ChatGPT needs to be your newest teaching buddy

Okay . . . so I’m guessing you’ve heard about how AI robots are going to take over the world, ruin education, and steal your dog. I’m not entirely sure about the taking over the world and stealing your dog part but pretty sure ChatGPT is not going to ruin education.

And, yes, I’ve been wrong before. So the ruined education piece could happen, I suppose. But I’m pretty sure that an artificial intelligence chatbot like ChatGPT isn’t going to be the thing that does it. And I’m starting to believe that it might actually help us do our jobs better.

For those of you just catching up, ChatGPT is a piece of software that rolled out last fall that mimics the thinking and writing of people like you and me. The concern is that students will use this piece of software to create products in response to classroom assignments and submit those products as their own work. Could this happen? Absolutely. Has this sort of thing been going on for years? Absolutely.

Back in the day, pre-internet, students could and did order entire catalogs that listed hundreds of pre-written history papers available in a variety of lengths and quality. Post internet? Those catalogs and essays simply went online. And now? AI is simply the next step in the decades-old Cold War between student and teacher.

Some of you haven’t been around long enough to remember the heated discussions and hand-wringing that happened in the math world when pocket calculators became readily available. The current conversation around ChatGPT ruining the educational process has a similar feel to it.

And I get it. We want the actual kid, not a chatbot, to prove what they know and are able to do. But I’m convinced that social studies teachers can and should find ways to incorporate AI into their classrooms.

So. What can that look that look like in practice?

5 ways you can use Loom to create sweet remote learning activities

I love Loom.

Simple to use. Simple to share. It’s free for teachers and kids. And it works great for both face to face classrooms and remote learning environments.

If you’re already a Loommate and love using Loom too, you may be in the wrong place. This post is for Loom newbies and how we can use the tool as part of effective social studies instruction. So feel free to browse through a list of History Tech posts highlighting historical thinking resources and strategies. (But you’re not gonna hurt my feelings if you skip past the quick Loom introduction and scroll down for the tips.)

Loom is a free, ready to use screencast recording tool. What’s a screencast recording tool? Basically it’s a button you push that records your screen while at the same time recording your face and voice, saving them all together in a downloadable and shareable format. And it does all of that in a matter of seconds.

Need a quick example?

Did they just add tour creation to web-based Google Earth? Yes. Yes, they did.

Google tools. Good.

Maps. Good.

Google map tools. Awesome.

The move by Google to create a web-based version of Google Earth a few years ago made sense. They needed something that would work on mobile devices and Chromebooks. But as a huge lover of the Desktop Pro version of GE, the problem for me was that the web-based version lacked so many of Pro’s bells and whistles.

I loved the ability to create tours and Google LitTrips, to use Historical Imagery, to combine different layers of data tell amazing stories. Sure. There was Tour Builder and My Maps but my heart still belonged to Google Earth.

But apparently Google listened in on enough of my conversations to do something about my need for tour creation tools in the web-based version of GE. A few weeks ago, they finally added the ability to generate tours with some pretty sweet features.

(If you’re semi-new to the Google Earth world, there are multiple versions. There’s the original Pro version that you install directly onto your laptop or desktop, there’s the more recent web-based version that runs through the Chrome browser – including on Chromebooks, and there are mobile app versions that run on tablets and phones. We’re talking about the web-based Chrome version here. While you can view tours created on the Pro and web versions on mobile versions of GE, you’re still not able to create tours on the mobile versions. Clear as mud?)

These new features help you and students

Tip of the Week: Joe Harmon and shared Social Studies PLN goodness

I love Twitter. And I love Google.

So when Dr. Joe Harmon posted his idea on Twitter for a collaborative Social Studies resource Google folder, it was the perfect day. Taking advantage of my Twitter PLN and the awesome #sschat hashtag. Using Google Drive to share, view, and use teaching and learning resources. The only way it could have gotten any better was if Roy’s Pit BBQ had delivered some ribs and toast while I sat there getting smarter.

This is what the Internet was designed to do and what we should be using it for – connecting people and ideas in ways that make the world a better place. What does this look like in this specific case?

Revisit Google Tour Builder: The forgotten little brother of all the map tools

It’s no secret that History Tech loves the maps. I still get a bit giddy whenever a new National Geographic mag shows up with a historical map insert. Cause . . . maps are cool.

So it’s not a surprise that I’m also in love with all things Google map related. There’s the basic Google Maps and Maps app. You’ve got both the original, downloadable – and by far the best – version of Google Earth and the new version of Google Earth they created so it would play nice with Chromebooks. You’ve got the relatively new Google My Maps. You’ve got the Street View and Expeditions apps. And there’s hundreds of third party tools using Google Map API code that do all sorts of fun things.

And then there’s the often forgotten little brother of the Google Map world – Google Tour Builder. Tour Builder came out about 

Use Timeline JS and Juxtapose for historical thinking awesomeness

Several weeks ago, I gushed about a new tool I had just run across called StoryMap JS. It seemed like an easy to use, nice to look at tool for creating interactive, multimedia historical accounts. Perfect for pushing out teacher created content to students and for pulling in student created content.

And guess what?

That’s right. KnightLabs at Northwestern University, the makers of StoryMap, have some other tools as well. They’ve created something called