Teach with expert insights on AI, curated by your trusty Teacher’s AIde

Good morning, and welcome back to Teacher's AIed, where we silently acknowledge that the ‘Days until Winter Break’ calendar keeps us sane, seeing the days until break dwindle. And, of course, you’ll spend some of that winter break brushing up on your AI knowledge! Luckily, we have a few pieces to get you in the AI-knowledge-building spirit!

New Tool Alert: Amazon Q

Last week, Amazon launched Amazon Q. And the Teacher’s AIde team is excited about the possibilities it offers. While Amazon Q is pitched for enterprise use, we see its value for the school setting.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides secure cloud computing for over 14,000 educational institutions. If a district stores its data with AWS, educators, building administrators, and district administrators could leverage Amazon Q to understand big questions around student data like:

• What areas of numeracy are our eighth graders struggling in the most?

• And what curriculum materials are already available to teachers in my district to support them in teaching their students in this area?

• When is the next professional learning community meeting when we can share this data and provide some training on utilizing the new curriculum to fill in the gaps?

• Can you schedule 45 minutes to discuss with each eighth-grade math professional learning community?

• Finally, can you make an agenda to discuss the numeracy gaps for our eighth graders and the available tools teachers can use to supplement these gaps?

As you can imagine, with this simple demonstration of what Amazon Q could do, the possibilities are virtually endless. While we haven’t gotten our hands on Amazon Q yet, we are eager to share how responsive and easy it is to use.

Read This: 8 Key Developments in the History of AI

Did you know the modern AI field stemmed from Alan Turing's famous 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence? As a history buff, you may know Turing as the father of artificial intelligence who revolutionized thought experiments like the “Imitation Game” (now known as the Turing Test), which measures a machine’s ability to show intelligent behavior indistinguishable from a human. Or, as a pop culture enthusiast, you may know Turing from Benedict Cumberbatch’s Oscar-worthy depiction of the famous mathematician and early computer scientist in The Imitation Game.

We’ve seen other exciting developments in AI, like when Deep Blue, a chess-playing AI, beat Garry Kasparov, who is widely respected as one of the greatest chess players ever.

This article also cites the founding of OpenAI and the public release of their famous tool, ChatGPT, late last year.

We’ll use these facts from the New York Times to wow our families and friends over the holiday season…

Virtual PD: Ditch That Textbook Digital Summit

Matt Miller and his team started the digital summit that allows you to do “PD in your PJs.” The summit “brings together some of the brightest minds in education to discuss technology, pedagogy and more.” Given Matt’s interest in AI in K12 education, there will be great sessions on AI in the classroom. Between December 11th and January 5th, you can earn free certificates for professional development credits. This summit is entirely FREE.

You can learn more about the summit and register for it using this link.

The Teacher’s AIde team will attend some sessions and report back with our thoughts and learnings.

Before we go, we want to share a thoughtful testimonial from a reader.

If you have any thoughts about how we’re doing or what you’d like to see more of in our posts, leave us a note!

If you feel like the educator above, click the button below to refer your colleagues to Teacher’s AIed. It may be the best gift they receive all season!

Class dismissed!

Lewis Poche & Kourtney Bradshaw-Clay