Category: EDCI 570: Research in C&I in Elementary Grades

As the use of artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly widespread, and there have been numerous advancements in the field of education regarding AI over the past couple of years, I believe that one blog post on the use of AI by teachers is insufficient. Therefore, I have chosen to write a second blog post discussing another piece of literature.

The article I have recently been examining is titled ‘The Promises and Challenges of Artificial Intelligence for Teachers: A Systematic Review of Research’ (Celik et al., 2022). In this article, the authors conducted an analysis of various AI-based research in the education field and identified some of the promises and challenges associated with the use of AI for planning, implementation, and assessment.

In education, “AI-supported instruction is expected to transform education” (Celik et al., 2022, p. 616). This is a complex and debatable topic because there are many positives, challenges, and ethical dilemmas about how AI can be used by teachers to support learning. Celik et al. (2022) also state that there has not been effective integration of AI into teaching and learning in schools because the “developers know little about learning sciences and lack pedagogical knowledge” (p. 616).  This makes it difficult to have a tool which is accessible and reliable for teachers because those who develop the technology do not know what goes into creating effective, engaging, and inclusive activities and effective, reliable, and insightful assessment. Ultimately, the authors state that “to achieve successful AI implementation in education, various stakeholders, specifically, teachers, should participate in AI creation, development, and integration” (Celik et al., 2022, p. 617). I completely agree with this statement as, for example, a program that is used by an engineer should be created, reviewed, and experimented with by an engineer. Adding on, the authors also state that it is important to allow pre-service teachers the opportunity to develop their AI awareness and skills prior to becoming certified teachers (Celik et al., 2022, p. 626). This will increase the implementation of AI into schools and students can assess the ethical dilemmas through university discussions and course work.

Will teachers still be needed if artificial intelligence is used for education purposes?

A distinction that I appreciated the authors included in the literature is regarding the teachers’ role in AI-based education. The authors state that the adoption of AI in schools “does not imply that we will need fewer teachers in the future” (Celik et al., 2022, p.617). This is a topic that I find myself engaging with those in other fields of study a lot because of how others see the tools that students are now questioning education as a whole. I completely agree with the authors because AI is unable to replicate the effectiveness of teacher planning, implementation, and connection. That being said, this can be increased with teachers having an active role through AI-based research in education because teachers have an essential role in the learning and teaching process. This connects back to the other article which I discussed in my previous blog post about how AI-based tools can then be used effectively as a teacher’s assistance in planning, implementation, and assessment.

The Benefits of AI for Teachers

As this is an article which I could dissect and analyze for a long time, to be respectful of my readers, I am going to jump to share their findings on the advantages of AI for teachers. Through this study, the authors found many benefits of using AI-based technology to assist teachers. These include assisting teachers during the planning, implementation, and grading.

Above is a table from Celik et al. (2022, p. 623) that illustrates the advantages of AI use for teachers. Although there are many advantages of AI-based technology for teachers and this table only references a portion of them, I want to emphasize that this technology should be used only as a teacher assistance tool and not a teacher replacement tool. As seen above, some of the advantages include decision-making on learning content, planning of activities, and tracking student progress. These are important pieces of the learning and teaching process that need to be reviewed, edited, and redesigned by teachers before they are implemented for student learning.

The advantage of using AI technology that interests me the most is how it can decrease teacher workloads. This is a topic that I discussed in my previous blog post, and it is the topic of my EDCI 570 presentation at the end of November. Although this article briefly describes how AI systems can decrease the workload for teachers, workload is an important discussion point of the teaching profession and any ways in which teacher workload can decrease without sacrificing the quality of instruction would be beneficial.

The challenges of AI use by teachers

The challenges of AI use by teachers are described by the authors through another visual. As we can see above, the most prominent challenges of AI for teachers are regarding the limitations of AI-based technology. As stated by the authors, “one of the most observed challenges is the limited technical capacity of AI” (Celik et al., 2022, p.625). The implications of this are that teachers will not get reliable information from AI technology when planning or assessing. This validates the importance of ensuring that AI is being used as an assistant tool rather than a replacement for an educator.

Another challenge of AI use for teachers is regarding accessibility. In general, there is a lack of teachers who are educated in AI and there is a lack of technical infrastructure in schools (Celik et al., 2022, p. 625). This means that integrating AI into schools in meaningful ways becomes a challenge.

Through analyzing these challenges of AI for teachers, I think they can be separated into 3 different categories. Category one is teacher-created AI resources. This connects to the author’s idea that those who are developing AI technology “know little of the learning science and lack pedagogical knowledge” (Celik et al., 2022, p. 616).  These resources need to be created by educators, for educators. This also includes ensuring that the technology can successfully comprehend multimodal learning strategies and assessments. Category two is teacher education. Teachers need to be educated on how to use AI technology and how to apply AI in their classrooms. This needs to be done in meaningful ways to ensure that teachers are engaged, interested, and motivated to support this technology. Finally, category three is regarding technology in schools. Integrating technology and artificial intelligence in schools is impossible unless there is adequate and an abundant amount of technology that is accessible and reliable by teachers. Through these three categories, the challenges of AI use by teachers can be minimized and teachers will, hopefully, be able to use AI technology for their benefit, the students’ benefit, and the school’s benefit.

AI-based technology for assessment:

This is a topic which I wrote about in my previous blog post. To give you a reminder of my opinions on using AI for assessment, here is my opinion:

“I ethically and morally have issues with teachers using AI for assessment. This is because I believe it undermines what education and teaching is about. Teaching is about providing support for students while they learn and giving them personalized, informative, and relative feedback to the student. This assessment is also meant to help you as an educator guide instruction for your students. By having ChatGPT assess student work, you are immediately losing the ability to fully understand students’ abilities and what instruction is needed for developing their skills in different subject areas. It would cut down the time that teachers work outside of the school day, but at what costs?”

Through reading this article, I stand by my opinion. However, I am interested in how teachers can use AI to help their instruction methods and assessments. Celik et al. (2022) state that “AI could help provide teachers feedback on the effectiveness of their instructional practice” (p. 623). After collecting student data, teachers can presumably use AI to model student progress and areas of improvement. The models give teachers the opportunity to improve their instructional practices (Celik et al., 2022, p. 623). I was not aware that this technology could be used in this way. This interests me because the teacher is still assessing and giving students personalized feedback, but it also could give insight to the teacher which could have gone unnoticed.

As the course has progressed, project signup has occurred, and different topics of educational technology have been spoken about, I have decided to change my topic from my previous blog post. In my last blog post, I identified that I was primarily interested in accessibility, teacher-student relationships, and collaboration in the field of Educational Technology. Although these topics do still interest me and I intend to learn more about them, my partner and I have decided that for the time being, we will research and explore the use/potential use of AI in Education. This is a massive topic and needs to be broken down so we have decided to specify our research on how AI can be used as a tool to support teachers.

In my research so far, I have read three different articles. The primary one that I learned a lot about and would like to discuss in this blog post is ‘AI to the rescue: Exploring the potential of ChatGPT as a teacher ally for workload relief and burnout prevention’ by Hashem et al. This article was particularly interesting because it focused on how teaching is a very intensive career that requires a lot of work from the teacher to provide proficient education for every student. This ultimately results in teacher burnout. Hashem et al. (2023) state that “teaching is regarded as one of the most demanding professions across various cultural and educational settings [and] has consistently exhibited higher levels of burnout among teachers compared to professionals in other human service fields” (p.1). As I am a young educator, I have read, heard, and been told about how prominent teacher burnout is in the education field but have been given few resources or ideas that can help prevent burnout.

The authors described many teaching tasks and non-teaching tasks that are required to be an educator. These include “coping with numerous individual and school-related pressures, heavy workloads, conflicting roles, school climate, lesson planning, and behavioural challenges” (Hashem et al., 2023, p.1). One non-teaching task that I particularly have designated a lot of personal time to complete has been lesson planning. Lesson planning is expected to be prepared for students but there is very little time to prepare for student learning. Through the article, the authors state that Chat GPT, a computer program that is designed to aid with tasks, can facilitate lesson planning, provide tutoring, grade assignments, assist with language translation, and foster learning (Hashem et al., 2023, p.2).

Through this literature review, it was shown that ChatGPT has the potential to support teachers and provide teachers with lesson plans which allows teachers to spend less time on their planning for students (Hashem et al., 2023, p.18). However, although ChatGPT can generate lesson plans for teachers, the quality of lesson plans generated by ChatGPT is quite satisfactory and not meeting the standards of teachers (Hashem et al. 2023, p.19). In my experience, the first time that I used ChatGPT for my own planning was in the middle of September 2023. The lesson plans not being fully-operational after the first ask of ChatGPT was something that I noticed and have been cautioned about. As ChatGPT is a computer program and lacks a deep understanding of questions and its comprehension and teaching ability are minimal, the quality of lesson plans is low and needs to be reviewed and changed multiple times. Therefore, rather than completely eliminating the need for teachers to lesson and unit plan, ChatGPT was shown in this resource to be a virtual assistant to receive quick and reliable answers to inquiries related to pedagogical approaches, subject-specific content, lesson planning, and classroom management strategies” (Hashem et al., 2023, p. 18). They then added, “likewise, to improve ChatGPT’s accuracy and relevance, teachers should engage in a feedback loop with ChatGPT.” (Hashem et al., 2023, p. 19). I did have much more success with the useability of ChatGPT lesson plans when I asked it to think about and redesign the activities.

Although ChatGPT can aid teachers in a multitude of ways, when I read and researched how AI can support teachers, it raised my eyebrow. This is because although teachers can use ChatGPT for lesson planning and tutoring, it can also be used for grading and assessing student work. I ethically and morally have issues with teachers using AI for assessment. This is because I believe it undermines what education and teaching is about. Teaching is about providing support for students while they learn and giving them personalized, informative, and relative feedback to the student. This assessment is also meant to help you as an educator guide instruction for your students. By having ChatGPT assess student work, you are immediately losing the ability to fully understand students’ abilities and what instruction is needed for developing their skills in different subject areas. It would cut down the time that teachers work outside of the school day, but at what costs?

This article was very interesting, and I support the author’s idea that AI, such as ChatGPT, can be used as a virtual assistance tool for teachers to support their planning to prevent teacher burnout from non-teaching tasks.

References

Hashem, R., Ali, N., El Zein, F., Fidalgo, P., & Abu Khurma, O. (2023). AI to the rescue: Exploring the potential of ChatGPT as a teacher ally for workload relief and burnout prevention. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning, 19, 23. https://doi.org/10.58459/rptel.2024.19023

In the realm of educational technology, there are many different categories, themes, or issues that can be discussed, debated, or explored. As a result, there are many educational technology topics that I am interested in. At this moment, the three primary educational technology topics that intrigue me are accessibility/inclusion, teacher-student relationships, and collaboration.

This article by Nicole Krueger and this article on Acer Education’s website identify multiple educational technology themes. The topic that caught my interest in both of these resources was equity and inclusion. She states that although there was a sudden shift to online learning where e-learning has become more accessible, the problems surrounding equity and inclusion are far from being solved. In Acer’s Educational article, they explore using educational technology to increase inclusivity and accessibility. The terms inclusivity, equity, and accessibility are intertwined and are essential for ensuring that all humans have the tools to learn, grow, and succeed. This is a topic that I am passionate about because I believe that education is a fundamental human right for everyone yet not everyone has access to quality and affordable education.  

A second topic that I am interested in is using EdTech to promote collaboration between students. Technology has provided the tools necessary to increase the efficiency of collaborating on academic, social, or recreational tasks. This includes gameplay, problem-solving, writing, personalized blog posts, and more. I believe that most students learn more, learn deeper, and learn better through collaboration with others. Technology allows for this learning environment to be created in an in-person environment, a synchronous online classroom, or an asynchronous online learning platform. I am eager to learn more about using EdTech to increase student collaboration because I primarily build lessons and units that involve student collaboration, but I have minimally done this through the use of technology. This video by Katherine Hixon describes how they use technology to support collaborative learning.

The third topic about educational technology that I am interested in is teacher-student relationships. This topic is the one that I am currently most interested in because my teaching pedagogy relies heavily on positive teacher-student relationships. This is because I know that positive teacher-student relationships enhance engagement, student learning, and teacher effectiveness. I am also aware that these relationships open pathways for increased personalized learning, mental well-being, and a positive learning community. My interest in teacher-student relationships regarding educational technology is about how teachers can still have and maintain positive relationships with students while learning is not occurring in physical environments (distance, asynchronous, or blended learning environments).

In my initial thoughts and reflections on EdTech and student-teacher relationships, I have the current belief that EdTech has negative effects on teacher-student relationships. I am fully aware that this is because of my limited understanding of how teachers can facilitate meaningful relationship-building through online platforms. However, this would be a topic of research that I would like to investigate. In particular, how teachers can overcome the depersonalization, isolation, and interpersonal divide that can often be seen with the uneducated use of technology. Of course, these three negatives that can be seen in EdTech would be regarding learning environments of distance learning where in-person connection is not possible. In scenarios that are blended or in-person learning environments, it is evident that the use of educational technology can support furthering the bond between teacher and student.

I have not yet decided on one topic of educational technology that I would like to pursue in research. This is because I am passionate about creating a learning environment that is inclusive, accessible, collaborative, and interpersonal. I would love to combine these different topics of educational technology into a larger, broader topic of research. However, if I were to concentrate on one particular area of EdTech, it would be about how teachers can create digital learning environments that are built upon creating and maintaining positive teacher-student relationships.

As a concluding thought, attached is a podcast of a conversation with Kevin Santer. Kevin is a fully online instructor at Michigan Virtual (2019 Virtual Teacher of the year) and dives into his experiences with online teacher-student relationships at the secondary grade level. I am going to write about my thoughts in my next post, so take a look before then!

What Is EdTech? Educational technology (EdTech) describes the technological tools that can be used for educational purposes and how they are/can be implemented for learning. As Colin Duff states in his article ‘Everything you need to know about technology’, EdTech is being used to update and advance our current education system. Although there are many aspects of educational technology, how EdTech is implemented is different for every district, every school, and every classroom.

Who am I? I am a current teacher on Vancouver Island. I do not have a full-time position in a classroom, but I am a Teacher on Call (TOC) who visits the same classrooms regularly. Although being a TOC has its advantages and disadvantages, being involved with different schools and classrooms allows me to see how/if technology is being implemented to support and advance student learning. As I primarily teach at the Gr. 7 level, I am going to analyze how technology is being implemented and what technological tools are available for students and teachers at this grade level.

What does the Curriculum say? In the re-designed curriculum, the overview acknowledges that the world we live in is technology-rich and accessibility to information is immediately accessible. Adding on, under ICT-enabled learning environments, the document states the following: “Students need opportunities to develop the competencies required to use current and emerging technologies effectively in all aspects of their learning and life. Technology can facilitate collaboration between students, educators, parents, and classrooms while also providing schools with rich online resources. Today’s technology enables classrooms, communities, and experts around the world to share digitally in a learning experience, wherever they may be.”

In the Gr.7 part of the B.C. Curriculum, there is an Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies section of the curriculum. In this section, it is stated that “the ability to design, make, acquire, and apply skills and technologies is important in the world today and key in the education of citizens for the future.” In addition, applied technologies entail “the skills needed to access technologies that help facilitate design thinking and the design process; these differ according to the area of application.” An important thing to note is how the curriculum addresses safety implications regarding the use of educational technology. A major goal of educational technology is to create safe spaces for students to use technology in the learning environment but it is also important to educate students about internet safety and give them the tools to be digitally active, safe, and responsible citizens. There is a section in the curriculum about safety considerations and it is essential that educators educate themselves properly so that they can be effective role moles and educators to their students. These pieces of the curriculum regarding technology open pathways for educational technology as the benefits of implementing these technologies are evident.

What are the benefits of implementing technology in education?

• Increased student engagement and interaction
• It offers new learning techniques
• It encourages differentiation
• It encourages more collaboration
• It boosts productivity and creativity
• It makes learning more accessible
• It decreases paper (environmentally friendly)
• It introduces students to the digital world
• It prepares students for a technological future
• It increases accessibility
• It allows for distance (or blended) learning
• It is more efficient for students and teachers

What technology is available in my school district?

In regards to EdTech at the district level, there is technology that is provided to schools to be used for educational purposes. I am aware that the following pieces of technology are not universal between schools in the district, but at the schools I primarily work at, there are:

• Document Cameras
• Projectors
• Apple TVs (for connecting iPad, MacBook, iPhone, etc.)
• Desktop Computers
• Personal Laptops for Continuing Teachers
• Chromebook Carts (is not 1:1 but rather ~2:1)
• iPads (Library Set used for ELL, translations, photography, etc.)

How is the technology used in the schools/classrooms that I am involved with? These technological devices can be utilized in many ways for learning purposes. In the classroom level, student work is primarily done on Google Apps for Education (GAFE). With GAFE, there needs to be parental consent for students to be able to use and access these applications due to privacy laws and information storage. However, GAFE is a great tool that I like to use for collaboration, organization, and it can help with the instruction of digital materials. Below is an infographic on the benefits of GAFE and why I utilize these applications.

In my experiences with practica, TOC work, posting vacancies, or longer-term callouts, I try to utilize all of the technology available. I use Chromebooks with GAFE for learning accessibility, collaboration, research, and inquiry. I use iPads for photography, brainstorming, research, translations, and teaching tools. Apple TVs are great for connecting laptops to the projector when you do not have a district computer. Document cameras are a great tool for providing a visual element to lessons. I am aware that I do not fully utilize any of the provided technology by any extent, so I am eager and excited to learn about how can I enhance my students’ learning and my teaching effectiveness through this Master of Education.

Concluding thoughts: Although there are many benefits with educational technology, the reality is that many teachers do not utilize any EdTech equipment. This is something that I hope changes throughout the next decade but overall, it starts with educating teachers on how to use technology in a learning-enhancing experience for students.