AI Quest - Part 1
Educational Ai use cases
Welcome to this interactive AI in Education Challenge. In this experience, you’ll take on the role of both learner and evaluator. Through a series of hands-on activities, you’ll explore the potential of AI by completing tasks that support and enhance teaching practices. At the same time, we want you to critically evaluate the benefits for the use of AI and potential challenges.
Benefits and Challenges
Each task will prompt you to evaluate the benefits and value of using AI, considering the following aspects:
- Where AI is particularly helpful
- Where AI saves time
- Where AI enhances teaching, learning, or work
- Where AI supports well-being by reducing stress from certain tasks
At the same time, we also ask you to consider potential challenges and ethical implications:
- Could this misrepresent who created or completed the work?
- Could there be any privacy or security concerns?
- Could the generated results contain errors, biases, or lack integrity?
Ready to Begin?
Challenge 1
Using AI to Craft a Thoughtful and Professional Email
You receive an email from a concerned parent who is upset about a recent classroom policy change regarding personal technology use. The school has implemented a new rule requiring students to keep their phones in designated storage during class time to minimize distractions and improve focus.
The parent argues that their child relies on their phone for accessibility reasons, such as checking reminders for medical needs or communicating with them during the school day. They feel the policy is unfair and are requesting an immediate response.
Use AI to:
- Generate a professional and empathetic response – Ensure the tone is respectful, understanding, and constructive.
- Clarify key points and policies – Summarize relevant school policies in a way that is clear and supportive.
- Suggest next steps – Offer a path forward, such as a follow-up meeting, additional resources, or further clarification.
Challenge 2
Using AI to streamline meeting preparation
- Summarize key points – Generate a concise summary of each article.
- Identify connections – Analyze and correlate key themes and ideas across the articles.
- Generate discussion questions – Develop thoughtful questions that could guide meaningful conversation during the meeting.
Article 1
Article 2
Challenge 3
Using AI to Assist with Grading Student Work using a Rubric and Providing Feedback
You have developed a rubric using AI to assess a recent student project. Now, you want to streamline the grading process by using AI to analyze student work and generate feedback comments aligned with the rubric criteria.
Use AI to:
- Evaluate student work against the rubric – Input student responses and have AI assess whether they meet expectations in key areas (e.g., critical thinking, evidence, clarity).
- Generate personalized feedback/comments – Use AI to create constructive and strengths-based feedback that reflects each student’s performance while maintaining an encouraging tone.
Teacher Rubric
| Criteria | Extending | Proficient | Developing | Emerging |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Identification of Career-Life Challenges and Opportunities | Clearly identifies multiple career-life challenges and opportunities with detailed examples and thoughtful reflection. | Identifies some career-life challenges and opportunities with relevant examples and reflection. | Identifies a few career-life challenges and opportunities with limited examples and reflection. | Identifies minimal or no career-life challenges and opportunities with little to no reflection. |
| Generation and Application of Strategies | Generates and applies multiple effective strategies for addressing career-life challenges and opportunities, supported by detailed scenarios and examples. | Generates and applies some effective strategies for addressing career-life challenges and opportunities, supported by relevant scenarios and examples. | Generates and applies a few strategies for addressing career-life challenges and opportunities, with limited scenarios and examples. | Generates minimal or no strategies for addressing career-life challenges and opportunities, with little to no support from scenarios and examples. |
| Decision-Making Process | Provides a comprehensive and reflective description of the decision-making process, including various methods (impulse, logic, emotion, etc.) and factors considered. | Provides a reflective description of the decision-making process, including some methods and factors considered. | Provides a basic description of the decision-making process, with limited methods and factors considered. | Provides a minimal or unclear description of the decision-making process, with few or no methods and factors considered. |
| Challenges and Strategies in Decision-Making | Thoroughly describes challenges in decision-making and provides detailed strategies for improvement, supported by specific examples. | Describes challenges in decision-making and provides some strategies for improvement, supported by relevant examples. | Describes some challenges in decision-making with limited strategies for improvement and examples. | Minimally describes challenges in decision-making with few or no strategies for improvement and examples. |
Student Work
Making Decisions Discussion by Josie Smith
As a teenager, I find myself making all sorts of decisions every day, from what to wear in the morning to bigger choices like how to juggle school, work, and hanging out with friends. I usually start by thinking through all my options, considering the pros and cons before making a choice. For example, if I have to decide between going to a friend’s house after school or staying home to catch up on homework, I’ll think about how much homework I actually have, how tired I am, and if I’ve spent enough time with my friends lately. I try to be logical about it, but honestly, my feelings play a big part too. If I’m feeling stressed or just not in the mood to socialize, I might choose to stay in and relax instead of pushing myself to do more. One of the harder decisions I’ve had to make was whether to commit to working at the night market over the summer. I knew it would take up a lot of my free time, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to miss out on summer fun with friends. To figure it out, I talked it over with my family, thought about the money I’d earn, and considered how the experience could help me in the future. In the end, I decided to go for it, and while it was tough at times, I’m really glad I did it because I learned so much and gained a lot of knowledge and skills that i know will help me in the future. When it comes to making decisions, I find it can be pretty challenging sometimes, especially when I want to make the “right” choice but don’t know what that is. I often start by gathering as much info as I can, but sometimes I end up overthinking things and taking too long to decide. I usually talk things out with friends or family, which helps, but I’d like to get better at trusting my instincts and making decisions faster without second-guessing myself so much. I think it would be cool to learn more about decision-making strategies, like maybe figuring out some personal guidelines to help me make choices more quickly and confidently in the future. Overall, while decision-making can be tricky, I’ve found that thinking it through, getting advice, and sometimes just going with my gut helps me navigate through the choices I face every day. Being able to make good decisions is a really hard thing to be able to do, because it often puts logic against your emotions and feelings. Sometimes you have to set aside your feelings and go for the logical decisions and sometimes its the opposite. This skill is something i feel like i should develop more because being able to make good decisions can literally change my life at some point. That’s why it’s so important to find strategies to help make good decisions and ensure that you lead the life you want.
Challenge 4
Using AI to Support Indigenous Learning Activity Development
You are designing a place-based learning activity that connects students to Indigenous knowledge and perspectives while exploring the local environment. The goal is to foster a deeper understanding of Indigenous ways of knowing, relationships with the land, and sustainability.
Context: Your school is near a local river or forested area with historical and cultural significance to Indigenous Peoples. You want to create an activity that encourages students to engage with the land, learn from Indigenous teachings, and reflect on their relationship with the environment.
Use AI to:
- Develop an engaging student activity – Design a guided exploration, storytelling walk, or inquiry-based reflection that aligns with Indigenous perspectives on learning.
- Create reflective discussion questions – Encourage students to consider how Indigenous knowledge can inform their own relationship with the environment and sustainability practices.
Challenge 5
Using AI-Detector to see if a student has used chatGPT
You suspect a student has used AI (like ChatGPT) to complete a writing assignment. The language and structure appear more advanced than the student’s usual work. You decide to run the text through an AI-detection tool.
Use AI to:
Plagiarism in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
by Nick Christofides
In the modern era of artificial intelligence, the question arises: how can individuals ensure their work is genuinely original? While this may appear to be a contemporary concern, it is, in fact, a longstanding issue. Historically, people have consistently built upon the knowledge and creations of others. The development of writing styles is a result of exposure to pre-existing material, leading to a natural incorporation of various influences.
Truly original ideas are increasingly rare. For instance, when one generates a novel concept for a science project, it is highly probable that similar experiments have already been conducted. This phenomenon is not exclusive to science. In music composition, the finite number of chord progressions often leads to the repetition of familiar patterns. Similarly, television sitcoms frequently recycle narrative structures with updated characters and settings to reflect contemporary culture.
Imitation is a fundamental part of learning. Students often replicate notes from instructors, repeat phrases in foreign language classes, and emulate professional athletes in sports. Society tends to accept these forms of copying as part of growth and improvement. However, the use of AI tools like ChatGPT is often criticized as being dishonest, despite the fact that the outputs are generated uniquely in each interaction.
Therefore, it is important to reconsider the definition of plagiarism and recognize that leveraging AI does not inherently constitute cheating. Utilizing such tools is an extension of the human tendency to adapt and build upon existing knowledge. In summary: I am not cheating.
Plagiarism in the Age of AI
How do I genuinely create and develop my own work in the ‘Age of AI’? I don’t believe this is really a new question. Haven’t we always been copying others? Everything I’ve read has been incorporated into my style of writing. There are very few original ideas anymore. So even when I brainstorm a new science project idea, someone has already probably done it. Consider in music and songwriting that there are only so many chord combinations. Have you ever watched a new sit-com on TV? The episodes basically are the same premises as old sit-coms with new characters and variations to modernize them. Don’t we say “imitation is the best form of flattery?” We are copying all the time. We copy the teacher’s notes. We repeat whatever our French teacher says. We copy the same moves as the best basketball players. Now, I’m told I’m cheating when I use ChatGPT which supposedly creates original content each time. Repeat after me, I AM NOT CHEATING!
What does it mean to be transparent as a student and a teacher?
