Rich McCue

Generative AI in K-12: Student Learning + Teacher & Admin Productivity

A double edge sword

Generative AI (GenAI) is top of mind as many educators struggle to address it with their students’ assignments, whether they don’t want their learners to use GenAI or if they want to model the responsible and ethical use of GenAI.

Workshop participants will explore the use of GenAI to assist with Student learning, and administrative support, as well as consider ethical and legal considerations. Participants will gain a basic understanding of GenAI and in the hands-on portion of the workshop, participants will explore GenAI tool usage and output evaluation for accuracy and biases. The workshop will also encourage informed, responsible GenAI use.

Learning Objectives

  • Understand GenAI: Define GenAI’s strengths & its limitations.
  • Using GenAI Effectively: Describe possible use cases for GenAI in school settings for administrators, teachers, & learners.
  • Practical Applications: Demonstrate how to write effective prompts for GenAI tools for academic, instructional, & administrative purposes.
  • Evaluate Quality & Reliability: Demonstrate how to critically evaluate the outputs of GenAI tools, for things like accuracy, relevance, & biases.
  • Ethical & Environmental Considerations: Describe some of the issues around the responsible use of GenAI in education.
  • District GenAI Policies: Explore district-level GenAI policy templates & examples.

Presentation Slides

Here is a link to the slides from my presentation to the Island Chapter of the BC School Superintendents Association. Below the embedded slides are hands-on activities, plus links to additional resources & suggested next steps.

Hands-on Activities

If you have experience with Generative AI tools I’d recommend you check out each activity in tern and skim over the activities until you encounter something that is new or interesting to you. If you’re fairly new to using GenAI tools then I’d suggest you start working through the first activity and go from there.

GenAI Intro & Prompt Design (Intro)

If you’re fairly new to using GenAI tools then this is where you will want to start with a gentle introduction to the sorts of things GenAI could potentially help you with: GenAI: Introduction & Prompt Design (Introduction)

NotebookLM a Personal Tool for Research & Productivity (Intermediate)

Notebook LM is a great Google tool that is free for anyone to use. It allows you to specify specific documents for it to use as data sources to respond to the prompts you give it, which makes it less likely to make mistakes or hallucinate. It does so much more as well and is one of my current favourite tools. Here’s the link to the workshop materials: AI: Tools for Literature Reviews (Introduction)

  • Use the built-in prompts in the “Notebook guide” to quickly create: Briefing documents & an Audio summary of the documents in a 2-person podcast format
  • Prompt NotebookLM to create a summary based on who is the intended audience for the summary, and the purpose of the summary (for example meeting notes).
  • Summarize and analyze research literature such as journal articles, reports, presentations and videos including citations. Verify all facts and claims.
  • Summarize large numbers of short-answer survey responses, to help you quickly understand the key issues being brought up by respondents.

Transcription with Free AI Tools (Intermediate)

Transcribe audio and videos with locally installed software using the open-source and free-to-use Whisper.ai: Transcription with Free AI Tools (Intermediate)

  • Transcribe audio or video with Microsoft 365, Whisper.ai, & Zoom
  • Learn about the benefits and use cases for transcribing audio with Microsoft 365, Whisper.ai, & Zoom compared to other transcription technologies

Running GenAI Tools on Your Laptop (Advanced)

explore the use of Generative AI (GenAI) including installing and using local Generative AI software on a laptop, using specific documents as the training data for the GenAI tool, and performing sentiment analysis on free from survey questions. In the hands-on portion of the workshop, participants will explore GenAI tool usage and output evaluation for accuracy and biases: GenAI: Research Tools (Advanced)

  • Explore the use of advanced GenAI tools & techniques including installing and using local GenAI software
  • Explore GenAI tools using specific documents as the training data, analyze datasets, perform sentiment analysis on free-form survey questions, & assist with qualitative coding

Suggested Readings to Assist in Developing a District GenAI Policy

Recommended Books

Free GenAI Training from UVic Libraries

Generative AI (GenAI) tools are truly double-edged swords. They can be helpful to subject-area experts, making their work more efficient. However, for those who lack subject expertise, these tools can lead to embarrassment or worse if the facts and analysis provided by GenAI tools are not checked for accuracy.

This UVic Libraries GenAI workshop pathway series is designed to help subject area experts and non-experts, by offering foundational to advanced research & productivity skills training.

  1. GenAI: Introduction & Prompt Design (Introduction)
  2. AI: Tools for Literature Reviews (Introduction)
  3. GenAI: Spotting AI-generated content online (Introduction) – COMING SOON
  4. GenAI: NotebookLM a Personal Tool for Research & Productivity (Intermediate)
  5. Transcription with Free AI Tools (Intermediate)
  6. GenAI: Presentation & Multi-Media Tools (Intermediate) – COMING SPRING 2025
  7. AI: Tools for Literature Reviews (Advanced) – COMING SPRING 2025
  8. GenAI: Research Tools (Advanced)

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