AI Tools: A Review of Magic School
This week I explored the website, Magic School, an AI tool specifically designed to support teachers an students, writing lesson plans, creating tailored activities, and many more! To begin I generated a math lesson plans for 1st grade students. The Lesson Plan is linked below.
https://app.magicschool.ai/tools/lesson-plan-generator?share=dc69ed97-4163-4ae8-8f0a-800c27a202b7
I used the following standards:
Oklahoma Academic Standards: Math: 1.N.1 Count, compare, and represent whole numbers up to 100, with an emphasis on grouping in terms of tens and ones. 1.N.1.1 Recognize numbers to 20 without counting (subitize) the quantity of structured arrangements.
Lesson Plan Review:
At first glance, the lesson plan provides good bones for a lesson plan. It connects well with the Oklahoma Academic Standards and has good idea for introduction, practice together as a class, as well as independent practice. That being said, it does not connect the ISTE Standard at all. It is implied that a technology tool is utilized to practice as a whole group, but there is not instruction for what to utilize of how to engage students. I would suggest adding a digital math manipulative tool such as Polypad. Students can create their own dot patterns on the board and give them more hands on practice with subitizing. Overall, I think the lesson plan that Magic School generated is a good start. However, it needs an educators support to take it to a level that truly benefits student learning.
Additional Tool Review:
After exploring the Lesson Plan Generator, I tried out the text leveler. This tool alters passages of text to a desired reading level. This tool could be incredibly beneficial when working with student reading groups. For example, the teacher could find a passage of text that aligns with what all students are learning in science or social studies. Then, the teacher can input the passage into the text leveler and create a passage of text that will meet each student at their own reading level allowing them to engage in the content in a way that is appropriate for them. This allows all students to be reading about the same topic, but makes it accessible for everyone regardless of their level.
Reflection:
Magic School seems like a neat site to help brainstorm new ideas or create templates to save teachers time and energy. For that reason, I would share it with colleagues and encourage them to explore the site. Some tools however, I would discourage teacher use of. For example, any involvement where the human component matters, such as parent communication, should not be generated by an AI. Parents put their children in our care and they deserve our full attention and consideration when we are communicating with them. While Magic School seems neat, it does not seem like a worthy use of student time. In my opinion, their time should be spent engaging with their peers, not an AI tool. Magic School appears to be a helpful tool for teachers to save time in the initial planning of lesson plans. It also has tools to make learning more fun such as a jeopardy generator. Overall, Magic School is a fun tool to have in the teacher toolbelt, a helpful support, but not a replacement for intentional lesson plan creation and teacher instruction.
I too, do see Magic School as a good tool to brainstorm and help develop but it cannot replace the human component of instruction. I appreciated Kolb reiterating that technology is meant to be a tool that elevates and extends learning opportunities.
ReplyDeleteI agree that MagicSchool is a good tool, but that there are better tools available or that could be used as supplements.
ReplyDeleteI had Magic School create a lesson plan on contractions for second graders, and it did a decent job of aligning with both Oklahoma and ISTE standards. But, I read more than once from others that they had some errors on theirs, mainly with the time frames that it suggested. I do agree that it is a great way to get ideas started on different lesson plans. I am glad that you checked out the text leveler; what a neat tool to use! Like you said, you could take a passage and adjust it for all the reading levels in your classroom.
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