AI in the Classroom: Practical Strategies that Prompt Student Success

Jeffrey Bradbury (00:01.378)

My guest today is an amazing high school English teacher and she is about to take on the ride of her life by learning a little bit about how artificial intelligence can be used in the classroom. Not only is she a fantastic educator, but she has an amazing YouTube channel where she teaches educators all about the fantasies of yoga. I want to bring on today, Miss Stephanie Clenis. Steph, how are you today? Welcome to the podcast.

Stephanie Clinise (00:24.648)

Hi Jeff, I'm doing good, know, living that summer life as a teacher.

Jeffrey Bradbury (00:30.336)

it is that summertime, you know, we always say July is like a big Saturday. Sunday is is what August is going to look like. I and I know right now as we're recording this, I'm not ready for Sunday to show up. Are you

Stephanie Clinise (00:34.494)

Yes.

Stephanie Clinise (00:42.788)

No, we're living in that like Saturday early afternoon vibe right now and I'm gonna keep that vibe going until about August 21st. think that's, I think I'll have this Sunday Scaries for about one day. That's all I'm allowing myself.

Jeffrey Bradbury (00:57.486)

that that is a scary day. I think I got the email that says we're going back to like the 23rd 25th or something. I don't even want to think about it. I didn't read the whole email yet. I just know. Well, at least the emails are coming. So that means I should be going back to you know, still have a job at this point with everything going on.

Stephanie Clinise (01:14.302)

Yes, definitely, definitely grateful to have the job in the space that I want to be in. So, so that's a win. I just also very much enjoy my summers.

Jeffrey Bradbury (01:24.874)

And you are now teaching ninth grade English. What is that like these days?

Stephanie Clinise (01:32.116)

Okay, so I think that before we get into ninth grade English, I think overall sometimes ninth graders get kind of a bad rap. Maybe they've earned it, I don't know. I don't know. I, what?

Jeffrey Bradbury (01:44.62)

You think it's the middle school teacher's fault? You're saying it's the middle school teacher's fault? No.

Stephanie Clinise (01:49.106)

Never. No, but I feel like sometimes when people hear like that the most common reaction to so you teach ninth grade my god, how I'm like I just go to work every day. I'm like the same as the rest of us but I actually love ninth grade and I love ninth grade English. And so yeah, is it a little? Rambunctious sure We're having We have a really good time in ninth grade and I think it has to do with the fact like I really want to kind of change that mindset to like ninth grade being the worst I was like, I think ninth grade is

low-key as the kids say, the best. So there's a lot that goes on in a classroom, lot of personalities, and they're definitely in that growth space. And in an English class where we can have more chitchats and conversations, and we're talking about feelings and questions and books and literature, I think that we get to know a little bit more with them. But I really like it. think it's actually a really cool space to be in.

Jeffrey Bradbury (02:43.982)

How long have you been working in the 9th grade area?

Stephanie Clinise (02:46.963)

So I've been a contracted teacher going into my 11th year. So all but two of those years, I had at least one ninth grade class. And the last three, four years is just ninth grade.

Jeffrey Bradbury (02:54.926)

And it's an interesting year, you know. As a middle school teacher, we know we get them in sixth grade. We push them out at eighth grade. We just kind of hope for the best and ninth grade teachers pull them in and have to get them ready for 10th 11th grade. Talk to us a little bit about what that's like. There's a lot of ninth grade teachers. I'm sure that are listening to this, but you get them as post eighth graders and essentially you have to turn them into high school students.

That's gotta be a fun year.

Stephanie Clinise (03:25.417)

I think it's a lot of fun. First off, I always commend middle school teachers because you see them from sixth to eighth. And I think that level of growth that you see in what is a little kid in sixth grade becoming this adolescent, preadolescent, getting ready to send them off to high school where they're going to be right next to 18 year olds after being right next to 11 year olds. You know, it's a huge jump. So.

The course of the year, mean, prepping them for high school, kind of focus in, and I think this works for all ninth grade teachers, all subjects, and honestly, just all throughout high school. It's not even so much prepping them for high school as prepping them to be a person who's contributing to the community rather than just being the child that's being taken care of by the community. And I see that start to change over the course of ninth grade when that, that spotlight, you know, that you see all those middle school, you're a middle school teacher, right?

You see how they walk around thinking everybody's staring at them because they're staring at themselves. So hyper-focused. And in ninth grade, you start to see that shift of like, they're not all just looking, not everybody's as concerned about what I'm wearing today as I'm concerned. And you to see that like the eyes opening a little more and this awareness of, this isn't just about.

me, I have to give a little something back and it's really fun to see like from September to June that shift in their personalities and their perception of what school might look like.

Jeffrey Bradbury (05:03.928)

preparing myself mentally right now to get my sixth graders to be, you know, middle school kids versus being post elementary kids. And I'm saying that both as a middle school teacher, but also the dad of 11 year olds who are going into sixth grade, like, my goodness, the next 12 months is going to be completely transformative in all different respects of my personal and professional life with all this stuff. And you know,

Stephanie Clinise (05:11.514)

you

Stephanie Clinise (05:27.698)

my gosh, sixth graders all day and all night.

Jeffrey Bradbury (05:31.07)

it's gonna be absolutely just ducky all over the place, right? The smells, the changes, the language, the conversations, the whispering. And with all of that, you know, they say, you know, the responsibility comes up. And today we're going to be talking all about our favorite topic here, artificial intelligence, how it's going to be addressed in school districts, how can it be addressed in the classroom? How can it be addressed from a coaching

Stephanie Clinise (05:39.142)

You

Jeffrey Bradbury (05:59.944)

standpoint. And let's just kind of open this up here. And I first of all, thank you for coming on and having this great conversation. What are your current thoughts about using artificial intelligence as a high school teacher?

Stephanie Clinise (06:16.009)

We've definitely talked about this before. You and I have talked about that before. I think that AI is a support in the fact in the same way that all ed tech is meant to be a support. It's not meant to be a replacement for anything. And over the past, I want to say six months is when I really was able to spend some time with it. And I'm looking for, I look for places in my classroom. I just want to make sure I'm saying this in a way.

makes sense. So I look for places in my classroom where I feel that I as the teacher am not maybe like reaching everybody or I feel that something could be done a little more individualized or a little more personalized for a student. And so what I'm doing is I'm having it kind of be the million places that I can't be at once. I know that sounds insane, but stay with me. So I

I took it as a baseline. So if you think about stuff that we're using in our classrooms, and this I think even works at the middle school level, wherever it is, we all give some sort of like review sheet, right? When we prep for tests, like we do our cahoots, we do our booklets, we do all of our different games to gamify all of this. And I'm like, this is all fun and kids like doing it.

But at the same time, they're all getting the exact same questions. Like the questions are not tailored to the students' struggles. When I make a study guide, I mean, you know, back in 2011 when I was printing off those study guides for everybody, that was a student teaching, that was more than 10 years ago. But we were doing all of that and there were kids who were like, I don't need this. Like I know what all these words mean. I don't want to study this. One of the things that I've been utilizing AI the most for is to create

not quite tutors, but using those chat prompts. And it doesn't matter which platform you're using. If they have an interactive piece on it, you can train it to create a room or a space or a chat bot or a sidekick, whatever. And you tell it that it is helping the students study for, you're helping a ninth grader study for their ELA, ninth grade ELA final. And then I fed it all of the terms I wanted it to go over. I told it what types of questions to ask and things like that.

Stephanie Clinise (08:36.257)

And so students were reviewing and saying, I don't want to go over literary terms. Can we go over, can I get samples of irony so I can identify them? And it does that for them. But if I had six different kids telling me they want to review irony, but I've got, you know, the 12 kids over here who were like, I still don't understand, themes. Can we do more theme statements? Now it just in that hour, in that 80 minutes, I'm a block scheduled teacher. And I even it's there now.

able to focus in on that. If that makes sense. I just really, I really love the tool for that. You're gonna sit down, you're gonna open it up and say, hey, I wanna practice this. Or it tells you something and one of the best things about these tools is you get to review their chat so you can see who's focused on irony and who's telling it no and who's being rude to it. Because they're still ninth graders.

Jeffrey Bradbury (09:30.494)

they're still ninth graders, right? And I think that's the big point of using AI. There's, this is the time where we need to be teaching them how to use these tools appropriately. Rather than having this fear that it's just a way of cheating.

Stephanie Clinise (09:43.057)

Yes, and so that's kind of.

And that's what I said to them. was like, you're not going to have this available at all times because you are going to have to have an original thought. Now, if you need help organizing the current thoughts you're having, that is a very human thing. So write down those thoughts. But like I said, as of right now, as I'm rolling it out, I'm not asking them to interact with it, to ask it, to generate information for them. I'm asking it to generate questions to support the learning we already did in the classroom.

They're not getting new information from the AI. I'm telling the AI, hey, we just did Romeo and Juliet. We just finished act three. I need you to review all the different types of ironies and help the kids identify which quote has irony in it. And now they're doing that. And the kids who are doing really well with it can move on to something else. I can prompt it ahead of time. So always talking about in like differentiated learning. Like if you've, if you're in the education space, I think that's the number one thing we always hear. it's like,

This is going to do that and it's going to be student led. And I think that we are definitely in an era of student led. Like we're trying to follow what kids need in order to meet the goals we set for them. And I think this really supports that, especially like I said, these like chat bots we can create that we're in charge of, not the kids are in charge of.

Jeffrey Bradbury (11:07.586)

When you're talking about your chat bots, let's be a little bit more specific here. You're working in a Microsoft district, if I'm correct about that.

Stephanie Clinise (11:16.731)

Yes, we are a Microsoft district. We have magic school. Also, we we are a magic school district. I also have access to school AI. We also have class companion. School AI is more like I got that through the insider program and I won something during teacher appreciation week. I also won cookies from them during teacher appreciation week, so shout out to that.

I'm just saying, I love crumble adieu. There's nothing wrong with it.

Jeffrey Bradbury (11:42.188)

which which there's nothing wrong with freebies. When when you're looking at using this from a teacher's point of view, obviously, look, you know, you and I teach different things. I'm the only person teaching my curriculum. You being an English teacher, I'm assuming there's more of you in the in the building, maybe more than one person teaching ninth grade English. Is it difficult?

Stephanie Clinise (12:04.041)

Cause I was going to say there's only one thing.

Stephanie Clinise (12:09.171)

You're welcome.

Jeffrey Bradbury (12:11.5)

I don't know if I signed up for this one yet. It's too early in the morning.

Stephanie Clinise (12:13.801)

I don't know. I think you did sign up for this.

Jeffrey Bradbury (12:17.902)

Going back to the AI, you know, it's, is it different trying to use AI to create materials, create questions, knowing that the same course with a different teacher is not having those experiences, I would assume that at some point, everybody has to read Romeo and Juliet, here's the same test, here's the same homework is, you know, is there some point where it's okay for you to be a little different than your peers?

Stephanie Clinise (12:21.554)

Yeah.

Stephanie Clinise (12:48.775)

Yes, the short answer is yes. Of course we can be a little bit different as we just saw with the old personality here. I am who I am and I'm always going to be that way. And the way that I approach teaching on a daily basis is going to have my spin on it, right? But we are standardized along this is the unit test. This is the skill that needs to be taught and it needs to be taught with this text. So yes, there's an element of I can review

when we talk about those spaces. like I go in and I create a space to review for a test, but it's the same test we're all taking. Like if that makes more sense. So I can have that piece of it. So we said that there's only one of me. You're right. There's six ninth grade English teachers. So there are six different people with different experiences, like different lengths of time in the classroom, different.

They've sat through different rollouts of different tech and different ideas and different ways of approaching the content. So yeah, we all have a certain lens. So yeah, I think that AI can simply support us getting on that same page with reviewing for the test, with helping us hone in on like, hey, is this a good test question? One of the things that AI does when you're talking about we're all getting these different experiences, but we're all giving the same...

Like we're all supposed to be meeting the same criteria. One of the things that the programs we utilize is insights. And so we can see very quickly as before, it just took more time. That's what we're doing is a speeding up a process here. We look at the test questions. Did Ms. Clenice's class, you know, they all tanked questions 14 and 15. What about the other teachers who gave this test? How did your students do? Is the deficit on the side of the students learning or is the deficit on the side of the teachers?

ability to push the information, right? Is it on me? Is it on the test? Is the test question a weak question? And I've been able to use, we have been like, you okay, I feel like I'm studying over myself because I'm trying to organize my thoughts. Yeah, we all give the same information. We get the information back. We look at the insights in our PLCs. We have that conversation of where did your students struggle? Is it the same place as mine? If not, where was the deficit? Where was the loss? What was the miss? And I think that

Stephanie Clinise (15:08.903)

Yes, I love using it on a day-to-day basis with these fun little prompts with the kids, helping them review, among other things I've done with it. But at the end of the day, we're looking at it from that perspective of how is this supporting all of us, even though our day-to-day might look different.

Jeffrey Bradbury (15:25.1)

And when you're working with your colleagues, some may be in the AI space, some might have dabbled in the schools and the magic schools and stuff like that. Are you in a position where you can say, hey, look at this thing that I'm doing? Or are you more like sitting in the background, just waiting for the room to come up? Or what was that like the last couple months of school trying to figure out how to use AI, but knowing that not everybody has yet embraced it?

Stephanie Clinise (15:50.506)

Well, I think that you bring up a really good point, too, of not everyone's embracing it. I mean, there are students who don't like it. I used one of the programs and the kids, one of the kids said to me, he's like, I don't like seeing art that AI made. Like, I don't want to do this. And, you know, I sat with that. was like, I get it. I said, listen, we're not in this for the art. The art is just background art. Yeah, I get it. I would rather see that made by a person as well. So it's top to bottom where people are and are not getting on board with it. I think it's pretty clear from the type of person that

I am, like I'm not sitting in the back and waiting for an opportunity. am front row, like I'm pushing up and saying, we are tired, we are exhausted, we are trying to be the best versions of ourselves in the classroom, at home, out in the world. This is to lighten our load. I don't want to spend 30 minutes building a spreadsheet so we can all see which question the kids got wrong. I want the 30 seconds, here it is. What do we do with that information? Now we can spend that time rather than analyzing data.

Analyzing the question, looking at, what did you do to review the dramatic irony in Act 3? We can talk about that then and have conversations about content rather than conversations about how to build the data out in the most effective way. So yeah, some people might push back, but you can only push back so fast and so hard when it's being done for us right in front of you. Because after a while, we're like, what are you arguing, pants?

Jeffrey Bradbury (17:14.734)

And I think.

hoping that this is the year where for many school districts, that is the beginning transition, right? There's some school districts that are going both feet in the water. Let's do this. Everything is open. You know, we had an announcement over the summer last few weeks here where you know, Gemini is now deeply embedded into Google Classroom. Obviously, co pilot is now a huge part of Microsoft Teams, you have these free applications. You know, the school AI is the magic. These are coming and they're here.

But for many school districts, it's a matter of how do you roll this concept out. And I know for many school districts, it's, you know, once a month, we might talk about it in a faculty meeting. And like, that's never gonna happen. If you say, I'm going to spend 10 minutes in a faculty meeting, maybe in October. Dude, you're already seven years behind at this point, if you don't have a plan, if you don't have any guidelines, if you don't have a rollout situation. If you were to give a school advice,

on how to roll out some kind of a staff led, not talking students yet, but training your staff on how to bring these concepts in. What would you suggest?

Stephanie Clinise (18:27.913)

I mean, I would suggest it first, you know, find somebody within each department. It doesn't need to be a department chair. You know what mean? Find somebody within the department who is interested, who has already been dabbling in these because I can tell you in my own district, I'm talking to people, every department has at least one or two teachers within it who have been, hey, I've been deep diving in on this. This is so cool, right? So you have somebody and I'm going to be doing a new teacher induction, a professional development training on how we're rolling it out.

And my best guess or my best advice is to have your teachers bring like two to three things that are time consuming, exhaustive, tedious, things that wear on them that they would like to find a way to expedite and show them, have somebody within your department, whatever it is, show them how we will use the program that you've chosen, right? Whatever it is, how that will eliminate some of that stress from you.

show them how we are going to use these tools to just lift a little burden. What do they talk about? Decision fatigue. Like we have to make 800 decisions a day. How can we, I mean, that's a random number. I'm sure we make more. I go to you, I say, I do a do now writing prompt every single day. How can you expedite that for me? I can't read 75 topic sentences that say the same thing every day. How can you expedite that for me?

Bring them, bring those questions to the person in your department, in your building, whatever it is, and show them how this product, whatever the product is, the platform, whether it's Gemini, Chatgy, whatever it is, right? How can this ease that burden a little bit? That's how you get your teachers on board.

Jeffrey Bradbury (20:12.55)

I think for me, it's going to be showing the teachers the stuff that's already in front of them, rather than saying, here's something new. Just as an example, maybe you can you can think of a Microsoft way of doing this. But you know, recently in Google Classroom, they they snuck in an analytics tab. Great. It's not much right. But now you can see overall your percentages and who has turned in stuff and what the grades are.

Stephanie Clinise (20:19.336)

Yeah.

Jeffrey Bradbury (20:38.968)

But now you can take those numbers and then start to manipulate, okay, well, this kid really does need this. And this kid decided that, you know, these questions need to get some support and things. There's a lot of different ways that we can take the tools. And you know, when I was a coach, and I still consider myself a coach, it's how can I save you five minutes? Okay, now how can I save you 10 minutes? How can I save you a half an hour?

and then start to creep that in rather than putting everybody in a room and go, this is magic school and this is what it can do. And let's just start with this activity, because nobody wants to spend time starting with a new activity. It's the beginning of the year, things are crazy. AI is this cloud that suddenly everybody has to learn. You're hearing stories about people who are retiring because of this because they just don't want to learn it anymore. If I can save you five minutes of time by hitting one or two buttons.

how can I help you with that? And for me, it's always been, you know, let's let's take our time. But you know, if you really want to do 10 minutes of free time, this is what you can do and just kind of entice them here and there. But also, you know, we talked earlier about setting up goals and making sure that you know, this has to be part of our school goals. This has to be part of our district goals is getting students and teachers to understand that this is modern teaching. It's here. Here we go.

Stephanie Clinise (22:03.741)

I I feel like that's, I feel like that's like super aligned and just a much cleaner way of saying what I'm trying to say too though. Yeah, like what's already in front of you. Cause I wasn't sure what you meant by that at first. Like you mean what's in front of you on the platforms you're already using or like what's in front of you. I thought maybe like content or.

Jeffrey Bradbury (22:17.154)

What? Right. I mean, I remember going through last year to a bunch of teachers and saying, Did you know that classroom now has basic analytics? No, I've never seen that. Did you know that that Google Classroom has something called practice sets? Nobody really uses them that I've ever come across. But they're there. And you can use them and in five or six minutes, now you have this thing that you can give to a kid and it's got a little bit of feedback to it and

This is great. Exactly. So how do you use the tools that are there? You know, in the in my book impact standards, we talk about coaching, we talk about digital learning, it has to be seen as a through, not as an and right. So it's not I'm teaching this year, and I'm going to learn AI, it's no I'm teaching this year through the help of artificial intelligence or through the help of Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams or whatever the application that you want.

if we start to look at these programs as a through it's, okay, this is how you get home earlier. This is how you know you're not there till five or 30 in the afternoon. This is how you write. But as an English teacher,

Stephanie Clinise (23:26.619)

I I think that's I love that. This is gonna get me home a little quicker. mean, time is not something that we can go out and collect. So if I can find a way to get it back where I can, I'm going to. Time is just, the most valuable thing.

Jeffrey Bradbury (23:32.014)

Gonna get me home.

Jeffrey Bradbury (23:41.686)

And I'm curious for yourself, you know, do you as an English teacher still feel the need? And I hope the answer is yes. But do you still feel the need to go through every single kids essay word for word? Or are you comfortable sticking it in a application that will at least get the the grading, you know, it'll at least final the spelling mistakes. And that's one less thing that you have to do.

Stephanie Clinise (24:11.049)

Okay, this has been a conversation that has been so big. No, you're like, uh-oh, here she goes. Here we go again. No, so here's the thing. I love being able to put their essays through something, right? But the most important thing that I say to them is that is not me. That is a tool that is gonna give you a little bit of proofreading, a little suggestion. I am the law. I grade it. I read it. Just because AI says it's good, I don't know that it's true.

Jeffrey Bradbury (24:15.82)

Here we go.

Stephanie Clinise (24:39.773)

And just because AI says your quote isn't strong enough doesn't mean I agree with it. So no, under no circumstances is anybody but me grading that essay. I get, as an English teacher and I think social studies and anywhere where the students are writing, we get to know our students through their writing. I would never want to give that up, right? Like I love that piece of it, but do I like it that perhaps it will flag them of, you only used one quote.

Okay, flag them for that. Tell them they forgot to put quotation marks. Tell them they've got the citation wrong. That's fine. That's okay. Like that's that to me is baseline stuff that can take an entire class period where now I'm getting almost their second draft of it. Like I'm reading the words because the words are what make the person right. Our words and our thoughts and our actions are what make us who we are. And I'm going to help you organize them and I'm going to help you get your thoughts onto paper.

But if this thing can help you spell, because we're in ninth, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, yeah, I'm going to take that support.

Jeffrey Bradbury (25:44.782)

I think it's the little things, right? As you mentioned, if if if your subject and verb agreement isn't there, let that one do the job for you. Your job is to help with the storytelling. Your job is to help with the thoughts. Your job is to help out with with getting the point across, not sitting there with a red pen going up the punctuation and you know, IB for all that stuff. I know, look at me, right? But all of those things. It's a tool, right? And I think we have to keep thinking about that. This is a tool, not a substitute.

Stephanie Clinise (26:06.321)

Yeah, right.

Stephanie Clinise (26:14.057)

It could never be a substitute because when I give that we read Fahrenheit 451 at the end of school year, which is just chef's kiss with this AI conversation, right? But I had the kids, was like, let's look at the theme of, I always found this difference between a topic and a theme. Like a topic is ignorance. What is Ray Bradbury saying about ignorance? That's the theme. So I am now able to spend an entire day on building theme statements.

because I no longer need to save that day for doing those little edits. And we can deep dive into this. And every single kid is like, I may have three different essays or short essays, whatever it was, where they're coming up with these themes about ignorance and they're all slightly different. And so much of the lens of the student is showing up because they could spend that time because some of the details that they've already learned can be reinforced elsewhere.

Jeffrey Bradbury (27:09.196)

When we're looking at the next couple weeks here, planning out how we're going to start the year, or I think for many teachers, it's going to be spending the next few weeks dreading that the first year, the first couple of days is starting, right?

Stephanie Clinise (27:21.226)

We're not treading it. It's not our business yet. Okay, we don't need to do it.

Jeffrey Bradbury (27:25.346)

We still have to get through Jurassic World Superman and the Fantastic Four then we can think about the next school year coming I think is where I am at this point.

Stephanie Clinise (27:33.711)

I am thinking about it on August 21st. Just kidding. I'm just kidding. Like, I mean, you know that too. I'm like out here at like emailing you and talking about all the other trainings I'm doing. Like I'm going to a summit next week and I'm really looking forward to all this. Like all joking aside, like I love this job. I love summer, but I get to use this summer to kind of do the things I like about education and see what I can bring in.

Jeffrey Bradbury (27:37.326)

You

Jeffrey Bradbury (27:57.698)

Well, my question on all this is how are we spending our our summertime preparing? I mean, for instance, I'm trying to learn as much as I can about prompting, I'm trying to learn as much as I can about Gemini and all the tools that I have. I'm doing that through there it is the word personal projects, you know, I'm using Gemini to work with my kids to build an interactive game so that they can play with each other.

I'm using Gemini to recreate some recipes. I'm using Gemini to, you know, I'm using it and trying to get these prompts in there. And yeah, I think August 21 comes around, I'll start to do more prompting on the school subjects. But right now I'm trying to figure out, okay, how can it help me? Again, when I'm training people, I don't just start my trainings by doing curriculum stuff. It's, hey, put a prompt in on your favorite book, put a prompt in on a vacation, you know,

something that is more relatable to kind of draw my audience in. I'm doing that for myself right now. You know, my kids are using notion databases to organize all the Marvel movies. And I'm using that to teach them prompt engineering and a little bit of how AI works. How do you see yourself getting through the next few weeks and trying out some of these things, maybe on a yoga project, maybe to help you out with descriptions?

for your videos and for thumbnail, anything like that? Where do you see yourself over the next few weeks just trying to figure out how the whole AI world works?

Stephanie Clinise (29:27.881)

like want to pull up my history with chat GPT now. Well, one of the things, one of the things I've used it for very recently is, just going to give myself a quick shout out here of I am not a good cook. I am, it's not for me. It's more art. I can bake because it's science. And if you do it right, it works.

Okay, like if you don't use the baking soda, it doesn't do what it's supposed to do. But with cooking, I was like, it said four cloves of garlic. Why doesn't it taste good? So what I've been doing is going in and like asking it of like, okay, I have these ingredients or I have leftover taco meat. Like what are some things I can do with it? And then it gives me ideas and I say, I don't like those. It's too spicy. Give me ones that are. So it's like, I'm starting to use it and like giving it a basic prompt. And what it spits back then informs me of where I'm going next of like.

We get stuff left over from my little pre-K graduation event for my son's class. It's fine. You know what? Sometimes you just got to throw a party for no reason. Or your kid is the reason, whatever. So we had like all these leftover things, like accoutrement, like food. And I was like, what do I do with this? So I started asking him, like, what can I make with leftover ground beef? And then it's like, you have, it's giving me stuff. And I said, I don't have like X, Y, and Z ingredients. And then like, as I'm moving through it, I'm like, okay, now.

I've seen all the different types of responses, maybe I'm starting to lose the thread. And then I honed it in, I'm like, have these four things, what can I make in less than an hour? And now it understands what I'm trying to do. And it's like, I'm not, I tell you, I'm a beginner cook or things like that. Like I have to tell it who I am.

Jeffrey Bradbury (30:59.82)

Meanwhile, it's...

right. So it took you two hours to create a prompt that says I have only an hour to cook.

Stephanie Clinise (31:06.089)

So I mean like...

Stephanie Clinise (31:10.793)

I will only spend an hour cooking. 50 minutes of that better be in the oven. Listen, we all have our strengths. I will read every book, okay? But I just don't tell my mom. Yeah, but like it's helping me where I'm struggling, where I don't have that creative lens when it comes to food, for example, or I'll say like, hey, I need to get groceries for the week. Just I think using it in your day to day like that has been a good.

Jeffrey Bradbury (31:26.135)

is not recording.

Stephanie Clinise (31:39.978)

way to train myself. I'm like, okay, like you need to be specific. You need to give it parameters. Um, we're getting ready for like a vacation, like a short vacation. So one of the things I want to do is ask it like, what would I need to pack for a trip to, you know, the Jersey shore for three days and the house has this many bedrooms. Um, you know, I want to play with it in that regard so that when I am asking it again to help me make a multiple choice,

know, formative assessment on the first three chapters of Animal Farm, I know exactly what to input into that.

And mean, that's the stuff I've already been practicing those last six months of the school year. But try it on your own life.

Jeffrey Bradbury (32:19.138)

We'd love to know what you guys are looking at you.

Let me put a quick edit. Sorry about that. I didn't mean to jump over you.

Stephanie Clinise (32:23.709)

Hmm.

Go ahead. I'm always running my math.

I can't help it. She's a yapper.

Jeffrey Bradbury (32:36.76)

We'd love to know what your thoughts are about using artificial intelligence in your classroom, maybe how you've been testing it out, what your favorite applications are. There are so many that are out there from the Geminis to the Copilus to the School AIs, Magic Schools. There's a lot of different things that are out there going on. What is your favorite? How are you going to be using that? Please head over to teachercast.net slash contact and let us know your thoughts. Stephanie, you know, there's a lot of things that we could talk about as we go through here.

But if there was one piece of advice that you could give anybody for the rest of the summer, when it comes to creating, playing with testing it out, speak to the audience today. What can we be doing to get ready for the next school year? And it might just be wait till August 21.

Stephanie Clinise (33:23.251)

Listen, if you want to wait till August 21st, be my guest. I love to go in and ask it questions and ask it to help me do some mundane tasks just to see how it's going to talk to me. So why not ask it to plan something for you? Ask it to help you maybe something more interesting than cooking with leftovers, but ask it something that you're like, I'm genuinely curious about what this will say.

Ask it something about to say, give it five books that you read this summer. Five books you read this year and be like, hey, can I get five more suggestions of something like this? Just something you're interested in, ask it, see what the outcome is. It's not gonna cost you anything but a little bit of your time.

Jeffrey Bradbury (34:04.92)

I think

Jeffrey Bradbury (34:08.424)

I think the one thing that teachers need to remember as we're learning this stuff, every AI is coded differently. Right. So if you're having a hard time putting a prompt into one thing, try something else, right? Like if if chat GPT isn't giving it to you, try it on co pilot, try it on school AI, right? Like, school AI, magic school, those are great educational products. They wouldn't be my first choice for doing recipes, right? Like, they're not coded for that.

Stephanie Clinise (34:16.53)

yeah, that's so important to remember.

Stephanie Clinise (34:28.872)

Yeah.

Stephanie Clinise (34:33.639)

And they

Stephanie Clinise (34:39.453)

Now, and they do interact differently with you, even though they're both education, I think they're the limited language models and all of that. And it's still, when I ask one program, because I have access to quite a few different ones, they all give me different information. It's not wrong, it's just a different response. So yeah, try it out. I mean, I have co-pilot on my personal computer and I love to ask it questions too. It hasn't helped me with my recipes yet though, I'll get back to you on that.

Jeffrey Bradbury (35:04.674)

Well, we'll have to have that as the follow up artificial intelligence created recipes with Stephanie coming to a yoga YouTube channel near you today. Steph, where can people reach out and get ahold of you?

Stephanie Clinise (35:19.739)

Well, I am on TikTok and Instagram at Mrs. Clint East. I am a little. What is it? I got my YouTube channel that's all yoga right now. I'm hoping to post some more stuff like more student friendly for education, but we'll get there later. And then of course, always Mrs. Clint East at gmail.com. And it's just if you search Mrs. I'm the only one. So it's not a popular last name. You'll find me.

Jeffrey Bradbury (35:45.398)

And if you're looking for links, we're going to make sure that we have all of this stuff over in our show notes, you can head on over to teachercast.net slash podcast for more information. Check out all of our shows, hit that like and subscribe button. You can find this show on Apple podcasts, Spotify and our videos are always over on teachercast.net slash YouTube. If you're looking for a good book this summer, don't forget impact standards is now available. You can head on over to teachercast.net slash standards. Pick it up from Amazon today, both on hardcover and in paperback. And you are going to have a great time. Steph

thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate your time. Please come back on but love to continue the conversation.

Stephanie Clinise (36:22.569)

You know I'm ready to chat, so please have me back.

Jeffrey Bradbury (36:26.978)

And that wraps up this episode of Digital Learning today on behalf of Stefan, everybody here on TeacherCast. My name is Jeff Bradbury, reminding you guys to keep up the great work in your classrooms and continue sharing your passions with your students.