TTT 01.24.2024 Tis the Season for Planning Spring Inquiries: How does AI get integrated? Paul Allison 2024-01-26 | Pull up a chair for a planning meeting for this spring semester. We'll be meeting in Kumospace.com/youthvoices on Wednesday evening at 8E/7C/6M/5P.Chris Sloan, Marina Lombardo, and Bonnee Bentum have agreed to get us started by talking about projects they are planning to do with their students, and we want to invite you to join them in batting around a few of your ideas.And we will consider how AI is finding its way into these plans.We welcome all!
TTT 01.17.2024 Rohan Writes w/ GPT Thinking Partners: An 8th Graders Self-Directed Revision Process Paul Allison 2024-01-18 | How are middle school students using AI to become better writers?Come find out at our TTT meetup on Wednesday evening at 8E/7C/6M/5P in Kumospace.com/youthvoices.This week on TTT we will take a close look at what's happening in a self-directed revision process of an eighth grader who gets feedback from GPT Thinking Partners (some of which he invents himself) to compose an assignment to "Say Something Meaningful."We are circling back to a 23-minute conversation a few of us had with Rohan on January 3rd, the transcript and video--and supporting materials--for which are here. At the time Rohan had written the first of six drafts (so far) about the "way too many wars" the "US engulfs itself in." He had uses several GPT Thinking Partners including two that he had made for himself and a third fact-checking one that I had created for him: a lot for most of us to take in. He seemed game to work it through when he could find the time.And we told him: "Somebody needs to be watching you and seeing how you manage to figure that all out. You know what I’m saying? We’re fascinated with that."A couple of weeks later, Rohan revised his essay five different times and used GPT Thinking Partners to guide his journey, and eventually to score his drafts.We've collected together as much of his work around this essay as we can find: his drafts, his prompts for the GPT Thinking Partners that he created in this process. We have begun to make notes and say what we are noticing about Rohan's process of thinking and writing with AI.We could use your perspective, your expertise. Come describe Rohan's AI adventure with us! Let's see what we can learn. What rhetorical moves and writerly decisions does Rohan make? What else might we want him to do?Sure, this is about how middle school students are learning with and about AI right now in their classrooms. But it's also about how youth are finding self-directed paths to becoming better writers.Come find out more at our TTT meetup on Wednesday evening at 8E/7C/6M/5P in Kumospace.com/youthvoices.
TTT 01.03.2024 Eighth Graders Learning with and about AI Paul Allison 2024-01-16 | Two students from Jill Stedronsky's 8th Grade ELA classes joined us to show us what they are doing with GPT Thinking Partners on NowComment.
TTT 01.03.2024 Rohan Writes w/ GPT Thinking Partners: An 8th Graders Self-Directed Revision Process Paul Allison 2024-01-16 | Rohan joined Paul Allison, David Cole, and Jenell Krishnan on TTT and he shared the start of his writing process on his "Say Something" essay.
TTT 01.10.2024 Chris Sloan & Marina Lombardo talk about AI in their classrooms w/ Christina Cantrill Paul Allison 2024-01-11 | It's 2024. An election year! What are you planning to do to involve your students? Are there ways of using the elections to have students develop their AI-literacy skills?A couple of points of departure:Letters...2008 Letters to the Next President2016 Letters to the Next President 2.02024 What if we did "Letters from the Movers and Shakers?" We could encourage and invite students to use AI tools to compose their multimodal letters.Chat2024.comKevin Hodgson asked recently:"Wondering what you all think of this site, as we shift into the year of the election: chat2024.com" I answered: Thanks Kevin.This seems useful, even if so many of these people are hard to listen to.One idea would be to do something like this on NowComment with students finding the sources they need for each candidate.An extension of that would be to create their ideal candidate. They would have to give the GPT Thinking Partner reference sources and personas and ways of communicating that they would want to see in a candidate.Now that sounds like a promising project, doesn’t it?What do you think? Let's talk about what we can imagine doing in 2024 with the inspirations of 2008 and 2016 in our legacy and AI tools that we have designed in our future. Pull up a seat with other teachers and students as they lead the way with creating GPT Thinking Partners on NowComment.We'll be meeting at our new hour -- 8E/7C/6M/5P -- on Wednesday January 3rd in Kumospace.com/youthvoices
TTT 12.27.2023 Prompt Engineering Workshop with an Eighth Grader from New Jersey Paul Allison 2023-12-28 | We were going to take a holiday break, but 8th graders who are working on their craft as prompt engineers want to come talk about their work. Pull up a seat with Jill Stedronsky's students as they lead the way with creating GPT Thinking Partners on NowComment.We'll be meeting at our new hour -- 8E/7C/6M/5P -- on Wednesday December 27th in Kumospace.com/youthvoices
TTT 12.20.2023 Asking the Right Questions with Andrea Zellner: Teaching & learning in the age of AI Paul Allison 2023-12-21 | Pull up a seat with Andrea Zellner, a Learning Design Consultant in the Oakland Schools in Michigan -- and Teacher Consultant for the Red Cedar Writing Project and long time friend of Teachers Teaching Teachers.We've invited Dr. Zellner to play with us around a recent article she published in the Irish Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning: Asking the Right Questions: The meaning of teaching and learning in the age of generative AI. AbstractAs educators grapple with the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and the ease of access to these models by learners, questions of pedagogy and learning have dominated the conversation. This paper explores the concerns of teaching through exploring the contrast between human and machine learning and the implications of both on educators facing an environment where AI is prevalent. Through a prompting process, a position paper was generated by ChatGPT3.5 on these contrasts and implications. The AI output, largely accurate, highlighted strategies for educators while also showcasing the limitations of the tool. Educators and scholars can support themselves and their students through critical reflection of the use of AI tools.Our plan is to begin and end with more general questions and thoughts about AI in our classrooms -- so bring your dreams, dreads, disappointments, and declarations about AI. We'll talk with Dr. Zellner, read and comment on her article, talk with her again, then use GPT Thinking Partners to engage again.We have reserved a seat for you in Kumospace at 8E/7C/6M/5P on Wednesday evening December 20. Please plan to join us!NOTE THE NEW TIME FOR TTT. We are meeting with Dr. Zellner at 8E/7C/6M/5P on Wednesday, December 20, 2023. This is an hour earlier than we have traditionally met.
TTT 12.13.2023 (Late) Marina Lombardo & Chris Sloan update us on their work with AI in the classroom Paul Allison 2023-12-14 | Let's make more, better GPT Thinking Partners together! We'll start with some examples, then see what we can come up with, before getting back together to discuss what we are learning about reading, writing, and chatting with GPT Thinking Partners. We have a seat for you in Kumospace on Wednesday December 13th at 8E/7C/6M/5P.Note the new time. We will also be meeting 9E/8C/7M/6P. Join us for the early meet-up or the late one!GPT Thinking PartnersGo Beyond ChatGPT, Bard, or ClaudeThe prompt you write when you create a GPT Thinking Partner directly shapes the output from OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo model.It does not get passed through or managed by the conversational, user-pleasing programming built into ChatGPT or a similar of-the-shelf tool.Not even an advanced user of ChatGPT, Bard, or Claude with the most sophisticated set of prompts can match the ability of NowComment's GPT Thinking Partners to stimulate and challenge the user's thinking.We are not writing prompts to generate specific details or shapes of a generated text. Instead we are using prompts to program a GPT companion who can assist us as we read and write, or think through a question in chat.Each turn in a chat with a GPT Thinking Partner renews the prompt in a new context. The personas, intellectual frameworks, and output criteria that you have written in the prompt remain steadfast and get applied in new ways depending on the user's questions.NowComment's GPT Thinking Partners offer a more nuanced interaction tailored to the goal of expanding the user’s intellectual horizons.
TTT 12.13.2023 (early) Students and teachers are making GPT Thinking Partners: What are we learning? Paul Allison 2023-12-14 | Let's make more, better GPT Thinking Partners together! We'll start with some examples, then see what we can come up with, before getting back together to discuss what we are learning about reading, writing, and chatting with GPT Thinking Partners. We have a seat for you in Kumospace on Wednesday December 13th at 8E/7C/6M/5P.Note the new time. We will also be meeting 9E/8C/7M/6P. Join us for the early meet-up or the late one!GPT Thinking PartnersGo Beyond ChatGPT, Bard, or ClaudeThe prompt you write when you create a GPT Thinking Partner directly shapes the output from OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo model.It does not get passed through or managed by the conversational, user-pleasing programming built into ChatGPT or a similar of-the-shelf tool.Not even an advanced user of ChatGPT, Bard, or Claude with the most sophisticated set of prompts can match the ability of NowComment's GPT Thinking Partners to stimulate and challenge the user's thinking.We are not writing prompts to generate specific details or shapes of a generated text. Instead we are using prompts to program a GPT companion who can assist us as we read and write, or think through a question in chat.Each turn in a chat with a GPT Thinking Partner renews the prompt in a new context. The personas, intellectual frameworks, and output criteria that you have written in the prompt remain steadfast and get applied in new ways depending on the user's questions.NowComment's GPT Thinking Partners offer a more nuanced interaction tailored to the goal of expanding the user’s intellectual horizons.
TTT 12.06.2023 See students using AI Assistants for reading, writing, and (now) chatting about texts Paul Allison 2023-12-12 | Come talk with Writing Project teachers who are using GPT Thinking Partners in their classrooms.Note, recognizing that our new time might come as a surprise to some, we will be meeting twice this Wednesday, at 8E/7C/6M/5P and at 9E/8C/7M/6P. Come either hour to join the fun in Kumospace.com/youthvoicesLast week we started talking about using a chat format for interacting with GPT Thinking Partners on NowComment (Get your AI Assistant here is 30 seconds).Even after last weeks somewhat rushed presentation, Jill Stedronsky's 8th graders took up the challenge and they have started to ask GPTs to enhance and extend their Reading Thought Journals. Come learn with them about chatting with GPTs.There are many other examples around the country of Writing Project Teachers embracing AI across the universe of Digital Discourse (with apologies to James Moffett). Students are reading, writing, and (now) chatting with GPT Thinking Partners.Join us on Wednesday evening, December 6th at 8E/7C/6M/5P in Kumospace.com/youthvoices Note we will be meeting twice this Wednesday, at 8E/7C/6M/5P and at 9E/8C/7M/6P. Come either hour to join the fun in Kumospace.com/youthvoices
TTT 12.06.2023 We talk to a student who is learning to build GPT Thinking Partners Paul Allison 2023-12-07 | Come talk with Writing Project teachers who are using GPT Thinking Partners in their classrooms.Note the new time for TTT this week, and possibly into the future (depending on feedback). Join us on Wednesday evening at 8E/7C/6M/5P in Kumospace.com/youthvoicesLast week we started talking about using a chat format for interacting with GPT Thinking Partners on NowComment (Get your AI Assistant here is 30 seconds).Even after last weeks somewhat rushed presentation, Jill Stedronsky's 8th graders took up the challenge and they have started to ask GPTs to enhance and extend their Reading Thought Journals. Come learn with them about chatting with GPTs.There are many other examples around the country of Writing Project Teachers embracing AI across the universe of Digital Discourse (with apologies to James Moffett). Students are reading, writing, and (now) chatting with GPT Thinking Partners.Join us on Wednesday evening, December 6th at 8E/7C/6M/5P in Kumospace.com/youthvoices Note the new time for TTT this week, and possibly into the future (depending on feedback). We are meeting on Wednesday evening at 8E/7C/6M/5P.
TTT 11.29.2023 Get your AI Assistant here in 30 seconds Paul Allison 2023-12-05 | Ever imagined having a personal assistant that learns and evolves with you?You can design your own GPTs (Generative Pre-trained Transformers) to personalize and shape your AI chats for specific purposes.Alternatively, tap into the ever-expanding universe of GPT Thinking Partners, each rigorously created and vetted by users just like you.We have reserved a seat for you in Kumospace/youthvoices on Wednesday evening at 9E/8C/7M/6P.Get your AI Assistant here in 30 seconds
TTT 11.15.23 Sarah Levines current AI research+what teachers are doing on Youth Voices & NowComment Paul Allison 2023-11-16 | On Wednesday evening, November 15 at 9E/8C/7M/6P in Kumospace.com/youthvoices, we've reserved a seat for you to have a conversation with Stanford researcher Sarah Levine. We'll start by checking in on Sarah's current research, then turn to AI-supported learning students are doing on NowComment and on Youth Voices.In addition to an impressive list of research focuses, Professor Levine is "interested in ways that AI and digital media (for example, natural language processing models like ChatGPT)... can be used as frameworks for teaching reading and writing to middle and high school students."In September, in Kappan, Sarah Levine wrote with her co-author:"As literacy researchers who work with teachers, we urge education leaders to allow students access to ChatGPT. With strategic and informed guidance from teachers, using ChatGPT can allow students to develop important writing skills and practices, like those of professional writers."Read and comment on the whole article on NowComment ChatGPT: A powerful technology tool for writing instruction nowcomment.com/documents/362023And in October, in The Hechinger Report, Dr. Levine told a reporter: “ChatGPT and other text-based tools can’t think for us,” she said. “There’s still things to learn when it comes to writing because writing is a form of figuring out what you think.” Read and comment on the whole article on NowComment: How AI can teach kids to write – not just cheat nowcomment.com/documents/362065This would be a great week to get a feel of what is happening in AI in schools these days. Come share your own work or dreams or dreads! Join us on Wednesday evening, November 15 at 9E/8C/7M/6P in Kumospace.com/youthvoices.
TTT 11.08.23 Turn Voices & Viewpoints from the Israel-Hamas War into Conversations in Your Classroom Paul Allison 2023-11-09 | At about 9 minutes there's a jump-cut. Participants moved to separate rooms where each got more familiar with each AI Thinking Partner by seeing their AI-generated comments on poems, articles, and first-person accounts.We have reserved a seat for you on Wednesday evening, November 8 at 9E/8C/7M/6P in Kumospace.com/youthvoices..We will invite you to get inside a voice and a viewpoint from the israel-Hamas War, then engage in dialogue from that perspective, a "dialogue of difference" that will introduce you to a text-set and a group of AI Thinking Partners that you can use with your students.While I recognize the local constraints, social-emotional considerations, political risks, and the mindfulness and intentionality involved, I'm growing more and more concerned about what we are inadvertently teaching students if we are not inviting the swirling controversies from the Israel-Hamas War into our classrooms. If you are a teacher who is already finding a place for conversations and learning about the Israel-Hamas War in your classroom or one who is getting ready to, I offer this ever-expanding, open and free text-set on NowComment: Collection: Is Peace Possible in the Israel-Hamas War? We invite you and your students to:Comment and reply to first-person accounts, poems, commentaries and news explainers. Add your own stories, poems, articles, video, songs, works of art, and more.Deepen your empathy by reading with newly-minted AI Thinking Partners designed to simulate the voices of poets, scholars, citizens, and youth from many different Gazan and Israeli perspectives.One way to get startedClick here to engage with a range of voices and views on the conflict.Add your own feelings, thoughts, and questions about the war by hitting reply under the question.Reply to our AI Thinking Partners first thoughts.Follow links to their actual speeches, audio journals, and interviews, and comment on those documents.Scroll down in the collection to see a growing multimodal text-set of first-person accounts, poems, commentaries, and news. Comment and reply yourself or use AI Thinking Partners.How are you handling all of this? What kinds of conversations and projects are you doing around the Israel-Hamas War? What are you thinking?Let's talk! Grab your seat on Wednesday evening, November 8 at 9E/8C/7M/6P in Kumospace.com/youthvoices..
TTT 10.25.2023 The Israel-Hamas War: Reading for Empathy with AI Thinking Partners Paul Allison 2023-11-08 | A couple of people in last week's TTT meet up, wondered what would happen if we created AI Thinking Partners who could respond to a text the way a Hamas Soldier and a Zionist Soldier might -- and a way for them to have a conversation with each other about a text. We've started building such AI Thinking Partners. See this simulation of a Hamas-Zionist Dialogue and this simulated Hamas Soldier's view of history or this simulated Zionist Soldier's perspective on the same history. How do these perspectives help us to grow the habit of empathy as readers?Join us tomorrow evening, Wednesday, October 25 at 9E/8C/7M/6P for the next iteration of our exploration of the Israel-Hamas War, where we are learning together WITH and ABOUT AI. We meet in Kumospace.com/youthvoicesWhat would you include in a text set about the Humas-Israel Conflict? We welcome you to a conversation about how to bring this into our classrooms -- with, perhaps, support from AI Thinking Partners on NowComment. We will be meeting this Wednesday evening, October 25th at 9E/8C/7M/6P at Kumospace.com/youthvoicesWe've been testing our motto. Often over the past several months we have said that students can learn with and about AI using AI Thinking Partners on NowComment.We invite you to come as a reader this week, ready to learn as much a you can about the conflict in Gaza with AI Thinking Partners there to assist our collaborative reading and annotating an evolving text-set of articles that you can contribute to.Come put to the test whether or not AI can support you as a reader.Your seat is reserved on Wednesday evening, October 18th at 9E/8C/7M/6P at Kumospace.com/youthvoices
TTT 11.01.2023 Reading the Israel-Hamas War with AI Thinking Partners on NowComment Paul Allison 2023-11-03 | I write this as a reader, and I invite you to join us as a reader on Wednesday, November 1st at 9E/8C/7M/6P in Kumospace.com/youthvoices.I'd like to introduce you to a profound reading experience made possible by AI Thinking Partners on NowComment. You will leave the conversation with the resources and the reasons for engaging your students in reading first-person accounts, poetry, and articles about the Israel-Hamas War using AI Thinking Partners to deepen their empathy and understanding.Here's the text-set or Collection: Is peace possible in the Israel-Hamas War? that we invite you to use with your students -- and to add to yourself.We have been working on creating AI Thinking Partners from first-person accounts of the Israel-Hamas War recently. A few weeks ago, we started using AI Thinking Partners with recent texts about the war in our TTT conversations on Wednesday evenings. The discussions in our group suggested that we needed AI Thinking Partners that showed their opinions and passions more, and expressed why this war was happening.So, we started with three: a Hamas Soldier and a Zionist Soldier, and an AI Thinking Partner that was a dialogue between them. The feedback on these was that they had perspectives and different positions and arguments, but lacked personality or an authentic personas.To the credit of the group, we didn't give up on AI and started thinking about where we had felt that passion. Jessica Early suggested, "Can you put an interview from NPR in, because that's where I hear strong voices."This is why we turned to first person accounts. To my surprise, all we had to do was put these interviews and transcripts of audio and video interviews into prompts and the AI Thinking Partners came alive! This is all pretty exciting! I've never done reading like this before. While reading a poem or an article, I can ask any of these AI Thinking Partners to comment as well. Most profoundly, I now have this cast of characters in my head no matter what I'm listening to, watching, or reading about the Israel-Hamas War.Golan Abitbol, 44, refugee from kibbutz Be’eri, a simulatorHamas Scholar SimulatorHamas-Zionist Scholars DialogueMosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet from Gaza, a simulatorShaylee Atary, Wife of Missing Israeli, a SimulatorTasneem Ismael Ahel, 19, Gaza City SimulatorZionist Scholar SimulatorWe invite you to try it out. Come as a reader, and leave ready to introduce this innovative inquiry process to your students. We have reserved a seat for you on Wednesday, November 1st at 9E/8C/7M/6P in Kumospace.com/youthvoices.
TTT 10.18.2023 Can AI Thinking Partners and a Text Set help us understand the Israel-Hamas War? Paul Allison 2023-10-19 | What would you include in a text set about the Humas-Israel Conflict? We welcome you to a conversation about how to bring this into our classrooms -- with, perhaps, support from AI Thinking Partners on NowComment. We will be meeting tonight, Wednesday, October 18th at 9E/8C/7M/6P at Kumospace.com/youthvoicesWe've been testing our motto. Often over the past several months we have said that students can learn with and about AI using AI Thinking Partners on NowComment.We invite you to come as a reader this week, ready to learn as much a you can about the conflict in Gaza with AI Thinking Partners there to assist our collaborative reading and annotating an evolving text-set of articles that you can contribute to.Come put to the test whether or not AI can support you as a reader.Your seat is reserved on Wednesday evening, October 18th at 9E/8C/7M/6P at Kumospace.com/youthvoices
TTT 10.11.2023 Can AI Thinking Partners help us understand the Hamas Attack and Israel’s Response? Paul Allison 2023-10-12 | Let's test our motto this week on TTT. Often over the past several months we have said that students can learn with and about AI using AI Thinking Partners on NowComment.We invite you to come as a reader this week, ready to learn as much a you can about the conflict in Gaza with AI Thinking Partners there to assist our collaborative reading and annotating of this New York Times article, What We Know About the Hamas Attack and Israel’s Response.Come put to the test whether or not AI can support you as a reader.Your seat is reserved on Wednesday evening, October 11th at 9E/8C/7M/6P at Kumospace.com/youthvoices
TTT 10.04.2023 Ninth Graders invite AI Thinking Partners to visit The House on Mango Street Paul Allison 2023-10-05 | On TTT this evening at 9E/8C/7M/6P we will be taking a look at the almost 400 calls to AI Thinking Partners that Rolyn Heywood's ninth graders made yesterday on the second half of The House on Mango Street. We hope that Rolyn will be able to join us as well so that we can learn what all of this looked like and sounded like in her classrooms at Central High School in Philadelphia, and how she integrated this digital discourse with socratic discussions and more.See how writers and readers are learning with and about AI on NowComment. You will learn how to introduce AI in a free, safe, ethical, private, and protected online environment.You will learn how you can use AI Thinking Partners in NowComment's context-connected conversations!We've developed a platform that allows any user to choose from dozens of AI Thinking Partners who can:summarize, translate, and level textengage in simulations, pretending to ask questions like critics following particular literary theoriesact as a student learning along side of the reader (teaching as a way to learn)coach the reader to think in more depthtutor the reader with background informationmentor the reader with encouraging insightsJoin us to see how you and your students can go beyond ChatGPT and begin to use the power AI Thinking Partners on NowComment! See how this can open up new possibilities for readers and writers of all ages.We have saved a place for you tonight, Wednesday, October 4th at 9E/8C/7M/6P at kumospace.com/youthvoices.
TTT 09.27.2023 ChatGPT is a very dumb technology! Paul Allison 2023-10-02 | We are giving it the knowledge it needs to level the playing field for our students.From the get-go on last week's TTT meetup, a student, Sidhi Dhanda established her confident, centered expertise with her own thinking and writing processes -- and with her growing sophistication in her use of ChatGPT as an editor for her writing. Here, for example, Sidhi talks about how and why she uses ChatGPT to give her feedback on her college admission essay.After spending this time getting to know Sidhi and her use of ChatGPT, we shifted to showing her and the others with us on TTT some of the work we have been doing with designing prompts for OpenAI's Large Language Models with intellectual frameworks. In particular, we read through some of the AI feedback that Chris Sloan's student received on their college admission essays -- and their reflections on that feedback.Toward the end of our hour together, Sidhi recognized what we are trying to do, and she made remarkable connections. Her notion that we might be leveling the playing field for students who do not have access to private tutors on their college admission essay inspires us all to get knowledgeable AI tutors into the hands of students everywhere.If you don't have the time to watch the whole thing, these five minutes will give you a sense of why the time is now for getting prompt-designed, knowledgeable AI tutors into your classroom.This week on TTT, Chris Sloan will pick up on this conversation by talking about his senior's responses to the AI Tutors we have built. Jessica Early will be with us to join into this open discussion. Your spot is reserved on TTT this Wednesday evening, September 27th at 9E/8C/7M/6P kumospace.com/youthvoices. Join us!
TTT 09.20.2023 High School Senior: Why arent more teachers embracing AI? Paul Allison 2023-09-22 | We invite you to join a conversation with high school senior, Sidha Dhanda, who, this weekend, asked in a CNN article, "Why aren't more teachers embracing AI?" Hop on a stool in our AI Makerspace at Kumospace.com/youthvoices on Wednesday evening, September 20 at 9E/8C/7M/6P.In "a quick celebratory share," Fred Haas let us know that: One of my past students who I currently get to advise as the editor of our school newspaper just got this published - High school senior: Why aren’t more teachers embracing AI? (cnn.com/2023/09/16/opinions/ai-chatgpt-technology-chatbots-school-dhanda).She has been on quite a roll the last few years, landing pieces in multiple mainstream publications.For the past several weeks on TTT we have been creating AI mentors to support the teaching and learning of the key elements of the College Admission Essay as identified in chapter 4 of Real World Writing for Secondary Students by Jessica Singer Early and Meredith DeCosta, Teachers College Press and National Writing Project, 2012.Chapter 4: Demystifying the College Admission Essay GenreAfter reading Sidha Dhanda's essay on CNN, we invited her to to join us on TTT. When she said yes, she wrote: "AI and college essays are topics that are very much on my mind right now." We'll also have more reports from Chris Sloan's students who are experimenting with the AI Tutors we created based on the genre elements that Dr. Early identifies for the College Admission Essay. Here is one of Chris's student's reflections on three different comments that AI gave him on his essay:Hmm, I didn't look at my essay in this perspective, and this response brings a valid point: my essay doesn't quite align with my thesis that my life isn't complete without my desk. I think I should reword my thesis to have my desk be something more as a friend who has been closer to me than even my parents. Good and insightful response!Huh, I thought I already put enough description in my essay, but the suggestions that this AI makes me think about adding even more description because I actually think these suggestions would work really well into my essay. Nothing bad to say, only good helpful suggestions.So, the AI is suggesting that as I build my conclusion, I can go broader in my life from this acute perspective I have in my essay (past to future, real life outside desk) by applying values or lessons learned. I could also link it to my introduction to create a good connective loop of my literary work. And finally, I should avoid summarizing the body, because that's unnecessary and isn't a strong impression on the readers. I'm trying hard to find criticism to these suggestions, but I seriously can't find any. I'm going to have to give these responses a resounding 5 stars across the board.Come hear what young people are saying about their experiences with AI.Hop on a stool in our AI Makerspace at Kumospace.com/youthvoices on Wednesday evening, September 20 at 9E/8C/7M/6P.
TTT 09.13.2023 Students responses to feedback by AI Mentors on their College Admissions Essays Paul Allison 2023-09-14 | Last week, Bob Montgomery, David Cole, Jessica Early and I tested AI Mentors designed to give students feedback on their College Admission Essays. This week Chris Sloan is trying them out with his students, and we will hear his report, then delve more deeply into how and why these AI tools work!We have saved you a seat in our AI Makerspace. Grab a stool on Wednesday September 13th at 9E/8C/7M/6P at kumospace.com/youthvoices.We are creating AI mentors to support the teaching and learning of the key elements of the College Admission Essay as identified in chapter 4 of Real World Writing for Secondary Students Teachers College Press and National Writing Project, 2012.Chapter 4: Demystifying the College Admission Essay GenreAuthor: Jessica Singer Early and Meredith DeCostaSummary: This chapter from Jessica Singer Early and Meredith DeCosta’s Real World Writing for Secondary Students presents a writing workshop for ethnically and linguistically diverse high school students in which students receive instruction on specific genre features of the college admission essay. The chapter offers an overview of the college admission essay genre, key components of the workshop, samples of student writing, and professional resources for teaching the college admission essay. Equally useful as the focus of a professional development session or as the basis for a youth writing program, the chapter is especially relevant for teachers who work with linguistically divers youth as a way of providing access to “gate-opening writing tasks.”Join us on TTT's AI Makerspace. We'll see you on Wednesday September 13th at 9E/8C/7M/6P at kumospace.com/youthvoices.
TTT 09.06.2023 Lets Make AI Mentors to Demystify College Admissions Essays Paul Allison 2023-09-07 | We have saved you a seat in our AI Makerspace. Grab a stool on Wednesday September 6th at 9E/8C/7M/6P at kumospace.com/youthvoices.We are creating AI mentors to support the teaching and learning of the key elements of the College Admission Essay as identified in chapter 4 of Real World Writing for Secondary Students Teachers College Press and National Writing Project, 2012.Chapter 4: Demystifying the College Admission Essay GenreAuthor: Jessica Singer Early and Meredith DeCostaSummary: This chapter from Jessica Singer Early and Meredith DeCosta’s Real World Writing for Secondary Students presents a writing workshop for ethnically and linguistically diverse high school students in which students receive instruction on specific genre features of the college admission essay. The chapter offers an overview of the college admission essay genre, key components of the workshop, samples of student writing, and professional resources for teaching the college admission essay. Equally useful as the focus of a professional development session or as the basis for a youth writing program, the chapter is especially relevant for teachers who work with linguistically divers youth as a way of providing access to “gate-opening writing tasks.”Join us on TTT's AI Makerspace. We'll see you on Wednesday September 6th at 9E/8C/7M/6P at kumospace.com/youthvoices.
TTT 08.30.2023 Can AI become a trusted mentor for students writing their college admissions essays? Paul Allison 2023-08-31 | We are learning how to get Large Language Models (LLMs), such as the one that powers Chat GPT, to act like writing mentors for our students. In this article I’ll describe how and why we are designing prompts that young writers can use to ask OpenAI’s LLM to give them helpful, honest, and harmless feedback on their college admissions essays.We are not asking AI to write college admissions essays for our students or to score them for us, although LLMs can do these tasks. Instead, the prompt designing we are doing on NowComment and on Youth Voices gives our students AI tools that appropriately engage, push, challenge, affirm, or inspire them at different points in their own writing and thinking processes.These tools–Thinking Partners on NowComment and AI Mojo Templates on Youth Voices–can be used by students to support their development as writers, not just improve the text they are working on. We invite you to follow our process as we develop AI tools for students who are writing essays for college admissions.As this semester, the Fall of 2023, was about to begin Chris Sloan, a media and English teacher at Judge Memorial Catholic High School in Salt Lake City, started thinking about how he usually begins the school year with seniors by asking them about their college admissions essays. This year was like many others in that his students expressed an interest in work on these essays in their English class.Chris also started wondering if there might be a fit with such a project for AI to act as a mentor through the process of writing these important essays. Student often write about personal histories, traumatic experiences, and other things that ofter make them uncomfortable with sharing these essays with their peers.While having this conversation about how to respect our students’ needs for privacy and get them the feedback that a trusted mentor or peer might provide, we started to wonder if AI might be useful in this process given. An AI mentor might be worth considering given it’s anonymity and our growing confidence in being able to shape the results it produces into criterion-based (using the criteria we give it), useful, descriptive, and suggestive comments.In addition Chris had taken the lead earlier in the summer with composing prompts to describe stakeholders who could give a writer feedback from particular perspectives. For example, what would a principal in your district say about the proposed solution you are writing for a problem you see in the curriculum?Perhaps, Chris thought, writers could use and create AI personas or Thinking Partners who would could give them responses to their essays as if they were admissions officers. How would students expect these AI Thinking Partners to respond? How would they describe the people they imagined are going to read their essays?With these questions in mind we asked Jessica Early to join our conversation at a Teachers Teaching Teachers meetup on August 23, 2023 . In the 4th chapter of their book Real World Writing for Secondary Students: Teaching the College Admission Essay and Other Gate-Openers for Higher Education (2012), Dr. Early and her co-author Meredith DeCosta explain that “the research and teaching team decided to devote a class to understanding audience and purpose as a step toward successfully executing this real world, gate-opening genre (Day 4).”On TTT we all agreed that it would be great if we could find a way for NowComment Thinking Partners or AI Mojo Templates to simulate a college admissions offices as a way to have students to consider their audience. We put a pin in this and spent the rest of the evening talking about how AI Mojo Templates could be used to give students feedback on their college admissions essays in a way that simulates a peer review group. See AI Does Peer Review. There’s plenty to unpack with this simulation, and we think these AI Mojo Templates will be quite useful for student. (I also make an edit to one of the prompts that was imprecise. Now it provides the kinds of feedback we would want it to give.)See more here: https://www.youthvoices.live/can-ai-become-a-trusted-mentor-for-students-who-are-writing-their-college-admissions-essays/
TTT 08.23.2023 The College Admissions Essay in the Age of AI Paul Allison 2023-08-24 | What happens to the college admissions essay in the age of AI? Students can ask AI to write these essays for them, and they can be evaluated with AI, of course. Before tripping to far into this dystopia, let's consider together how we might show students how to use AI to find their topics, develop strong introductions, personal anecdotes, convincing "so what" sections, and more as they compose, revise, and complete their college admission essays.Join the TTT conversation at Kumospace.com this Wednesday evening at 9E/8C/7M/6P.We are designing an AI MAKE CYCLE for the college admissions essay following the workshops delineated in Jessica Singer Early and Meredith DeCosta's essay Demystifying the College Admission Essay Genre (Chapter 4 of Real World Writing for Secondary Students).This Wednesday on TTT, we are going to work with a college admissions essay from a few years ago that Chris Sloan has offered for our consideration. We will use some of the AI Mojo templates on Youth Voices that we already have for giving a writer feedback on content as well as revision and editing suggestions.We are intending to do a very hands-on experiment with AI tools this Wednesday evening, then open up the conversation to consider what other supports and AI tools we might develop to support students to write their college admissions essays.We will hold a seat for you at Kumospace.com this Wednesday evening at 9E/8C/7M/6P!
TTT 08.16.2023 Adding AI Dialogue Notebooks on NowComment to the New AI Makerspace on Youth Voices Paul Allison 2023-08-17 | We are designing an AI Makerspace on Youth Voices, and we are adding a MAKE to introduce students to keeping AI Logs and Notebook. Think it through with us on Wednesday evening, August 16th at 9E/8C/7M/6P. Pull up a chair at our AI workbench in Kumospace/youthvoices.Here are four examples of AI Dialogue Notebooks:Paul's Notebook nowcomment.com/blogs/349164Kevin Hodgson's June 24 - July 1 AI Reflection Journal nowcomment.com/documents/349393Sloan's AI notes (July 26-30) nowcomment.com/documents/352005Sloan's AI notes (Aug 1-6)nowcomment.com/documents/352005An AI MAKE A mini-project designed for you to learn with and about AI in about 30 minutes.Each AI MAKE is also one piece of a larger make cycle that takes about a week or two to complete. The AI MAKE CYCLES introduce students to tools they can use to learn, become known, broadcast their views, and develop their digital discourse skills on Youth Voices.Come bring your ideas and learn how to design your own AI MAKES.
TTT 08.09.2023 Introducing an AI Makerspace on Youth Voices Paul Allison 2023-08-10 | We are designing an AI Makerspace on Youth Voices, and we invite you come do the first AI MAKE with us on Wednesday evening, August 9th at 9E/8C/7M/6P. Pull up a chair at our AI workbench in Kumospace/youthvoices.An AI MAKE A mini-project designed for you to learn with and about AI in about 30 minutes.Each AI MAKE is also one piece of a larger make cycle that takes about a week or two to complete.The AI MAKE CYCLES introduce students to tools they can use to learn, become known, broadcast their views, and develop their digital discourse skills on Youth Voices.Come see how it all starts with the first AI MAKE: Personalize Your Profile. Then let's talk about creating other AI MAKES together.
TTT 08.02.2023 How is Chris Sloan planning to include AI with his students this coming semester? Paul Allison 2023-08-03 | What will you say in that first meeting of the year when AI comes up? How will you explain where AI fits into your teaching of writing and reading? What do you think your school's policies and programs should be to support your students in this new era of AI? How are you talking about all of this with your colleagues and administrators?Chris will be coming from a department chair's meeting on Wednesday about AI, and he'll characterize the meeting. Chris has been one of the early explorers of AI on Youth Voices and NowComment.Grab a seat with us in Kumospace.com/youthvoices on Wednesday, August 2 at 9E/8C/7M/6P.Consider how you will engage with your colleagues and how you will bring AI into your classroom this coming semester.
TTT 07.26.2023 Hacking the Notebook: AI Edition Paul Allison 2023-07-27 | Grab a seat in Kumospace.com/youthvoices on Wednesday evening, 9E/8C/7M/6P and take a look at recent AI Dialogue Notebooks that are being kept by LUTE-STEM pre-service education students at Lehman College this month.Let's talk about all of the ways we can imagine hacking notebooks, from David Cole's NEXMAP notebooks that students make with copper tape, surface mount LEDs and batteries... to our experiments with adding AI Thinking Partners to logs in a notebook See Kevin Hodgson's thoughts... to Write Out's nature and science notebooks... to YOUR use of digital or interactive notebooks. Let's talk about through lines in this work and how AI might add to these practices and traditions.Keep your ownAI Dialogue NotebookUse NowComment to add daily logs on one document each week. Also add images and videos. Invite others to comment. Use Thinking Partners beside your freewriting, jottings, exploratory logs. Upload a new document each week for you logs, then collect these weekly log documents and things you are reading into a Personal Collection. This collection becomes your AI Dialogue Notebook.
Noyce Multimodal Literacy Workshop Three 07.21.2023 Paul Allison 2023-07-22 | Noyce July 21, 2023 - Focus on Problem Based Learning and Mentor ProjectTHIS WEEK - July 21 - 28Continue logging with images, videos, and your written thoughts. Use the log document dated July 14 - 28Continue commenting on each other's logs, which you will find in the Noyce Focus-on-Stem 2023 Group. (Note that you can Reply with AI.)Continue asking Thinking Partners to give you regular (every day) feedback and ideas. Ask for AI on the Whole Document each day. Try these Thinking Partners: Freewriting, Wicked Problems, and Burning QuestionsContinue adding images you create using the Text-to-Image Thinking Partner and Stable Diffusion WebIdentify a problem that you may want to dig deeper intoReturn to each of the videos on the page “Videos We started With” and respond to the prompts5:00-5:15 (Paul) One thing… Updating individual journals, commenting on our peers’ journals. Checking in with all…5:15-5:30 Introduction to Problem Based Learning Through Video Sources Problem Based Learning - NowComment.com(Paul) Quick showing of how to comment on video (Enhanced Video Commenting)(Marina) Participants will be invited to select 1-2 videos to watch and comment Using the prompts:What stands out to you about problem based learning?Where do you notice the habits of mind that we learned about the other day? Thinking interdependentlyCreating, imagining, and innovating Question posing and problem posingThinking and communicating with clarity and precision5:30-6:15 Marina shares her unit and participants engage in exercises5:30-5:35 Slides 2 - 5 ( Goals: Explain the relationships and connections, share that Hudson River pollution was the topic, not the question, describe three elements that are important to start off the unit, Assess this with T-chart)5:35-5:40 Participants will go to NowComment and View Dolphin Video. Students comment based on Marina’s prompt: How might the viewing of this video lead students to develop theories and pose questions?5:40-6:00 Slides 6-8 (Goals: Share story about how students reacted to intriguing information and how those reactions brought us closer to a problem question, students reactions demonstrated the research and information that needed to be done, a problem was established and the 5 Whys strategy was initiated )6:00-6:10 Participants will go to the Watershed Resource page and watch the video on the 5 Whys. They will respond in Nowcomment to the prompt or with their general reactions. They will be invited to interact with a second visual document.6:10-6:20 Slides 11-12 (Goals: Describe how we researched and experimented with solutions) Marina will present the website that was created to highlight student learning and sharing learning with the public.6:20-6:30 Habits of Mind - choose one from the four that you exercised effectively in this workshop and one that you might improve on (All 16 will be linked from icons on the NowComment LUTE-STEM 2023 group page.Gathering Data Through All SensesThinking FlexiblyResponding with Wonderment and AweTaking Responsible Risks
TTT 07.19.2023 Come learn with and about Artificial Intelligence on NowComment with us Paul Allison 2023-07-20 | Collaborate with AI in Comments & RepliesIntroducing Thinking PartnersAI as Your Reading Buddy or Writing CoachWrite your own text of any genre or upload one from a Web Site, PDF or Word Doc.Choose a sentence, paragraph, or the whole document. Click the button to Ask AI then select a Thinking Partner. Pose a question and add a description of yourself if you would like, then wait for the results.Critically read the output from OpenAI that comes to you in an edit box. You can also Resubmit and Resubmit to choose from alternative results. Edit the output of the results you choose so that it is helpful (for other users), honest (about the facts), and harmless (free of bias).Hit Start conversation and see how an AI comment is posted in context showing that this was written by a Thinking Partner and edited by you. You and others can reply to any AI collaborated comments with human-only replies or with another Thinking Partner.Your work with OpenAI is free and anonymous on NowComment. No separate login is required and no identifying data is transmitted to OpenAI.LLMs at your serviceWith the click of a button, you can deploy OpenAI's Large Language Models (LLMs) next to any document on NowComment. You can select from a bevy of brilliant bots.We have designed these bots to be Thinking Partners who are always available to be your personal mentor, tutor, coach, teammate, student, simulator, or tool. Thinking Partners don't just correct your writing or summarize a text; they help you to become a stronger writer and a more thoughtful reader.NowComment's Thinking Partners shape and transform the output you receive from an LLM. This is a different experience than you get with the popular, off-the-shelf, product-oriented tools. You will be inspired by the control our Thinking Partners give you over how to integrate AI into your own creative and thinking processes.There are over 30 Thinking Partners to choose from already (with more coming all the time)! And since there are so many, to guide your choice, we have organized them into the seven approaches for students that Dr. Ethan Mollick and Dr. Lilach Mollick describe in a recent paper, "Assigning AI," as briefly described in the next section, below.We also invite you to make your own Thinking Partners. NowComment is a platform where we learn with and about Artificial Intelligence.Remix & CreateThinking PartnersDetail the persona of the best Thinking Partner you can imagine having. Itemize for that character the reading strategies you want them to employ. Specify the output that you want to receive. Test and test until you have taught your Thinking Partner how you want it to respond to the texts of any genre that you are reading or writing and uploading to NowComment. Become a prompt engineer.Productivity MeterAI as Tool: Extending PerformanceWe are learning together how to use AI as a tool to extend our thinking. These Thinking Partners can translate, adapt, and transform text. They can give you a prompt for creating an image and more. See Mollick & Mollick (2023) for more.Keep your ownAI Dialogue NotebookUse NowComment to add daily logs on one document each week. Also add images and videos. Invite others to comment. Use Thinking Partners beside your freewriting, jottings, exploratory logs. Upload a new document each week for you logs, then collect these weekly log documents and things you are reading into a Personal Collection. This collection becomes your AI Dialogue Notebook.feedback iconAI as Mentor: Providing FeedbackAsk a Thinking Partner to give you feedback on your work. Some examples of available Thinking Partners. See Mollick & Mollick (2023) for more.direct instruction iconAI as Tutor: Providing Direct InstructionSelect a Thinking Partner that pushes you to think through problems and connect ideas. Some examples of available Thinking Partners. See Mollick & Mollick (2023) for more.thinking thinking iconAI as Coach: Increasing MetacognitionSome Thinking Partners will help you to think about your thinking. Examples of this kind of Thinking Partner. See Mollick & Mollick (2023) for more.Teammate AIAI as Teammate: Increasing Collaborative IntelligenceInvite a Thinking Partner into your study group to provide inspiration, find consensus, or play “devil’s advocate.” Consider these Thinking Partners. See Mollick & Mollick (2023) for more.Learning RobotAI as Student: The power of teaching othersTreat a Thinking Partner like your student who has given you their thinking on a text. Respond by teaching more about the topic. Try this with these Thinking Partners. See Mollick & Mollick (2023) for more.Simulator IconAI as Simulator: Creating Opportunities for PracticeSome Thinking Partners are characters we have created to have specific, ideological ways of responding. Choose a Thinking Partners like this to engage with different perspectives. See Mollick & Mollick (2023) for more.
TTT 7.5.23 Teaching w/ & about the universe of AI discourse using Mollick&Mollicks 7 AI approaches Paul Allison 2023-07-06 | Come learn with us about how your students can learn with and about prompt literacy in the coming school year. Grab a seat tonight, Wed. July 5th at 9E/8C/7M/6P at Kumospace.com/youthvoicesWe found the missing owner's manual for NowComment's Thinking Partners. Dr. Ethan Mollick and Dr. Lilach Mollick from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania & Wharton Interactive published a paper a few weeks ago that is helping us to organize and illuminate prompt writing for Thinking Partners. We are now using their 7 AI approaches as categories for NowComment's Thinking Partners:AI as Mentor: Providing FeedbackAI as Tutor: Providing Direct InstructionAI as Coach: Increasing MetacognitionAI as Teammate: Increasing Collaborative IntelligenceAI as Student: The power of teaching othersAI as Simulator: Creating Opportunities for PracticeAI as Tool: Extending PerformanceOpen the universe of AI discourse for your students! We will see you tonight, Wed. July 5th at 9E/8C/7M/6P at Kumospace.com/youthvoices
TTT 06.28.2023 AI Dialogue Notebook Challenge Paul Allison 2023-06-29 | Come see what we're up to with our AI Dialogue Notebooks. kumospace.com/youthvoices. We left last week asking what the ideal Thinking Partner(s) would be for a notebook where we were logging our lives as teachers. All invited, whether you are dubious, curious, just getting started, or a full-on prompt engineer in the making!I have kept a journal since I was fifteen and it is my important habit. It's a reflective tool where I distill my experiences, engage in self-dialogue, and contemplate future scenarios. Despite its benefits, journaling can feel somewhat solitary sometimes it is great just to talk to somebody, get a new perspective, bounce some ideas to create new ones. The beauty of journaling with GPT lies in its ability to maintain privacy while providing a sounding board for your thoughts. It offers "superhuman empathy" (a quote I attribute to my friend Maciej Cielecki) and uncovers your perspective through a third-party lens. All you need to do is feed GPT a journal entry and ask about the writer's intention. The depth of insight it brings forth might surprise or even scare you - GPT can figure out a lot about you from reading your journal. It's also insightful to analyze your journaling style with GPT, revealing your thought process, writing style, and areas to improve. My journaling is better and feels easier now.Michal PrzadkaThis challenge does not involve buckets or ice water or even using NowComment (although we provide a "How To do this on NowComment" below). A group of us who have been meeting at Teachers Teaching Teachers on Wednesdays at 9E/8C/7M/6P have been creating an AI platform on NowComment called Thinking Partners. We are testing this new system this summer, and we thought that one way to start thinking together about the kinds of AI feedback we find most helpful for our own writing might be to keep an AI Dialogue Notebook. We could keep daily logs on one side of the page and ask AI to comment on our logs on the other side, and we would record the prompts we used to get the responses from AI that we wanted. (On NowComment, prompting AI is almost equivalent to choosing a Thinking Partner, so the prompt gets recorded automatically.)We want to invite you to do the same thing and share it with us. For a week or more, keep logs on your day and ask AI (any way you want to do it) to respond to your writing. Remember to attach the prompt you gave AI and the results you got back each day.Almost 40 years ago Anne E. Berthoff wrote a one-page "Facets" about Double-entry notebooks, referencing the work of "teachers who have studied... with Dixie Goswami at the Bread Loaf School of English." (nowcomment.com/documents/349277) I was in my first year of teaching in a middle school in the Salt Lake Valley, and immediately started showing my students how to make dialectical or double-entry notes. A couple of years later with colleagues like Elaine Avidon at the New York City Writing Project and The Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard, I added triple- and quadruple-notetaking to my backpack of ways of helping students to think about their thinking. This month, on Teachers Teaching Teachers we've been exploring what an AI Dialogue Notebook would be like, and we want to invite you to do the same.We are asking: What if after writing a log on the left side of of a page in your online journal, you asked AI Thinking Partners to respond? And what kinds of responses would you find most helpful? Do you want to be challenged? Or helped to find a theme in your meandering freewriting? Or encouraged to give more detail about particular parts? Or just heard? How To Do This on NowComment(The first 10 steps. More here.)Quick Start (3 minutes)1. Log in to NowComment, and in My Library or on almost any page, click Upload Document from the main menu in the blue banner at the top, then click the box for Text I'll Write Now.2. Title this document with today's date to a week from today to keep weekly logs.3. At the top of each weekly document, write a list of your goals for the week. Then hit the buttons at the bottom and on the next two screens: Upload, Save and Continue, and ContinueAdd Short, Frequent Logs to the Weekly Document (5-10 minutes)4. Hit the button Add to Document. Enter your logs by adding to this document each day for a week, then upload a new document (using Text I'll Write Now) for succeeding weeks. Start your first log now.Invite People to Comment (2 minutes)5. Invite people and groups to see and comment on your logs. Click the Invite tab in the upper-left corner, then invite people by listing email addresses yourself or selecting People or Groups from your Address Book.Add Images and Videos (5 minutes)6. Use text-to-image prompts to create images on the Stable Diffusion Playground, then copy and paste images from there to a New Content box. Double-click on an image to control size and spacing.
05.10.2023 Bonnee Bentums English Class B Introduction to Thinking Partners Paul Allison 2023-06-26 | ...
