Week 4: AI And Educators

     This week I was introduced to Magic School AI. Before now I had not yet used AI before. The program itself seems easy enough to use. It was not very complicated for me to put a single word prompt and it provided a lesson plan that would have been more than sufficient in teaching students how to create perspective drawings. 

Part I

    The basics of the plan are sufficient to teach students how to begin with one point perspective drawing of buildings and giving the opportunity for growth into more advanced perspective drawing techniques. It is a good introductory lesson into the technique. The assessments are sufficient for the teaching of the technique.

    The assessment process can be expanded to also branch into the philosophy of criticism and how to objectively critique artistic works in a constructive manner.

    The lesson plan would be a good beginning point, I was intentionally vague in the prompt to attempt to generate a plan with potential for growth and elaboration as the instruction progresses. This way the same lesson plan can be adapted with more advanced methods of perspective drawing. 

    I initially attempted to share the link but it didn’t generate a hyperlink when copied into the post or after it was published. I decided to post the actual lesson plan instead to show what it generated.

    Whenever A.I. has come up I have been very resistant to it. Speaking in regards to art, A.I. is a danger to artists because it can generate images as prompted and can result in the loss of work and commissions to living artists.

Part II

    I looked at the recommended options and was not pleased. AI should not be used to generate art, songs, or videos because there are humans that can provide those services and receive payment for them. I chose the rubric tool to generate grading criteria for a 3 point perspective drawing of a building. The standards may be higher than an introductory class presented to a group of 9th graders can produce without prior instruction. 

    There are uses for this, but it takes a lot of the building process out of the planning processes. The lesson plan and rubric were both created in an instant, however if I were building the lesson plan myself I would be pulling information and images from my library to use as visual aid materials to present to the class, so I would have to work backwards from the lesson plan to produce those materials. 

    The rubric tool might be useful to develop values to use in grading the assignments so that I can produce quantifiable grades for submission. 

Part III

    The AI tool can be useful, perhaps in other subjects: history, mathematics, English. It would not be a tool I would apply to artistic instruction. If I were to see a colleague struggling with their classes then I might share it with them to see if it can help them get their teaching plans to where they need them to be. As I stated earlier, I am resistant to AI for the reasons I have already mentioned.

    What challenges do you see that would discourage you from using Magic School, if any? What concerns do you have, if any? I would see it as hypocritical to use AI if I’m warning my students against using AI to produce their own work. It would present a do as I say not as I do conundrum. Also it may give the perception that laziness is acceptable if it makes life easier. 

    I have never used AI before, and only did so because it was part of the lesson. I have considered using VR in some art history class settings for students to experience artworks and places that presents them to scale and not a small picture in a book. 

In conclusion: AI is not something I would seek out to utilize in artistic instruction or lesson planning. It is something I might use for grading term papers but that would be at the college level. There are some things I could use it for as far as assigning values to qualities to help in grading. Unless I was required to use it, I would not. But I can see how useful it could be to other educators subjects.