#379 – Snorkl

#379 — Snorkl

AVID Open Access
9 min

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 Beckerman.

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 0:16 The topic of today’s episode is Snorkel. Classroom teachers face a daunting task. They often have 30 or more students in a class period, and they are expected to not only design learning experiences that differentiate for different levels of student readiness, they’re also expected to provide practice opportunities, provide timely feedback, assess progress, and adjust instruction accordingly.

For a long time, this has felt an impossible task. It’s still difficult, but fortunately, AI is beginning to offer practical solutions to this challenge. In this episode, I’m going to describe one of the AI tools that can serve as your feedback assistant in the classroom. It’s a product called Snorkel, that’s S-N-O-R-K-L, and you can access it at snorkel.app. Here’s the, here’s the, here’s the tool for today. So what exactly is Snorkel, and what does it do? Snorkel is an AI feedback tool. It allows you to create a student task and share that task with the students to complete.

When students click the link to the task, they’re prompted to complete the activity by following the directions on the screen. They can draw out an answer on an integrated whiteboard. They can type a response, and they can record themselves speaking and solving a problem or answering a question presented to them.

When they are finished, they submit their answer, and then the magic happens. Snorkel AI assesses the student work based on criteria that the teacher has pre-approved and provides students with feedback about what was done well, mistakes that are noticed, and suggestions for improvement. Students can try again, and teachers can review the AI-generated feedback.

Essentially, Snorkel is acting as a classroom assistant, providing personalized feedback to each student while you’re circulating through the class and helping as many students as you have time to meet with. So let’s take a look at how Snorkel works and how teachers would set it up for use with their students.

First, you need to set up your free Snorkel account. To do this, navigate to snorkel.app and choose “Sign Up.” You’ll have two options: sign up with Google or Microsoft. Snorkel says it’s limited registration to these two choices to improve security.

From there, indicate if you are a student or a teacher. With the teacher option, you’ll be prompted to enter your school and job title. Once your account has been created, you can try a sample activity, find an activity from the thousands of standards-aligned activities that are included in the library, create your own activity, or set up a class.

Let’s take a look at the process a teacher would go through to create, assign, and review an activity. To begin, click on “Create an activity.” Here you’ll fill out the boxes presented to you, add a title at the top, and then click the question field to open the whiteboard space and add your questions or directions.

When you click on the whiteboard, you’ll see the same workspace that students will see. At the top, there’ll be a toolbar with a pointer, pencil, highlighter, a magic pen, an eraser, text tool, Math Equation Creator, shapes tool, line tool, and an “Add Image” option. There’s even an Undo and Redo feature.

As the teacher, you’ll set up the task in this space for the students to complete. You could insert a passage of text and then ask the students to respond to questions about the text. You could include a math problem to be solved. It’s really great for math. You could have students label parts of a cell. You could have students create a historical timeline. There are lots of options here.

When you’re finished, click “Done Editing.” From there, you can click the “AI Feedback” button on the left and then either set up feedback manually or, as is recommended, click “Generate from the question.”

With the “Generate from question” feature, AI will generate the correct answer as well as criteria for solving the problem or answering the question in the best way. You can accept these as generated or edit them to add more detail and feedback on your own.

Under “More options,” the teacher can choose a student’s default language. Students will receive feedback in the language selected; over 40 different languages are available. The teacher can also choose to show the answer as correct or incorrect, and whether or not to show the student their AI-generated score on the task.

Once you’re finished with the problem, click “Assign.” To assign an activity, you’ll be prompted to either create a new class or select a class from your list. From there, you can schedule a start and due date, allow a guest logon so students don’t even need to set up their own account, and determine whether students can view and comment on each other’s anonymous responses, which Snorkel calls the collaboration option.

Once assigned, you can share it with a join code or provide a link. From the teacher dashboard, Snorkel allows you to try the activity yourself. This is great so you can see what your students will be experiencing, and you can test it ahead of time to make sure it’s what you really want.

When I clicked on my activity, I was greeted with a welcome screen that said: “Whiteboard recording activity. Number one, add your ideas. Draw, type, or upload an image. Number two, explain your thinking; record your response. And number three, get instant feedback; submit and learn from it.”

Let’s go from there. I could click the “Record Screen and Voice” button to begin solving the problem. I did that and was prompted to allow the microphone for the site, which I did as a student.

Then I could review my response, cancel it, redo it, continue recording, or submit it. Once a response has been submitted, Snorkel gets to work analyzing the work.

When Snorkel is finished, it shares feedback on the right-hand side of the recording that the student submitted, which appears to the left. The feedback is time-stamped, includes praise for what is correct, suggestions for rethinking mistakes that may have been made, and a follow-up question to prompt rethinking of the answer if it’s incorrect. Students can click a little speaker next to each chunk of text to have it read aloud to them. Then there’s an option at the top to respond again if the student wants another try.

Back in the teacher dashboard, the teacher can see all student responses, as well as an “Insights” tab, which provides AI-generated summaries of performance trends, top student exemplars, and common mistakes. It’s a great way to get quick formative feedback on how students are doing in your classroom.

There’s also an option for the teacher to go back and edit the activity to make it stronger.

If you don’t feel ready to create your own activity, you can pick one from the Snorkel library. There are options from kindergarten through 12th grade with standards-aligned activities for math, science, reading and language arts, and world languages. Notices on the page let us know that more activities will be coming soon. Even if you don’t end up using any of these pre-made activities, reviewing them can give you excellent models from which to reference when crafting your own activities.

Finally, Snorkel is COPPA and FERPA compliant and claims to protect student privacy. As always, of course, it’s best to contact your local experts and leadership to determine if Snorkel is acceptable and appropriate for your students in your school and your district. If you’re looking for ways to provide personalized feedback to your students, Snorkel might be the option you’re looking for.

Again, you can check it out at snorkel.app to learn more about today’s topic and explore other free resources. Visit AVID Open Access.org. Specifically, I encourage you to check out the collection of resources titled “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.