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Weekly Reflection #4 – Professional Development Sessions

ceadrahardardt

Week of February 13th

This week, we did not have a formal class, and instead we attended virtual professional development sessions hosted by Focused Education Recourses. I attended two sessions, one on AI literacy lessons, and one hosted by the National Film Board! It was great to participate in this event as I was surrounded by my peers, both pre-service and in-service teachers and educators, who were able to offer interesting perspectives and opinions.

AI Literacy Lessons

The first session I attended was on AI. While it was interesting to sit in on, I felt that the practices and lessons that were encouraged were very similar to what I have heard many times before. We spoke about equity, the environment, and ethics. That being said, there were a few moments that stood out for me.

In previous weeks, we have discussed privacy. AI is trained on statistics and probability, and with personal language models of AI, the model trains on information inputted by the user. As pointed out by the host of the session, students need to be made aware that the information they put in should not contain any personal data, as the model will train on their data, causing an alarm for privacy.

While we touched on many factors of AI usage in the classroom, I’ve noticed that there has been minimal discussion on the cognitive effects of AI use, especially in school-aged children. I’m curious if this has been looked over as the effects have yet to emerge at a significant level.

I checked out this podcast, which discusses what I am curious about: how does AI effect cognitive development in children? https://www.childrenandscreens.org/learn-explore/research/ais-impact-on-childrens-social-and-cognitive-development-ying-xu-phd/

National Film Board

This was a very interesting session to attend, and I was unaware that these resources even exist! The National Film Board of Canada has a webpage with Canadian films and media, which can be a great resource to show in class. However, it can be difficult to filter through media to find appropriate films for school. The National Film Board is aware of this, too, and so they created an education-specific page. Here, they offer mini lessons, educational playlists, quick start guides, and educational-only videos.

What a useful resource! I really like how they have educational playlists, as it can be a helpful tool to search for media that links to specific curriculum.

See the link to the National Film Board of Canada Education page: https://www.nfb.ca/education/