Blog Post #8

 

I learned a lot of new skills with the previous assignment. For example I wanted to have a consistent blue font color to match the aquatic theme I was going for but since the pictures I chose for the banners were also blue, I had to learn how to use the photo editor within Weebly to darken the photos so the text would be legible. I wasn't a big fan of how restricting Weebly felt. Sometimes I had an idea of something that I wanted to do but the website's features were fairly limited and made some of my design choices impossible. I definitely want to make a class website in the future to have a central hub for all of my students to view assignments and announcements.

In a classroom, I might use QR codes to make a fun and engaging activity for my students. I'd hide various QR codes around an outdoor area for a treasure hunt and they'd contain links to different quiz questions. Whoever finds all of the QR codes and correctly answers the questions first would get a prize. I think that it would make class fun for the students who tend to get bored more easily.

From Rachel Miller's Padlet post: "Rachel is a 2nd-grade teacher who uses generative AI tools to streamline her workload. She often asks AI to help her create outlines for lesson plans and assignment ideas so she can focus more time on her students. One week, Rachel is overwhelmed with grading and asks AI to generate a full set of lesson plans and student worksheets for a new reading unit. The AI creates high-quality materials that perfectly fit her objectives, so she decides to use them as-is. Later, a colleague notices that one of Rachel's worksheets contains text very similar to a copyrighted children's workbook. Rachel realizes that the AI might have generated content that closely mirrors an existing source. She now faces a decision on what to do next."

To address this issue, I'd advise Rachel to, instead of using AI, go online and find lesson plans and worksheets that aren't copyrighted, in order to avoid any legal trouble that she might find herself in. Generative AI draws from a database of already existing content and therefore counts as theft and plagiarism, unless the creator of the original work has given explicit permission for their work to be used for free. There are plenty of resources out there that teachers have been using for decades now, all of which have no moral issues. In order to avoid AI ethical dilemmas, it is best for one to avoid AI altogether.