Digital AI Oracle:The Prophecy Machine

Digital Oracle Prophecy Machine

I am teaching The Lightning Thief with my sixth graders and we are at a chapter where Percy Jackson gets his prophecy from the Oracle. I had this idea of finding an online site that could spit out age-appropriate prophecies for my students as an activity. I found nothing and then thought, why not make my own?

I knew the Flippity site had a spinner tool and I knew I wanted at least 50 prophecies so each student in each class could get two different prophecies. But … writing 50 prophecies, myself, in one night? Yikes. Not gonna happen.

Wait … I thought … what about ChatGPT?

Why not make it do the work for me?

Yep.

It worked.

I had ChatGPT create 70 different prophecies, age appropriate for sixth graders, popped the phrases into the spinner, and yesterday, it was a huge hit with the students.

I described the spinner as our Digital Oracle, after a lesson on Apollo and the Oracle of Delphi, and the ChatGPT mix of prophecies were fun and interesting, with some having obscure Greek references for my students to wonder about. The mix of fantasy, mythology and positive thinking made for an enlightened time.

Thanks, AI.

Peace (spinning it),
Kevin

Resource: Gathering AI Tools Across The Curriculum

AI Tools Across The Curriculum

A few weeks ago, I helped co-facilitate a session about AI in education, and for that session, we developed a resource that might be helpful to others, as it is built around different areas of the curriculum and content.

You can download the digital handout we created for participants of our session. We’ve grouped AI tools by curricular area and then broke out some other assorted resources that we think may be valuable for explorations.

View/download AI Tools Across The Curriculum resource

Peace (and sharing),
Kevin

Poetry: A Word Goes Walking

In Sync

This poem comes via a prompt from Open Write this morning about taking a word for a walk. I used the word “synchronized” and it was a tricky bit of writing here, making sure the six lines with six words had the word moving systematically through the poem from first-word position to last-word position.

Peace (in and out of sync),
Kevin

Write Out: Thank You Notes to Park Ranger

Thank You Notes for Ranger Scott

Ranger Scott Gausen of the Springfield Armory National Historic Site visited our classroom for Write Out last week, and along with his engaging personality and vast knowledge of the National Parks System, he has a pretty cool beard. For the Thank You notes, my students drew him with his beard. We’re mailing a package of these to him this week.

Peace (and fun),
Kevin

Write Out: Poetry In The Park With Teachers

WMWP At SPAR 2023

Yesterday, a small group of teachers gathered at the Springfield Armory National Historic Site to do some poetry writing, as part of Write Out and the National Day on Writing.

We used the museum site for inspiration, writing Diamante poems in the Innovation and Engineering wing, freestyle protest poems near the Organ of Muskets where a poem about the Armory by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is displayed, and then found poems near an exhibit of photographs (along with passages from a novel set at the Armory).

Here are my three poems.

Then, we made buttons!

WMWP SPAR buttons 2023

Peace (and poems),
Kevin

Write Out Poetry: Wind Whispers Song (multiple version)

Wind Poem

This morning’s Daily Create prompt for Write Out was all about the sound of wind, and the music it makes. I did a few versions of my morning poem, including the regular text, a visual with Word Art, a video with the word art and just music, and then a final version in which the words are blown by the wind, with narration of the poem itself.

Peace (listening to the song of the wind),
Kevin

Generative AI and the Writing Classroom: WMWP Workshop

AI WMWP AnswerGarden Opening

Last night, a colleague and I facilitated a fascinating discussion and workshop about the impact of Generative AI in the writing classroom. It was the first Western Massachusetts Writing Project event at our new university home — we move from the University of Massachusetts to Westfield State University – and I designed and led the session with Catherine S., who runs the Writing Center at WSU.

The screenshot of the Answer Garden was a “writing into the session” activity, just to get a sense of where people were in their thinking of AI at the start.

One thing that made this session rather unique, I think, is the mix of educators — it was pretty even gathering of K-12 teachers (mostly, high school) and professors from the university, and that mix led to some deep, connected discussions about writing across the upper grades into the entry to college, and how platforms like ChatGPT, Google Bard and others are making an impact on the teaching of writing, and the writing that students are doing.

AI WMWP Group Activity

One activity that was a hit involved mixing the tables up with different people, so that college and K-12 folks did it together, and they were given a board with a span of “acceptable use of AI” to “unacceptable use of AI” with little cut-out squares that they had to place along that spectrum. Each square — such as using AI for brainstorming or Using AI to write a draft of a paper — sparked fascinating back and forth between participants about expectations of AI and their writers. (You can have access to make a copy, too)

AI WMWP Resources

We also created a large database of various AI platforms that could be useful for educators, grouping platforms and tools under curricular themes. We ran out of time for participants to play around with the sites, but made sure they had access to it. (You can have access, too).

Overall, our intentional message was not “the world is ending so ban AI” but more, “this is our new reality, so how can we start to think of AI as a partner to help us as teachers and maybe help our students as writers?” and I think that theme really resonated with the educators who joined us last night.

Peace (Writing It Down),
Kevin

Write Out: Gathering Sensory Details for Haiku

Student Haiku

We’re in the second week of Write Out and using time in class to be inspired for writing. Yesterday, after watching a Park Ranger Video about writing Haiku poetry, we headed outside and gather some sensory details, and then my students wrote some Haiku poems.

They are doing final versions on note-cards, which we intend to mail off to Ranger Chris at the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

Peace (Short but Sweet),
Kevin