Emma Holmes, I am currently working as a supply teacher for primary and junior aged students while I finish this degree and hope to start LTOs and my full-time teaching journey next year. 

I would say the current extent to my use of AI in teaching and learning is using things like assistive technology tools, google classrooms, spell checking, Padlet, kahoots, etc. Very general tools, and I do not engage with ChatGPT or encourage the students to use this at all. As discussed in one of our readings, I think I am still within the mindset that AI can be useful, however just because there are tools out there does not mean they have to be used. I think students are losing the ability to think critically, focus attention and do things on their own; which is only made worse by the excess exposure to technology (AI, video games, social media, etc.).

I would like to learn more about how to use AI effectively in the classroom, to ensure that the technology is adding to the lesson and not doing things for them or taking over the main focus. I enjoyed some of the suggestions for how AI can be useful for learning in theGonzalez (2024) reading. I will likely use some of these in my future classroom and teaching methods.

Conner Hurd. I am part-time educational faculty for Sunnybrook Center for Prehospital medicine. I help design and teach curricula for new skills and medical directives to Primary Care Paramedics in Ontario.

I like using AI to generate pictures for google slides presentations. This makes sourcing and citing images easier, since I don’t have to worry about potentially implicating my employer in litigation over unintended copyright violation. 

I enjoy giving powerpoint presentations, but designing them can be very time-consuming. I would like to learn more about AI that can help me design and format presentations. My students would benefit from this, as I could spend more time focusing on improving delivery and content of my presentations, rather than design. I think Canva might have AI that does this, but I haven’t tried it yet, since I think you have to pay for it.

My name is Julia Balke and I am a Primary Core French teacher in a CAIS certified Independent school. Since my students are young and have little access to technology, I use AI to help teach and learn myself, but not with my students. Considering the age of my students and their developmental stage, a good place for us to start is to teach students how to communicate properly. This will facilitate their use of AI later in middle school. My colleagues in middle school are introducing AI and having discussions around what is real and fake. 

My name is Opeyemi Akindotuni and I am currently a supply teacher. I am qualified to teach General Science and Biology at the intermediate and Senior level and last year I taught Grade 10 & 11 Religious studies and World Religions, Grade 7 & 8 Math and Science.

I use AI in teaching to organize my lesson plan for time management, enhance instructional materials to be more engaging and cater for diverse learning styles. For my learning, I use AI to help break down concepts that are abstract to me, to enhance my understanding during my independent study.

I would like to know more about grading essays using AI. I am kind of skeptical about using it to grade essays due to its' inaccuracies.

I would like to introduce students to how AI can be helpful during independent study. I like the GenAI tools because I can brainstorm ideas I have in my head with it. I like the quiz AI tools also. I do not like generating images with AI, I find them a bit awkward, because I tend to gravitate towards realistic images. Maybe, I don't understand how to use the visual AI tools to create realistic images yet.

Julia Katz. I currently work as a special education teacher in the resource room of an elementary school in grade 5-6 literacy and writing. I also help other teachers in the resource differentiate their material for their students.

I use AI mainly in differentiating material. I find it really helps pick out vocabulary and write definitions at various levels, change the reading levels of texts, and create graphic organizers. However, I do think you need to be careful, look over what it produces and change it to suit your needs as it rarely creates something in the exact way that you need it.

I would like to learn more about grading using AI. Particularly, feedback on my students writing. How well does it work? Does it correctly evaluate writing? Is the feedback it gives useful? What apps are best at giving feedback?

My name is Karen Racioppo. I am currently teaching Grade 2, but this week found out that I will be transitioning into an Early Reading Facilitator position for my school board.

I find I am using a lot of technology in the primary grades, but not necessarily AI. This is not because I have huge reservations for it, but moreso because until I did some of the readings this week, I was still quite unaware of the benefits it can bring to the primary grades. I know I just need the gift of time to further develop my own comfort and learning with AI before I bring it into the classroom. Personally, I have used AI to help write grants that would benefit our school, tailor some very tricky learning skills into well-worded comments for report cards and add to lesson plans for my students.

I would really like to learn more about using AI for students on the spectrum and to benefit students who are Language Impaired. There is a lot of training for Autism, but less for students who struggle with receptive lanugage and I think AI could build a bridge for educators and their students. When reading Gonzalez's work, I appreciated her statement that those who embrace these changes earlier do have an advantage. I was also very intrigued to learn more about how AI can assess reading skills through Amira Learning and Readlee. This could have a huge impact for primary students and their teachers.

My name is Camille Legris, and I am a nursing clinical instructor. I teach third-year nursing students enrolled in university programs and second-year nursing students enrolled in college programs.

In my teaching, I encourage my students to use AI for basic research. However, I emphasize the importance of using this information cautiously. Additionally, I highlight the necessity of applying critical thinking when interpreting the information obtained. Personally, I use AI to gather supplementary information when I encounter difficulties understanding a specific subject or to correct my grammar.

I would like to learn more about AI platform that are proficient in french. Because I teach nursing students in french, I find most AI platform to be inefficient when creating french study materials. This highlights how the use of AI can create digital inequities and disadvantage my students.