This journal entry is about the planning and implementing of a Before, During, and After lesson plan model.
Preparation:
In a previous lesson, I assigned my Google students a Scholastic article to practice Transacting with the Text. A teacher subscription to Scholastic includes materials for each article, including multiple-choice DoK 1 and 2 questions, discussion questions, and primary source supplements, including political cartoons. These materials can be published as Google Forms and are easy to post on Google Classroom.
Preparation time often determines whether I use Scholastic’s materials unedited or not. When planning that previous lesson, I was short on time and went with the provided questions. During the lesson, I realized this set of questions was too easy (several could be answered without even reading the article), and it didn’t provide questions for each section heading. My students were not Transacting with the Text. In reflection, I needed to try this again with another article.
That brings us to this week’s Before, During, and After lesson. For this journal reflection, I am focusing on my period 3 class. The article is on Artificial Intelligence and deepfakes. Scholastic provided an excellent thought question to start the lesson: What effects can deepfake videos have on society? My students will have five minutes to answer this question independently and then share in a brief class discussion Period 3, writing their answer as a Collins level 1 on the provided Do Now worksheet.
During the lesson, I plan to utilize the text-to-
speech function on the Scholastic site to accommodate various reading and learning levels. I took the time to review, edit, and supplement the provided questions to require the students to read the entire article. I used one of the discussion questions to create the DoK 3 question requiring a three-sentence answer. The lesson would then wrap up with a poll question to be answered on Padlet: Should AI companies be held responsible if they
release tech that harms people? Students will simply give thumbs-up ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’
Reflection:
The lesson started as I had hoped. The students wrote down thoughtful answers and appreciated getting a stamp on their Do Now paper. Several even started sharing answers with their partners within the first 5 minutes. Students were still a little shy to share with the whole class, so I called on a few who had written excellent answers.
Everything was going as planned until I tried to present the Google Form of questions and the Scholastic article. My projector decided not to work. Since this was Google Class, I demonstrated some troubleshooting by restarting the projector and then restarting my computer. During the restarts, I moved on to the mini-BDA within the questions. My students had no issues pulling up the questions and the article on their Chromebooks, so I read the opening question from a Chromebook. They had to observe three deepfake photos before reading and tell me how they could tell they were fake. They found each mistake, including the ‘camera crew wearing normal clothes’ on the moon.
As none of my restarts seemed to work. I tried switching HDMI cables, which also didn’t work. My projector wasn’t even showing on the Bluetooth list. At that point, I called IT for help. Meanwhile, I continued to lead the class, moving around the room and reading the questions of various students' Chromebooks. Students took turns reading aloud while IT attempted to figure out my projector. He did get it fixed, though not in time for period 3.
We did not get to do the Exit Ticket I had planned, but my students did have a sense of closing via the mini-BDA as a matching question on the Google Form. They had to determine ways of identifying deepfakes depending on whether the media was a picture, audio, video, or text. One final note: I did the planned Exit Ticket with Period 4, which worked. My students responded to the poll with an overwhelming vote for AI companies being held responsible for harmful products.
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