Friday, May 31, 2024

KyEdRPG Spotlight: Lexie Bewley-Gilley Bringing Role-Playing to Reaganomics

Lexie Bewley-Gilley is a high school social studies teacher at Bullitt Central High School (Bullitt County Public Schools in Kentucky).  After attending some sessions on game-based learning at KySTE 2024 -- and in particular, how tabletop role-playing could be a part of a classroom -- she was excited to attempt a new lesson near the end of her own school year.  KyEdRPG friends like Chad Collins and Michelle Gross definitely were an inspiration!

Recognizing that student energy is flagging in May, and that her U.S. History unit about the end of the Cold War and Reaganomics was a bit dry in the past, Lexie found an angle to gamify the learning.  She took the element of "rolling up a character" in a TTRPG and had students create a person living in the 1980's.  Lexie leaned into Canva for its presentation and video creation capabilities, alongside AI tools for image generation.  Kicking off with an ElevenLabs-narrated video in full Valley Girl speak, Lexie made a slide deck to guide the students through a series of d20 rolls on random tables, starting with determining their socioeconomic status.  Each random table roll brought a new financial crisis or opportunity that, in effect, shaped the life of their character.  Students collected the narrative along the way on their character tracker sheet.

From a Bullitt County PD session led by Lexie, sharing her lesson.

At periodic moments, Lexie prompted the students to stop and have discussions.  From the perspective of their characters (and those who felt comfortable doing so in first person), students considered and debated how their person would react to the latest event.  The lesson took several days, and culminated in the students individually writing a reflective narrative/essay on the story of their character, making connections to the final days of the Cold War. 

I have seen and shared the idea of using a character sheet from a popular published TTRPG for a deeper demonstration of learning (for example, filling out a sheet from the perspective of a historical person or literary character, then defending your stats and choices).  However, Lexie's commitment of several academic days for this character generation lesson fostered an academically rich opportunity for students to really gain an empathetic POV of a person from another time period. 

Lexie talked about expanding on TTRPG inclusion next year in U.S. History.  Perhaps the students could roll up a time traveller at the start of the course, and several times throughout, the character plays through a scenario in a new historical period -- a little gaming, with a little "fish out of water" reflection!  But for now, it's great to see teachers like Lexie try something new for her students.  I can't wait to see what she'll do next!



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Friday, May 24, 2024

Gemini for Google Education: Highlights of their Latest AI Release (May 2024)

It's been a big month for generative AI updates!  Back on May 13, ChatGPT announced ChatGPT-4o (as in "Omni"), a "new flagship model that can reason across audio, vision, and text in real time."  In various short videos, that new "reasoning" was demonstrated in pretty remarkable ways.  Fire up the app on your laptop, and it actively listens and even participate in your meeting (providing insights and summaries), or it can tutor you on understanding a math problem.  Open it on your phone, and it can translate between two speakers in real time, referee two people playing rock-paper-scissors, or even make a new song while harmonizing with a second ChatGPT AI.  Additionally, the lag of input to output is reducing down in time so much that interacting with ChatGPT will start to feel like a human in natural conversation. 

It's another example of ChatGPT seemingly leapfrogging its competition.  Since November 2022 when ChatGPT first broke through to the general public, other major generative AI platforms have come forward, but without as much fanfare.  Microsoft's Copilot has an attractive user interface and, among other features, can generate accurate images inside of itself, allows voice-to-text input, and provides hyperlinks in responses, yet I hardly hear it as a person's first AI platform of choice.  Google's AI went from Bard to the renamed branding of Gemini and was much like Copilot in its features.  While Gemini and Copilot allows uploading of images, you can upload both text and image files to analyze or alter in ChatGPT.  (A quick disclaimer: as you likely already know, AI is sometimes wrong and hallucinates.  When it comes to inputs, I highly recommend trying prompts in multiple genAI platforms and comparing the results.)  

But that was then, this is now.  Gemini may have finally played its ace card with its latest upgrade, announced in a live webinar yesterday.  (By registering, you can get access to the 45 minute archived recording.)  Finally, Google seems poised to lean in on two of its major assets: its near-monopoly of education with its variously tiered domains,  and having the world's most popular cloud-based productivity app suite.

Here are some of the highlights from the webinar.  (Images are screenshots from the webinar unless otherwise noted.)


There is now a premium version of Gemini AI, one that can be incorporated across some of the core Google apps: Docs, Gmail, Slides, Sheets, and Meet.   With the upgrade, AI help is just a button click away.  This integration is likely a game-changer.  Why pop open a new tab for another genAI when Gemini could be built right in?

From the Google course "Get Started with Gemini for Google Workplace."

However, for educational domain customers, Google recognizes there are special needs.  Gemini will now offer, free of charge, several assurances: the data inputted from students and teachers will not be human reviewed, not be used to train AI models, and not be shared outside of their domain. (These three highly sought features are coming "soon," a phrase used several times in the webinar and in its various promotional material graphics.) For educators with privacy concerns, this alone might be a compelling reason for a school district to recommend Gemini over other genAI tools.  Vivek Chachcha, Product Manager of Gemini Education, promises that the AI tool will help "save time," "make learning more personal," "inspire creativity," and help students "learn confidently" (by "empower[ing] students with guided support").  

The webinar included several video examples of Gemini at work in various Google apps, and some shorter excepts of these videos are available separately on its Google for Education YouTube channel.

Although this video shows examples from higher ed, they could apply to anyone needing to increase their productivity and effectiveness (2:58):


In this clip, an instructional coach uses Gemini to draft a professional development session agenda in Sheets (35 seconds):


In this last clip, a teacher inside of a Doc creates a first draft of feedback on a student's poem (47 seconds):


In a related tool revealed earlier this week, Google also has a "side panel" feature that will incorporate Gemini.  This will basically allow the AI to look across your various apps and files in Google Drive in order to complete the task.  (Currently, access to this side panel requires being enrolled in Google Workspace Labs, which will likely need the approval of your domain's admin.)


An example of Gemini's side panel, inside of my personal Google Drive.

Yes, yes, you may be saying, but what about the price?

First, it may be helpful to compare the current free Gemini chat AI (accessible in a separate tab, at its own URL) versus the new paid Gemini for Workspace:

Next, note that these paid licenses come at two different tiers of pricing.  (The upper "Premium" license includes Gemini being able to have "advanced meetings" in Google Meet, a potential nod to the ChatGPT meeting summary/interaction feature mentioned at the start of this blog entry.) The good news: there is no minimum number of licenses you can purchase for users, and there is a discount if you order with a yearlong commitment before August 23, 2024.  The bad news: these premium features do not come automatically with any current upgraded Education domain tier, although Education Plus customers can qualify for a bit more of a discount, again if ordered before August 23.


While the integration of Gemini across your Google apps does cost, it is easy to see how powerful the AI could be for Google Suite learners.  If nothing else, it certainly gives Gemini an opportunity to jump to the front of the genAI competition line!

I'll end this blog entry with some Gemini resources:
  • For tech and IT friends, read this blog entry from "Workspace Updates" (5/23/24) for an official Google breakdown of Gemini for Google Workspace for Education's coming upgrades.
  • If you're interested in more of a general audience narrative of what's happening with Gemini in education, here's an entry from Google's blog on 5/16/24.
  • Looking for even more ways to use Gemini for Google Workspace in education, from Google itself?  Check out these Slides from April 2024.  The resources and tips include advice on writing better prompts, multiple visual examples of how to use Gemini in various apps, and help for domain admin.
  • Google offers some free online courses.  Here's one I just completed myself, and I highly recommend for a low-stress walkthrough: "Get Started with Gemini for Google Workspace."  (It requires logging in and allowing ExceedLMS to access your Google account, but again, it's free!)
One last thing: have a great summer and enjoy some time off!


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