Google Sheets Your Students Can Do

I believe spreadsheets are a necessary skill for today's world. I can hear the groans. When most teachers hear spreadsheets, I know they groan. They think data and analysis and blech. Don't worry! That's not the point of this spreadsheet activity for your students! (You might have fun working with it, too.)

One of the units I cover with my 6th graders is Google Sheets. Most of them have had very little exposure to Sheets at this point. I totally understand - Sheets isn't the easiest tool, not is it the "prettiest".  Using Google's Applied Digital Skills - Sheets, Part 1,  we do a few days of the basics with Sheets - vocab; inserting & resizing rows & columns; sorting; formatting; and a little bit of data validation. I tell my students up front, that this part isn't flashy, but it's necessary before we see Sheets in a different way.

Once we cover the basics, I give them the Google Sheets Choice Activity. The first tab contains the directions and the descriptions of the 6 activities. I crafted 6 different activities that should appeal to a variety of interests. I assigned point values to each activity and then I challenged the students to complete enough activities to accumulate 25 points. This is meant to require them to do more than one, but also to keep this activity within a 2 class period timeframe. So far, they have loved it! We didn't cover every single thing they might need to do - so there are times where I get to do a little more with various students. 

I've added this activity to my partner blog - Templates for Teachers - to keep all my templates in one spot. If this activity appeals to you, I encourage you to make your own copy and share it with your students. Even better, if you want to make changes to the template by adding activities, changing the requirements, or removing an activity, go right ahead! Make it your own and make it work for your students!

If you use it, I'd love to hear about it! 

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AI You Can Do - but ...

I was lucky enough to attend my first conference in awhile this past week. It was the Schoolwide AI Conference. It was a good one & I'm going to share my thoughts here as a way to help myself process it, but also capture and share them with you. AI is definitely a hot topic these days ... including in education. 

Matt Miller - of Ditch That Textbook - was the keynote and boy did he have a great keynote! Matt had a lot of great ways to use AI as a teacher. He shared some pretty cool tools, including image generators that really made some amazing images. AI can help make several teacher tasks much easier and save us all some time.

But ...

Matt also shared some drawbacks to AI. Since I subscribe to his newsletters, I'd just read the recent news stories he shared. You can read his newsletter about this topic here --> "🗑 AI, students, relationships and manipulation". It's more than eye-opening. 

It's shocking. 

It's wild. 

It's sickening. 

It's troublesome. And it needs to be shared. 

And it needs to be discussed.

I went to the conference in the hopes of learning more about AI. I recognized a lot of names of presenters. I was excited. And I saw some great sessions. Quite a few of the sessions shared how AI can help create lessons, provide prompt suggestions, assist creating rubrics and assessment questions, and help with differentiation. They were good.

My favorite session was with a lawyer who shared about Ohio's AI Toolkit. He also shared the Federal Governments newly released guidance, "Empowering Education Leaders: A Toolkit for Safe, Ethical, and Equitable AI Integration". I know for sure I want to dive deeper into this toolkit.

The final session of the day was pretty enlightening. It was a student panel. There were four high schoolers and one 8th grader. They all shared ways they've used AI. A few use AI more than the others. They don't seem afraid or intimidated by it. They all wish their teachers taught them more how to use AI. The 8th grader said he believes he will definitely be using AI more as he gets older.

Wow.

I have to say, walking away from the conference that day, I was a bit disappointed I didn't see sessions that focused on my biggest concerns: 

• At what AGE is AI developmentally appropriate? 
• At what AGE "should" students begin using AI?
• WHY would a teacher use AI with a young student?
• Do the benefits of using AI outweigh the risks?
• AI has only been around for a couple years (for the general public) ... what are long term ramifications of using AI with students? 

I know these aren't questions that have "easy" answers. They probably don't HAVE answers, truthfully. And I'm sure there are teachers on all sides of these questions. This is the dialogue I want to have. These are the areas I want to learn more about. 

Do you have resources I can read or learn from? Articles? Podcasts? People to follow? I'll take it all. I have a Wakelet for things I've collected - AI in Education. Please share if you have more that I can learn from. Thanks!

*** Every Monday, I share a newsletter with a collection of Tech You Can Do resources. It is delivered right to your inbox. Interested? Sign up here!  ***