THE PREP PERIOD

Quick tips, tools & tricks you can take to the classroom on Monday

Evaluate is Back on Top | This week's tip comes from Aldeya​

The 2001 revision (Anderson & Krathwohl) reordered Bloom's Taxonomy swapping Evaluate (formerly Evaluation) with Create (formerly Synthesize), reasoning that producing something original requires evaluative judgment, making creation the most cognitively complex task.

The original Bloom's taxonomy thesis - that original human creation is the highest order of learning - remains the gold standard. The Aldeya Bloom's for AI framework is an amendment intended for AI-assisted outputs, preserving rigor while preparing students for meaningful AI use. Like its predecessor, it requires that students begin with a solid base of knowledge and understanding. From there, the following steps look a little bit different:

1. Apply: students plan and build a prompt. This is the deliberate construction of an input that reflects the student's knowledge and understanding of the topic, the goal of the task, and the criteria the output should meet. Try Aldeya's Anatomy of a Strong Prompt.
2. Generate: students input their well-crafted prompt and receive an output.
3. Analyze: students verify output against what they know and understand about the topic.
4. Evaluate: students evaluate the AI's output. A rubric like Aldeya's AI Output Evaluation Rubric is recommended.

Research on AI and decision-making points to a consistent finding: AI cannot exercise judgment. Judgment requires the combination of relevant knowledge, experience, and personal qualities to form opinions and make decisions. AI can process information and generate output, but it cannot weigh context, apply values, or account for the nuances of a specific situation.

Thinking of teaching prompting skills with this framework? Check out the entire free-DF (PDF) at Aldeya.ai.

LOUNGE READS

The AI headlines that matter for your classroom

This week's news is all about the "how". How are we adopting AI in classrooms? How should we be adopting AI in classrooms? How do we know if we're asking the right questions?

University of Washington

​How Are Teachers Reckoning with AI in Schools?​

Researchers asked teachers directly how AI is changing their work.

"What are ways schools might amplify the positive parts of using AI while mitigating some of these negative effects?"

The Conversation

​How Should Schools Teach AI? 3 Models to Consider​

Exploring how to integrate digital learning through 3 frameworks: as a dedicated subject/domain, as subject embedded learning, and as cross-curricular/transversal learning.

"Each model can support AI literacy, but each creates different conditions for time, assessment and teacher preparation."

The Hechinger Report

​OPINION: In the rush to adopt new AI technologies, let us not forget about the human touch​

Joy Delizo-Osborne, president and CEO of Student Achievement Partners (SAP) and father, offers his take on the questions we should be asking on behalf of children.

"Artificial intelligence and evolving technologies can absolutely advance our capacity to collaborate, problem-solve and think critically — if we make it so. But we cannot ever forget that it’s ultimately the human experiences we share that are the most important part of the learning that we do."

SARAH'S PICK

Harvard Gazette/Harvard Thinking

​Is AI Dulling Our Minds? and Preserving Learning in the Age of AI Shortcuts​

Cognitive scientist Tina Grotzer makes the case that human thinking does things statistical models genuinely can't: it catches exceptions to patterns, makes intuitive leaps through somatic markers, and reasons analogically.

Not so sure about this? An experiment Grotzer conducted with a group of Kindergarteners showed that children could outpace a Bayesian model (a formula used to turn prior knowledge into smarter predictions) at a strategy game - they were "better than Bayesian". Her findings beg the question:

It's true that AI could lead to haphazard, input-output style "learning". But as we discussed in The Prep Period today, properly scaffolding and sequencing AI use is key to ensuring rigorous learning.

We can protect student thinking by ensuring that students have first developed the underlying capacity to evaluate what AI gives them. We must explicitly teach them how to use AI tools and foster an environment of rigorous evaluation of AI outputs.

If you have the time... Tina Grotzer speaks to protecting students ability to think for themselves in the Harvard Thinking podcast episode Preserving Learning in the Age of AI Shortcuts. Check it out!

Preserving learning in the a... Feb 18 · Harvard Thinking 28:27   ​

A NOTE BEFORE YOU GO...

I'm glad you're here! If something resonated this week, hit reply and tell me. If you know a fellow educator who would find this useful, forward it their way. The village grows when educators share with other educators.

- Sarah