Using Technology In Interactive Lesson Plans

Your students are going to use AI. You can put as many blockers, rules, policies, etc. in place. It won’t work. They will find a way. You can pretend AI doesn’t exist, try to bury it, and put your students at a disadvantage - OR you could get familiar, make a plan, and implement a strategy. What are four immediate things you could do? 1. Get familiar with ChatGPT, GROK, and ClaudeAI Knowing the tools is step one. There are many more out there, but these are your current Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper of AI world. Know the ways they can check your work, help you outline, help you iterate, help you build materials, and help you do tedious tasks. Why? This can actually reduce cognitive load and let students focus on more rigorous material! 2. Determine the “why” for your AI policy. Why are you letting students use AI sometimes but not other times? You may want them to try hand calculate an equation a few times to build the muscle memory, you may want them to outline an essay a few times to build the muscle memory. That said, worked example theory shows that having an example can help alleviate cognitive load so you get the skills out of students. Wherever you land, give a compelling rationale so students understand how you arrived at your decision. 3. Practice and model using AI effectively and ethically. Do you really want to hand type all of your objectives and hand scaffold them on a long term plan? Awesome. I hope you have some good Netflix on in the background! That would bore me to tears. You can model how to effectively use AI by using it AND telling students when and how you used AI to develop lessons, develop assessments, check your work, etc. 4. Finally, learn how to write clear, crisp, and effective prompts Garbage in, garbage out. Learn how to write effective, detailed, clear, crisp prompts for your AI tools. Then model this for students. I use AI a lot to put together the jobs blast. Mostly it helps me categorize through prompts I have refined over the last 18 months. It helps me organize and build advertising posts. It helps me put together the bi-monthly newsletter. I would be at a considerable disadvantage if I didn’t use AI! Your students will be too if you don’t get ahead of this and embrace it. Remember, math teachers freaked out when Microsoft Excel came out too - but we are smart. We can use tools to our advantage!

For educators seeking practical implementation, not just theory: 1. The 20-Minute Rule Require 20 minutes of unaided work before any AI collaboration Application: Human: Draft initial climate policy arguments AI: Generate counterarguments Toggle: Develop a more nuanced position 2. "Blind Bake" Assessments Students submit three components: Original handwritten draft (scanned) AI-enhanced version "Toggle Map" documenting their decision-making process Key Benefit: Makes cognitive offloading visible and intentional 3. Skill-Specific Toggle Zones Designate certain skills as AI-free territories: History: Primary source analysis Science: Hypothesis formulation Math: Initial problem structure and approach 4. Feedback Roulette Peer reviewers identify: Which sections appear AI-assisted Their reasoning behind these assessments Builds meta-awareness for both creator and evaluator 5. Cognitive Time-Stamping Leverage document version history to: Compare thinking before and after AI assistance Identify when AI bypassed valuable struggle Evaluate process quality, not just final output Free Resource: I've created a Toggle Method Lesson Planner template – comment "TOGGLE TOOL" for access. "AI shouldn't make thinking easier – it should make thinking deeper." #EdChat #AIStrategy #CriticalThinking #ToggleTeaching Pragmatic AI Solutions Alfonso Mendoza Jr., M.Ed. Amanda Bickerstaff Vriti Saraf Pat Yongpradit France Q. Hoang Mike Kentz

What if students could create their own science simulations with AI? I've been exploring how AI can help create interactive science simulations without writing any code. Using tools like Claude, I recently developed three simulations that bring complex concepts to life: wave interference patterns, flocking bird behavior, and sound wave propagation. These simulations do more than just look impressive. They actively challenge common student misconceptions about physics and biology. For instance, the sound wave visualization clearly shows how energy moves while molecules stay relatively stationary - a fundamental concept many learners struggle with. What excites me most is how this technology gives educators and learners creative superpowers. If a non-programmer like me can create accurate scientific simulations, imagine what students could build to demonstrate their understanding? Link in the comments for the full post with interactive simulations.

Today, our favorite chatbot Claude has gotten an upgrade. Anthropic is going all in to create a GenAI Chatbot that is for everyone from developers to teachers with their artifacts feature. Anthropic just widely released artifacts for all Claude users across their free and premium plans, as well as in their iOS and Android apps. Artifacts is a game-changer for educators, creating a dedicated window alongside the chat where Claude takes your written prompts and turns them into interactive games, presentations, websites, etc. Claude also has made it easy to publish the artifacts, so students or colleagues can interact with the activities. Mandy DePriest, on our team at AI for Education, recently demonstrated how the artifacts feature works with a quick walkthrough of a common classroom use case: creating an interactive, digital vocabulary quiz in seconds with no code and only a few simple prompts. In our training on Monday with a district in NJ, I modeled creating an interactive game out of the popular Egg Drop Challenge STEM project, adding a Batman themed twist to help students in their mission – trust me when I tell you teachers were super excited to start building their own interactive elements. If you want to try artifacts out, here are some example prompts to get you started: -Create a webpage for a high school English class based on this uploaded syllabus (we love the upload feature on Claude) -Generate an interactive math game to help 4th-grade students master comparing fractions. Use faction bars when providing students explanations for the questions -Design an interactive game to help students' learn Newton's First Law of Motion. Include an interactive element and directions for the game -Create an interactive vocabulary quiz based on keywords in the attached file We're excited about the potential of the artifacts feature to help teachers create fun and interactive ways to engage students in the classroom. Add it to the list of the many reasons to try out Claude. Have you used Claude and the artifacts feature yet? Share your best results! Links in the comments to my game and our Claude video walk through. #aiforeducation #GenAI #Claude #teachingwithAI