Key Point:
Technology plays an important and expanding role in today’s schools. The availability of technology tools, including those with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, continues to increase, as do their potential applications in the classroom.
Schools can also use technology and AI tools to increase the success of their teacher teams and professional learning communities (PLCs). When a team of teachers sets collective goals, they often achieve the intended results in the classroom, such as improved student outcomes. But working toward a goal requires effective peer-to-peer collaboration, which requires different skills and structure than classroom instruction. Technology exists to fill that gap.
Here are five AI and technology tools to increase the success of your teacher team.
1. Milo: Tools for visual brainstorming
Teacher teams should brainstorm, exchange ideas, and work together toward solutions. Online whiteboards are the perfect solution for collaboration, as they provide a centralized canvas where members can visually communicate with each other.
Miro users enter data into the whiteboard by uploading documents and images, embedding videos, and linking to websites. Share and respond to content using sticky notes, shapes, drawing tools, emojis, and more. Whiteboards can be expanded to hold any amount of content. Additionally, users can view and modify her Miro boards synchronously or asynchronously.
Additionally, Miro provides an AI tool called Miro Assist that helps teams gain advanced insights from the content on their boards. For example, Miro Assist condenses thousands of sticky notes into his single sticky note and automatically generates presentations, mind maps, and diagrams to help teams quickly transform content into a variety of visual formats. Masu.
2. paymo: Project management tools
Common pitfalls that reduce PLC effectiveness include a lack of structure, clarity of direction, and leadership. Paymo, a free project management software for schools, can help alleviate each of these challenges.
Paymo provides a centralized workspace for teaching teams to clarify roles within groups, assign tasks to individuals, and track progress over time. These features allow educators to make real progress by moving from brainstorming and open-ended conversations to defining concrete, actionable goals.
Teams can organize uploaded assets by project or task, so members know where to find the information they need. Paymo also includes a comprehensive dashboard where a leader can gain insight into the progress of her PLC.
3. Torisider: decision-making tools
Making decisions as a group can be difficult. Tricider is a free online tool that simplifies the decision-making process and makes it more fair by allowing users to leave more feedback. This is a great option for a team of teachers and her PLC who want to brainstorm ideas and work towards consensus in areas such as grading, assessment, and professional development.
Here’s how it works: Users enter questions they want the group to consider. Then, start generating ideas by sending questions directly to group members or by listing several options for the group to consider. Recipients can add their ideas to a list of options, leave pros and cons for other members to consider, and vote for their favorite ideas. Feedback is listed in three easy-to-read columns, making even complex discussions easy to understand.
Giving team members the opportunity to weigh in on decisions helps create buy-in and shared responsibility, and is one way to accelerate teacher team success.
Four. Conceptboard’s Plus Delta template: Tools for reflection
Conceptboard is another online whiteboard that teams can use for visual collaboration. The Plus Delta template is perfect for teachers who want to reflect on their practice.
Plus Delta is a formative evaluation model that allows individuals to evaluate what went well in an event or experience and what could be improved. Conceptboard templates are simple, as are assessment models. The “plus” column records practices teachers want to replicate, and the “delta” column lists opportunities for growth and improvement.
These insights promote a continuous improvement mindset and help teachers strengthen their belief in their team’s collective efficacy, their collective ability to positively impact students. Research shows that mindset matters. In other words, overall teacher effectiveness is strongly and positively correlated with student achievement.
Five. TeachFX: Tools to track engagement
TeachFX is an AI-powered app that provides instructional feedback to K-12 educators. Teachers use mobile phones to capture audio recordings of lessons. TeachFX then generates personalized reports on academic vocabulary, conversation rates, and student engagement.
Feedback provided by TeachFX is private, objective, and non-evaluative. Rather than telling teachers how to change their practices, TeachFX provides data that teachers can use to guide their own growth and decision-making.
The data teachers receive can be surprising. One middle school teacher overestimated how long her students would talk during class by a factor of 10 (she guessed it was 5 minutes, when in reality it was 30 seconds). Gaining this level of self-awareness makes this tool invaluable for teacher teams looking to challenge current thinking and practice.
Of course, strategies to increase classroom participation go beyond increasing student conversation time. However, students’ willingness to participate in discussions is one indicator of their comfort level and motivation, and is something that TeachFX can improve over time using research-based methods.
A valuable opportunity to increase the effectiveness of your teacher team
It’s no secret that the expanding world of technology and AI provides educators with a variety of tools designed to increase their professional effectiveness. In a recent survey, 83% of teachers reported that their ability to use educational technology tools increased during pandemic building closures. Since reopening, districts and schools have leveraged increased technological fluency among staff and students to address persistent challenges such as learning loss, delayed social-emotional development, and teacher burnout. There is no silver bullet that will solve everything that ails our education community. But with the help of technology and AI, there is tremendous potential to provide teacher teams with the tools they need to tackle these issues.
