#371 – Custom Chatbots for Students

#371 — Custom Chatbots for Students

AVID Open Access
10 min

Keywords
custom chat bots, generative AI, prompt engineering, student accounts, AI spaces, pre-created options, chat bot creation, academic standards, teacher dashboard, student feedback, integration ideas, personalized learning, interactive experiences, educational tools, AI in classrooms

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

Paul Beckermann 0:01 Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I’m your host, Paul Beckermann.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 0:05 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 0:15 The topic of today’s episode is custom chat bots for students. Tools like Magic School and School AI have made generative AI much more accessible to classroom teachers and their students.

These tools do a lot of the heavy lifting of prompt engineering so that you can interact with a series of text boxes that guide you step by step through the process of using artificial intelligence to meet your teaching needs. They also include integrated student accounts so you can have your students interact with the AI experiences that you create.

Perhaps the most powerful use of this functionality is to create custom chat bots for your students to engage with. Essentially, this is like giving each student a pre-programmed chat bot that guides conversations and interactions, which reinforce your learning objectives and provide students with personalized feedback on those interactions. In today’s episode, I’ll be walking you through this process in School AI. If you’re a Magic School user, you’ll find a similar tool there as well.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 1:24 Here’s the tool for today.

Paul Beckermann 1:27 To get started, you’ll need to set up your free School AI account. Once you’re logged in, click on the Spaces menu at the top. Spaces are AI spaces where students can interact with AI-powered experiences.

If you’re just starting out, you may want to try some of the pre-created options that are available. You can access these by choosing Discover from that same Spaces menu at the top. Here, you’ll find a host of options. Some of the choices you’ll find include Sidekick, which is like a student tutor, Bell Ringer, and Exit Tickets, which engage students in activities to open or close out a lesson, and a host of others, like Video Explorer, Topic Explorer, Career Exploration, Chat Bot Tutoring Session, and Choose Your Own Adventure.

Further down the page, you’ll see chat bots or spaces created by other educators. If you find one that aligns with your needs, you can remix it, customizing it to meet your specific needs but saving you the work of starting from scratch.

And even if you don’t end up using these pre-made spaces, you can use them to give you ideas of spaces that you might want to create. Browsing through these is a great way to get ideas and brainstorm possibilities.

What I’m most interested in today is creating my own custom space for my students. To do that, I would again click that Spaces menu at the top, and this time choose Create. Here you’ll click on Create a New Space. This will bring you to a simple page that has a few easy-to-understand fields to fill out.

There’s a place for you to add a title at the top. Then below that, you’ll write your AI prompt. The directions appear right inside the field so you can’t miss them. The directions for the AI prompt read: “Describe the activity agenda or instructions you’d like to run. Be as creative as you want. If this is your first time, try out an immersive text-based role-playing game, a morning check-in, or a review game on specific learning outcomes to get started.”

If you’re not sure what to type in, you could go back and review some of those pre-made examples as well. And the more you experiment with this, the better you’ll get at it.

Below that on the screen, you can enter your academic standards or even attach a document that has content you want the chat bot to focus on. These two options are how you will guarantee that the chat bot experience actually supports your learning targets. That’s really important.

Below that, you can add a cover image if you want, or even have AI generate one. You can also add a subtitle that more specifically calls out the focus of the activity. Below that, you can add a Teacher Description, meant to explain to another teacher or maybe remind yourself of the purpose of this activity. The last field is a Student Description, which is where you’ll type the greeting or directions that the student will see when the chat bot first appears. Here’s an example of how this might look.

Let’s say I want my students to plan out a news video story. I might title it Video News Story Planner. For the AI prompt, I could write something like this: “Guide students through the process of planning a script for a video news story about something happening in their school or community. Don’t give them the answers. Rather, ask them questions that will help them brainstorm and complete each step of the process. Also give them feedback on their ideas to help them improve their responses. Make sure they plan all of the required parts of the news story as indicated on the attached planning guide.”

Then, to help guide the chat bot, I could upload a document that outlines the entire planning process. This could even be the same handout that the students will fill out as they go, and the chat bot can use that to help guide the responses that it gives to the student. For the student description, I might write something like this: “Welcome to your News Video Story Planner. I’m here to help you plan your story and complete your planning guide.”

To test out your custom chat bot, click the Preview screen on the right. As soon as you do, you will experience the student view on your screen right beside the prompt you’ve created. You’ll see that students will be able to click a Speak button to hear the text spoken to them if they wish.

When I previewed my example, I was greeted with: “Welcome. Today, we’re going to plan and script your video about a topic in your school or community. Let’s start by brainstorming your topic. What’s something happening around you that you find interesting or important?”

To test it, I offered, “We have a fundraiser coming up.” The chat bot followed up by telling me that was a great choice and prompting me with follow-up questions to dive deeper into my preparation to write this script for the topic.

It worked really great, and if it hadn’t been what I wanted, I could have revised my directions and then previewed it again to see if it was any better.

When you do have the prompt the way you want it, click the Save and Launch button at the top. You will get what’s called a Space Code that you can share with your students, or an option to add the chat bot to Google Classroom. The Space Code option gives you both a QR code and a link that you can copy and paste to share with your students.

When students engage in the activity, you can go to your teacher dashboard to get feedback on each student’s interaction with the chat bot. This is a great way to peek into the thinking process of your students. You can get to this teacher interface by again, clicking on Spaces at the top and then clicking on the third option, Sessions. Overall, the process is pretty simple and straightforward.

In just a few minutes, you can create an engaging, interactive experience for your students to enjoy and learn from. Or you can pick one of the pre-made ones and use it as is. While you will be the best judge of what activities will best meet your academic standards, here are a few chat bot ideas that you might want to try out to get started.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 7:17 How do I use this? Integration inspiration.

Paul Beckermann 7:20 Integration ideas:

Number one, guide students through some sort of creation process that could be writing a paper, creating a slide show, recording a video, or generating an infographic.

Number two, prepare for a debate by having the chat bot engage in a friendly back and forth with the student over topics of their choice.

Number three, engage with a character from a story, or perhaps a historical figure.

Number four, experience a choose your own adventure story, where students engage in interactive narratives and make decisions that influence the story’s outcome, promoting critical thinking and engagement.

Number five, have the chat bot assist students to critique and analyze a science experiment.

Number six, guide students through the process of designing, creating, and testing a prototype.

Number seven, transport students through time to be a reporter at a historic event.

Number eight, support student learning as a subject matter expert or tutor.

Number nine, engage in conversation to practice a new language.

Number ten, participate in a constitutional convention.

Really, the ideas are nearly endless, and perhaps the best question is to ask yourself, what type of interaction you’d like your students to have? Who would you like them to talk to, for what purpose, about what? Then design your own custom chat bot to engage with your students in that way. For your design purpose, it can be a great way to engage all of your students in a more personalized way that gives you feedback and insights in each of those interactions. It can be a powerful experience for both you and your students.

To learn more about today’s topic and explore other free resources, visit avidopenaccess.org. Specifically, I encourage you to check out the article collection, AI in the K-12 Classroom. And of course, be sure to join Rena Winston and me every Wednesday for our full-length podcast, Unpacking Education, where we’re joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening, take care, and thanks for all you do. You make a difference.