Writing with Gemini AI

One of the things we have been thinking a lot about is how we include our Maniakalani Learn, Create, Share pedagogy with our BSLA program. 

This week, my Literacy class was reading the story "Staying Afloat."  We have been working to write complete sentences using lots of good detail and description. After we discussed the elements of the story, the class had 10 minutes to write their own retell. Then, they were shown how to put their retell into Gemini AI to get a picture based on their writing. They learnt how to modify their writing to include the best detail to get an image that properly illlustrated the main idea of the story. 

 Here is an example that was written by a student in class: 

  One day kele and Vika, also granddad, were going on a boat. Granddad told them to wear a life jacket but kele didn’t want to wear one so he told how a boy who was in tonga,  but strong  fell into  the sea. Kele gasped so he had to wear one at last. When they were fishing kele fell into the water too but grandad could get him in time. At last Kele was out  grinning because he got a snapper and said who is the best fisher now!! Here are our first two tries at an image. 

The first image didn't show grandad or the sister Vika and it didn't show Tongan children so we made a few changes (as seen in the above paragraph).

   

 But, we were still not happy because there were no life jackets in the second photo and they were in a motorboat. 

So we got back to work and this is how we modified it to get the best photo from Gemini: 

 One day a Tongan family went fishing in New Zealand. Kele, his sister Vika, and granddad, were going onto Grandad's vaka. After putting on his green life jacket, Granddad told them to put their life jackets on. Vika put on her pink life jacket but Kele didn’t want to wear one. Grandad told how as boy growing up in Tonga, he fell into the sea. Kele gasped so he had to wear one at last. When they were fishing kele fell into the water too but grandad could get him in time. At last Kele was grinning because he got a snapper with his blue life jacket on!!

Create Mini-Games with Gemini

 During our Manaiakalani Create teacher only day, I spent some time learning how to create mini-games with Gemini. It was a lot of fun and we were able to spend some time debugging through the AI prompt to make things run smoother.  To access each game click on the photo below. 

The first game I created was a Tetris-style multiplication game. In order to earn peices to play on tetris board, the play must accurately answer the multiplication facts.

The second game, (actually the first one I had a go with) was a solar system trivia game. It is very basic (game-wise) but the questions are pretty impressive given the parameters I set for the game in the AI. 

Making Music with Suno AI

 As part of the Maniakalani Cluster Create PD, I attended a workshop led by Fiona Grant (Manaiakalani Facilitator) about using the AI program Suno. We had fun exploring what key words to add into the program to have a song created by the AI. I then, took my song and embedded it into Adobe Express Animator to have an avatar sing my created song. Here is my final project. 

The video below is from Suno and shows the lyrics to the song. 

RPI: Create Tasks

 During week 8 of RPI, we focused on integrating create tasks into our learning tasks. Here are a few examples Create tasks that my students have been working on over the past week. 

JJ completed this task that I created as part of my RPI coursework. Check out the whole task on his blog. 

Ema drew a monkey using crayons and we hung it on our wall after reading "Monkey Tricks."

Check out her whole task on her blog.

After reading "Walking in the Spring," Zion created a drawing of a spring day using photopea and then inserted a photo of himself into his drawing.  Check out his blog post here. 

RPI Session 8: Create with Reading

 Engaging and Empowering Learning

We want our young people to be empowered so that their content is online. The consistent message that we receive from former students (now in their adult life) is that creativity in their schooling experience has designed who they are now as an adult. 

If using AI in the classroom, have the iMac (class computers) signed into a generic class account so that students learn not to use AI on their own devices. 

Getting our Creative Juices Flowing

Today we imagined we were book illustrators using the poem Te Marama by Kelly Joseph. We compared our illustrated poem with the published version. One of the differences between my poem and the published one is my little girl is still in bed with the moon phases above her head thinking about the things her whanau do during different phases. 

On the other hand, some similarities with my poem are the moon is shown and similar colours. 

The parts I like most about my poem are the different emotions that you could read the poem with because we spend a lot of time talking about our emotions and how different people respond to different situations. The parts I like more about the published poem is that the girl looks so peaceful. What do you think?

Why is Creativity Important?

If we want to see our learners as a whole learning, integrated their emotive and cognitive skills allow us to do this creatively, while applying the learning intention. This enables create to be used to support our overall learning.

Using Create to Show Learning

Tighter or Looser design theory around our create tasks. Tighter provides templates: graphic organisers, templates. For example, if a text leads to a specific object (ie backpack/umbrella) use a template of that object and extend the learning to the students adding to the object (ie what’s in the bag?).  

Here is an example of a Tighter Create task that I put together for my students to use before we read the text Kele’s Car. 

Using Create to Show Learning Part 2

Be sure we are providing opportunities for students to have choice when we are creating our tasks. For example, provide multiple avenues for a create task, or from the perspective of a character of their choice. This is also something that could be easily done with medium. For example, on paper or digital, and using markers or coloured pencils. 

Create to Learn “Longer…”

It is important to have set routine create tasks for our students to learn how to do early in the year that they can then pick and go throughout the year. This is very similar to the simplistic create “vlog” task that I have my learning to read students do throughout the year to retell the events of the story and share their vlog video on their blog. 

    Putting it all together

As a group, we reflected on various areas (from today’s discussions) that we would like to improve on or implement into our own classroom. Here is a screenshot of some of our responses. 

I would love to spend some time in the next few weeks thinking about how I can get my students to work more independently and collaboratively to create using the affordances that I have taught them so far this year. Students already know how to retell using their webcams but it would be great to move them to writing and recording a review or the books they are reading in class. I would also like to provide more opportunities for students to have choice when it comes to their create tasks.

Manaiakalani PD: TOD Create

To finish off a very informative day we had create workshops. In this time, Clarelle and I shared ways in which we create with our student in Literacy and in responding to or engaging with texts. 

What I really enjoy about this time is have a chance to share practical examples of what we are actually doing in our classrooms. I love poetry and it was great to share that with others. 

Bitmoji Virtual Bookshelf

 Today, as part of the Maniakalani Create Clusterwide Staff Meeting, I attended a session run by two teachers from Glenbrae School about Virtual Bookshelves. We had great fun learning how to create our own interactive virtual bookshelves and we even learned out to embed our own bitmoji. Check out what we were able to do in less than 30 minutes!

Expand the slide deck to see in a larger view to get the full effect. :-)

PD: Student Design for Learning

 Student Design for Learning

Dr. Naomi Rosedale (WFRC)

Today, teachers from across Manaiakalani met at Tamaki High School for our annual Create Staff Meeting. Before breaking out into our two create learning sessions, we heard from Dr. Naomi Rosedale (Wolf Fisher Research Centre) about Student Design for Learning. She gave us a bit of a teaser introduction for the MAPIC framework involving more student agency when creating Digital Learning Objects (DLO).

Students are creating overwhelming amounts of slideshows and most were originally teacher designs. Our challenge is to come up with ways for students to create using more modes of communication. Slideshows often show 2 modes: written and visual. Screencastify is often used for procedural demonstrations especially in maths. There is great opportunities for students doing podcasts, voice recording, etc.

We need to implement more Student Design for Learning DLOs to enhance the learning for other students. For example, creating more of a flow chart slide instead of a paragraph and a picture. The concepts can be bolded by the student to show their understanding. 

Our WFRC research based definition of student DLOs "a process wherein students learn as they design for others, and as a reusable digital entity (or object)....". Our aim is for high leverage thinking practices (video/voice recordings) to be used to compare. We will be unpacking the MAPIC framework in the future for our student design for learning.  

M: Multimodal mapping of ideas

A: Amplification key concepts

P: Personilization

I: Interactions

C: Coherence Structured organised and unified uderstanding

This made me think of the create tasks that I set up for my students. I think there is a sense of urgency sometimes to finish things off quickly with our students and many prefer slides over anything else. I have been encouraging my classes to use more Google Drawings lately in their create, but I am interested in making more interactive slideshow with embedded voice descriptions now that Google has added Audio/Voice Recording to the Slides platform. 

Google Drawing a Picture

As part of our DFI session this week, we had some lovely students from Panmure Bridge come by to share with use some Drawings they had made using Google Drawings. We then had some time to explore doing this using the Polyline drawing tool.

Here is a picture of a Kiwi Bird made using Māori designs that I drew during our session.