Three Ways I’m Using A.I. as an Educator
Newsletter
Artificial intelligence, or A.I. for short, has been around for quite some time.
It has likely helped you check grammar in a digital document or suggested your next book or movie after finishing one.
What’s changed is how accessible A.I. has become, empowering anyone to use it in their daily lives. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other large language models (LLMs) offer free versions to use and have low entry points. A.I. is no longer just embedded in our tools; it has become something we actively integrate into our daily routines.
For educators, A.I. can become an essential resource for supporting our work. Specifically, these tools can help teachers and leaders recapture time and generate novel responses. A.I. has best served me as sort of a virtual assistant.
Outsourcing tedious tasks frees me up to focus on creating high-quality educational experiences and building connections with colleagues. Delegating administrative burdens to free up more opportunities for enhancing learning conditions benefits everyone—especially students. However you feel about A.I., every educator I have connected with wants more time for what matters.
Here are three ways I’ve used A.I. to enhance my practice as a systems coach. I also offer additional use cases for different positions. (Note: I primarily use ChatGPT, and sometimes the paid version when I have a big project. You’ll see that in the examples. I’ve also used Claude and Gemini, and have found these tools to also be effective.)
#1: Idea Generation for Sparking Creativity
Teaching and leading are as much art as science. Starting from a blank canvas in our preparations can be difficult.
A.I. can be helpful in generating a bunch of ideas to get you started with a project, such as developing a unit of study or a professional development workshop.
For example, I wanted some suggested titles for a workshop on writing instruction at the secondary level. Below is my request and what ChatGPT generated.
One thing I’ve learned about A.I. is that it comes across as too confident in the responses it generates. So it’s important to not settle for the initial answer, somewhat similar to conducting a search on the Internet. I responded with what I didn’t like about these options, and clarified what I was looking for. Through multiple exchanges, we arrived at a suitable title.
Additional Use Cases for Idea Generation
Brainstorm five different essential questions for a unit of study on…
Develop an outline for a weekly newsletter article; here are the topics:....
Suggest five instructional strategies tailored for adult learners in a workshop on...
#2: Feedback and Revision for Improving Writing and Content Creation
When preparing an article, I upload my writing into A.I. to identify areas for grammatical or language improvement. This is a lower level task but helpful for saving time. For example, I asked ChatGPT to improve the readability of a previous paragraph in this post.
It reduced my word count while making the language flow better for the reader. I didn’t use this response verbatim. I revised the writing a bit to make sure it was in my voice.
You can also get feedback on finished content, such as an entire unit of study or professional development plan. In one situation, I asked ChatGPT to give me feedback on a presentation I had prepared. In my prompt, I included criteria for high-quality professional learning. Its initial response was “4 out of 5” with suggested areas for improvement. I made revisions, uploaded the next version, it would give me a better rating along with more feedback, and so on.
When I plateaued at a “4.9 out of 5,” I asked ChatGPT how to achieve a perfect score. Its response was insightful.
“You cannot achieve a 5 out of 5 because you have not delivered the presentation yet. You cannot know how it will go until you facilitate the professional learning event.”
Additional Use Cases for Feedback and Revision
Upload a unit of study and ask A.I. to evaluate alignment with the standards.
Ask A.I. to increase the complexity of a performance task using Webb’s Depths of Knowledge (D.O.K.).
Paste a school newsletter into A.I. and ask it to replace any educational jargon with more commonly known terms for better readability.
#3: Summarizing and synthesizing large amounts of information
Summarizing and synthesizing information is where A.I. truly excels. It is built for processing large data sets in a fraction of the time it would take you or me to do the same work.
The information you provide can be in text format that you paste in the chat. It can also be a file such as a PDF or an image. As an example, I’ve uploaded scans of my own handwritten coaching notes (personally identifying information excluded). It will transcribe my notes with high accuracy. I can then ask it to summarize my interactions and synthesize what the key trends are in my coaching practice.
When I have enough notes, A.I. can provide me with insights about how a coaching cycle is going. With prompting it can offer suggestions for next actions and identify patterns in my conversation with a client. My coaching improves through this augmented approach to self-reflection.
Additional Use Cases for Summarizing and Synthesizing Information
Teachers can upload their conferring notes after meeting with readers and writers. A synthesis of the students’ overall strengths and areas of growth can inform future instruction.
Principals can synthesize their instructional walks from the past month. Similar to the teacher, they can identify schoolwide strengths and areas of growth in relation to the implementation of effective practices.
An instructional leadership team can summarize feedback from student or teacher voice surveys. For instance, leaders can learn about student engagement or staff morale levels. This knowledge can guide organizational changes.
If you haven’t used A.I. yet, which of these examples would you try in your work?
If you have used A.I., are there additional ways you have leveraged this tool to enhance your practice?
Related Resources
In this Education Next article, Michael Horn and Daniel Curtis evaluated ChatGPT’s ability to generate essays in response to prompts from an ELA curriculum. They learned that the writing A.I. produced met grade level standards. “Even at the upper grade levels, ChatGPT is a solid B or C student.” These findings have implications for the types of tasks teachers assign kids.
Additional A.I. tools that I have tried and liked include NotebookLM and Perplexity. NotebookLM is a Google experiment. It allows you to upload your own resources and use that information to create summaries and content, including podcasts. Perplexity is a search engine that uses peer-reviewed research and cites its sources when responding to your questions.
For an overview on instructional walks, check out this article. I also developed a course for literacy leaders on getting into classrooms to support teaching and learning in a productive and positive way. It’s on sale here through November for only $74 (50% off). Use the “HALFOFF” coupon code.