Artwork for podcast Digital Learning Today: Where Productivity Meets Innovation in the Classroom.
Tailoring AI Prompts to the Audience How to Understand the Limitations of AI in Education
Episode 28 • 1st July 2024 • Digital Learning Today: Where Productivity Meets Innovation in the Classroom. • Jeffrey Bradbury & Diane Manser - TeacherCast Educational Network
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In this episode of the Digital Learning Today Podcast, Jeff welcomes Dr. Ryan Read on the show to discuss Prompt Engineering and how we can support our teachers and students in the classroom while discussing Artificial Intelligence. If you are a new listener to TeacherCast, we would love to hear from you.  Please visit our Contact Page and let us know how we can help you today!

In This Episode …

  • What is Prompt Designing?
  • How to determine your AI Program for the job you need to work on
  • How to Write a Prompt
    • Persona: Identify your role
    • Aim: State your objective
    • Recipients: Specify the audience
    • Theme: Describe the style, tone, and any related parameters
    • Structure: Note the desired format of the output
  • How to support students in learning how to use AI as a tool and not a cheating device

Conversation Takeaways

  • Different AI tools have different features and philosophies, so it's important to explore and find the ones that work best for your needs.
  • When writing AI prompts, consider the persona (your role), aim (objective), and recipients (audience) to create effective prompts.
  • Piecemeal prompts can be more tailored to specific students or situations, while including all information in the first prompt can provide a comprehensive starting point.
  • Understanding your audience and their needs is crucial in creating successful AI prompts.
  • AI is a powerful tool, but it cannot predict the future, understand emotions, or provide a straight answer to every situation. Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used as a tool to enhance student learning and create engaging and interactive learning experiences.
  • AI prompt engineering is a method of using AI to generate prompts and content for educational purposes.
  • It is important to teach students how to use AI effectively and responsibly, and to understand its limitations.
  • AI can be used to automate certain tasks, such as generating quizzes or summarizing information, but it is not a substitute for critical thinking and creativity.
  • Educators should embrace and leverage AI in the classroom to enhance teaching and learning.

Chapters

  • 00:00 Introduction and Recap of ISTE Conference
  • 02:26 Exploring AI Tools: Microsoft Co-pilot, Google Gemini, Magic School AI, Diffed, Canva AI
  • 11:40 Understanding the Limitations of AI
  • 25:18 Debate: Including All Information in the First Prompt vs. Piecemealing
  • 25:47 The Role of AI as a Tool in Education
  • 31:17 Teaching Students to Use AI Effectively
  • 36:22 The Purpose of AI in Education

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About our Guest: Ryan Read

Ryan Read has an Ed.D in Instructional Technology with thirteen years experience in the field. He has been a part of several conferences presenting on the use of iPad, chromebook, Blended Classroom and Technology Integration and the use of his creation, App Dice.  A Google Level 1 and 2 Educator. Ryan continues to explore the changes in Educational Technology and classroom integration with the latest technology. Ryan is also the host of his own podcast, The Pixel Classroom Podcast and his weekly comic book review show, Read's Reads.

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Transcripts

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

and welcome to the TeacherCast Educational Network. My name is Jeff Bradbury. Thank you so much for joining us today and making TeacherCast your home for professional development. This is Digital Learning Today, a podcast all about instructional technology and how we can best use it in the classroom. I am so excited to be coming back from the ISTE conference in Denver, Colorado. 15 ,000 educators all came together to support student learning, student achievement, and it was absolutely

Bonkers it was amazing. I had a chance to work with Microsoft had a chance to speak at the Google booth and Absolutely had a fantastic time meeting so many of you guys out there I want you guys to do me a quick favor if you did go to ISTE I want you to head on over to teacher cast net forward slash ISTE We're gonna be putting up all of our videos our interviews our blog posts our reviews everything about ISTE We're gonna be checking out over there at teacher cast net slash ISTE Hope you guys had a good time and I would love to have you guys

be a part of our newsletter. If you do head over to teachercast .net forward slash ISTE, you can sign right up there and be a part of our digital learning today weekly newsletter. Thank you guys so much. You know, one of the things that they talked a lot about it ISTE was artificial intelligence. I know, I know that sounds that sounds so shocking. But the one thing that I really focused on between all the Microsoft stuff, the Google stuff and all the other companies was this concept of prompt

engineering, the concept of not just how to use AI, or should we be using AI or when to use AI, but specifically how and what I found was it's easier than you think, yet deceptively difficult. They actually mentioned at the Microsoft booth, one of the easiest things that you can do when trying to tell AI what to do is ask it to help you do that. And they did a demonstration where basically the first thing that you put in there was

Help me write a prompt that helps you create this blog post. And I looked at that and that was mind blowing. I never thought about it. It was kind of meta, but it was kind of cool today. So here's what I did. 15 ,000 people and everybody in the country. I went out hunting for somebody who knows not only about artificial intelligence, not only is an expert in the STEM fields, but also can share with us a little bit about how to best write a prompt so that way we can support not only ourselves.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

but do some pretty awesome things with our students. And I'm excited today to welcome Ryan Reed onto the program. Ryan, how are you today? Welcome to TeacherCast.

Ryan Read (:

Well, thank you, Jeff. That was quite the introduction and the stuff I missed at ISTE this year that I didn't get to do. If I didn't have FOMO before, I now have it for sure.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

I have you on here, you know, as I mentioned, ISTE was all about this whole as artificial I think it's intelligence is the second word, right?

Ryan Read (:

Its intelligence is more of what it's put on. You have the AI and some people think the old Steven Spielberg movie and some people go back to, you know, the Terminator movies and everything. But artificial intelligence of what it is, is it does learn things. But the truth is it is type pretty much an algorithm. Believe it or not, when I say, when people say AI, technically you mean algorithm intelligence more too. And there's books coming out of this and some empirical evidence. A friend of mine actually contacted me and I wrote up a little like speaking, which we'll talk about a little later about it.

prompt about like, boy, how would I organize this? I haven't written something like this for a peer review paper and since my dissertation. So, you know, it was kind of like, how do I do that? And I did my checks and I talked with some people and it's very, there is a structure to it and we'll get into that as we do the problems in here. But the one thing is people need to understand about AI is you do have to understand the prompt design of it. I can't say, you can say the simple, hey, you know, roll a six sided die at random.

Well, I could Google that. Google is a very early version of AI algorithms because it would look for that search. It would look for those keywords and how much meant. And if we go way back in time to the 90s in the late 20th century, we had Yahoo where I would say, hey, find me Captain America. here's a website on it. Here's a Wiki or hey, here's an article that was just posted by Marvel Comics .com two weeks ago. Go ahead and read. That was more basic in his time.

went on. That's what it is. But basically the how the algorithm searches and pieces. The difference is now it's taking all that bit data based on a prompt and it's giving you that information. Like if I did a resume and I say could you update this resume to be more of a curriculum Vitae and for those wondering like what is it curriculum Vitae stop with your dissertation doctor Reed. But anyhow one thing would be is like could you reorganize and edit this so it's structured.

as a curriculum vitae for education or can give me a curriculum vitae for construction or accounting and it will look over and say yeah sure and this is chat gbt or google gemini and it basically looks what you have it's basically doing like grammarly or anything it's first of all feeling if things are spelled right if you got some bad grammar mechanics because one thing people always say here is like well it's a resume you need to summarize it but you know it doesn't have to be a marked punctuation i actually had a description on my

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

you

Ryan Read (:

my objective and immediately divided it into two things like, hey, you gotta put a punctual period here and this here. And believe it or not, I got more phone calls and emails saying, hey, would you like to come in for an interview? Just fixing that, because everything else, it just either cleaned up a word and then it always would say, but tailor this that sounds like you, because you can tell and we'll talk about that about people talk about plagiarisms and students. We'll talk about that.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

So let's start at the beginning here because when we're looking at using AI, one of the things that was very clear is all AI is not the same and having a chance to really meet some of the engineers that work with Microsoft Copilot and then meeting some of the engineers that work with Google Gemini, there is clearly a philosophy difference here.

Just to kind of frame the conversation here in Microsoft Co pilot, once you close your tab, it goes away. In Gemini, it saves it. And those are two completely different philosophies. I'm not here to sell one versus the other. I pay for both. I use both. I've been kind of saying this as I'm dating.

Ryan Read (:

Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

Microsoft co -pilot, but I'm engaged to Gemini only due to the fact that when I go back to Gemini, I can say, Hey, remember that conversation we had three or four days ago. Let's dive back into that. Whereas Microsoft co -pilot, I think is actually a better product, but it's like drew Barrymore in 51st States. Every time you have to reintroduce yourself to it, but I think

Ryan Read (:

Yeah.

and shout out right there to 50 First Dates, but I think that's a great analogy. I think it's a great analogy.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

Now, let's just start at the beginning between all of the AI programs, and I know there's 100 something out there. Do you have a personal favorite right now? And if so, or what? Or do you choose your AI tool? And look, I'm not talking about, you know, all hundred of them. Like, let's look at the big three or four here. Do you go to one specifically for a certain function? Or are you married to one for your your overall AI needs?

Ryan Read (:

yeah.

Ryan Read (:

Mine is more of like I have a long -term friendship. I have more BFFs preferred. I have an acquaintance with mine as you perfectly said, you know, you're dating, but you're engaged. The other one too. I have to say when I'm using more personal pieces or something on the draw, the number one, everybody says is chat GPT. And I've done that ones many times because sometimes it's just very simple to say, Hey, you know, can you update this letter to be reflected to a community college? Even though the letter maybe would be for applying for part time to work at a book, a library and just say, Hey, take this letter.

and give it the prompt like you do this towards a media directing positions open at a community college in Illinois or in Rockford in Chicago. And it will do that because it will also look like, yeah, who's applied here? What would be a simple structure for that? And it would do that. So like if I had to do like a right off the bat or like, boy, I gotta, I gotta type this out. I can't think, GDBT educational wise, I have hugely hit with magic school AI and Diffed.

Magic School AI is honestly the most user friendly. It also is very easy for student prompt. So if anybody had the and they have SOPA agreements with most school districts so they don't have that problem. So it's just, you know, letting it through the filter while whitelist versus it's blacklisted. But another thing is you do only have a premium or a paid version, but if you get certified in Magic School AI, you're getting more higher end teachers and it does count as PD credits. If you're looking to just get your PD for certificates or showing what is your.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

you

Ryan Read (:

knowledge of that because one thing magic school is it gives you a little bit of everything from current stylings and I think it updates every three months like when Dali 2 came out it gave you more things for image prompts for like if you were making a an infographic. So it does do that so it keeps you modernized in that and then like I said the levels there so for school and other pieces or I need to make a rubric and I just like I know what I want the kids to be able to do.

Once we're done talking about making a food truck or talking about structuring a Sphero bridge that's not going to break, that's going to go over 15 feet between one side and the end. But it's like, well, what would be the actual correct thing on that? And I could pop into a rubric and say, Hey, you know what? Pop in a couple of your objectives and it gives me a nice little readout. And then I can copy and paste it, export to Google or Microsoft. I love it. Diffed was very good.

which is if they always tried diff, it stands for different is what it actually is a patient. Diff is very nice. The bad news is you get a 90 day free trial and then after that you either have to only have so many credits and I'll talk about Canva AI in a little bit on this, but you can do a lot more differentiated lessons. You can update pieces. You also can take old lesson plans. Upload it there and just say, hey, you know what? This is a lesson I made nine years ago.

Could you just rewrite to give depth of knowledge level three and four and put it to common core? Done. Export it out. Boom. my principal wants me in my updated lesson plan. There's my update lesson plan. Okay, cool. We move on with your lives and just teach the lesson like you had with the updated prompts. And then Canva AI, if you're in graphic design, if you're into podcasting, if you're into video, one of my biggest things for the last couple of years is teaching kids how to make a better presentation. So I actually in...

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

Mm -hmm.

Ryan Read (:

Canva AIs come so far with Magic Studio and everything now. And no, I do not speak with Canva. I might use Canva, but I am not their spokesman. But it just lets them do the prop. Like, I need an image to talk about why I love Fortnite so much. OK, but you only can use so many images. So it's like, you know, design something that looks like the level of the night Fortnite on a Tuesday night. There's my cover. Boom. Now give me your bullets. And click on Magic, right?

I don't know if it's words. Some things are not spelled correctly. Magic, right? OK, looks through it. OK, here's your here's your suggestion. Do you agree or disagree? Sure, I try again. I agree. Boom. Organize it. Talk to the kids. Talk to the students like, OK, let's look over that. OK, fix this. That's not center eyes. I like or I'm an old guy and I'm not that old, but I say, how can you read that? And they go, you're right, Dr. Reed. I can't read that sense like change the color like it doesn't have a prompt to say hey, exercise the color. It's getting there.

basically do the old classic:

Good job citing that. And then, you know, two years later, cite your sources. crap, I gotta cite my, how do I cite a website?

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

One of the things that we learned about is the structure for creating AI prompts. And there was a banner that was there that was talking about this acronym parts, P A R T S. And P is persona, how to identify your role. And I want to go through each of these with you. We'll talk a little bit about it here. But one of the things that I was struggling with, and everybody had a different point of view is do you start with I am a math department supervisor? Or do you

Ryan Read (:

Mm -hmm.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

say, you are a math department supervisor. And I don't know if it really matters. I started playing with each of these things. But the first thing that you want us to do is to basically set the room. I am this person. And that does have a big difference in what's going on. Let's just start with this persona concept here, Ryan, but do you start with I am a meaning yourself or you are a meaning the chat program?

Ryan Read (:

And this is a good, this is actually a huge point because like I said, no matter what an AI cannot do three things. Number one, it cannot predict the future. I'm sorry, as much as we try Ben Affleck was wrong. It does not predict the future. Number two, it doesn't know who you are. You don't know if like, boy, you know, my cat just passed away and I'm dealing with my daughter, having a good thing. I'm emotionally messed up. It has no idea how I'm feeling. And number three,

It can't give a straight answer to every situation. It's like saying, I want to apply to be a math teacher in middle school. The best it's going to say is here's a, here's a known letter for a middle school piece. Fill it out all you want. It doesn't know. It doesn't know it's like, well, what are you teaching? You're teaching basic arithmetic. Are you just doing early intro? Nothing. Are you teaching an honors class? It doesn't know that you have to prompt it too. So if mine said, if I go to it and say, I am a media teacher.

give me a rubric on creating a stop motion using Canva. And it will say, okay, here's what you should do for each slide for yourself. But then it'll say, but Canva is this blah, blah, blah program. I cannot access this. I'm just gonna give you what I got off Wikipedia or from some websites that are public to do it. Versus if I say, using Google Slides, I am a business teacher. I would like the first five pieces of what is the stock market. Boom, it says, okay, what's your grade level? Okay.

I should have said like, wait, I'm a high school. So for freshmen through juniors, basically nine through 11, and it retails. It looks at the messages, like a thing. It looks at who's your audience. So then it says, here's what a stock market is. Here's a global market. Here's the three different types, bear, bull, pig. Here is stock basics. Okay, there you go. Your first five are done. Good luck. Have fun. It really needs to know.

where you're coming from. If you're just saying, hey, edit my resume to fix any grammar mistakes, it's just gonna look for grammar mistakes and maybe spelling mechanics. If you're saying, hey, you know what, I need to give the lifestyle of a guinea pig, it's gonna say, well, here's the basics of where they come from, how a guinea pig lives and what they should eat. It's not gonna say, this is something I learned or I found out they're more group animals. That's not me. It's not personaizing its wealth or it's not giving, as they say, point of view. It's like, like I said.

Ryan Read (:

It can't read emotions. Maybe I have been having the worst day ever. You know, car needs new tires. My garage door is broke. By the way, this is based off a true story. Exactly, my cat died. But I need to say, hey, I need to email this parents to talk about why their son is drops is not turning in assignments. And I can just give the problem like talking to a sophomore thing about grades not doing it. Student was doing X, Y and Z. Here are two assignments they're missing. And it immediately makes up a nice little prompt for that email.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

You're cat died, right?

Ryan Read (:

but it's doing it better because as they say, what's the biggest thing you can't do with text? You cannot read emotion. And some people are like, why are you yelling at me? Like, what do you mean I'm yelling? Your two letters are in capitalized. That wasn't my thing. That was me calling my cap. My cap box got stuck or I hit the wrong button when I went to hit shift, but you interpret it as you're yelling at me.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

So the first P is persona identifying your role. The second one is a aim, stating your objective and we learned a lot about action verbs, right? So I am a music teacher, brainstorm ideas for a lesson plan, right? So you have to be action verb action verbi with this to make sure you know, create something design this move this

Ryan Read (:

Mmm.

Ryan Read (:

Mm -hmm.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

And this is where I sometimes get lost, you know, you are a teacher, help me create a blog post for you. And I feel that maybe that's not the best answer. It should be I am an educational blogger, create a list of 10 prompts that a teacher so I guess maybe going through this is a little bit of therapy for me as it usually is. But

Ryan Read (:

Mm -hmm.

Ryan Read (:

Yeah

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

Let's just kind of quickly go through a few action verbs, right? You know, brainstorm this, create this design this, what are some of the other terms that we can start with on our on our prompts?

Ryan Read (:

Believe it or not, my former instructional coach, she was aiming a little thing. She was doing, she's a AP geography teacher. And one thing she wanted to do is a lot of people were listening to certain music and believe it or not, what was popular at the time she was doing it was Beyonce's Texas Hold So she ended up saying, give me the, she's like, I am an AP geography teacher. I want a song about the, the, the manifest destinies to the rhythm beat of Beyonce's

Texas hold them and just give me one course. And this was in Google Gemini, just so you know. And I've done it too, because I did something with game design. I talked about the origins of Nintendo, but those action verbs hit it because the truth is I could say like, hey, give me this to, you know, Hooting the Blowfish's, you know, crack rear view mirror. And I'll be like, well, what beat do you want? Or I'll do this with the chorus of, you know, this person or do you want on the drum beat? And it's basically, it's designed to look at that. So those action verbs are, cause that's, I'm in community theater. I sing at my church.

I'm not a music. I listen to music. Some days I'm on key, sometimes I'm not. But at the same time is what's important is your beat on that part. As they say, when in doubt, sing the melody. So henceforth, I put that action verb as it on this beat to this song by this person there. And you could change it to where it's like, as you said with Gemini, it saves that material. I was looking for one I did. So I just went back and said, prompt on what I said about the oranges and Nintendo for my introduction for game design and scratch for makey makey controllers. And it just came right like, yeah, sure. Here's that information, Ryan.

we did three weeks ago. And then I said, you know what, could you update that to be shorter on a present on a Google on a Canva presentation? And it shortened up the words and it fixed the text. And then I just downloaded the piece or I just copy and pasted it and then it worked better. But you have to say, where is it going to? Like you said, I'm a music, I'm not a music teacher. I do business tech, STEM, applied tech, CTE. I've dabbled in many other fields. I mean, I have a theater background. One of my best ones would be as like,

give me a lighting directing sign for a theater department, a theater room that is 24 by 14 has 15 light setups and the director will be off stage in a booth that's about 600 feet from the thing. Well, they said, well, then you're gonna have to have a lighting that's gonna have to light up this part of the stage based on that play, but it'll say, what play do you want? I said, give it to me where it gives a dark and moody thing. According to the play, death of a salesman is like, then you want X, Y and Z and you want this too. I'm, I'm giving it that prompt and I'm giving it that mood setting. So it's not just action, it's also adjectives. Like I want to create a

Ryan Read (:

the opening to a story, give me the old classic, it's a dark and stormy night with the sound of rain in the background. And then it looks at that and kind of gives it, but at the same time, it's like, well, we got, would you want to adjust the audio? Say like the audio is very light in the background. Like I said, those action versions, because otherwise it's like, I can't hear what he's saying. I hear nothing but thunder and lightning. And is that a cat screaming? I don't hate cats. It's just, it's coming up here.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

So when we're looking at our prompt writing, number one, we have persona, identify your role. Number two, we have aim, stating your objective. Number three here, I think is probably the most important one, which is recipients, specify your audience. And it says to here to include details about the intended audience. And the example on the screen was the audience should be a school budget committee or sophomores or Spanish ninth graders. So again, I am a music teacher, create a lesson

Ryan Read (:

Mm -hmm.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

and plan for music theory for my eighth grade students. And so you're starting to figure out that frame. Now, we can go into details about all these Ryan, but my question to you is about this debate that seemed to be happening with multiple people at ISTE, which is, do you put all of this information on the first prompt? Or

Do you baby it and I noticed that even this was a debate between the magic school the Microsoft and the Googles. Some would say fill out this whole thing and some would say I am a middle school music teacher. I am looking to create an assessment. Boom, great. And then it asks you a question or you can even ask the prompt. I'm a middle school music teacher and I'm looking to make an assessment on Beethoven. Ask me questions so that way we create a lesson plan together and for me.

Ryan Read (:

Mm -hmm.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

even the concept of telling it to ask me questions was a game changer. And what's your thoughts on this? Do you put everything on one first prompt and then whittle it down? Or do you piecemeal it and go, Okay, I need two eggs. Well, what kind of eggs? Great. I need some flour. Well, what kind of flour? How do you put all that stuff together? What say you?

Ryan Read (:

That's actually a fantastic question because like when I was first using AI would be like do this 9th grade freshman. OK, great. But am I looking at anyone's have IEPs 504s? I ones have short attention spans. Do I have kids that want a more in depth area to it too? So I then started going say like, you know, give me this. I have two kids with a 504 plan. One specifically is they have a retention issue so I will have to repeat this.

and then go from there. And I've done that, but then I've realized that it's sometimes prompted on every single slide. That's great for that one student, but then, you know, Rachel and Mindy back there have like, I've heard this for six slides. I don't care. I'm going to sneak my phone out and Snapchat my friend because I've like, you're repeating this nine different times. Why is it doing it? So it really comes into, like I said, you said sometimes it is a piecemeal. Sometimes like here's the agenda. It's for sophomores. And then later on, like, by the way, I have two ELL students.

give me the prompt so I can, the same prompt to curtail so that they can do that, especially when I got one who's very good at English speaking and one who cannot speak any sense of English outside, yes, no, and okay. And then it would look into that. Then I would be like, I would be there and I would have to separate that, like say, hey, now you, you and you go ahead and open that up. Let's go to that. But then they can follow along. I've got the main one here, but then they can just go over there too. But I've also had students that are hard of hearing.

And it's like I used to do videos. What do I have to do? I had to turn on transcription. So I said, make sure transcriptions are available for all slides. I have one student that is basically legally deaf. He's not going to hear a word I said. He knows sign language. Yes, we have an aid in there, but the aid's only so fast with the word. But they can read at a 11th grade level. So they have no reading issue. But where's the emotional aspect of it? So you have to look at those audience. I found out piecemealing works really well.

And then sometimes it's just like, hey, I have 15 freshmen. This is, we're gonna talk about how you should avoid cognitive bias online. Go and then say, okay, now I'm gonna look at these two slides because I know I have two students where that probably after two minutes they're gonna drift off or it's like, but where can I do the engaging? And it might be say, okay, once we get to this lesson, give me an engaging part of lesson that will get them up and out of their seats and we will.

Ryan Read (:

go over and do a thinking classrooms model or we will do a quick activity. And I say, why don't you try X, Y, Z or use a frayer card and break that down and then think, pair, share. Perfect. Wonderful. Gets everybody up. I differentiate it. I do it. It's also noting your audience and knowing your class. They always say like, well, you got to know your students. You got to have a relationship. And I agree.

You have that relationship counts for everything else. But as I say, know who your audience is. I want the introduction because I'm about to talk to the school board about how our STEM maker fest is going to be working for fourth and fifth grade. Give me the opening to that. And then after that, it's like, well, it'll say like, well, are you an opening to us? yeah, this is free. So make it so not only am I talking to school board, but my, you know, you know, grandma, grandma Jean is going to be on her phone watching it live stream on YouTube. And it's like, what are they talking about versus, gotcha. That works. That makes sense. And then

We build it from there. Like now let's show what the kids got. Here's what there is. Here's two of my kids introducing yourselves. Wonderful. You move on. Cause like I said, everybody has distinct personality. Cause like I said, real tool, it can't read emotions.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

One of the things that I did notice is there is no wrong answer here. There is no right answer, right? And it's because every program is running things a little different. I did make sure when I met with all these different companies, I said, are they really running the same core? And the answer isn't no. But the answer isn't yes. It's just a matter of okay, everyone's pulling from this same centralized nervous system, if you will, it's just, is that 20 % of what you're looking at? Or is that 60 %?

Ryan Read (:

Mmm.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

of what you're looking for. So it's really amazing how different companies have decided to take different concepts on here. When you're working with students, we had already talked about magic school AI, I love magic school AI, I'm not a paid member, I haven't taken any of the certifications yet, I think that's going to be a summertime thing. But I was using magic school AI, the free version during the school year for just basically creating rubrics.

Ryan Read (:

me.

Ryan Read (:

Mm -hmm.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

simple, easy, copy and paste into Google Classroom, make it look nice. What's your recommendation for showing students how to use this? And that was a big conversation. It's a tool. It's not the cheat sheet. How do we convince students that this is a tool and not this thing?

Ryan Read (:

And I, that is a fantastic question. I mean, something I definitely did too, cause like I said, when we were doing a magic school, the first time is I did have a tour. We had early prompts where we just did the basic introduction. Like I'm gonna give you a prompt. Here's what you do. And it worked good. They'd make a teacher joke or they would make a quick little, you know, give me what I should emphasize on my dash robot. Talking about the cell, about the pieces of a cell. I might say, well, talk about the main eight parts of a cell and what's the difference between animal thing. And then repeat that and.

pause between videos, you only have one minute, but then it got blocked because of various reasons. I mean, it's not blocked now, but it was one of those issues. So the thing is, what's going to be available to the students and what is it that we can do a prompt with? I mean, I believe or not for students, and I think as I do like to go to Canva because I can do a lot with those things. I can create an avatar characters. We can make logos. A lot of them are gamers. They want their own badges for their tweet decks. I'm not tweet decks, Twitch.

pieces and get that done. So the truth is I walk them through it and then I give them a prompt like, okay, we're going to talk about, we're going to do my, this one, I love the most. I've been doing this since the last year is we're going to make a four presentation. What is AI and what isn't AI? And then I give them the prompts and then it's like, we're going to use this tool. Let's get a, let's get an image for your presentation. The first thing is like, I want to make a couple things using the algorithm and imagine.

you know, magic create. Okay, I like this presentation. Cool. Click. Well, okay, we done. I said, okay, now delete, get down to those last basic slides. Just get the four slides. Okay. Slide one introduction. I said, go to the apps, look up these AI, look up one of these two AIs and we're going to do them both. Find out which one you like. And some of them, they have to keep prompting because it's like, I'll show them like, see, it made that. But I'm like, but then like I said, now let me pop this in. is it, see it can't do it. And I say, Hey guys, why isn't it unable to do that? It's like, well, cause it can't think that way.

They said, I have a better job of drawing that on a piece of paper and thinking what is, I said, great, let's go to draw AI. Now draw what you really want on that piece of paper, give it the description and let's see what it was. you're right, that works really good. And I've had a lot of students do that because the problem is a lot of students were always throwing presentations up. I just got to throw a bunch of words information to make my point. I'm doing a book report on the secret garden. Okay, here's a garden. This happened, this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened. I go, what's wrong with that? And they said, what do you mean? I have all the facts. No, what is wrong with that?

Ryan Read (:

I'm reading the slide. I'm like, do they hear you very well? No, Mrs. Blah, blah, blah would say I have to know the thing is like, and but why are you reading? Is that because I put 15 things on there because I told the AI to give me 15 facts about the secret garden in chapter one through five. Right. So now go to that prompt and find the ones that are good for you and then use the next magic prompt to clean up any editing issues. OK. And then they did that. So it's also making like the little rubric checks like, OK, let's do a check in. You've used Dally one.

to make up a shark that's made out of chocolate, that is surfing a strawberry ocean, to talk about why sharks are awesome. It grabs the audience. you've got the audience. But I said, is the shark really gonna be coming out of an, no. Is it made out of chocolate? No. I'm like, but have I gotten the attention? Yes. There's your AI. You've gotten your audience in. Now let's go to that next page. What is AI? And then go from there. And I said, now let's use these. Now we go back to that tool.

I want you to find tool to you like that either going to give you a free credit or say, Hey, you have five uses of this right now. I said, do that. Let's explore. I'm going to walk around because there might be some tools on here. I've never used it. It's kind of nice. We kind of learn together, but I give them that problem. What are my three things? What is AI? And then we go that may four or five minutes. And then I go back. So I want to use this. Here it is. There's what is AI is like, okay, let's create the next slide. I said, now let's go to the prompt here. Let's clean up the slide. Say, give me an organization for four bullet points using magic, right?

Sounds good, Dr. Reed. Go in there and then, okay, I have the prompts. Okay, click on it. What is an AI? I said, I'm gonna give you one. AI cannot predict the future. Okay, AI cannot predict the future. Cool. What do I do next? I gotta hit enter to make that next bullet point. Sounds good. Now, what would be an example of what also it is? And they're like, yeah, it can't tell how I'm feeling. I'm like, perfect, put that in now. What would I use? I can go to ImageGen and find a logo of maybe me sad. Boom.

Go, click on it, find the emoji you like. All right, third one, I'm like, go for it. What do you want? What's the third thing you know? You got your notes on that PowerPoint, I've mentioned a couple. So then they have to scaffold, they have to remember. And sometimes I might have a student that might just like, I just cannot remember this other one. I said, let's go over it again. What's this? What's this? And I said, what's another way you can do it? He said, I could just look up Google, which is a basic algorithm AI and just say, give me a couple of lists of that. I said, good, now you're transitioning tools. You're using your tools you built in since you were five years old.

Ryan Read (:

You make it so then it's like it works for those prompts. It works for those check ins. But the one thing is the biggest thing is to show the students to explore it and then what is their limitations and what is not there in the things. It's just like tool. You can give me a screwdriver. Jeff, you know, it's like what can a screwdriver not do? What can a screwdriver not do? There's my prompt for you. What can it not do a screwdriver? Exactly, some people think it can hammer now, but what is really a screwdriver? No, I can't hammer. Can't hammer now.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

Hammer and nail.

Ryan Read (:

But then here's another thing. What is an example of a flathead screwdriver? If you were, let's date ourselves, go MacGyver here. What would be an example of a flathead screwdriver?

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

door jam.

Ryan Read (:

door jam or a butter knife. What a lot of people have, butter knife. You're in culinary arts. Find a simple tool that transitions tools and then be like, I'll make a butter knife. That can open up a flathead. Of course, if you were like a certain wrestler who was a Sergeant Slaughter, he just used his thumbnail. Because he was Sergeant Slaughter. Now I am dating myself. Yo, Joe.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

There you go.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

I'm.

I'm such a loser.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

I'm going I'm suddenly going into a I'm not going to say on this podcast, but a quote that he had in the GI Joe movie of a ditty bag. Anyway. There we go. We've we've broken that wall. All right, I want to I want to wrap this up here because we talked about parts par TS persona identifying your all a is aimed stating your objective. Three is recipients. Who's the audience?

Ryan Read (:

An itty bitty.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

And then four and five, we've basically already covered it. Theme, which is describing the style tone and any related parameters. In other words, you know, do it in no more than 50 words, use pop culture references, whatever it happens to be. And then finally, structure, right? Note the desired format, right? I don't use bullet points, I use metaphors, use sketches, quizzes, tell it what you want, you know, make me a quiz all about this thing, right? So I don't think personally,

Ryan Read (:

Mm -hmm.

Ryan Read (:

Yep.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

we need to have all of that in the same deal, right? There's been times where I've said, let's do an outline first. Okay, no, this I don't want this. I don't great. Now I like the outline. Now let's write the first paragraph together. And I'll actually like write out an entire blog post based off of something like you know, now that we're post ISTE, I'm doing a lot of take the press release, stick it in, and then generate an outline.

Ryan Read (:

Mm -hmm.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

And then we're gonna do this and we're gonna do this and we're gonna do this and I'll go find the website that has more information. I'll copy that in and I'll go okay, we're gonna put this in the fourth paragraph. And so I feel like I even though I'm not sitting here on every single word, I am sitting here on every single thought. So I feel like it's my partner and I want to I want to wrap up today with something that I found out that I thought was interesting. Have you ever looked at the logo?

for Microsoft Copilot. If you look at it the right way, do you know where I'm going with this? The way that the Microsoft Copilot logo looks like it basically was designed as two hands, I'm putting this on the camera, two hands kind of clutching each other. And the idea behind Copilot is you don't, you're not thinking of it as your secretary, as your executive assistant, you're thinking of it as your partner. We are going to do this together as opposed to

Ryan Read (:

I think I do. I'm going to bring it up on my phone over here really quick.

Ryan Read (:

Mm -hmm.

Ryan Read (:

Right.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

go do this for me. And if you think of go do this for me, then you're not going to get what you want. Because then you're going to go back and say, Well, I don't like this at all, or I do like this, or I you know, but if you're working on this together, I think that's kind of how I'm going to take the next few weeks over the summertime as I start to create things. I mean, look, I'm creating a brand new second level curriculum for my middle school kids. So part of it is I'm going to say, take what I've already done.

And let's bring that to that next level. My last question for you with all of this stuff is this Ryan, we know that people are using artificial intelligence to create content, whether that be tests, quizzes, blog posts, whatever it happens to be. We also know that people don't read. We also know that if you give me a PDF, I'm not going to read it.

Ryan Read (:

Mm -hmm.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

So we're living in this world where the people who are creating the things are not really doing the work and the people who are consuming the things are really not looking at it to begin with, or they're putting it into AI and saying summarize it.

Ryan Read (:

Mm -hmm.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

guess the question I left Denver is, what are we doing? Right? What are we actually doing here? And the only thing I can come up with is I'm creating content for Google search to find me so that way when you put in I need a podcast on it hits. Because you're not reading all the show notes for this episode. And I'm certainly not writing all the show notes for this episode. So what are we doing here?

Ryan Read (:

Yeah, I think that's a good point.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

I don't know if I'm wrong in thinking about that. Obviously, I love your thoughts if you're listening, but what is the purpose of doing any of this stuff if we're not consuming what artificial intelligence is writing? And apparently, we're doing it wrong in the first place because we're new at this. So I'm going to leave you with that question, Dr. Reed. What is the point of all of this?

Ryan Read (:

right.

Ryan Read (:

That is a wonderful question and I think that's always what it comes to. No matter what is created. I mean, I remember when people saw the very first long rail trail. I've do, like I said, people always said I missed my calling as a social studies teacher, but a lot of people is why are we making this rail?

why is it like, well, it's not only do it, but it's also good shipments. It's good people to explore the frontier. It's the move it's to adventure. And people said like, it's all of those things. I thought it was just mean, I need to get somebody from New York to, you know, Alabama in the next two days. I thought that was the point. It's like, maybe that is your point. Maybe it is. It's like, what need is it for filling? They always think like, as a marketing teacher, what is the niche? What is it? What are the four P's of marketing person, place, price, you know, people, you know, I'm actually going to the seven P's are I'm good.

That's what happens when you only have one cup of coffee in the morning. But it always is, is how is it aiding you? I mean, magic's, when you talk about the logo at Cold Pie, it looks like two hands. If you look at Gemini, what is really the point of Gemini? If you want to go to the astronomical sim, it means twins, but it means two people hand in hand helping each other. That's actually the point of Gemini. So Google Gemini has that. Apple's AI that's coming out too, still has the Apple logo, but then it has a couple of little sparks going on too. Like it's giving you magic.

ade science amazing since the:

Yeah, but I could pour salt on it. If I really want to do it fast, I put under water. Why is cold water making an ice cube melt faster? I don't know. There's the experiment. There is the piece. I think what's happened to just like any other firm when Google first came out, people said like, people are not going to summarize reports and do everything and so forth. And they said, but are you citing that source? Is it really doing are you hitting that plagiarism? And some people always say, well, isn't that plagiarism? Well, no, plagiarism is you're copying somebody who's already written it.

Ryan Read (:

It's out there in the world. It's on somebody's website. I, you know, it's, you know, if you look at Elvin, the chipmunks, he took Simon's report on dental hygiene to get out of being grounded. I'm, I'm a pop culture nerd anyhow, but that was an example. The only difference was is what happened is it was written out. So what happens is Alvin went and typed it out, but Dave had no way to tell that was originally Simon's report because what happened? He didn't check the fact cause it was Simon. He was the smart, intelligent of the boys. Why do I need to check his work? He got a, I can believe he got a versus like,

s been around since the early:

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

my children.

Ryan Read (:

That's a good one. It's your spam folder on your email. That's the most earliest form of AI. somebody keeps deleting this email. You know what? I guess that email is being sent out as a newsletter or, he reads this, but then he erases two other people from that same messenger. I guess that's spam too. But it's not doing it versus like, hey, I'm not, I've done my fundraiser. You don't need to email me 90 different times about contributing more money. It's coming out. Stop giving me a reminder. I don't care. But that's the most.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

yes.

Ryan Read (:

earliest form of an AI was a spam folder on an email way back when. And like I said, I'm AOL way back when from my first emails in Yahoo. That's the most earliest form of AI. And I always, I always make the kids go over their emails because they have like 14 ,000 emails and they don't, they just leave them there. And I go over like, go to your spam folder and then tell me what it's hitting for spam. And somebody was like, there was a, there was a track meet alert three days ago. Why did it do that? And like, well, think about it. Like I've been ignoring all the emails from coach.

So what did your Gmail tell you? Why do I need to have it there? Right? You've now done it. How could you fix that? Maybe reading the emails, maybe not deleting his money. There you go. You've trained your E you train your AI, but why is your spam? What would I say? Why is the spam folders? So I'm not getting wasted emails and time. You've got your answer. That's the purpose of a spam folder. Don't waste my time. Don't give me something. I've read 60 ,000 times. There it is. How are we consuming it? How does it feel that niche and where are we going with that?

And I think the problem is, as soon as you have something too new, everybody wants to lock down or you get people that abuse it. And it's true. I've seen AI hugely abused in other classrooms where I had a teacher email me say, Ryan, come over here. I really want to see if this is done. And I even have the timestamp for it. And I looked at it like, you're right, he's copying and pasting. He's like, do you think he's using A5 for this? And I looked over like, yeah, he is. Like, why? When's the last time that word was ever used? And she looks at me like, you have a very good point. Versus like, I think he used AI, but this sounds like his Ryan. He's like, because he took the AI as a

prompt. He fixed it and edit it, made his own materials and then see he still cited a source. And I'm like then that then he just did at the same time. I said, yeah. And I said, any place football guess what he doesn't want to do? Mispractice. What does he also not want to get benched and not play because he failed his paper? I'm like, there you go. I'm like, isn't that true? Like I've got to get to my kids soccer game. I have to go take the dog out. I have to run to the to the doctor. What's one thing I can cut right now is like we go and order. What's the most important and you drive that way is like exactly if my doctor orders, if my doctor's office is on the other side of town, I'm going to start there first.

and work my way back. I've saved time. There's my motivation. I don't know if that was a long winded answer or not, Chef.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

If you look.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

If you'd like to learn more information. I'm actually doing this on purpose to make the cut to see what happens.

Ryan Read (:

Yeah, no, I understand.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

I've been hitting to make a marker just to see what this looks like. So let's try this.

Ryan Read (:

Yeah, I've been looking at the upload speed and everything and all that. That's interesting.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

Alright, let's take a quick here. If you'd like to learn more about artificial intelligence prompt engineering, we have a bunch of great podcasts over on teacher cast. You can head on over to teacher cast .net forward slash podcast today to check out all of them. I honestly think we're over 40 different edge or I honestly think we're over 40 different artificial intelligence podcasts out there. And Ryan, this was certainly one of my favorites. I have learned a lot. And you know, coming out of Denver.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

This is definitely something that is real. Even having conversations with my family here going, the kids are 10. This is time. I'm not ready to give them an account yet, but I'm ready to sit down and have them start to learn how to do these things. I leaving Denver, I walked by the Microsoft booth one last time to say goodbye. They they roped me into play with Microsoft designer.

Ryan Read (:

Mm.

Ryan Read (:

They're good at that.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

Next thing I know, I am building myself as a Muppets. I said, you know, my voice a double bass player, I said, create me an orchestra with a big bird that looks like a Muppet. And basically, they created an orchestra. It was interesting. They had some of the Muppets playing violins. But it had to been 150 foot tall, big bird in the center of the stage with a double bass. It was awesome. I sent it to her. And she says, just

please stop and come home.

But there's a really

Ryan Read (:

I know that feeling. I played with a robot and my wife's like, Ryan, enough.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

Yeah, we're timing. Right. But but these are important things. This is that playtime, right? Because what's playtime right now is going to be tomorrow's soft skills. For students, we need to be able to know that if it starts by finding out answers to the homework, great, we all know that the response that is right a homework assignment that people can't just copy and paste.

Ryan Read (:

Mm -hmm.

Ryan Read (:

Yep.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

No matter what, there's a lot of great things that you can do on here. Ryan, where can somebody get a hold of you and learn more about the great work that you're doing?

Ryan Read (:

Well, you can find me on my social medias. I'm both on threads and Instagram at a Herc78. You can find me on bluesky at Ryan7Read. I still have an X handle there once in a while. I will share my podcast on X. So if you want to do that, it's also at Ryan7Read or Mastodon and everything.

ich maybe I used it for. Ryan:

So I'm on those. I'm pretty much around. I'm around. I'm good. You just look up Ryan C. Reid or Dr. Ryan C. Reid and I pop up in some really things and I think I have a better picture there where I look like I've shaved and had a haircut.

Jeffrey Bradbury (:

We want to say thank you guys for listening to this episode. We've got a lot more podcasts coming out over the summertime. If you'd like to be a guest head on over to teachercast .net slash contact today. We would love to have you and feature some of the great things that you're doing in your classrooms. And so there are apps up this episode of digital learning today on behalf of Ryan and everybody here on teacher cast. My name is Jeff Bradbury reminding you guys to keep up the great work in your classrooms and continue sharing your passions with your students.

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