Tidbit: Still waiting for the right moment to try AI? This is it.

 

If you’ve been watching the AI conversation unfold from the sidelines—maybe feeling unsure where to begin or wondering if it’s already too late—I’ve got good news: it’s not.

Join me Wednesday, April 16 at noon ET for a remote hands-on Workinar designed for educators who are ready to try out generative AI but don’t want the hype or the overwhelm.

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Teaching: This Just Happened

Lately, I’ve been saying that keeping up with AI feels a bit like being stuck on a treadmill that only speeds up. Just when I think I’m catching my breath, something new barrels in. In the past few weeks alone, I’ve heard about “vibecoding”—the emerging ability to speak complex code into existence like some kind of techno-conjuring spell—and OpenAI’s latest image tools, which have taken deepfakes from disconcerting to downright uncanny.

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Teaching: Real World Connections, Active Learning, and Collaborative Knowledge-Building

During Open Doors, Adam Walke (Economics) observed Julie Mujic (Global Commerce) lead an engaging and interactive session in GC 201: Elements of Commerce. At the beginning of class, Julie asked students to volunteer to briefly summarize articles they had recently read in the business news. This warm-up activity encourages: 
  • Transfer of Knowledge – Learning is more effective when students can connect abstract theories to concrete examples.

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Teaching: Unpacking Complexity

For many students, analyzing a complex scientific paper can feel like climbing a mountain—steep, daunting, and sometimes overwhelming. Heather Rhodes (Biology and Neuroscience) talked about how she guides her students up that mountain at our recent Teaching Matters debriefing the Open Doors program.

In her Neuro 312 course, which Karen Spierling (History) observed, Heather led students to analyze challenging primary research literature.

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Teaching: Validity Matters More than Cheating

In a CfLT-sponsored webinar on assessment and gen-AI on March 3, Leon Furze (longtime educator, education administrator, and now Ph.D. candidate working on a dissertation on AI in writing instruction) shared an academic article, Validity Matters More than Cheating,” which argues that academic integrity needs to focus on “assessment validity” rather than “cheating.” Cheating is a question of moral integrity, whereas validity is a process by which educators ensure that students have met learning outcomes.

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Teaching: Kids These Days Can’t Read

I’ve been in education long enough to recognize this as a familiar faculty lament. Over the years, I’ve heard numerous concerns:

  • Kids these days can’t compute a square root.
  • Kids these days can’t graph (or factor) a third-degree polynomial.
  • Kids these days can’t use an abacus.

You see the pattern. It seems that the longer we teach, the more likely we are to encounter this sentiment.

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Teaching: Responsive Teaching in Action

No one responded after Michael Tangeman posed a thought-provoking question to the whole class and allowed for appropriate wait time. Instead of moving on or answering the question himself, he skillfully pivoted, asking students to turn to a neighbor and discuss their thoughts first. This simple shift transformed the classroom dynamic—creating space for engagement, rather than silence.

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Teaching: Magic School AI

Despite Sydney Green’s proficiency with AI prompting, she often finds extracting specific tasks from advanced models like ChatGPT or Gemini to be time-consuming and sometimes unproductive. To address this, she turned to Magic School AI, a platform offering over 80 AI-powered tools designed to assist educators with lesson planning, assignment creation, and material generation. It’s user-friendly, click-based interface allows users to interact without the need for specialized prompts.

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