For our final video, we decided to record a mock online class on Zoom. The lesson took place during an imagined scenario in which covid returns to a world where students have widespread access to ChatGPT and other AI softwares.
As we all experienced during the pandemic, online classes rarely run smoothly from start to finish, and we included some scripted elements, such as David not turning his camera on at the beginning of the call, to mimic this experience. We also encountered some similar non-scripted issues such as our faces not being visible during some portions of the screen sharing; seeing as we spoke about the ways in which students can sometimes find technology inaccessible during our initial presentation, we made the decision not to edit out any of the technical difficulties encountered in our video. We screen recorded the Zoom call, which is a skill many of us learned from completing our free inquiry tutorials for this class.
We wanted to include a discussion of the ethics of AI, since that was such a central point of our initial presentation, but in a way that would be appropriate for a grade eight ELA class. It was important to us to touch on the importance of doing your own work and creative thinking in English classes, and to focus on the drawbacks of AI in an educational context.
While AI can certainly be a helpful tool, I believe that its use in schools can be especially harmful as it can undermine the development of crucial writing and critical thinking skills.
The technology that we chose to focus on in our lesson is Canva’s storyboarding tool. We were all interested in the ways in which digital storyboarding could be included in the classroom, and, after trying out several similar platforms, we found Canva to be the most user-friendly and accessible. While Canva does have some features that are exclusive to those who pay a monthly membership fee, none of us found this to be a significant barrier and we were all able to create storyboards without much difficulty.
Going into my own teaching practice, I will definitely be using digital storyboarding tools like Canva for creative writing or narrative structure units. I also want to have discussions regarding AI similar to the one we had in our video, and hopefully get students to consider some of the ethical and environmental concerns we touched on.
Notes on role selection/participation: we all researched and designed this project collaboratively. For our roles in the final video, everyone appeared on-screen acting as either a teacher or student except for Emily, who edited and refined the video.