EASIE AI - For learners, parents, and teachers [Issue 5]

Welcome, cutting-edge educators and aspirational parents

Introducing your no-nonsense EASie guide to using AI to support your kids’ learning and growing your own AI literacy

Today, we’ll cover:

• Trending AI Apps

• Using new tools - Image Generation - Free

• Generating Images with AI - Stickers

• AI Beginners Jargon—Turing Test

• AI Adepts Jargon—Temperature

• Good prompting—Roles

• AI Math Solvers—Uses and Tips

• AI News

We want to continue producing this free newsletter to help parents and teachers benefit from AI while keeping their kids safe. Please forward it to someone you think would benefit from its contents and help us keep it alive.

Reading Time 6 Mins

Trending AI Apps

AI apps delighting educators and parents.

• Homework Helper: Math Answers Are parents using this to support their kids’ summer math learning? Math answers on tap!

• ChineseSkill - Learn Chinese Summer is peak language learning time. Here’s an AI-supported Chinese tutor.

• Buddy.ai Could this be the ideal learning companion for young kids over the summer break?

Using New Tools - Image Generation

Do you want custom pop songs for your lessons?

There are plenty of free AI tools, but they have usage restrictions, so it pays to have a few alternatives in case you have to wait too long. One of the big names in AI Image Generation is Stable Diffusion and they’ve recently released Stable Diffusion 3 Medium.

Step-by-step

• Go to Stable Diffusion 3 Medium on Hugging Face

• Enter a detailed prompt in the prompt box

• Experiment with the settings (optional).

• Click ‘run’

Teaching/Learning Use

I wanted a character for children to practice using adjectives in their writing. I wanted them to all have a similar challenge but not have the exact same image to prevent the ‘over-sharing’ of ideas.

Image generation makes it easy to achieve this. Each time I clicked ‘Run’, I got a new image. If I’d slightly changed the prompt, such as ‘add warts’ or ‘make him blue’, I’d have had greater variation with little extra work.

Generating Images With AI

Sticker sticklers

Generating images in sticker format can be a great time saver and creative support for kids. First we’ll tell you how to create stickers and then give you some ideas on how to use them.

Use Sticker Whiz. This is GPT for ChatGPT/Dall-E only. Use this GPT and to get images like those above enter the prompt:

Create an image of Henry VIII. Use a cartoon style

Create an image of a Victorian child chimney sweeper. Use a cartoon style

Create an image of Abraham Lincoln. Use a cartoon style

Just change the subject to your own choice. You can use objects to like fruit and vegetables.

GPT-Free

You can use other image generation AIs, as Sticker Whiz only saves you from entering the part of the prompt that defines the sticker and background.

Prompt:

Create a sticker of a banana in a cartoon style. Use a pale grey background for the image. The sticker has a solid white border with a solid black line around the image. The sticker should have a black border between the background and cast no shadow. There should be no other objects in the picture except for the sticker.

Being AI and a little random, it won’t always obey every part of the prompt. Dall-E is very keen on shadows, for instance. But most times, you’ll get an image that is still easy to use.

How does this help in education?

It is the borders on generated sticker images that make the difference. That border makes it easy to isolate the image. Why do you want to isolate the image?

• Print them out for kids to cut around and stick into their artwork.

• Use simple tools to isolate the image for kids to use in art and animation apps.

• Fit them into teaching resources to illustrate key points without the hassle of awkwardly trying to trim out more complex images.

• Use different styles to make your resources appeal to different age groups.

AI Jargon - Learning

We’ll help you increase your knowledge of AI by explaining a beginner and advanced concept each week.

For AI beginners—We all start somewhere.

Turing Test

The Turing* Test is a way to measure if a computer can think and act like a human. It works like this: a person (the judge) has a conversation through a computer with both a human and a machine, without knowing which is which.

If the judge can't tell the machine from the human based on the conversation alone, the machine is said to have passed the test and shown human-like intelligence.

If a computer can chat with you and you can't tell it's a computer, it passes the Turing Test.

*Alan Turing was a pioneering British mathematician and computer scientist widely considered the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. He played a crucial role in breaking the German Enigma code during World War II, significantly contributing to the Allied victory.

For AI Adepts—Next-level AI Knowledge!

Temperature

In the context of large language models (LLMs), "temperature" is a parameter that controls the randomness or creativity of the model's output. It is usually given on a decimal scale between 0 and 1.

Here's a simple way to understand it:

Low Temperature (close to 0): The model becomes more deterministic and conservative. It tends to pick the words or phrases it is most confident about. This makes the output more predictable and focused but less creative.

Example: If you ask for a recipe with a low temperature, it will give you a straightforward, common recipe.

High Temperature (closer to 1 or above): The model becomes more random and creative. It is more likely to choose less common words or phrases, which can lead to more surprising and diverse outputs.

Example: If you ask for a recipe with a high temperature, it might include unusual ingredients or steps, leading to a more unique recipe.

Some AI models let you adjust the temperature, although it may not be called that. When you choose between Precice, Balanced, and Creative when using Microsoft’s CoPilot, you are essentially adjusting the temperature.

Prompt Guide

Good prompting practice for you. Learning opportunities for your kids

Role

This is very simple to implement. Just tell the AI to assume a specific role.

You’ll often see this prompt technique described as a way to offer teachers a way of creating a chat between a class and a historical figure, but the role of a teacher is also a great one to give an AI.

Teaching Help

Teachers and parents can use this technique to get the app to help shape their thinking. Teachers can use the AI as a supportive colleague or sounding board, and parents can make up for their lack of teaching experience by getting tips and advice.

In both cases, this can promote creativity and better teaching techniques.

Prompt: Act as an experienced elementary teacher helping a less-experienced colleague. I will tell you what I am teaching and what my children need. I will share my ideas and available resources, and you will help me think through how I will teach my students. You will also let me know of any common misconceptions children often have.

AI for Math

We’ll look at AI’s impact on math learning in an upcoming newsletter. As you’ll have seen in the trending apps section, Math Solvers are becoming popular, and the iPad will soon have one built in.

Find out more about their impact on learning in our Guide to Math Solver Apps

AI News

Your one-stop, in-brief AI newsstand

• Siri might not become smarter as soon as we hoped with Apple’s AI upgrade

• Khan Academy has added a Rubric Creator to its toolset to aid teacher assessment of assignments.

• ChatGPT’s Mac app was discovered to store data in a less-than-secure way. If you use this app, make sure you update it and know how it uses data