Come and Play with AI

AAC Simulator

Catherine Winters, Sauder School of Business; Gabrielle Coombs, LDDI

AAC Simulator is a project originally developed through Emerging Media Lab (EML) for EPSE 411. Since last year, we have been working on updating and improving the AAC Simulator. We will be demonstrating the updates in this session, and speaking to our development journey.

All Class Response Technologies

Lindsay Cunningham, Yvonne Dawydiak, Nashwa Khedr, TEO

In our presentation, we would demonstrate several all class response technologies, such as Plickers, Padlet, and Mentimeter. These technologies can be used in any subject for a wide variety of grade levels. They provide immediate feedback for teachers and can be used for formative assessment. These strategies are easy to learn and quick to get up and running.

Betwixt AI and art a league is took: GPT-3.5 versus GPT-4 in a sonnet contest

Aidan Chua, Student

I will compare the capabilities of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, highlighting the vast improvements of the paid GPT-4 version over its freely accessible counterpart. The test requires the AIs to transform a list of tasks into a Shakespearean sonnet; the differences in output may reveal the extent to which AI (ChatGPT specifically) can produce text within the strict boundaries and precise intentions of a given prompt.

Floating School: Sustainable Educational Planning Response for Climate Change Adaptation

Mahfida Tahniat, EDST

Worldwide, climate crisis is an increasingly alarming concern, with significant implications for the delivery of education in marginalised communities. My research responds to this through a focus on the Floating School Program (FSP), a sustainable educational planning intervention in climate change affected communities in Bangladesh and explores the possibilities of incorporating learning from this innovative programme in the wider international educational development context.

Education is free in Bangladesh, but children cannot reach school buildings regularly during the annual monsoon season. As part of local climate change adaptations, “Floating Schools” enable children to attend school in boats, and also provide critically needed adult education on community development through healthcare and sustainable agriculture (floating crop beds) as well as environmental education (recycling wastes) and women’s empowerment among the most marginalised communities. My research aims to investigate the effectiveness of the FSP and its contribution to the promotion of sustainable development in the context of climate justice.

Poetry and Place: Using the PhoneMe Web App in Classrooms

Kedrick James, Yuya Takeda, William Rowluck, Rachel Horst, Effiam Yung, LLED

PhoneMe was created for poets, educators, and K-12 students, as a social network for place-based spoken poetry. This presentation will introduce attendees to the PhoneMe web app (previously a mobile phone application) which hosts over 600 poems in a variety of languages, pinned on an interactive map across the globe. We will discuss the process of creating new poems, recording them, choosing Google Street View panoramas (or uploading scenic photos), tagging poems (and how this can be used to isolate only those poems produced for a classroom project), copyright and creative commons, and publishing them to the map. We will also discuss how poems can be curated and moved between drafts and published versions (which the user can take down and revise and republish if they wish. We will also discuss several exciting projects that are currently taking place that use PhoneMe in schools and Indigenous communities for commemoration and as a form of poetic reflection on the importance of place and our relational connections to it.

Supporting Teachers to Address the Mental Health Needs of Newcomers from War Zones

Sofia Noori, EDCP; Jamilee Baroud, Kalisa Young, LDDI

The aim of this knowledge mobilization effort is to provide information and resources to teachers and administrators who are working with families from the war zones that the Canadian government has promised asylum to: Syrians, Afghans and Ukrainians. The anticipated outcomes of the online teachers’ manual is to primarily increase awareness of, and offer avenues to address, the psychosocial stressors experienced by recently arrived refugee children and youth. This work is significant in that it will create online resources that will strengthen the capacity of elementary and secondary school communities to provide culturally appropriate support for war-affected learners and their families. The goal is to work with stakeholders to foster school environments which nurture refugee students’ mental health and well-being, thereby enhancing their educational and life outcomes.

Whose name is this? Learning about Indigenous Plants and Animals

Wendy Traas, Education Library; Yvonne Dawydiak, TEO

In this presentation we will invite participants to respond to the provocation: Whose names are these? As we explore materials from the Education Library, freely available digital tools, and open educational online resources to help identify and learn more about Indigenous plants and animals. These resources and approaches support learning about local flora and fauna through the lens of place based learning.

Digital tools are frequently employed to support animal and plant identification. In this session we complement the use of these apps with Indigenous language and other resources so that participants might consider how they can decolonize their practices and incorporate Indigenous sciences, critical thinking, and critical digital literacies in their teaching.