What I have Learned about Artificial Intelligence this Semester

One of my goals this semester was to figure out ways to use AI as a helpful tool for teaching. As a result, my students have experimented with AI in both the Technology for STEM Educators course and the Assessment in STEM Education course.

When it comes to lesson planning as a teacher, we need to be realistic. Teachers aren’t going to create detailed multi-page lesson plans for each course every day. And there will be some days that they will be stressed because they don’t have a plan for the next class period.  During these stressful times as a teacher, I think that it would be good to use AI to come up with a basic lesson plan. After exploring some AI tools, one of our favorites was Gemini. It isn’t one of the AI tools designed specifically for teachers, but it does a very good job when given explicit directions. We used it to create a detailed lesson plan and also discovered that it is great for creating rubrics for summative assessments, such as projects, presentations, or other non-exam assessments.

However, it should be noted that there are a lot of specific AI tools designed for teachers, such as MagicSchool, Eduaide, and Brisk Teaching, which has a Chrome extension. Since these are designed specifically for teachers, they offer a lot of tools that could be used besides lesson plans and rubrics. These include but are not limited to presentation makers, quiz makers, state practice tests, newsletter generators, and letters of recommendation generators. We didn’t explore all of these tools as we focused on lesson plans and rubrics. If you do experiment with any of them, let me know what you think and the pros and cons of the tool.

One tool that an alumna, Sydney Stapleton, pointed me to was Formative. She uses it a lot for creating assessments in her classes. I created a Formative account and decided to have it create a quiz for my Technology students on mean, median, and mode. It has a lot of options to choose from, such as low, medium, and high difficulty or short, medium, or long quizzes. If you want it to grade the questions, then you would select multiple choice, true/false, or multiple selection problems. You can also have short answer questions, but you need to grade those by hand. After students have completed the assessment, the teacher can see a lot of details on which problems were missed and their scores on the assessment. If you like the questions, you can publish the quiz to a library for future use. I was very impressed with it until I asked it to create a quiz on similar triangles and I noticed that one of the True/False questions had the wrong answer. I was able to fix it, but be sure that all answers are correct before using one as an assessment in your class.

This past week I wanted to do something different in my History of Math class. I had already created a PowerPoint but that sounded boring so I thought it would be fun if I could take the PowerPoint and have AI create a Kahoot. I started exploring that option, but wasn’t sure it would work with my free account so I went to Quizizz. After logging in, in the middle of the page, there is a banner that says “Create with Quizizz” and below it are various options. You can upload a file with the content and it will create a quiz. You can even create from YouTube or a link. So I uploaded a PDF version of my PowerPoint slides and within 5 minutes, Quizizz had created 60 multiple-choice questions covering the material on the slides. I didn’t want that many so I deleted several until I had 36 questions. Quizizz lets you use various ways to engage the students—they can do the questions at their own pace during class or you could assign them as homework or you can play a game, similar to Kahoot. I elected for the last option. At the beginning of class, I told the students what I had done and after playing the game, we determined that 2 of the 36 questions were not good, but the rest seemed reasonable. They all agreed it was more fun than just going through PowerPoint slides. I suspect that I will use this AI tool again.

One thing that I haven’t explored with AI is to have it write questions for an exam. I think that the best use of this tool could be creating another version of a test with similar questions. For example, you could upload your test and then ask it to create free-response questions. Hopefully, it would make ones of similar difficulty, but one would have to go over them thoroughly. I think I may encourage colleagues to try this for classes where they have to have 2 versions of an exam.

While I am not an expert in AI, I have learned a lot more about it this semester. It is here to stay and I want to learn how to use it for productive purposes and share that with my future math teachers.

Building Thinking Classrooms

Definition: A building thinking classroom helps change the way students are learning. Students are encouraged to learn and explore new techniques while being guided by a teacher. Students learn vertically on a whiteboard where they can erase problems and learn by proving definitions. This is mostly done in group work while changing groups frequently to work with different perspectives. The biggest kicker of this type of classroom is NO NOTES; there are barely any notes for students to take because they learn by doing or struggling through questions. 

Pros: This approach to learning math presents a lot of positive areas of growth for students. For one, it encourages students to problem-solve and critically think as they work through unfamiliar problems with little initial direction. It also gives students many opportunities to collaborate with classmates, and not just their friends. Switching up the learning groups allows students to see and share different methods for solving a problem and helps them create a network of classmates who they can work alongside. This method is also very hands on. It gives the classroom to the students and allows them to directly do the work to learn the material. Finally, students get to work through questions at their own pace and ask questions as they arise.  

Cons: The biggest con of having a building-thinking classroom is no notes for the students to look back on and study. Studying for exams is a big adaptation concerning what a student needs to do and how they must be diligent and proactive to take some notes or pictures in class to study with in the future. Another downside of building thinking classrooms is how to best give exams or tests to students. Since they are not learning on pencil and paper, how do we as teachers adapt that to taking an exam on paper? This is especially challenging since they are learning and working in a group to collaborate with peers on what the best process would be; do you always do group exams? Is it possible to give an exam verbally or on a whiteboard?  

Would you use it? As a future teacher, it is important to consider different teaching methods like building thinking classrooms and whether you would use them in your classroom. There is a lot of value in trying nontraditional teaching methods and seeing how students respond to them. Personally, I would not want to exclusively use the building thinking classrooms teaching method as students often struggle to adjust to prepare for exams under this model. However, there would be great benefits in implementing this style into my classroom for certain days and lessons. This would allow students to collaborate and stretch their ability to think through concepts. Yet I would also want there to be times that students could take notes or complete work independently. Finding a way to use a mix of the building thinking classroom style and more traditional classroom styles could allow students and teachers to have the best of both worlds.  

Written by Jacie Staedtler, and Nicole Swanson

Adapting To Changes in Education

The way students learn is constantly changing, and teachers must be able to adapt to those changes. Just because your teaching style was effective last year doesn’t necessarily mean that it will carry over to the next year. As educators, we will have to continue developing our teaching skills and styles to become the best teachers we can. Thus, it’s time all teachers start looking into other options that may best help their students learn. So, we will talk about some of the options out there and explain the benefits that go with each one. 

One style of teaching that would benefit the classroom is a flipped classroom. According to Harvard University, a flipped classroom is when students cover the material by themselves before class. When the students get to class it opens lecture time for deeper intellectual discussions on the material, instead of spending most of the class in a lecture. Some of the benefits that a flipped classroom provides is that it allows students to learn at their own pace and it increases and encourages collaboration between students. Since you are not spending important class time lecturing, you can commit it to activities and projects that can increase students' understanding of important topics and subjects.

Another style of teaching that could benefit classrooms is feedback formative assessment. According to Stanford University, feedback formative assessment is an assessment you give to a student at the beginning of the semester and see where your students need to improve. Then, as a teacher, you would teach the content where your students need to improve the most. By the end of the semester, you would give them a test similar to the one at beginning of the semester to see how much your students improved. This is a great way for a teacher to know what you need to teach your students to get the most out of your class. 

The next style of teaching that is useful is active learning. Active learning is when a teacher puts students in situations where they are questioned and uses discussion to help improve their understanding of the material. This can also involve other active structures that get students involved like doing debates, group work, and other forms of discussion. Some benefits include processing new material through thinking, writing, talking, and problem-solving. It also can help create personal meaning when working on activities, which can help increase motivation in students. Also, from a teacher’s perspective, it may help them understand the student’s thought process and how they think through problems. These are just a couple of the benefits of active learning, but overall, it’s supposed to help students retain information better. This is another option that will hopefully get your students more engaged in the material. 

The last teaching style that we'll discuss is project-based learning. Project-based learning allows students to develop their creative skills and work hands-on when solving a problem. This style of teaching has students identify the problem and slowly develop their solution. Now I’m sure many teachers have heard of and even used this style of teaching, but we tend to see less project-based learning in the higher grade levels. I’m not sure why that is because it is still very beneficial. For example, in one of my college classes, I was told to create an art project in Desmos. With this, I was able to experiment with Desmos and develop a new skill. Not only did I learn how to use Desmos, but it allowed the creative side of me to come out and just have fun learning. Instead of dreading the project, I found it difficult to stop trying to add more details to my art project. So, what I’m trying to say is that project-based learning is a beneficial teaching style for all grade levels. 

Now this isn’t to say that there aren’t other teaching styles to try. The goal of this is to illustrate that there are other options if you are struggling to get your students to understand and stay engaged with the material. Students and the way they learn will continue to change, and teachers must be able to adapt to these new changes. Every class in every year will be different and students will have different ways of learning. It can be challenging to change what you're doing, but at the end of the day, remember what your purpose is as a teacher. Your purpose is to teach your students to the best of your ability and hopefully to give them a brighter future.  

Marcus Winter and Tanner Rakebrandt

References: 

https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/active-collaborative-learning/active-learning 

https://www.bu.edu/ctl/ctl_resource/project-based-learning-teaching-guide/#:~:text=in%20your%20classes.-,Introduction,problems%2C%20commonly%20in%20small%20teams. 

Gamification: A Solution to Disinterested Students in Math Classrooms

 When people hear you are a math major, their response is usually along the lines of:

“Wow, you like math? Good for you; I could never do that.” 

We seem to be noticing, as time goes on, less and less enthusiasm for math. Often, this is not because of the content, but rather, because of the way that it is presented. In a research article by Jair J. Aguilar, “High School Students’ Reasons for disliking Mathematics: The Intersection Between Teacher’s Role and Student’s Emotions, Belief and Self-efficacy,” we see the statistic that out of 350 participating students in grades 11-12 from a school in northern Mexico, 21% said they disliked math because of a “lack of interest or apathy” in the subject matter. Is there a solution to this? What is a way that students can have an interest in the content and applications without actually changing the content itself? Well, one possible answer to this question is gamification. 

What exactly is gamification? To put it simply, gamification adds a game-like element to a task such as student homework, therefore encouraging engagement and participation. A couple of weeks ago, our Technology for STEM Educators class had a guest speaker, Dr. Kevin Smith from Dakota State University, come and talk to us about gamification in the math classroom. He led us through examples of different ways to implement this strategy in our own classrooms as future math teachers. As a whole, we found these exercises fun and interesting as well as a great way to get to have a more positive mindset about math. 

Now, knowing this classroom teaching method, where do we go from here? According to Karen from the Naturally Creative Classroom blog, five possible ways to incorporate gamification into your classroom include:

• Friendly competition
• Offering rewards
• Creating teams for learning and collaboration
• Using a game-like tracking system, such as experience points
• Game-like terms, for example: homework is a task, test is a quest, etc.

There are also different online resources that teachers can access, such as Prodigy, Quizizz, and Happy Numbers. These can be tailored to contain different types of content for different grade levels to fit the needs of students. 

As previously stated, there is a trend of students being disinterested in math, with a high percentage of this being a result of finding the content disinteresting. There are many options to explore in order to solve common complaints about math being boring and not having future applications in the lives of students, and one of these is gamification. Gamification gives us, as teachers, a chance to positively influence students to find interest in the subject of math.

Carson Haak, Rose Gutenkauf

Links to articles and websites referenced:

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1327942.pdf 

https://thenaturallycreativeclassroom.com/5-powerful-ways-to-increase-student-engagement-in-math-with-gamification-for-education/ 

https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/ 

https://quizizz.com/?lng=en 

https://happynumbers.com/?redirect=no 

Math Isn’t Always About Math

While I may not be a teacher yet, I know middle and high school students everywhere are always complaining about math. Students will constantly ask the questions: why are we doing this? Why is this important? When will I ever use this? And to be honest, these are questions that go through my head as well. With that said, it can sometimes be difficult to answer these questions depending on what’s being taught. I know that from this point on in my college career I will most likely never teach what I am learning. So, sometimes it can be hard to see the bigger picture and these students are feeling the exact same way. Many students will choose to not use math in their future careers. Therefore, they don’t understand why they should learn math beyond the basics. So, the real question is why is it important for all students to keep learning math and how do we respond to these tough questions? 

The easiest way to respond to these students is to say that math isn’t always about math. Which can be confusing to think about, but it’s true. Math gives many students trouble, and it can be extremely frustrating for them. This is why many of these questions occur. Math not only tests our abilities in algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, and so on, but it also tests our problem-solving skills and perseverance. Those two reasons are why all students should not give up on math. These skills are extremely useful, and they will continue to be used for their entire life. Someday these students will experience failure in some aspects of their lives, and they will have to find ways to overcome these failures. Students will go through failures constantly. If students start quitting on themselves for something like math, how might that translate into other parts of their lives? That is what students need to realize. 

As teachers, or in my case, future teachers, we need to show the importance of math and how that can be applied to our problem-solving skills and perseverance. But this is not just true for math, but for all subjects. In all classes, students go through hardships and need to find ways to overcome them. The goal is to teach students that there are skills to be learned beyond the subject itself. Now, most students will probably brush it off when you tell them they are working on their problem-solving skills and their perseverance. But someday they’ll realize the importance of what they were doing, and they’ll thank you for showing them. 

Overall, what I wanted everyone to get from this is that math isn’t just about math. There are other skills to be learned like becoming a better problem-solver and learning how to persevere. Teachers can try and explain this to their students by relating how these skills are useful in their everyday lives. But this is mainly something that students will have to learn on their own. So, the next time your students ask you, when I ever use this? Maybe you’ll have a response.

Methods or Principles?

When it comes to solving a math problem, there are several methods a student can implement that will yield the correct answer. Sometimes, while helping friends with their math problems, I like to wait until they finish the problem to confirm their answer matches mine. This approach gives allowance to the fact that we learned two different methods for solving that sort of problem. However, because I grasp the general principle that they are applying, I can often double-check their work even if the specific notation or order of steps is different than what I utilized.

I have noticed that my understanding of general principles is not shared by all math students. This makes me question whether math teachers are teaching methods or principles to their students in the classroom. Many students struggle to solve a problem unless they are using the specific method they learned in the past because they do not understand the underlying principle behind the method.

“As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.” -Harrington Emerson

Although this quote is usually applied to life principles, I find that it is just as relatable for a mathematics classroom, while also addressing the very observations I have made. Math teachers need to be teaching their students the principles and big ideas of a lesson. If a student understands what they are trying to accomplish and the principles behind finding the solution, they can then choose the method for solving that makes the most sense in their mind. Students are often taught multiple methods to solve a problem, but without an understanding of the foundational principles of the lesson, they will struggle to know which methods to use, why they are using that particular method, and when to use it.

A competent teacher helps their students understand the principles of math so that they can choose a method that makes sense to them. Teachers serve their students well when they expose their students to one main principle and multiple methods that address that principle. This idea is utilized in both lower and higher-level math classes. In Calc 2, I learned many methods for solving integrals. However, I first needed to grasp the principle of integration if I was going to be successful in choosing which method to apply to a problem.

Gaining a deep understanding of mathematical principles also means that students will be able to solve many different problems. If all a student knows is a method for solving a given problem, they will be confused when they run across an unfamiliar problem even if it uses the same basic principle. However, if the student has been taught the mathematical principle, they will have the foundational knowledge needed to solve problems that initially look unfamiliar. Methods are often easier to teach, but teaching principles are what will serve students best as they move forward in the world of mathematics. Teaching principles allows students to become problem solvers, not merely method masters.

Is Math Just One Subject?

Earlier this week I had the privilege of attending the South Dakota STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Education conference in Huron, SD. I attended the conference with an open mindset of learning a lot of new things, however, one session, “Teaching Math as a Language,” left me questioning.  

The way the session opened was by comparing a math classroom to a language classroom. When he played the video of the language classroom, we were all a bit confused, as we had no idea what was going on. Later in the session, he presented an equation in slope form with a range of x-values. He then asked for volunteers to read the equation aloud. Two volunteers read the equation differently. At this point, I was confused about why or how they could read the equation differently.  

As a math education major, I adapted to the speech of math early on in life, but just like language classes, some people cannot adapt or process the language of math as easily. Translating math into language is a lot harder for kids; I have some younger siblings and I asked them to translate an equation for me. They also had three separate answers when reading the equation aloud (for reference there is a 7th grader, a sophomore, and a senior in high school).  

After witnessing this event happen two times in the same month with quite different people, I am curious how often kids struggle with translating a mathematical question and if they are struggling with just the basics of translation. Are they able to fully understand the concept of math? What if we started teaching the basics of how to pronounce equations in our lessons? How would this affect learning and the classrooms? Would this be beneficial, or would it take too much time out of the lesson and be too confusing?  

Referring to the session I attended, the presenter ended it with how he was teaching a lesson on chalkboard and one student was not writing anything down for the entire lesson. When he dismissed the class, he asked the student, “Why did you not write anything until the end of the lesson?” The student then responded, “I was trying to figure out how you wrote the curly bracket at the beginning of the lesson.” This brings us back to whether math should be taught as just a language or as a writing classroom. Is math just one subject? Do we need to teach math as multiple subjects so students can fully understand it?