For the past 2 years, I’ve been facilitating a series of AI workshops across the country. The goal of these workshops is to remove some of the fear around AI and see it’s potential if used with fidelity in the classroom. It has been eye-opening to me to see how the sentiment towards the use of AI shift over these past couple of years. One of the first questions I always ask (via poll) in a workshop is “What concerns do you have around AI?”
I feel like getting this out of the way does two things. First, it helps educators (and myself) identify what our biggest collective concerns are. Secondly, by naming those concerns, in some ways it helps us move forward into the real work of figuring out how to integrate it effectively. Below is a screen shot of some results from a training I did last year with 200+ high school teachers:
This is a voting poll so they could up vote items they agreed with. It’s no surprise that cheating and academic integrity remain a big concern. However, what I’ve started to notice less concern about cheating and more concern about loss of critical thinking and creativity. Here’s that same survey question done this past week with a group of PreK-20 educators in the midwest:
You’ll notice that cheating doesn’t even make the top of the list with this group. Now it’s more about losing critical thinking skills and a lack of AI literacy when it comes to what is real and what isn’t. When I asked 400+ education leaders at the ASCD conference last year, their top concern was loss of creativity. I remarked to the audience, “but we’ve been killing creativity in schools for years…now you’re worried about it?” with my tongue firmly planted in cheek.
If I’m being honest with myself, my biggest concern is the loss of foundational skills. Students will use AI to take short cuts and lack the foundational knowledge and understanding of various academic topics. This means our role as teacher becomes even more important as we scaffold and model this. I wrote about a general strategy on AI integration here, but thought I would share an activity here that I’ve done with adults and students that scaffolds critical thinking and creative skills.
Part 1 – My Favorite Things Activity
I wrote about this in detail in this AI Icebreakers post, but the premise is, using the built in AI image generator in Padlet, students identify 5 different “favorites” of theirs and post the resulting image. A sample prompt might be “Draw a combination of [my favorite animal] eating [my favorite meal] while doing [my favorite hobby] at [my favorite place] with [my favorite color] sky.” Below are some examples of the outputs:
Then, after students have posted their images, I bring up slideshow mode in Padlet and review the images and ask the students to “reverse engineer” the prompt. I like starting here as using Padlet doesn’t require student log-ins to use and it’s a very structured first use of a prompt.
Part 2 – Say What You See Activity
After they’ve done their AI Favorite, the next activity I would do is the “Say What You See” game from Google Labs (shout out to Emma Moss for showing me this one). In the game, you have a limited amount of characters to try and create a prompt that matches the image shown. I usually do this activity in three parts as well. Part one is whole group, where I have the class share thoughts on what the prompt should be as a model the critical thinking process. For the next image, I give the students a chance to interact with others and share what words they would use for the prompt. Finally, I have the students try it individually on their computers or phones and see how they do.
Scaffolding this activity models the kind of thinking you’ll need to generate the right output from AI while also showing students some of the limits with AI.
Part 3 – Recreate this Picture Activity
Now that the students have built some critical thinking skills with their prompting, it’s time to put it to use. Find an image on the internet (or make one with AI) that the students have to attempt to recreate. Unlike the Google Labs activity, there is no limit to the amount of descriptive words they use. They can either use the AI image generator in Padlet or try out some other image generators like those in Adobe Firefly and Canva. Here’s an example where the goal was to recreate an image of a beach ball in a pool:
Again, much like with the first activity, take time to look at the images and reflect on what could be changed and what wording could be used. Find images that match fairly close and ask the students to share their prompting strategy.
Bonus Activity – AI Self-Reflection
One of the hardest activities to do with prompting and image generation is actually recreating yourself in AI form using only words. It requires deep (and honest) reflection on your outward appearance that can trigger some emotional responses. However, the results can also be hysterical. I’ve found that this particular activity takes much longer than recreating an inanimate object as it’s much more personal, so be prepared for it to take more than a few minutes.
You could do similar scaffolding activities with large language models like ChatGPT as well, but I purposefully started with image generation to show them the creative possibilities that come with AI. A student that has the right amount of descriptive language can turn their keyboard into a paint brush. Choosing the right image generator, the best words, and the correct order in which to ask the prompt can generate different outputs. This is part of learning and I argue will actually help elevate critical and creative thinking in the future.
Carl Hooker is an international speaker and educator. He works with schools and events across the country to thoughtfully integrate tools like AI into learning. His latest book Learning Evolution shares several examples, strategies and ideas like this one. His newest workshop “Learning in the Age of AI” is designed for educators and school leaders looking to implement AI thoughtfully in their schools. If you are interested in booking Carl for your next event or professional development day, fill out this speaking form to get more information.
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