Welcome to the EdTech Throwdown. This is Episode 185 called How to Teach Students about AI. Have you ever tried to teach your students about AI, what it is, and what role it can serve in education and their future lives? This is a tall task and in this episode, we’ll discuss how we go about this complex process. This is another episode you don’t want to miss. Check it out.

For years now we’ve been involved in trying to get our district to adopt a formal AI policy. Now that this is happening, we’re being asked to put together an education program for students.

• What is AI?
• What can it do? What can’t it do?
• How can it be used to benefit you while in school? In your future lives?
• How can it hurt you in school? In your future lives?

What is AI?

• Ask students what they think AI is? Share their thoughts in a digital space like Padlet. Facilitate some discussion.
• Show a video that explains what it REALLY is. There are tons of good ones, here are a couple we like
• For older students: https://www.ted.com/talks/mustafa_suleyman_what_is_an_ai_anyway
• For younger students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttIOdAdQaUE

What can AI do?

• Choose an AI tool to demo (we use ChatGPT). Show three prompts:
• A bad prompt, something very vague that gives a general and bland response.
• A better prompt, something that includes lots of detail and specific requests. Show that this yields a much better response from the AI tool.
• A prompt that gets untrue results. Students need to know that AI tools can give incorrect information, sometimes that it just “makes up” due to lack of other information.
• ACTIVITY: Have students play with prompts: Ask them to try a bad, vague prompt on purpose. Then ask them to try it again but with more specificity, comparing the results. They share out what they...

Welcome to the EdTech Throwdown. This is Episode 184 called 10 Project Ideas for Students to Show Mastery. In this episode, we’ll discuss some of our favorite project ideas that you can use in your classroom to check for student mastery. Of course we’ll share some of our favorite edtech and AI tools along the way. This is another episode you don’t want to miss. Check it out.

How has checking for mastery in education changed over the past 10 years?

1. Infographics
2. Visme
3. Canva
4. thinglink
5. Posters/Memes Poster/Calendar
6. Canva
7. Adobe Express
8. Snappa
9. Pixlr
10. VistaCreate
11. Timelines
12. Thinglink
13. Online Timeline Maker
14. Canva
15. Timeline YouTube Video
16. Choose Your Own Adventure
17. Google Slides
18. Canva
19. Student Made...

Welcome to the EdTech Throwdown. This is Episode 183 called 8 Great Edtech Tools for Literacy. In this episode, we’ll discuss some of our favorite websites for enhancing literacy in your classroom. We’ll also take another look at an AMAZING new feature in google notebook lm. This is another episode you don’t want to miss. Check it out.

Guises mind is blown

n over notebook lm’s new feature

1. No Red Ink lessons
2. Maps.com. Not a literacy site, but these are some cool maps and would make for great writing prompts.
3. Diffit Books, How it works: Select “Books” on the Diffit homepage, Choose your book and chapters, Get student-ready resources! We’re rolling this feature out to all schools over the next few weeks, but your access is live now as an admin on your Diffit account. Test it out and let your teachers know it's coming to their accounts soon!
4. ESL BITS: Wide selection of audio books and text. The sole purpose of this site is to help students improve their listening and reading comprehension of the English language.'BITS English Language Learning' is completely non-profit; it sells nothing, advertises nothing, and asks for nothing."BITS" is an online-only site. No links for downloading items are available and none will ever be provided. Skip is wholly responsible for this site and has all the credit or all the blame as the case may be.
5. Write the World: A nonprofit dedicated to developing teenagers’ writing and critical thinking skills. We empower young writers to become global citizens and succeed in school, career, and life.
6. NYT Writing Prompts
7. Wonderopolis Writing Prompts
8. DeepSeek AI Article