the other coast were doing.
“It shows the power to unite educators,” says Griffith, whose school team is using Claude, an assistant to developed by Anthrope, to give previous and subsequent comments to the evaluation of high school students in their writing tasks . (Part of the challenge, says Griffith, is that teachers must first learn to train Claude, adjust the guidelines and adjust the words options, before Claude can give beneficial comments to the students).
The collaboration is “intentionally agnostic of the platform,” says Alex Magiera, senior director of innovation of the main educators, which means that group leaders did not influence educators in the direction of, for example, Chatgpt, on Claude or Gemini
In Denver, students use a platform called PlayLab, which describes itself as a “safe sand box to learn, adapt and create educational ai for context”, to build their chatbots. Playlab allows students to easily alternate between different ai models, since each one spits a different result.
Until now, students in Kennelly class this semester are not yet impressed by the potential of ai, he acknowledges.
“They are all over the board,” he says. “They are scared. They are excited. They are confused. “
But they are still the first days.
Geraphfo, his co-maestro, remembers that the students last semester experienced an important change from the beginning to the end of their term, “of”, I am someone that “I am” I am someone who conducts the ai. “
That type of empowerment is critical, Kennelly believes, since ai is already here, and it is practically inevitable that it becomes part of the careers and lives of its students.
“People who do not understand this technology,” he adds, “are the most likely to be exploited by it.”
A pragmatic approach
The collaboration is based in some way on a certain pragmatism about ai, says Huh, something like, well, it is here. It is likely to stay. So what are we going to do with that and about that?
“We are not here saying that the ai is the solution and the end, everything, for everything,” he says. “I think there is a healthy skepticism in our group.”
All those involved have a certain level of emotion and hunger around the understanding and use of ai, but are committed to integrate it into their schools and classrooms of “responsibility and effective,” adds Huh.
“This group sees the potential and the possibility with ai,” says Magiera, “and also recognizes that in the past, technology has promised and subdivided too much.”
The collaboration creates a community where people can share victories and alleys without exit, express enthusiasm and fear, ask questions and help answer them.
For now, the group will culminate during the summer, after the school year concludes. But already, Magiera can imagine the teams that continue their conversations and work much further.
“This is definitely not the end,” she says. “These schools say: 'Is there a 2.0?' They want to keep the impulse in motion. “
