🤖 How I'm using AI to write my book

📢 Announcing: A NEW email newsletter from Ditch That Textbook 📰

🖍️ Do you work with K-2 students or teachers?

Our new "What's New in K-2" newsletter is your weekly source for fresh ideas and practical resources designed to spark joy and learning in your classroom!

Each week, we'll dive into a curated collection of helpful content to make your teaching life a little easier and a lot more engaging.

Inside each edition, you'll discover:

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Don't miss out on these weekly gems! Subscribe now to receive "What's New in K-2" directly in your inbox and unlock a treasure trove of helpful resources. Let's make every week a wonderful learning adventure together!

📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ Cheating, Clarity, and the Role of AI (via What Teachers Have to Say Substack) — Author and educator Jacob Carr writes about how a shared scale builds trust and expands possibilities in the classroom.

2️⃣ Anthropic Education Report: How educators use Claude (via Anthropic) — They’re building custom tools with AI and automating drudgery. Some are automating grading (while some are deeply opposed).

3️⃣ 6 AI-powered Google tools for the classroom (via Ditch That Textbook) — Learn about updated AI-powered tools that educators and students are using in the classroom.

📢 Your voice: Cross-curricular work

Last week’s poll: How can AI best help teachers do cross-curricular work?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 See connections between content areas (20)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Brainstorm project ideas (5)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ See the step-by-step process (2)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Troubleshoot problem areas (0)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other ... (1)

See connections between content areas: I think this is a critical area in which kids need guidance so they can understand the importance of what is being taught. The more connections made - the better a topic is learned!

See the step-by-step process: I would just love for more teachers to see that AI can make anything a little easier for them. All they have to do is ask. — Marty Geoghegan

See connections between content areas: I think it's a great opportunity, a window into how interconnected things are and students often miss that when a teacher isn't demonstrating or detailed those connections. I'd love to see more PBL activities or Authentic Learning activities happen as a result! — Chad Sussex

See connections between content areas: AI allows us to search for connections and standards across areas we might not be as familiar with. It gives us confidence in new projects, ideas and partnerships as cross-curricular, even when we may not have recognized it!

What would you like to read in AI for Admins?

What’s a topic you’d like to see covered here? Hit REPLY to this email and let me know.

Have you done anything you’d like to share with the AI for Admins community? Hit REPLY and let me know.

Would you like to write a guest post to support and equip AI for Admins readers? Hit REPLY and let me know.

🗳 Poll: AI for data for school leaders

I NEED YOUR HELP!

After last week’s newsletter, reader Michael Tornetto hit “reply” and emailed me. (Yes, you can do this. And yes, they go to me. And yes, I read them!)

Each week, I always ask you … what would you like to read here?

His response: “AI for data analysis.” (Great topic.)

“AI as a tool for admin and/or counselors to sort through, flag, draw conclusions from data compiled in staff or student applications … Heck maybe local scholarship applications, or local grant applications too. Moral implications to this as well could be explored or discussed with some guidelines perhaps...do's and don'ts...?”

I emailed him right back and said: “I want to jump right in and write this right now! I have lots of ideas.”

But first, I want to collect what you have to share. Use the poll below — and please use the reply/comments to give details. I’ll share results in next week’s newsletter. Thanks!

Instructions:

1. Please vote on this week’s poll. It just takes a click!

2. Optional: Explain your vote / provide context / add details in a comment afterward.

3. Optional: Include your name in your comment so I can credit you if I use your response. (I’ll try to pull names from email addresses. If you don’t want me to do that, please say so.)

The role of AI in my new AI literacy book

I'm writing a new book! 📚 And although I wrote about AI in my sixth book, AI for Educators, I still wrote almost the entire thing myself.

This is my first book where I'm really collaborating with AI in the writing process.

I want to set some firm boundaries ... but I also want to use AI as a helpful resource in all the areas where it makes sense to use it.

Here's how I'm using (and not using) AI to brainstorm, ideate, and write it -- while maintaining my humanity.

Quick introduction to the book

First, the working title (subject to change): AI Literacy in Any Classroom.

The concept: We don't need to be tech teachers -- or trained in computer science -- to help students grasp AI literacy. It can be done in small, incremental shifts in any classroom -- any grade level, any content area.

(I know because I've done in myself -- in my own high school Spanish classroom.)

You can follow progress and get updates right here in the AI for Admins newsletter (or in my Ditch That Textbook email newsletter: ditch.link/join).

Here are 5 big decisions I've made in the writing process ...

1. To capture ideas on the run (literally):

I'm a runner. I'll run anywhere from 4 miles to 10 miles on the rural county roads around my home.

On my runs, I've been using ChatGPT like an interactive podcast / notetaker / writing coach. I open the app and use my voice dictation button (the little microphone button on the keyboard) to voice-to-text my ideas. Sometimes I have to slow to a walk, but often I'll keep running and just get my ideas down for review later.

AI LITERACY LESSON: We’re going to be able to access AI models in more and more places. (Plus, they’re going to operate behind the scenes many times when we don’t even realize it.) We can help our students understand that there are lots of ways to get support from AI — and there are implications (positive and negative) to using them.

And ChatGPT's response? Well, I'm cautious about how I have used AI in my initial brainstorm phase (see #2) ...

2. To prompt me, not to write for me:

Early on, I knew that I didn't want ChatGPT to be so cheerfully helpful that it would write the whole book for me. So I gave it a specific format whenever I brain dumped new ideas:

• Restate what you heard me say

• Suggest misconceptions I might have (or my readers might have)

• Suggest areas where I could expand

• Tell me how this new idea might fit in the overall book

It really, really, REALLY wants to make an outline for my book. It has asked me several times. One time, I even told it NO ... that's human work and not for you to do.

AI LITERACY LESSON: AI doesn’t have to be a “work completion machine” for us. If we prompt it to, it’ll become our coach … our thought partner … the one who nudges us and provokes our thinking. And if we use it in that way, the thinking is still ours — very human — and keeps us in the middle.

3. To identify holes in my book:

As humans, we're really good at seeing what's there ... but not so good at seeing what's NOT there. Several times, I've asked it to tell me what I'm missing in the student AI literacy conversation. I've even asked it to root its response in guiding documents, like the UNESCO AI competency framework for students.

AI LITERACY LESSON: Instead of using AI to do the work for us, we can use it to help identify the work that we still need to do — so we can do the appropriate amount of it ourselves.

4. To do background research:

Right now, I'm working on a chapter about how to fit little nuggets of wisdom about AI into day-to-day classroom conversations. I want to offer suggestions and examples on a variety of grade levels, but I hesitated ...

I was operating under some assumptions about the cognitive development of students of certain ages, and I didn't want to operate under assumptions.

So I asked ChatGPT to describe the cognitive development of certain ages, complete with appropriate classroom tasks and discussion levels. I did a prompt for high school, middle school, upper elementary, and primary -- because I knew that it would be more detailed that way (than if I asked for all four in one prompt).

AI LITERACY LESSON: When using AI as our research assistant, we have to be careful about accuracy and bias. Even when it generalizes and gives you a broad summary of the results, ask for sources. Ask it to look up what it gave you so it can verify. (Or just do the verification work yourself.) Ask it in a few different ways. You might find that, even after this verification process, you’re saving time — and getting better results. (But if you don’t, you might revise your process — or do the work yourself.)

5. To speak in the voice of my future readers:

I've done this with keynote speeches and presentations, too. I'll tell ChatGPT about the chapter ... or overall book ... or presentation ... or keynote ... and I'll ask it to write a response, in the style of a classroom teacher telling another teacher about it in the teacher's lounge during lunch. Casual. Conversational. Honest. About what was helpful, what was impractical, what they might use, etc.

I know that it's still fiction. But it does help me see a new perspective ... and hearing a fictitious teacher's voice talking about my work can motivate me and keep my focus where it needs to be.

AI LITERACY LESSON: AI will take on the voice of just about anyone for you. It’s a creative writing exercise for the AI model … and that kind of work is a strength of large language models. Remember: it isn’t an actual human’s words. Each individual human has their own unique perspectives and lived experiences that color the nuance of their response. Sometimes, the “average human,” the aggregate of what AI thinks that people would say? Sometimes, that average response isn’t at all what an actual human would really say.

BONUS: My “AI literacy” project in ChatGPT

I’ve been working with projects in ChatGPT lately, and I created a broad “AI literacy” project to guide my work in this area.

WHAT’S A PROJECT?: It’s a workspace where you gather files, custom instructions, and chats related to the purpose of the space. For me, whenever I work with ChatGPT about AI literacy, I’m doing that work in my AI literacy project. For example …

• Files: I’ve downloaded documents with outlines of my speeches, PDFs of speech slides, links to articles I’ve written, etc. By gathering all of those resources in the files, ChatGPT is able to focus its responses — and refer back to those files — when I chat with it inside the project.

• Custom instructions: I haven’t used custom instructions for this chat, but it’s a place where you can give it guidelines for the format of responses, topics to discuss in that project, etc. If you don’t want to write the same instructions over and over again, you can specify them in these custom instructions.

• Chats: Whenever I want to chat with ChatGPT about AI literacy, I’ll start that chat in my AI literacy project. That way, it’s informed by all of the other chats. It’ll bring up ideas from past chats and refer to files I’ve uploaded.

All in all: Trying to maintain the right balance

It's interesting ... practicing all of those things I've been preaching. In the book (and in my in-person AI workshops), I talk about human thinking before AI. I talk about emphasizing the process. I talk about preserving what's most important -- your humanity -- against letting AI take the wheel.

Now I'm having to walk the walk.

People don't realize all of the little micro decisions you have to make in work like this, like:

• Should I ask it this -- or brainstorm it myself?

• Am I letting it be helpful -- or take over something important?

• At what point does inspiration turn into content ... and a level of attribution is necessary?

• Will I be willing to put my name on this book and call it mine after all of this?

I'm trying to maintain my north star throughout this process so that, in the end, I'll be just as proud of the work that I did in my previous six books.