🧠 Easy ways to get students thinking

📺 FREE WEBINAR TODAY: It’s not too late to join today’s free webinar, “Understanding AI Tutors in K-12 Classrooms,” presented by me and hosted by Toddle.

It starts at 2pm U.S. Eastern (11am Pacific) and yessssssss, I know you might be in class teaching at that time. If you sign up, you can watch the recording later. 😁

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💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

🧠 How AI CAN support student critical thinking

In September, I did an AI workshop with teachers in Plainfield, Indiana. (Hey there, Karisa and Dayna and friends! 👋🏻)

That evening, I did a presentation for the PARENTS in the district. (📺 Full video of the parent session here.)

Beforehand, they had surveyed parents in the district about their thoughts on AI in education.

One resounding message: Parents feared that AI would keep their students from thinking. In essence: AI will make them stupid.

My answer to that: It certainly can.

• We already know that middle and high school teachers are grappling with students mindlessly copy/pasting work into ChatGPT.

• Learning often involves wrestling with new information, and when AI does the wrestling, we don’t grow as humans.

• Yes, AI will be available to them as adults, but they need to develop HUMAN skills that can be SUPPORTED BY artificial intelligence.

But it can also be a brilliant support to critical thinking — when used in the right way!

AI is a tool at the disposal of the teacher. Sometimes it isn’t what we need. But like other instructional tools, it can be just the right fit in the right moments.

Here are some of my favorite ways to use AI to support student critical thinking. (Images from my TCEA presentation slide deck.)

1. Use AI generated images in instruction.

I taught a full load of high school Spanish classes last spring.

One of my go-to instructional tools was AI image generators. (Here’s my tutorial about them and some of my favorite free tools.)

I made images with my students’ vocabulary words. Then, in Spanish, we talked about the pictures … described them … answered questions about them.

🧠 CRITICAL THINKING: Even though those activities were basic repetition to improve skills, we started by identifying what I called “AI weirdness” in the images. It was a small step to help students pick out what’s real and what’s artificial. (Plus, it was fun!)

2. Use AI to help students prioritize and justify.

This activity seems almost too simple … but it WORKS … and it’s a low-prep way to get students thinking.

1. Tell students you’re going to ask an AI assistant (like ChatGPT or Google Gemini) a question about what they’re reading.

2. Students anticipate what the AI assistant is going to say.

3. You ask the AI assistant and display the results on the board.

4. Students analyze and critique the AI response.

🧠 CRITICAL THINKING: When students anticipate what the AI chatbot will ask, they have to do a lot of important thinking …

• Recall important facts

• Rank them in importance

• Eliminate less important facts

• Justify their decisions

There’s critical thinking all over that. Plus, it gives students practice looking at an AI response and analyzing/critiquing it … an important life skill.

3. Chats with historical / literary characters

If you’re studying people in history — or characters in a book — or people in current events, this could give students a whole new perspective.

1. Use an AI chatbot app like SchoolAI’s Spaces or MagicSchool’s MagicStudent or Brisk Teaching’s Boost.

2. Create a chatbot that role-plays one of the characters you’re studying.

3. Share a link with students to the activity.

4. Students interact back and forth with a fictitious version of that character.

⚠️ CAUTION: Students need to understand that these are fictitious representations of these people. This isn’t actually what they said — or even would say. (More below.) I’d only do this after students have a solid foundation of knowledge about the character (so they don’t form their understanding on the AI representation).

🧠 CRITICAL THINKING: Students can ask the fictitious character questions and then reflect on whether they think that person would actually say those things. This is also a great opportunity to talk about the limitations of AI and how it’s always important to critique what it gives you.

More critical thinking ideas …

• Create variations of essays that students can analyze and critique

  • (Slides/PPT template)

• Generate AI images of descriptive text from a novel to analyze

  • (Post / tutorial)

• Have students reflect on their work with MirrorTalk 

  • (Post / tutorial)

• Give students instant feedback that drives to improvement with Snorkl 

  • (Post / tutorial)

• Generate songs about class content to analyze using Suno 

  • (Post / tutorial)

💻 TECH TIP 💻

👓 About wearable AI tech in the classroom …

I got a pair of the new Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses for Christmas — with prescription lenses and everything.

I was afraid they’d be a ridiculous, unnecessary splurge.

I was wrong! I love them and wear them all the time.

• They can take pictures and videos with a trigger button on the right arm of the glasses.

• They have speakers to play music, take calls, and ask Meta AI questions.

• They don’t have a heads up display or a screen … just regular lenses.

• They last for 2-6 hours depending on usage.

As I’ve used them, I’ve started to think … what happens when students start to wear these to class?

I have some thoughts … and I wrote them here …

PS: I write about these issues regularly in my weekly FREE newsletter called “AI for Admins”!

• Subscribe to AI for Admins for free here

• Read all of my previous AI for Admins writings here.

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!