Category Archives: Written by: Merijke Coenraad

Developing Sample Computational Thinking Lessons with ChatGPT

AI in Education, Computational Thinking, EducatorCIRCLS, Guest Author, Learning Technologies, Written by: Merijke Coenraad, Written by: Pati Ruiz

by Pati Ruiz, Merijke Coenraad, and Judi Fusco with contributions from Julio Vazquez

What is ChatGPT?

Let’s start with some definitions, ChatGPT is commonly classified as a natural language processing model, meaning it deals with language and human speech patterns, and “generative artificial intelligence”, meaning that it is AI that creates new content — in this case, new text.

More specifically, ChatGPT is a chat-based generative pre-trained transformer. Meaning that the model: (1) can generate responses to questions (Generative); (2) was trained in advance on a large amount of the written material available on the web (Pre-trained); (3) and can process sentences differently than other types of models (Transformer). Basically, it’s a chatbot that allows a user to ask a question in plain language and get a response in a way similar to how a human would reply.

What does this mean for education?

“ChatGPT is a good prompt for conversation.
I see this tool as a starting point for teachers and students.”
-Julio Vazquez, North Salem Central School District

Despite the precedent of banning access to ChatGPT set by New York City Public Schools in January 2023, not all school districts are following suit. Some educators believe that these AI systems and tools are out in the world and the best thing educators can do is to teach students to partner with AI tools so they can be better prepared for a technological world. For example, English teacher Cherie Shields was recently interviewed by the New York Times where she shared that she assigned students in one of her classes to use Chat GPT to create outlines for a recent essay assignment. She shared that the process helped deepen students’ understanding of the stories while also teaching them to interact with an AI system by manipulating their inputs to get the responses they were looking for. In this case, ChatGPT became a tool that can support learning when we thoughtfully include it in our lessons and also guide students in using it well.

Dr. Julio Vazquez, Director of Instruction and Human Resources, and his team are encouraging experimentation and access to ChatGPT for all faculty and staff and are thinking about how to provide students with access in a manner that will not conflict with student privacy laws. Staff members are rolling their sleeves up and starting to explore and learn about how they can use it with their students productively. In fact, they are exploring the use of ChatGPT to develop sample Computational Thinking (CT) lesson plans that the team uses as a jumping off point in their CT Pathways development process.

ChatGPT for Developing Sample Computational Thinking Lesson Plans

compass pointing north
North Salem Central School District
In a recent conversation with Dr. Vazquez, we asked him more about how he and his teachers are incorporating ChatGPT in their computational thinking lesson planning process.

Dr. Vazquez and his colleague Cynthia Sandler, Library Media Specialist, started by entering prompts into ChatGPT and seeing what came out. The searches started with prompt terms that went something like “generate a 5th grade lesson for computational thinking focusing on science.”

As the team began to analyze the lesson plans that came out, they realized they needed to make adjustments. Julio shared that he and his team have become better at giving ChatGPT enough context so that the lessons that are developed are closer to what the team expects of a lesson plan and the content better aligns to both CT and content area standards. For example, a more recent lesson prompt terms included:

“write a science lesson that integrates
9-12.CT.1
Create a simple digital model that
makes predictions of outcomes. and HS-PS1-5. Apply scientific principles and evidence to explain how the rate of a physical or chemical change is
affected when conditions are varied.”

The prompt terms and outputs were documented and provided a good starting point for sparking conversation. On first pass, the team collectively agreed that they liked the structure of the generated lesson plans. Beyond format and in terms of the content of computational thinking and subject area standards, the prompt terms entered into ChatGPT also included Habits of Mind, thinking dispositions which are implemented in North Salem, as well as the use of Visible Thinking Routines.

Dr. Vazquez and his team have worked with ChatGPT to develop sample computational thinking lessons across all subject areas K-12. These lessons are not meant to be implemented in the classroom “as is,” but rather, these sample lessons are to be used as a first draft, a starting point for consideration and conversation in North Salem. Teachers will vet the lessons for accuracy and then iterate and improve them in order to meet the learning needs of their students. Given the need for high-quality, integrated computational thinking lessons we will continue to work with Dr. Vazquez and his team at North Salem to learn more about how they are integrating ChatGPT in their work and their vetting process. We look forward to sharing more! Until then, do you have questions for us? Are you integrating ChatGPT in your classroom, school, or district? Let us know @EducatorCIRCLS.

Educator CIRCLS posts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. If you use content from this site, please cite the post and consider adding: “Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).”
Suggested citation format: [Authors] ([Year]). [Title]. Educator CIRCLS Blog. Retrieved from [URL]

Ambitious Mashups in Out of School Learning with Asset-based Approaches

EducatorCIRCLS, Out of School Learning, Written by: Merijke Coenraad

Ambitious Mashups Report Coverby Merijke Coenraad

Opportunities for students to learn are all around them. Our students are continuously learning at home and in their communities. As we continue to explore Ambitious Mashups, take a look at projects that have focused on how to provide valuable learning experiences and celebrate the knowledge students gain in out-of-school time. These projects have mainly focused on making, citizen science, and interactive/mobile exhibits. Keep reading to learn about a few ambitious mashups bringing highlighting learning in out-of-school time!

In the Learning in the Making: Leveraging Technologies for Impact project, researchers focused on promoting learning for middle and high school students using maker spaces. Their research found that successful making experiences for students happen at the intersection of the arts, engineering, and entrepreneurship, particularly when students have access to all three disciplines simultaneously. This ambitious project worked with 100-200 maker spaces to mash up informal learning and maker spaces in order to better understand how to support student learning in designing and making activities.

Paper Mechatronics is another making project, this time focusing on using inexpensive materials for students to learn a mashup of topics including programming, electronics, and mechanical design. This project uses making tools like computational devices, craft materials, and fabrication tools in a way that allows kids to build on their knowledge of paper crafts, be creative, and express themselves. See the ambitious projects you could take on at papermech.net.

A third out-of-school learning project, Mobile City Science, mashed up out-of-school learning with asset-based approaches to create a learning experience that celebrated students’ community knowledge while helping them to build technological skills. Students collected data about and mapped their communities using mobile technologies. They identified assets for learning (e.g., libraries), deficits to learning (e.g., no safe routes to school), and learning opportunities (e.g., places to build a community garden). These maps not only provide students with rich learning opportunities, but also can help educators to identify community-based and data-driven learning opportunities for students.

In previous blog posts we have focused on Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies and interviewed researchers focused on asset-based learning and ways to celebrate the assets that students bring to the classroom. Partnering with their communities and celebrating the knowledge that students bring from learning in these spaces is a great start to making your teaching more culturally responsive and sustaining.What does it look like to mash-up all of this up? Well, it is ambitious, but it is definitely doable!

While this making occurred outside of school, there are still many connections that can be made to your classroom. Not all students have opportunities to participate in out-of-school learning programs, particularly ones that are further from their homes or have a registration cost. Bringing these opportunities into the classroom expands the number of students who get to participate. Even if your students don’t have access to making using the same tools available in makerspaces, how could more simple projects like paper crafts or a physical (rather than technological) mapping project connect to students’ lives outside of school? Where do arts, engineering, and entrepreneurship intersect with your curriculum?

Learning from the CIRCL researchers who engaged in out-of-school time projects, think about:

  • What learning is supported by making, citizen science, and interactive exhibit technologies? How can that learning be brought into the classroom through novel activities that all of our students can participate in?
  • Are there maker-spaces near your school? How could you collaborate with them to provide new STEM learning experiences for your students?
  • Citizen science represents a community of learners of all ages worldwide (and students can participate in many projects at no cost!). How could your students participate and collect science data inside and outside of school? How can what is learned through citizen science projects be capitalized on in your classroom? Check out Zooniverse for projects you can do in your classroom or find local projects on SciStarter or iNaturalist. Need some help getting started? iNaturalist has a teacher guide and a version of the app just for young students!
  • Many students learn outside of school from their families and communities in addition to organized programs. How can you highlight the learning your students do outside of school, especially for students who are not typically the “focus” in the classroom.
  • If you become aware of out-of-school opportunities, particularly ones that create low-cost or free opportunities for students, how can you share some out-of-school learning opportunities with all families?

How can you transform these opportunities within your classroom? Tweet us @EducatorCIRCLS and tell us about your innovative technology use and stay tuned for future blogs in this series about CIRCL Ambitious Mashups.

Educator CIRCLS posts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. If you use content from this site, please cite the post and consider adding: “Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).”
Suggested citation format: [Authors] ([Year]). [Title]. Educator CIRCLS Blog. Retrieved from [URL]

Artificial Intelligence & Learning + Out of School Time Learning

AI in Education, EducatorCIRCLS, STEM, Written by: Merijke Coenraad

by Merijke Coenraad

Tenth graders collaborate on an engineering project.
Tenth graders collaborate on an engineering project. Photo by Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages
Welcome back to our blog series on Ambitious Mashups! Today, we are going to focus on the use of Artificial Intelligence in Learning and mash it up with Learning in Out-of-school-time.

Artificial Intelligence and Learning. The most common technologies used within projects were (a) Intelligent tutoring systems, (b) machine learning, (c) speech, vision, and natural interactions, and (d) social robotics and avatars. While these were the most common technologies, many projects used a mashup of technologies and focused on how the technology could be used in new ways within the classroom to support learning. If you want to read more about the types of AI, we recommend the AI4K12 project and this poster thinking about 5 big ideas in AI as a starting point.

Need an example of what this looks like? Check out the Inq-Blotter project. It provides teachers with real-time tools that alert them to students’ science needs as they are learning. Students use the Inq-ITS platform that provides them inquiry science learning experiences through labs and simulations. In addition to providing the experiences, Inq-ITS is an intelligent tutoring system and is able to assess students in real-time. Inq-Blotter builds on these capabilities to send teachers messages relating to how students are doing so they are able to provide just-in-time support. Inq-Blotter provides teachers with the opportunity to gather formative assessment data and support quality inquiry learning. This ambitious project took multiple years of research and mashed up data science, assessment, science learning, and intelligent tutoring tools.

If you are interested in intelligent tutors that help you understand what your students know, you can also check out our post on ASSISTments, an intelligent tutor for math learning. You can also see our webinar that discusses both ASSISTments and Inq-ITS.

So, what does this mean for your classroom? Think about:
What technologies might lie ahead and how do you want to use them? What would an intelligent tutoring system or social robot look like in your classroom?
Are you interested in using an intelligent tutor like Inq-ITS or ASSISTments in your classroom now? What are the implications of using these technologies for your teaching and practices within the classroom?
How could these emerging technologies affect your classroom practices and pedagogy? How will you continue to promote equitable learning opportunities when using them?

Out-of-school-time Learning. While we discussed technology in a formal setting during the school day, Some of the projects also investigated learning with educational technology in out-of-school environments.

Mash-it! Let’s look at a project that ambitiously mashes using AI in out-of-school learning!

The Virtual STEM Buddies for Personalized Learning Experiences in Free Choice Informal Learning Settings project brings together museum learning with intelligent agent buddies to support students’ STEM learning at a children’s museum. The computerized character interacts with the child as they move through the museum and acts as both a meteor and a peer. The AI agent, aka the buddy, is able to give instructions based on teachable moments and help children to find exhibits that aren’t crowded. AI in this out-of-school setting can provide youth with plenty of opportunities to learn and make the most of their museum experience. This ambitious project brought together team members from multiple universities and the Children’s Museum of Atlanta to mash up intelligent tutors, STEM, and informal learning.

What do you think of the possibilities with AI? Tweet us @EducatorCIRCLS and tell us about your innovative technology use and stay tuned for future blogs in this series about CIRCL Ambitious Mashups.

Educator CIRCLS posts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. If you use content from this site, please cite the post and consider adding: “Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).”
Suggested citation format: [Authors] ([Year]). [Title]. Educator CIRCLS Blog. Retrieved from [URL]

Data Science in Ambitious Mashups

AI in Education, EducatorCIRCLS, STEM, Written by: Merijke Coenraad

Download the Report (PDF)
Visit the Report Website

by Merijke Coenraad

This post will focus on Trends at NSF and Beyond: Data Science.

No matter what subject you teach, it is likely that data comes into play in your classroom. Whether it is statistical analysis of data in math, collecting and analyzing data in science, or analyzing historical and contemporary data to understand the present, data can be found in many classroom activities. A trend within CIRCL projects was harnessing the data revolution. With more and more data collected each day and the accessibility of data for you and your students, there are many ways you can learn from these projects and bring them into play within your classroom. For example, check out these two projects: STEM Literacy through Infographics and Data Clubs.

STEM Literacy Through Infographics

Created by a team of researchers from across the US, STEM Literacy Through Infographics focuses on helping students create infographics in both classroom and out of school settings to help students make visual, argumentative claims (watch a 3-minute video about the project). The project aims to provide students with the skills they need to ask and answer questions about their own lives and communicate that data to others through data journalism. This ambitious project brings together experts in educational technology, mathematics, and learning and mashes up data science, data visualization, and citizen science opportunities to help students make sense of the data that is available to them. If you’re interested, you can try out infographics in your classroom using their helpful step by step guide “How to Make Infographics”, classroom lesson plans and resources, and asynchronous professional development workshop.

Data Clubs

Data Clubs are designed by a team of researchers at TERC and SCIEDS to provide middle school students with data skills that allow them to visualize and analyze data about life-relevant topics. Within the lessons, students write their own questions, collect their own data, and learn how to represent their data by hand and using computer software. This ongoing ambitious project uses design-based research collecting data about students’ data dispositions and interviewing them about their experiences. It mashes up mathematics, informal learning, data visualization, and statistics to help students think about the who, when where, how, and why of data. Try out the currently available modules with your students!

These projects demonstrate the importance of quality data experiences for students and the role that data visualization can play in students learning from the large data sets that are available to them. Besides trying out materials from these projects, how can you use data science in your classroom? Here are some ideas:

  • Explore infographics on Information is Beautiful and have students create their own by hand (as seen in Dear Data) or using a computer program.
  • Engage students with visualization of climate change on Climate.org run by NOAA. The platform provides a number of data visualization environments in which students can explore climate data.
  • Explore the Johns Hopkins US or World Coronavirus maps to discuss current trends (click on counties to see more specific data)
  • Explore data visualization of the 2020 election from Statista or CISA to discuss trends in voting and the role that data visualizations play in data communication (consider showing this clip of CNN analyzers using live data visualizations to discuss visualizations in election reporting)
  • Allow students to use data from Our World in Data and/or the CODAP platform to explore data and create their own visualizations
  • Lead students in a discussion about data collection in their lives and the amount of data collected from their use of social media, online shopping, and other internet-connected activities. Provide students with the opportunity to critically analyze how companies are making money off of their data collection and what they could do to advocate for and protect themselves from harmful data use.

How do you use data in your classroom? Tweet us @EducatorCIRCLS and tell us about your innovative technology use and stay tuned for future blogs in this series about CIRCL Ambitious Mashups.

Educator CIRCLS posts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. If you use content from this site, please cite the post and consider adding: “Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).”
Suggested citation format: [Authors] ([Year]). [Title]. Educator CIRCLS Blog. Retrieved from [URL]

Introduction to Ambitious Mashups

AI in Education, EducatorCIRCLS, Learning Technologies, Written by: Merijke Coenraad

by Merijke Coenraad

As an educator, you know better than anyone else how much educational technology is changing, particularly within the last year. The Center for Innovative Research in Cyberlearning (CIRCL) has worked with researchers for the last eight years as they have developed and investigated learning environments and technology that pushed the boundaries between technology and education. This community of researchers (and their partner teachers) has focused on how emerging technologies could be important for learners and adapted into the learning tools that would positively impact the education of students five or ten years later.

The recent Ambitious Mashups report examines the work researcher teams did. You might have also seen our previous post encouraging you to attend the Ambitious Mashups Webinar. In case you missed it live, you can watch it here. As we reviewed all of the projects, we discovered that they together researchers with computer science expertise, knowledge of learning sciences theories and methods, and a firm commitment to investigating equity. More than just focusing on emerging educational technologies, CIRCL projects had a strong focus on groups that are marginalized within society and underrepresented in STEM professions such as students from marginalized races, girls, low-performing schools, low-income settings, students with disabilities, and students who are learning English.

Looking across projects, the CIRCL team found that researchers weren’t concerned with just one technology, research method, or learning theory. These projects were ambitious, pushing the frontiers of research and technology and studying big learning goals, and they were interdisciplinary mashups, involving many elements together in novel integrations. Therefore, we have deemed the results of CIRCL to be ambitious mashups and worthy of review by not only researchers, but by educators as well. These ambitious mashups bring together a set of novel technologies in unimagined ways to tackle learning challenges. As educators who will soon be encountering these emerging technologies in the classroom, this report points to what you can expect from ed tech and questions to start asking yourself as the research ambitious mashups of the past eight years become the technologies of the next decade.

So, what did we learn from looking at all the cyberlearning research? Reviewing the research projects completed through CIRCL, the team identified five themes representing the elements of the cyberlearning research community:

In this series of posts, we are going to look across some of these themes because we at CIRCL Educators believe that there are many things to think about as the emerging technologies of cyberlearning begin to enter the classroom and there are already exciting findings that can influence your teaching!

After eight years of researching together, the CIRCL community has learned a lot about what it means to do innovative research at the forefront of educational technology. Being a CIRCL Educator, what have you learned? How can you create an ambitious mashup in your classroom? Tweet us @EducatorCIRCLS and tell us about your innovative technology use and stay tuned for future blogs in this series about CIRCL Ambitious Mashups.

Educator CIRCLS posts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. If you use content from this site, please cite the post and consider adding: “Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).”
Suggested citation format: [Authors] ([Year]). [Title]. Educator CIRCLS Blog. Retrieved from [URL]