Tech EDGE, AI in the Classroom: Learning English with AI

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06/26/2025 Added

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In this episode of AI in the Classroom, we explore how artificial intelligence can support and enhance English language teaching. University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) | College of Education and Human Sciences (CEHS) | Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education (TLTE)

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[00:00:00.330]Coming up on "AI in the Classroom,"
[00:00:02.610]we're learning English with AI.
[00:00:04.681](upbeat music)
[00:00:09.900]Hi, I'm Guy Trainin,
[00:00:11.310]a professor of education
[00:00:12.630]at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
[00:00:15.060]And I'm Williams, a grad student at UNO.
[00:00:17.790]And Williams is going to show us today
[00:00:20.100]how he's been using AI
[00:00:24.270]in different configurations
[00:00:26.490]to create lessons and apps that help teach English.
[00:00:30.480]So let's go.
[00:00:31.620]Yeah, so today,
[00:00:33.570]I will take you through how to use a combination of AI tools
[00:00:37.830]to create a lesson for your students.
[00:00:40.200]And so, first of all, I used ChatGPT.
[00:00:44.790]And as teachers,
[00:00:46.440]one weapon that makes our work very successful
[00:00:49.140]is a lesson plan,
[00:00:50.520]and so I asked it to develop a lesson plan,
[00:00:53.910]and this is the lesson plan that it came out with.
[00:00:57.150]And so the prompt is:
[00:00:58.507]"Create a lesson plan that teaches English verbs
[00:01:00.750]to elementary school children,"
[00:01:04.380]and this is the lesson plan that was given.
[00:01:08.070]The materials needed are whiteboard markers,
[00:01:11.460]flashcards with pictures.
[00:01:12.870]And with flashcards, it's very difficult,
[00:01:14.880]and most of the time, expensive to develop.
[00:01:18.420]And so we will shift away from this.
[00:01:23.070]And there was also a part that was the activities
[00:01:27.870]that we are supposed to perform in the classroom,
[00:01:30.330]and that is an independent activity:
[00:01:32.850]handout worksheets.
[00:01:34.080]As I already said,
[00:01:35.190]that developing worksheets is very difficult
[00:01:37.650]and time consuming.
[00:01:39.030]Well, it's difficult, it's time consuming,
[00:01:41.100]and maybe most importantly,
[00:01:43.410]you cannot tailor it to specific students' level,
[00:01:46.230]or you can,
[00:01:47.070]but with a lot of extra work
[00:01:48.720]if you don't have a printer,
[00:01:50.070]if you don't have a lot of papers.
[00:01:51.630]And a lot of schools are constrained
[00:01:53.340]with the resources they have.
[00:01:54.930]So this is a great way to start remembering
[00:01:57.840]that whatever we're prompting,
[00:01:59.400]we are not beholden to.
[00:02:01.200]We can tinker with it.
[00:02:02.910]We can decide what fits our structure or not.
[00:02:06.750]And you can even, in the request for the lesson plan,
[00:02:10.650]if you have specific constraints in your school...
[00:02:13.380]For example, we do not have access to printers,
[00:02:16.440]so I cannot print worksheets.
[00:02:18.420]You can say that in the prompt,
[00:02:20.520]adding that context and creating a situation
[00:02:23.040]where the solution, a priori,
[00:02:24.810]can include some of that.
[00:02:26.190]Let's go for the activities.
[00:02:27.360]Yes. What's next?
[00:02:28.650]So I took this independent activity
[00:02:31.980]that is supposed to be done
[00:02:33.150]and took it to Claude AI and asked it
[00:02:37.230]that this is an activity I'm supposed to do
[00:02:40.230]with my students in the classroom.
[00:02:42.930]And it says, "Sure. Okay."
[00:02:44.790]So it created a much more detailed description
[00:02:48.660]of how the activity would work.
[00:02:50.790]So you are amplifying and you're adding detail
[00:02:53.820]and then?
[00:02:55.560]And then I asked it,
[00:02:57.097]"Okay, create a game based on this."
[00:02:59.880]And this is the artifact that was created,
[00:03:03.390]and it gave me the game features and everything.
[00:03:06.300]And the reason why I chose Claude to do this
[00:03:09.480]is that it comes out with vibrant appearance
[00:03:13.080]when it comes to application development
[00:03:15.300]rather than using ChatGPT.
[00:03:17.611]So ChatGPT does good with lesson planning,
[00:03:20.460]they all do well and,
[00:03:23.040]but I prefer Claude.
[00:03:24.930]And this is the activity that we are supposed to do.
[00:03:27.960]And so this is a verb detector.
[00:03:31.500]You can do what we call picture match
[00:03:34.320]or you can also find the verbs.
[00:03:35.910]So we'll go- Okay, let's do
[00:03:37.326]find the verb. Find the verbs.
[00:03:38.850]Yeah, let's try that one.
[00:03:40.350]Okay, so-
[00:03:41.700]So let's put barks.
[00:03:43.260]Okay, barks.
[00:03:45.180]Is that correct?
[00:03:46.170]Yes.
[00:03:47.003]Yes.
[00:03:47.836]All right. And immediately-
[00:03:48.765]And you immediately get a new one.
[00:03:49.620]Let's pick a mistake.
[00:03:50.790]What happens?
[00:03:51.870]Okay. High.
[00:03:54.690]That was wrong. Zero.
[00:03:56.160]And it gives you a tip.
[00:03:57.217]"Verbs or action words or words that tell us,"
[00:04:00.810]et cetera, et cetera.
[00:04:01.797]What someone- So there is
[00:04:02.715]or something does. A little bit of a hint.
[00:04:03.981]Yes. Yeah.
[00:04:04.814]What happens if you ask for a hint?
[00:04:06.780]Okay, the hint.
[00:04:09.397]"Look for words..."
[00:04:10.590]It goes out quickly.
[00:04:11.940]Yeah, so that is a...
[00:04:15.240]We can prompt it that, okay, we need,
[00:04:17.340]the prompt should stay on the screen for a long time
[00:04:19.470]for the student to see
[00:04:21.644]what it's taking about. Yeah.
[00:04:22.838]So we can improve.
[00:04:23.671]And remember, this is a first try.
[00:04:25.230]So we just launched and already got a working game,
[00:04:28.950]but we can tinker with it to make it a little bit better
[00:04:31.650]so it does everything that we want it to do.
[00:04:35.100]Let's try the picture match
[00:04:36.600]Okay, so you click on PICTURE MATCH.
[00:04:38.940]It also takes you to rounds.
[00:04:42.000]Okay, so this is kind of a book,
[00:04:44.790]a picture of book.
[00:04:45.623]So what do you do with the book?
[00:04:47.370]You read.
[00:04:48.990]And here, I think this guy is thinking,
[00:04:52.470]I hope he's thinking
[00:04:53.610]And run.
[00:04:54.443]But you can see that it's arranged them
[00:04:58.245]in line- They're arranged.
[00:05:01.110]Yes.
[00:05:02.040]And let's see a new run. The new run will appear.
[00:05:04.500]Yes. And this one, it's mixed up.
[00:05:06.420]So it's not always working the same way.
[00:05:09.630]Okay.
[00:05:10.463]So when you think about this,
[00:05:13.620]as a teacher who taught multiple things,
[00:05:17.490]what do you think the benefits are?
[00:05:19.500]The benefits is time consuming and it helps teachers.
[00:05:24.000]For example, back in Ghana,
[00:05:25.530]I used to spend a lot of weekends
[00:05:28.230]planning my lessons that I'll teach
[00:05:31.590]And also developing these flash cards
[00:05:33.690]is not an easy task at all.
[00:05:35.367]So with this digital,
[00:05:37.800]students will be able to have more practice
[00:05:40.530]on the action verbs
[00:05:41.880]rather than having a few pictures of action words
[00:05:46.140]and verbs that you can match,
[00:05:48.480]which is very difficult.
[00:05:50.730]And so with this one,
[00:05:52.140]it's easy to have them have more practice
[00:05:55.080]to improve their English.
[00:05:56.820]And for me,
[00:05:58.290]there are a few benefits to doing some design.
[00:06:02.580]Even if you have a curriculum that's already ready to go
[00:06:06.000]that has been provided,
[00:06:07.980]what this kind of activity can do
[00:06:10.680]is you can actually tailor this to the needs of students.
[00:06:15.150]So if we have some students who are more advanced
[00:06:17.370]and need more challenging exercises,
[00:06:19.650]so they might have the same kind of activity with verbs
[00:06:23.010]but at a higher level or with more sophisticated verbs.
[00:06:26.490]So we're saying, for them,
[00:06:28.050]I need this to be considerably more sophisticated
[00:06:32.040]in the language,
[00:06:33.300]making sure that they're working
[00:06:36.060]at the level where they're being challenged.
[00:06:38.310]We know kids need to be challenged
[00:06:39.900]and that's when they learn.
[00:06:41.430]And at the same time,
[00:06:42.870]you can also ratchet it down and say,
[00:06:44.947]"Well, I need a little bit simpler language.
[00:06:47.550]Let's use shorter sentences
[00:06:49.620]for students who are still finding this difficult."
[00:06:52.170]So the adjusting level
[00:06:53.670]and really individualizing is really important.
[00:06:56.940]The second piece is that this is a flexible medium
[00:07:00.120]that you can say:
[00:07:01.297]"I want an app,"
[00:07:02.467]"I want something that will run in an HTML window," or,
[00:07:07.237]"I want an app for a phone."
[00:07:08.850]You can produce those as well.
[00:07:10.740]Or, "I really need this to be on paper," right?
[00:07:13.800]So you can actually use the context
[00:07:16.800]to design based on what is available to you at that moment.
[00:07:20.970]If you have a class full of Chromebooks, great,
[00:07:23.700]but if you don't, there's a solution.
[00:07:25.920]If you have one Chromebook,
[00:07:28.020]and I've seen many classes like that
[00:07:29.850]where there's a device for every two or three students,
[00:07:34.260]you can say,
[00:07:35.093]"Design an activity that will work
[00:07:38.310]if two students are working together on one device."
[00:07:41.610]And so it might prompt turns
[00:07:43.800]or it might have two roles, one for each, and all of that.
[00:07:47.640]So that's another way that having the flexibility of design
[00:07:52.320]and just with one sentence
[00:07:53.970]being able to get the totally different results
[00:07:56.250]is so much better than just getting a few books
[00:07:58.650]in the mail saying,
[00:07:59.527]"Here's your curriculum," and, "Do this."
[00:08:02.700]While we are saying is wherever you're working,
[00:08:06.720]whatever you're using,
[00:08:07.920]we want also to anchor this to the expectations
[00:08:11.730]and to the standards wherever you are.
[00:08:13.500]So in Ghana, there are standards
[00:08:15.150]around what is expected in a third grade English class,
[00:08:19.110]and so you want to make sure
[00:08:20.550]that you're anchoring it to that
[00:08:21.990]while also adjusting it to the level of your students.
[00:08:25.095](upbeat music)
[00:08:26.340]Anything else you wanna add?
[00:08:28.050]No. That is all for today
[00:08:31.320]And we'll see you next time on "AI in the Classroom."
[00:08:34.257](upbeat music)

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Tech EDGE, AI in the Classroom: Learning English with AI

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