Category: Assignment 3 – Final Review – Module 3-5 Blog Posts and Comments

Role-Playing Game Prompt with Generative AI

For the role-playing game prompts, I decided to experiment with Perplexity, as it was a generative AI tool that I had never used before. I used the Wheel of Fortune game prompt that was provided. At first, I was interested in the fact that the Perplexity response not only had the text, mimicking a game host, but it also had the description of the tone that the “host” of the game was speaking in. Upon answering some of the host’s questions, I was given the category “Famous Phrases” and then asked to guess a letter. At first, I responded with just the letter F, and the host went on to fill in where that letter was for me and asked me to guess another letter. I then simply responded with the letter A, but this time, the host was no longer the person speaking to me, the answer was simply information that was found about the letter A. As this was not the response I was looking for, I deleted that answer and responded with the sentence, “I would like to guess the letter: A”. Then, the host returned and filled in the spaces where A was on the board and asked me to guess again. This time I simply responded with the letter T and was responded to by the host, but the game was no longer being played and I was only given information on the letter T. Thus, it seems that the AI was a bit confused with the task of the game, as my responses were not taken in the context of the game and there was very little consistency in the answers I was receiving. As discussed in the module, it was clear that the AI did not understand the meaning of the text being asked, as it was not able to distinguish why I was simply giving a letter as a response. Even with the prompt, the responses jumped back and forth between what the prompt asked and what the AI was trying to solve for me. Next time, I would perhaps try to make sure that my answers gave context to what I was speaking about, like explaining what letter I would like to guess, as it seems this helped to limit the confusion in responses. Below are some of the examples of the conversation I had with Perplexity:

SECTIONS Analysis: Screencast

Students: The use of screencast can be very valuable to students in many grades, but especially in university or post-secondary institutions. At this level of education, most students have access to the technology to create a screencast through the many available avenues. Through on-campus supports, students are able to access high-speed internet anytime they are on campus, which is likely frequently if they are full-time students. This form of media can have some barriers as it is not always as interactive as other forms of video lessons. However, these barriers can be mitigated by using a combined interactive approach of screencast for lessons and building foundational knowledge, complemented by a video demonstration afterward, for a more interactive approach.

Ease of Use: While practice can help to make anyone better at using this application, screencasts can be easy for both instructors and students, as it is simply a combination of narrating and illustrating the lesson being done. There are no specialized skills or training that are required, and there are varying degrees of expertise that you can use to make a screencast, as you can start by simply using the screen recording function that is accessible with most online technology.

Cost: Upon creating my own screencast, I had no issue with time or cost, as it was free to create and was very quick to make. This is the same for accessing the screencast video, as I simply posted it to my blog and my peers were able to access this content for free as well. Through using the screen recording application, this video was also very simple to make as I was not required to sign up for any subscriptions or add any personal information. I created my screencast on my iPad, which was then instantly saved to my photo library, where I was able to access and share the content at my discretion.

Teaching: This medium can be great for teaching, mostly in terms of lessons that are technologically based. For instance, as I created mine on the app Goodnotes, essentially any lesson that can be taught using this medium can be screen cast and shared with students. This medium allows for students to have a narration of what they are learning, while also seeing what their teacher is doing, which can be great for understanding the content. As a student, I feel that I was well equipped with the skills to use this medium, as well as be creative in how I chose to do this. Thus, I feel that a teacher would definitely have the skills and resources to do this as well.

Interaction: While this medium is not as interactive as others, you can combat this by adding some interactive activities to your screencast and perhaps sharing these in real-time with your students. For instance, you could teach the fundamental knowledge of your lesson with the screencast, and then have an interactive activity at the end that would narrate the activity and have the students test their knowledge on what they had just learned. Additionally, this tool can be a great method of studying for students, as they can try to teach themselves the topic, assess their knowledge, and watch it back to study.

Organization: As I have mentioned this medium is very much accessible as long as you have access to essentially any form of technology, there are also areas of funding that I am sure could help maintain this. For instance, ensuring that there are computers or tablets for students to use if they do not have access to their own could be a method of maintaining access to this technology. Additionally, if these are tools used by many people, the institution would have to ensure that everyone had their own personal login and account to ensure the privacy of students and the work that they do. This being said, the library does have all of these technologies available to students, which would be required for the use of this medium.

Networking: I feel that you can widen networks and include more people by using this medium, as it can be a great source of learning in an online setting. In creating a screencast for a learning purpose, you then can post this to perhaps a blog or video site and open up comments for those who view this. This can be a great way to gain feedback, help others with their learning, and create a network of learning based on the lesson you helped others access. This not only could be accessed by other students but could give inspiration to other instructions for creativity in the making of their lessons. As this is an online medium, you can help mitigate privacy risks by not showing your face within the screencast or opening anonymous comments if individuals do not want their feedback to be shown publicly. You could also manage these risks by only allowing your students to access the screencast, perhaps on a medium like Brightspace or Google Classroom. This can help as students do not have to sign up for a different application and they know their information is more secure through their institution.

Security: As this is a medium that can be used simply personally, or shared online for the use of others, I feel that this medium is secure for students to use. As a student, they have the choice of where to post their screencast, whether that be in a Google Drive to share with a small study group, or to post on a personal blog for others with the link to watch. I feel it is helpful that this medium has the flexibility of what you wish to share with learners, as you have the choice to not show your face and simply narrate the lesson.

Ethical Concerns About the use of AI

Personally, the majority of my ethical concerns with generative AI lie around how it is used in the media and the way that it is rapidly growing. As this is a newer addition to technology, I fear that many people are not properly educated on the use of AI and the implications that it can have on society. While I know that there are many useful and positive aspects of AI, I have also seen many negative uses in the media. For instance, I have seen many images on social media that have been altered using AI, either to create a better image of someone or something or to change one’s perception of a topic, which can often be deceptive in social media. I have also seen many instances where people have altered famous individuals’ voices with AI and created clips that contain false speech, in order to make it seem like the famous individual made a specific claim. Furthermore, I have also heard of many concerns regarding spam calling and the ability for callers to get one short clip of someone’s voice and then create an entire vocabulary that sounds like that individual. Scammers can then use this voice to access individuals’ banking through phone calls and in various other harmful ways. For this reason, many aspects of AI worry me, as it holds the ability for people to take the tool and run away with it in harmful ways, which can often be harmful to people without them even knowing it.

Additional Experimentation with AI

I was very interested when experimenting with some of the image AI, as this is something I have never done before. For this reason, I based my prompts off of a simple image, and then changed certain aspects to see how the AI would then alter the photo. I was interested to see that my images seemed to match the prompt for the first two photos, however in the last one perhaps my prompt was a bit too specific, as the image did not come out in the way that I depicted in my prompt.

Works Cited

“Wheel of Fortune – AdmTal” role play game prompt. Perplexity, 21 Mar. version, Open AI, 24 Mar. 2024, https://www.perplexity.ai/.

My Experience: Passive vs. Active Learning

Personally, I have found the balance of passive and active learning in this course to be extremely helpful in being able to apply and generalize the concepts I am learning. In most other courses, I find that most of my learning is done through passive learning, where I am simply learning the foundational knowledge, but then I am expected to find ways to apply it on my own in order to study for assessments such as quizzes and exams. In other courses, I have often found it rare to have many forms of active learning being used. For this reason, I really enjoy how this class has allowed me to learn foundational knowledge through some of the readings and resources, but then there is always an aspect of active learning that allows me to use what I have learned and put it to use in a real-life scenario. I feel that this method of learning has helped me understand how the concepts that I’m being taught are useful, making it more likely that I will use what I have learned outside of school. Even just simply reflecting after learning something new can be a great way to actively learn, as you will only be able to reflect on the things that were truly meaningful to your learning. I have also found that the task of reflecting allows you to understand a topic better and identify how the concept can carry weight in your personal life.

Designing a Lesson Based on Merrill’s Principles

An example that came to mind when learning about Merrill’s principles, specifically the first one on solving real-world problems, was the topic of climate change. Not only is this issue a real-world problem that we are constantly working to combat, but the learning done on this subject is pertinent to many generalizable subjects in school. For instance, for this subject, I would promote learning through a foundation of knowledge, as suggested by Merrill’s second principle. This can be done by teaching the learner about the states of matter, environmental change, ecosystems, and understanding the impacts of greenhouse gases. While these are all topics that are taught in most curriculums, they pertain to an authentic problem and are easily demonstrated and applied by the learner. In applying these topics, I would likely start by demonstrating the main ideas of these topics through teaching and interacting with the science at play, and then have the learner apply the knowledge through an interactive activity. Examples of these could be a drag-and-drop game about the water cycle, or even an image juxtaposition where the students had to identify which image of an environment was before and after climate change. This application of the knowledge learned can then be a great segue into the real-world knowledge that the individual is gaining, as they are seeing how a simple science lesson plays a large role in the environment that they live in.

H5P & Creating Interactive Activities

Upon learning about H5P and designing some activities on my WordPress site, I was a bit confused about how to correctly create them. However, I found that the tutorials for each of the activities were very helpful in learning how to make them. In my current work as an Education Assistant for elementary school students, I feel that in the teaching context, I would mainly be utilizing activities such as quizzes, charts, fill in the blanks, and interactive videos. I found these activities super neat to create, as I realized how many activities would be extremely beneficial for many of the children that I work with. For instance, as I work mainly with neurodiverse children, I would perhaps use the image pairing tool to help a child understand associations of words and pictures. Additionally, I find the ability to make the activities more inclusively accessible is very important, as many learners who are non-verbal use a communication device, thus the ability to add speech is incredibly useful. Creating this activity also gave me a lot of perspective on just how much active learning is present in our daily lives and how easy it can be to incorporate these activities into our learning. Of the activities that I experimented with, I found that the drag-and-drop activity was the most difficult to create, while it only needed a few resources. The process of creating this one was interesting to me as it required you to select all of the fillable spaces first, then create any text that you wanted to add, and then finally label what text matched with each blank space.   

My Lesson Plan

For my lesson plan, I decided to base it on my background of working with elementary schools students and plan a lesson the zones of regulation that are often taught to young children starting out in school. The zones of regulation are used to help kids visual their emotions and feelings and find helpful tools to regulate them in various settings.

Module 3 Blog Post Response

Module 4 Blog Post Response

Module 5 Blog Post Response

Meaningful Learning Through Storytelling

In watching a TED Talk by America Ferrera, I was provided with a meaningful learning experience about how individuals all around the world, regardless of their occupation, are impacted by their identity. As America Ferrera is widely known as a famous actress, many do not know the struggles that she faced amid stardom. She starts this talk by detailing her childhood home, as this is where her passion for performing and acting started. She then goes on to explain how from the moment she started acting, no matter how big the role, her identity as a Latina was never enough for the producers or casting agents. They would often ask her to change various aspects of herself to better fit the stereotype that they were trying to portray. In the end, Ferrera explains the strength in her identity and the importance of having the courage to stand against the negative values that are engrained in the workforce.

This story that Ferrera shared was extremely impacting to me, as it not only changed my perspective of who I previously knew as a successful actress, but it allowed me to see that we often only see things for what they are, and the importance of storytelling in shifting our perspectives. In her storytelling Ferrera used her voice to sing when describing her childhood performances, actualizing the story that she was sharing. Additionally, she used imagery to describe the floor tiles of her childhood home, where her passions first came to life. Tapping into these senses within the story allowed me as the watcher to feel a more personal connection to her story and created a deeper meaning as I was able to relive the story through her narration. Thus, I would say that Ferrera definitely used the technique of creating an immersive experience for the watcher. Additionally, she utilized the technique of using a personal story to teach the audience and get her message across. Similarly, her use of imagery and photos aiding the story used the technique of showing, rather than telling. Overall, I felt this story did an amazing job of engaging the audience and leaving a lasting message for them.

Experiences of a Branched Narrative

Through the use of a branch narrative, the learner is able to interact directly with the story and circumstances, creating much more engagement and focus on the material. In doing this, learners are likely to retain the information more readily as they are actively contributing to the experience, rather than simply feeling like they are learning. In addition, I feel that branched narratives are able to mirror real-life decision making. In life, we are faced with many choices, and we have to deal with and learn from the choices that we make. Furthermore, we see branched narratives in various other aspects of life such as interactive movies, games, and even flowcharts used to explain various circumstances. Thus, the experience of a branched narrative creates a learning environment that is natural to the reader and allows them to retain information in an unconscious manner.

My Twine Story

In creating my Twine story, I found myself struggling a bit with creativity, but then decided to tell a story that most people have experienced, or will experience within their life. With practice, I feel there are definitely options to make my story more complex, however starting out I tried to keep it simply while I was learning. I tried my best to experiment with some of the options regarding text colour and alignment. While I am not super familiar with coding and it can be confusing for me, I am intrigued to continue to try new things and learn as I go.