001[Music] Hello Buckeye parents and community members. I'm really excited to be bringing you this next video in our parent AI series. And this one is going to focus on u using AI as a support for core content areas like reading, math, writing, etc. uh and much of what I'm going to teach you today uh will apply in science and social studies and you can take those concepts and apply them in any subject actually. Uh but the question I get a lot is how can I use this to help my child improve their reading skills, their writing skills, etc. There are a lot of different ways to approach this and um what I'm going to do is be providing you some handouts that point you to some specific places that you can explore. Um, and so
002this video is going to more highlight kind of some broad themes uh around how you might want to think about it. Um, some things you might consider, etc. So, let's jump right in. So, first of all, uh, we're going to give you some practical tips, um, and we're going to talk broad concepts. And so, first, I highly recommend if you haven't watched any of the prior videos in the series, please do that. especially the the introductory videos about what artificial intelligence is, the warnings, the caution, safety, all of that are vitally important. So, this video is much more intended for people who have at least um watched those videos. And uh but I do want to start out by saying that just in case someone's watching this, they haven't watched those prior, this is always
003about safety first. So remember be very um very careful in this world in in the online world in general whether it's artificial intelligence or not. Um and also be very guarded about private data and understand that when you are engaging with artificial intelligence quite often um the company is using uh this interaction that you're having back and forth uh to train its model. So your child or any kind of conversation you're having um is helping this model to grow. So just keep that in mind and always be very careful and when in doubt um be cautious first. So we're going to just hit on a few um a few really key points and that is um how can this help you? Well, it can it can really allow you to do several things. First of
004all, you can create personalized practice opportunities, um, study guides, um, question and answer, I mean, you name it. And it also can be used to support you as a parent. Quite often what I'll hear, and I used to hear back when I was a principal, etc., was, "Wow, I really want to help my child at home with an assignment or to help them study for a test, but a couple things like, I haven't studied this in years, and I don't really remember it. So, I have to spend all this time relearning myself before I can even move on to help them or I'm not sure I was taught the same way that my child is being taught this concept and so I only know how to teach them that way and I know there are
005benefits to understanding this other method and I don't know how to do that. Well, this is where artificial intelligence can help you and so I will be referring back to some of the big enterprise language models. easy for me to say um things like Gemini chat GPT um those sorts of things because you can do everything with those. However, we will be talking about some uh some specialized tools. So, something else I want to kind of set the stage with is to remember to think critically. Just because it comes from an artificial intelligence doesn't mean it's correct. We've talked in prior videos about its ability to make things up that look really, really true um that might not be. So, this is actually a good opportunity to help model for your child, hey, let's look
006into this and make sure it's accurate. Let's check it. Let's not just have artificial intelligence uh provide us information and just accept it at its face value. And also, in a prior video, we talked about setting family rules, sam family um guidelines that you have adopted. If you haven't done that, I really encourage you to go back and um do the family agreement. All of that's available on the website. You can download and personalize and make it your own. So, let's start out with some some concepts related to subjects. Let's start with math. So, AI can help with math, but it's how we use it that matters the most. There are kind of three principles. There's a lot more, but we're going to just start with three. And so, the number one focus is focus
007on why, not just what. It's not about getting the answer correct. It's about understanding why an answer is the way it is. So, one of the great uses for an LLM uh or a chatbot is this is the the problem and here's the solution, but can you explain to my child in the language that a fourth grader would understand, for example, why this answer is correct? for talking my child talk my child through why the answer that they came up with which was seven when it wasn't seven um what they might have been doing wrong what are they thinking that might have led them to get to seven instead of the correct answer of 12 I'm just making this up obviously so it's the why not about the what as a matter of fact one
008of the misuses of AI would be to simply have it come up with answers for you that's not helping learning and the whole idea is that we're actually trying to stimulate learning, not complete assignments, right? Um so always ask a chatbot for stepbystep explanations. Um great way to help your child understand uh things. Then also use targeted tools for targeted practice. So um what you really want to do is address specific maybe uh maybe skill gaps. Well, this would be a time where let's say your child is struggling with um fractions, understanding conversions of fractions or conceptualizing fractions. Well, this might be where you do go to one of the specialized tools that you will find um in some of our handouts and they're just some of many. Uh we're not endorsing any of them
009as the greatest best tools. It's just these are places you can start. Um, but maybe you go to KIGO as an established site and you are gonna go specifically with the intent to help your child understand fractions more and that allows you to kind of burrow into, hey, this is the help my child needs. Let's just focus on fractions. Whereas the general chatbot can help you with pretty much any topic any day. Um, but for a deeper dive on a topic, you may want to pursue more specialized tools. And then last but not least, you've probably heard the expression before, trust but verify. Um, I mentioned earlier that chat bots can provide information that looks correct. Um, it is always a good idea to check for accuracy. Uh, one thing that's actually kind of fun
010is you can use two different chat bots. Again, we like to talk about using free resources. So, you can use free version of Google's Gemini and the free version of ChatGpt. And if you really want to help your child learn how to be a good consumer of artificial intelligence, you can take the response, copy and paste it out of chat GPD and put it in Gemini and say, "Hey, evaluate this and look for any errors and see what it says." It may validate the answer. Um, and just because it validates it doesn't mean that you don't want to also look at it carefully because that critical thinking piece of really looking for the errors and seeing if there are any um is really going to help the skill development in mathematics. So there's a lot
011more to consider when it comes to math. But as a primer and to help you kind of get started uh when it comes to math, just remember these key principles. And I would say the most important one is when you're using chat bots to remember it's about um the why, not the what. How did you get to that spot? And helping using a chatbot to explain misconceptions that a child might have. Um so really great place to start with math. Uh we'll move into more math support stuff in future videos. Um but this will get you jump started. Um so let's talk a little bit about reading and writing English language arts. Um we get a lot of questions about um how can you use how can you use artificial intelligence to support reading development.
012Now I want to stress if you are wanting to use artificial intelligence with a younger student it is absolutely critical that you are side by side with them during this process. Uh you do not want to take a first grader for example who's in the you know yes is learning the fundamentals of reading and yes the chatbot may be able to help them with that but you do not want to leave them to their own devices on how to uh get support. You really need to be an active participant a sideby-side partner in that and that really is a golden rule here. Um, I always recommend parental involvement, um, trusted sibling involvement when you're working with any kind of artificial intelligence, even if they're an eighth grader. Um, but it's particularly important if you are
013really trying to work with a primary student um, who is trying to uh, develop their reading skills. Now, um, some principles around reading and writing. First of all, um you want to you can use um a chatbot to um explore and understand concepts and topics. Uh you can use it to define tricky words or to simplify complex text or answer background questions. One of the things that I really like to do um is think about if you've got a a student who maybe is struggling with the complexity of a paragraph, you can take that paragraph and put it into the chatbot. And let's say your child is a sixth grader and um they're having to read for understanding and you're moving them towards being able to read at their reading level, but there's some frustration
014at the first pass. And so you want to get them access to the knowledge in this passage. Um, and yes, we eventually want them to be reading at a sixth grade level, but tonight around the homework table, they're not and you're just trying to develop this comprehension or this understanding of this of this content. You can take a paragraph and put it into the chatbot and say, you know, please rewrite this um at a lower grade level. uh please rewrite this with the same content but rewrite it at a third grade level um to help my child better understand it. And so uh then what you can do to help bridge the gap is you can go back and forth with your child and say, "Now, do you understand how it took this sentence and
015made it into that sentence? Does that make more sense to you?" And just have a conversation about that difference between the fourth grade writing level and the fifth grade writing level or or um or whatever. So again, a great way to access trickier words, more complex writing, um you know, and those sorts of things. Um another great thing in terms of writing is for writing assignments, the one of the things we should all be concerned about is cheating around artificial intelligence. And any student can go home and bring up uh a chatbot and have it write an essay for it. Matter of fact, they can modify the essay to sound like it was written by that particular student. there's a way to do that and it's not that hard. Um, instead, one way that an
016AI can be more useful is to sit down with your child beforehand and say, "All right, you're trying to think of a topic for this essay. Let's brainstorm some ideas." And that chatbot can be a brainstorm partner. And you simply start out by saying, "Let's ask the chatbot, you know, we're supposed to write about such and such and I'm having a hard time choosing a topic. Can you ask me some questions that would help me narrow down my topic? Um, these are great ways to spark the brain um to help a child begin to do some writing. Um, great great strategy for getting the brain growing for um for writing. You also can then um can you use it to help it help a child refine writing? Of course, you can. Um, but what you
017don't want the chatbot to do is to rewrite a paper for a student, right? So, you can say you can ask the chatbot to say uh please read this essay and um make suggestions for um some areas that my child might want to focus on. Right? So, you know, I've read your essay and um there does appear to be multiple grammatical errors or some um verb tense issues throughout the paper. Um I would recommend you go back and find those verb tense issues. And if your child then looks at you and goes, "Verb tense issues? I don't know what that means." Then you don't have to say, "Well, I forget myself. I haven't done this in a long time." You can say, "Please describe to my child what verb tense issue what a verb tense
018issue might be and provide five new examples of what um an error and a correction might look like, but don't use my child's writing." So, it's really just it's think of it as having a tutor that's an expert in that moment. That tutor is an expert in writing. And so in one of my prior videos, uh the first one we did, we talked about how you can um prime the chatbot to be the expert on a particular topic. So I recommend you go back and take a look at how do you write a good prompt. But remember, you just can have this ongoing conversation and at no point should you get stumped or your child get stumped, which is new because one of the things I've heard from parents for many, many years is my
019number one issue at night is frustration. either my own or my child's or collectively around studying and homework because of a lack of understanding. Uh we don't have any way to find out new information. We don't understand how it's supposed to be done etc etc. So, um you can even say uh you know take directions and just say you know this is take your child's notes and say here are the notes that um that that my child took in class today on writing and what the teacher considers to be important when it comes to doing this particular assignment and so keep that in mind as you are providing feedback on this piece of writing for my child. So really, really cool stuff, but needs to be used um very very carefully. When it comes to
020reading, if you're thinking about um helping an early reader read, this is when going to some of the specialized tools will really be of use to you. And again, I would point you towards our resource documents. Um, again, going to a place like a KIGO or a magic school, that kind of thing, where you can go into phonics games, um, vocabulary games, you know, word builders, all kinds of really cool stuff that are designed specifically to help your child advance underlying skills that will help them to read. So, lots of stuff and it takes the guesswork out on your part. Um, these are usually done using best practice uh and and align with what's being done in school, especially when it comes to things like vocabulary development and comprehension development. And it's still artificial intelligence,
021it's just not a chatbot. And so a chatbot being a broad use um tool, these are specialized tools where they've been built by the the people that are behind the platform to focus specifically on phonics or vocabulary, right? Site words, you know, you name it. So if you're working with younger children, um it is quite often very helpful. I've had a lot of parents tell me that they really enjoy going into some of the specialized tools. Um although you can if you get comfortable with chat bots, you can you can start to explore ways to use a chatbot to assist in um reading development. Uh but for now, I really recommend starting in some of those specialized um uh tool spots. And again, just like in math, uh you want to be a critical consumer.
022uh I one of the things that you know that that we want to make sure that our learners are you know they're moving into a future that's a lot different than what we experienced at their age and so being a critical consumer um in a in a market that's going to be saturated by artificial intelligence is really going to be important. So, you know, maybe you've tried three or four of these reading tools, and it's it's important then that you sit down with your child, say, "Hey, we've tried these three or four tools. Let's make a list of what are the pros and cons of each? What did you like about this? What didn't this do well? Did we find errors?" And that and then say, "Which one of these do we want to start
023using more regularly?" So maybe you pick one because one of the advantages of using some of these tools is that it can get to know the patterns um and the way so it can support the reading uh for your child for example in the in in the reading examples. Now again in order to do that um you have to enable permissions um to for it to gather that information about your child. That is entirely a parental decision. Um, but we are always extremely cautious about that. But if you know that you have the safeguards in place in your home and that it's going to be used appropriately and with you present and you have read the privacy agreements and you know exactly uh how it's going to be used and whether or not information is
024going to be shared and you've read those and you sign off on them, that's the single biggest role that you can play in all this is ensuring safety. Um, so once you've done that, if you find a tool that you're comfortable with, then the the AI can actually start to develop um a bit of an understanding on the path that it should put um your child on. So um I want to highlight the fact that I mentioned something very very important. There are multiple handouts um available for you related to this video. So we've created another safety handout. You can never have too many. Uh if you watched the safety video, you know there was there was one there. We've also created a different one that kind of goes in a different direction, but covers
025the basics. Um again, it might be of more use to you. That's our first handout uh for this video. The second handout is how do you use AI chat bots for homework help and that's going to show you specifically on how to use things like Gemini chat GPT gro um constructively for understanding not cheating. Right? The goal is Again, not to blitz through an assignment for the sake of completing the assignment, but to help a child be a learner, a thinker, and be able to perform at higher levels because it has this available tutor that it didn't have before. Um, so that's handout number two, how to get homework support without cheating. Handout number three, they just keep on coming, is AI tools for math practice. And so this is going to point you towards
026some some specific apps and sites that will help with mathematics. Um again, uh they are not necessarily these are not Buckeye sites. These are not things that we fully endorse. Um these tools change constantly. By the time this video even goes up, we don't know what modifications have been made. Um it this really falls on the consumer then to continually monitor uh whether or not this is the best tool for their child. and we really encourage you to stay on top of that um as it happens. So, and then the final handout is AI tools for reading and writing fun. It's going to um point you towards specific um sites that can help you uh to um develop reading and writing skills. I mentioned them earlier. things like if you want to do the basic
027stuffs like phonics and comprehension and all those things that are vital vitally important or if you want to start doing things uh at a higher level in terms of writing um you'll find those resources on that particular handout. So those are all available to you in the um in the handouts that you can find on our website. And uh so let's wrap this one up. boy it this is again there's some content here but most of it most of what I think you're going to get the most out of is going to come from those handouts u because they're very explicit they lay out and point you towards some very specific things um but the the overarching learning really you can go back to that first video that we did that talks about how do
028you design a great prompt and how do you do um how do you use a chatbot for general learning um and those really apply so I highly recommend recommend uh you going back to that. So remember, AI can be a very powerful learning ally when used thoughtfully and with your guidance. And remember, you're going to focus on process, safety, critical thinking. These are what's really, really important. So stay tuned. There's always more to come from the Buckeye Elementary School District. We're very excited about the possibilities that AI are bringing us. Um however, we also have have our eye on on safety and we'll keep you in the loop as things come up and uh we look forward to continue to partner with you as we go forward into this AIdriven future. Take care everyone. Thanks
029for watching. [Music]