For this week's blog, we are taking a look at AI, specifically Magic School AI, and how it supports educators in developing lesson plans and assessments etc.
Students will compose argumentative essays, reviews, or op-eds that:
introduce precise, informed claims
include a defensible thesis
acknowledge counterclaims or alternate perspectives
organize claims, counterclaims, and evidence in a logical sequence
provide the most relevant evidence to develop balanced arguments, using
credible sources
use sentence variety and word choice to create clarity and concision
use style and tone that suits the audience and purpose
Along with this standard, I also asked Magic School to incorporate ISTE standards
to align with the OAS.
While I thought that the lesson it generated for this standard was pretty generic, I did appreciate that it was just specific enough to support the standard above which would still allow for plenty of room to customize and tailor the lesson to however I would want to teach it and customize the lesson for each class. I did think that the lesson was aligned to the standard that I input. On its own, the lesson was not very rigorous, but as I mentioned, because it lacked a ton of specificity, it would be easy to add rigor where you need and could come in handy to differentiate between a pre-AP and an on-level course. The assessment that it provided was aligned to the standards and the homework and extension activity the lesson generated were also aligned with the standards given to Magic School. They also incorporated authentic technology use with the idea to create a visual infographic to summarize the key points in the argument students created in their essay. I’m not sure if I have any improvements. It seems that Magic School, like most AI platforms, gives more specific output with the more details you input. If you just put in a standard, it would give you a basic lesson plan like the one it generated for me when I just input an OAS standard and told it to align with ISTE as well. If you gave it more parameters and provided specifics that you wanted to incorporate into your lesson that would, of course, be best.
In my “expert” opinion, I think that Magic School AI could be useful for the creation of rigorous lesson plans because you as the teacher would be adding the rigor. The AI has done the work as far as building the framework of the lesson. As educators, we obviously know what our students are capable of better than any AI would, so relying on just an AI platform would not be beneficial to assume that it is doing best for your classes. Perhaps a new teacher, or someone teaching a new course for the first time could ask AI to increase or decrease rigor to help them as they create new lessons, and then that would be useful for the creation of a rigorous lesson plan. I think that this lesson aligns to the Kolb reading that we have done in class. Kolb is all about being intentional with the way that we use technology in our classrooms. I think this generated lesson plan is intentional with the way that it suggested activities to go with the lesson. Again, we have to be focused on how we incorporate technology: are we using tech for the sake of saying we have used it, or does it help to provide authentic intellectual work?
Part 2:
Aside from the lesson plan, I experimented with the "Informational Texts"generator. This tool allows you to create an original passage with a topic based on your choosing.
I really like this tool for creating original content for whatever topic you input. You can
adjust the length that you want the text to be, and give other parameters, obviously, the more
specific and more information you give to begin with, the better your created text would be. I think
this would be a great tool to use to help create an original prompt, or even to create a passage for
an APMC style test for students. It would even be useful for creating tests and creating multiple
versions of a test for added test security. I would use this more to create an assessment as
previously mentioned than to deliver instruction. Especially in my school district where we
are strongly discouraged from using any texts that are not already in our ELA text book.
Part 3:
International Society for Technology in Education. (2024). ISTE standards: For students.
ISTE. https://iste.org/standards/students
Kolb, L. (2020, December 9). Triple E Framework. Triple E Framework.
https://www.tripleeframework.com/
Magic School. (2025). MagicSchool.ai - AI for teachers - lesson planning and more!
Www.magicschool.ai. https://www.magicschool.ai/
Agreed. You mentioned that it provides a suitable framework, but we the educators are the ones who add the rigor. I've tried asking various educational AI's "What is a reasonable expectation for a _____ student?" and get a wide variety of results, but they mostly just go back to the standards. We're doing what we've always done: adding meat to the bone, so to speak.
ReplyDeleteI appreciated so many of your points, including the reminder that we need to be intentional in how and why we incorporate technology into our lessons. I think as educators we all know that technology can be a huge asset, but to use it just to say we do is not doing it or our students justice. Like you, I value MagicSchool as a tool to help create the foundation of my lessons, knowing that it is up to me to give it the depth and focus that it needs if it is going to benefit my class as unique learners. Thanks for sharing!
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