PowerPoints to Purpose: Pioneering AI with Pedagogical Purpose
by Jason M. Kosmiski, M.Ed.
Back in My Day: We Thought PowerPoint Was High-Tech
I began my teaching career in 1998, long before educational technology was a thing – when having a computer lab was a luxury and AI was more associated with Terminator 2 than classrooms. Back then, integrating technology often meant typing papers in Microsoft Word or having students create a PowerPoint presentation, which rarely enhanced student understanding in meaningful ways. These early attempts were more about adding technology as an afterthought than using it with purpose. Today, the idea of “intentional use” has become a common buzzword in education, but it really does carry weight when it is clearly defined. Simply assigning tech-based projects, like PowerPoints, didn’t achieve that; students reorganized existing information without deepening their comprehension. Making a presentation about Abraham Lincoln, for instance, didn’t further students’ understanding of Abraham Lincoln beyond what the textbook already said.
The Great Handbag Heist: Teaching Character Through Clutter
At Cranberry High School (Venango County), we get to choose the lesson for our yearly state evaluation. With a new, younger admin team – and me turning 50 – I felt like I had something to prove, especially to my evaluator, our new assistant principal. After all, I did start teaching back when Will Smith was still “Gettin’ Jiggy wit It.”
One of my favorite lessons was developed in conjunction with a block student from Clarion University a few years back. She told me about a creative writing exercise one of her classmates designed for a class, where the prompt included items from a purse. The writing exercise consisted of telling a story about a fictional character using the items from the purse. I was teaching characterization at the time and thought that, with modifications, this prompt could effectively be used to teach indirect characterization to 9th graders.
I ransacked my basement for items: broken glasses, an old cell phone, a circuit board from an old PlayStation, among other things. I grabbed an old purse from my wife’s stash and went into school early. I pulled a student desk to the front of the room and laid out the purse and all five of the items I pilfered from the junk in my basement. I found an article online called “What the Inside of Your Purse Says About You,” by Sam Escobar, and added it to the assignment. I also developed a Google Form where students could create a character profile. I told my students that this “lost purse” was discovered. The assignment: describe a character who would have these items in his/her purse. Students were permitted to work in groups and were encouraged to go up to the desk and look at the physical items displayed there. Group discussions during this project are always interesting, and students really get into developing their characters using indirect characterization and the random items I choose to display.
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| The Lost Purse Project: five items discovered in the “lost purse.” Groups of students use these items along with methods of indirect characterization to develop their own fictional characters. |
Lost Purse 2.0: Leveling Up Character Creation with AI
I have been actively using artificial intelligence in my classroom since 2023, but I haven’t integrated it directly into lessons that would allow students to use it. After much thought, I decided to add an AI component to this year’s version of the “Lost Purse” assignment. I used a very targeted approach to dip my toe into the proverbial waters of AI in the classroom.
There was no way that I was going to allow students unfettered access to artificial intelligence in my classroom. Besides, most AI companies have policies that state that users must be 18 or older to use their products. Artificial Intelligence is also subject to the same old pedagogical missteps of using technology for the sake of the technology, and not adding to student learning. I wanted my use of AI to be “intentional.” I wanted to use AI as a vital part of the assignment, not as a novelty divorced from the objectives of the lesson. I didn’t want a PowerPoint assignment for the sake of “using technology” in my class.
I was familiar with Magic School AI and knew it was compliant with COPPA, GDPR, SOC 2, FERPA, and state privacy laws. The platform has a feature that allows educators to customize AI tools for students and deploy them in a very controlled environment called “student rooms.” My initial idea for this year’s lesson was to allow students to use their character information to train their own, unique chatbots who would take on the personas of their fictional characters. Because of the educational nature of Magic School AI, this was not possible. They weren’t able to ask their chatbots personal questions, and I received alerts that students were misusing the platform in the teacher dashboard.
Fail Forward: When the Chatbot Chat Fell Flat
That iteration of AI integration failed; I needed to pivot (the fancy buzzword is “fail forward”). I piloted this activity in my sixth-period academic English class (the one that was being observed by the assistant principal for my evaluation), but I had four more sections of English to introduce this lesson to the next day. Magic School AI also contains an AI image generator in partnership with Adobe Express. Instead of a chatbot, I created a Magic School room where students could use this image generator to produce portraits of the characters they created during the assignment.
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Student Example: Ninth-grade students used the image generator tool in Magic School AI to supplement their character profiles by creating photorealistic portraits of the characters they thought up in the “Lost Purse” project. Student's Character Sketch: Stephanie Moon is a very recognizable person but her skill of stealth makes her seem invisible. She has red hair and a face full of freckles. She always wears her classic gold hoops. If you want to be her friend, good luck, because she is very rude and distant. When she was a kid, she was orphaned because her parents died in an electrical fire. She was adopted by her parents. As she got older, she was always quiet and had a knack for computer things. She was so good she was offered a job as a hacker. To keep this from her parents she said she wanted to be a yoga instructor at her friends studio. They strongly resent her for this. By day, she is a yoga instructor, by night, she is a hacker that protects the world from an organization called "THE LETTERS". She lost her purse after a mission. She purposely left it so hopefully another hacker would find it, follow the clues, find Stephanie, and help her stop LETTERS. |
So, AI Art – Hot or Not? Students Spill the Tea
I gave my student an opportunity to evaluate the Magic School’s application of the image generator tool through a survey I conducted after the assignment was completed. Eighty-four students out of ninety took part in the survey. Overall, 69.1% of the students who used the Magic School student room and the image generation tool rated these tools as easy to use and understand (see Fig. 1).
Figure 1: Ease of Use
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| 69.1% of the students surveyed felt that using the Magic School AI image generator tool and student rooms were very easy. |
Figure 2: Ease of Use Challenges
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| While 17.8% of students found Magic School’s execution of their image generation tool difficult to navigate, 34.5% didn’t experience any challenges while utilizing the AI tool. |
My goal in designing this AI experience was to integrate it as an important part of the assignment – to use the AI “intentionally.” I asked students if using the image generator helped them to visualize and develop their characters better. The results here were mixed. 45.2% of the students stated that the AI image of their character made them feel more real. On the other hand, 44% said that they already had a preconceived idea of what their character looked like in their heads, and using the AI only somewhat influenced the design of their characters. Furthermore, 10.7% felt that using the AI had absolutely no influence on their character design at all (see Fig. 3).
Figure 3: The Influence of AI Images on Character Design
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| The percentage of students who felt that the image generator had an impact on the design of their characters was almost equal to those who felt satisfied with the preconceived character concepts they envisioned. |
Do I consider this experiment a failure? Not at all. I consider this attempt at intentional AI integration a BETA test. I actually began this learning experience trying to incorporate an AI chatbot into the assignment, but ended up with a lesson in AI image generation. I learned several things, some unrelated to my English class, and a lesson in characterization. The experience taught me more about my students and their experience with using AI. As noted in Fig. 2 above, 40.5% of the students said that their initial prompt didn’t generate the results that they intended, causing them to have to tweak their prompts and eventually run out of the free credits they were initially provided (One of the drawbacks to using the “freemium” version of Magic School; unfortunately, students were only able to revise their image prompts ten times before they ran out of “credits.”). One student noted, “Maybe it [the image generator] could give you a better description of what you are looking for when you are generating your AI.” Another student wished, “For the AI to be able to understand the prompts better, so it takes less time to find an image.” These challenges stem from a lack of experience writing prompts for AI, not any deficiency on the part of the AI. I feel like there is another lesson somewhere in these findings. One that would familiarize students with the basics of effective AI prompting. A lesson I would incorporate before setting off to use AI in my classroom for the first time.
The Final Byte: What I Learned About AI and Imagination
My early use of AI in the classroom, like those “groundbreaking” PowerPoint lessons of the past, showed that having tech isn’t the same as using it well. The Magic School image generator hinted at AI’s potential, but nearly half the students still preferred their own mental images – proof that AI won’t completely kill creativity just yet. This experience highlights the need for thoughtful tech use. Moving forward, we must teach students how to prompt effectively and understand AI’s limits – like bias and hallucinations – so it truly enhances learning, rather than becoming another flashy tool we use without purpose. Otherwise, we risk merely going through the motions, much like those early PowerPoint days, without truly leveling up our pedagogical practices.
