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!!

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. :-)

Share-Term 4 2017

As part of my Community of Learning Inquiry and Spark-MIT Inquiry this past term, I have been focusing on the Learn portion of the Manaiakalani Inquiry Framework. The "Share Focus" answers the question:

“What has happened as a result of the changes in teaching, and what are the implications for future teaching?

 Below is a summary of the various Inquiry Items and links to specific blog posts that I have put together as evidence of each item.

Click here to open an interactive version of this document.