Integrating AI into teaching and learning is the next challenge for educators. This is a short instructional teachers guide to using ChatGPT. By following this guide, you will learn how to effectively incorporate ChatGPT into your teaching practice and make the most of its capabilities. Also, check out some additional AI tools that have been added to the AI Tools page and some new articles in the Chat GTP Resources section. 

The debate around how schools should react to using AI for learning (especially ChatGPT) continues to rage. Some fall into the “embrace it” camp, while other, such as New York City has banned it. John Spencer explains the various sides of the AI debate in his blog + video article: In a World of AI, Our Students Need Project-Based Learning.  A.J. Juliani has put together a video explaining 7 Ways Teachers Can Harness the Power of AI for Learning which is worth a watch. These videos will get you thinking about the many, many creative and useful uses for AI in the classroom. If you haven’t tried ChatGPT, maybe it’s time you do. Here is more information about AI in the classroom.

✅   Pressto 
This is a free writing app that uses generative AI to provide writing prompts and assist teachers with lesson planning and differentiation. It motivates students to write more. Students make writing booklets to develop their voice, agency, and share their ideas.
  
✅   Parlay Genie
Parlay Genie will generate higher-order thinking questions for your class based on a topic, YouTube video or article. For Grades 5+. View the Parlay AI tool.
  
✅   Openverse 
Openverse can be used as a valuable resource for teachers and students. Teachers can use the platform to find images, audio, and video files that are licensed for educational use, and incorporate them into their lesson plans. This can help to create engaging and interactive classes that promote critical thinking and creativity. 

✅   Perplexity Ask
Try out Perplexity Ask which is a new search interface that uses OpenAI GPT 3.5 and Microsoft Bing to directly answer any question you ask. Instead of displaying a list of links, Perplexity Ask summarizes search results and includes citations so that you can easily verify the accuracy of the information provided. View the Perplexity AI tool.

The UOI Planning Process and Resources document is wonderful resource created by Micheal Hughes includes a wide variety of planning/teaching/learning resources that teachers can use while creating a Unit of Inquiry.

Looking for a handy checklist of the PYP Standards and Practices  Ali Hassan has created one for you.

This post from Toddle answers the question: “How can we help our students in their development and understanding of the attributes of the IB learner profile?”. The post lists eight tried-and-tested ways to make them come alive in your classroom! You can use these strategies to make the learner profile attributes more visible and intentional in your classroom! More Learner Profile resources.

This wonderful Toddle School Leaders Bootcamp 2023 keynote presentation by Stephen MR Covey focuses on what he believes is the leadership crisis today, where even though our world has changed drastically, our leadership style has not. In his speech, he offers a simple yet bold solution: to shift from this “command and control” model to a leadership style of “trust and inspire.” Note: You can view all 31 Toddle School Leaders Bootcamp 2023 presentations here. Finally, you may be interested in scoping out Stephen RH Covey's book: Trust & Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others

Learn about schemas in play. Schemas are described as patterns of repeated behaviour which allow children to explore and express developing ideas and thoughts through their play and exploration. The repetitive actions of schematic play allow children to construct meaning in what they are doing. Here you will find guides for teachers and parents, posted and flash cards. Thank you Toddle for creating these resources.

Any preschool teacher can use this concept to help build strong connections with students and create authentic learning experiences. The concept connects to inclusion, caring, compassion and knowing yourself as a teacher and the children you teach.

I encourage you to watch Seth Godin’s Ted Talk, “Stop Stealing Dreams: What is school for?” Then read his popular eBook, “Stop Stealing Dreams” and view the keynote talk he gave at Toddle’s School Leaders Bootcamp 2023. Seth clearly provides great ways to think critically about why schools need to change to meet the needs of students in the 21^st century.

Toddle has created two instructive articles that help teachers facilitate inquiry in their classroom: A Teacher Self-Assessment: Strengthening Our Approach to Inquiry, and How Every Inquiry Teacher is a DJ: Meet the Responsive Teaching Console. They are both worth a review.

The Trust for Learning website, founded in 2011 by a small group of philanthropists who saw the potential to expand developmentally appropriate, play-based, whole-child early learning approaches like Montessori to serve far more children and families, has a wealth of early childhood resources that focus on ideal learning environments for young children.

OCED have posted a variety of educational webinars that are worth viewing. The webinars focus on high level, global educational issues such as: The role of Education in an interconnected world; Are students ready to take on environmental challenges?; and Assessing creative thinking: What, why and how?

This video is an intriguing and provocative watch about a new model for teaching and learning. Together, Rosina Dorelli, Zach Reznichek and Farhaan Mir, have built the Da Vinci Life-Skills curriculum and assessment model, supported by young people, teachers and academics. It is a vision for the future of education. Da Vincian Learners are insatiably curious, take risks and learn through all their senses and from their mistakes. They appreciate the interconnectedness of all things and nurture their intuition, creativity, relationships and practical abilities as well as their academic critical thinking skills.

Check out the updated PD page to find workshops provided by Kath Murdoch, Chapters International, Toddle, Professional Learning International, Innovative Global Education, and many more. You can check them out here.

Roots ConnectED empowers educators to create classrooms and schools where children and staff are community builders, critical thinkers, understand biases, and realize their capacity to create change. Their Anti-Bias Education model uses curriculum, classroom practices, (Universal Design Learning), and deep Community Building with all stakeholders to identify and dismantle the thinking and ideology that contributes to bias and discrimination before it gives way to harmful acts of oppression. This all leads to agentic learners. The framework and its tools are holistic and intended for long-term integration throughout the curriculum and environment. Explore the website and their educator workshops.

These free virtual workshops focus on getting children outside and connecting them with place and planet. There are eight one hour workshops to choose from during April to June.

By: Carla Marschall, Rachel French
Create a thinking classroom that helps students move from the factual to the conceptual. Concept-Based Inquiry in Action provides teachers with the tools and resources necessary to organize and focus student learning around concepts and conceptual relationships that support the transfer of understanding. Step by step, the authors lead both new and experienced educators to implement teaching strategies that support the realization of inquiry-based learning for understanding in any K–12 classroom.

By: Katie Novak
In the third edition of UDL Now!, Katie Novak provides practical insights and savvy strategies for helping all learners succeed in a post-pandemic world using the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
She presents examples throughout the book to make the content relevant and digestible. She concludes each chapter with reflection questions to help teachers apply key concepts to their work. UDL Now! is a fun and effective playbook for great teaching. Learn more about UDL.

By welcoming a student's home language into the classroom, schools actively engage English language learners in literacy. The research discusses: Embracing Differences; One Size Does Not Fit All; The Dual Language Identity Text; and Language in the Classroom.

Below are a few provocations you can share with your students. Most come from Ian Byrd's Daily Puzzlements and Provocations to Get Your Students Thinking. Enjoy!

A blast from 11 years ago. This is a video your students will be mesmerized by. Stop motion, thousands of jelly beans and a wonderful song by Kina Grannis. Better yet watch the behind-the-scenes video!

Amazing slow-motion magnet collisions! Want to see how fast the collisions were in real time, skip to the end.

Kevin Parry reveals the inside of fruit in this creative stop-motion animation. Stick around for the behind-the-scenes footage!

Check out this lovely leaf art from @lito_leafart. Lots more on the artist's Instagram

A must read and call to action! The scientific body that advises the UN on rising temperatures has released its final report that summarizes its six key pieces of research completed over the past five years. Briefly the report states that the world will soon burn through its “carbon budget” and may surpass the key threshold of 1.5C of warming by 2030. Scientists say the severity of climate events - droughts, floods, deadly storms - increases dangerously after 1.5C of warming. And the world could warm by 3.2C this century unless nations lift their game. That level of warming would leave much of the planet inhospitable to plant, animal, and human life. Also see a visual (Possible Future Global Temperature Changes) that shows the consequences of the choices and actions taken now in reducing [greenhouse gas] emissions for generations now and in the future, for our children.

Check out the World’s Largest Lesson’s latest student report. The report provides invaluable student insights into the current state of education and highlights their ideas on how education should be transformed. Very enlightening!

Good News! More than 190 countries have reached a landmark deal for protecting the biodiversity of the world’s oceans, agreeing for the first time on a common framework for establishing new protected areas in international waters. 

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