Sal Khan, founder and CEO of Khan Academy, has announced a partnership with TED and ETS to build an inexpensive (<$10,000) postsecondary program for students looking to earn a college degree that focuses on AI skills alongside math, economics, communication, etc. All courses would be taught through interaction with generative AI tools.

AI training is now a “fundable priority” for federal education grants, pushing more states and districts to ensure that both students and teachers are learning about artificial intelligence as part of their educational programs. This is not research funding, but rather money to begin implementing genAI tools and strategies into our schools.

In a long-awaited step, New York City’s Education Department released new guidelines for AI use that uses traffic lights to show when AI is allowed or banned. While this system seems similar to Leon Furze’s AI Assessment Scale (a version of which I’ve developed for the Learning Forge), it lacks the ability to differentiate between specific uses of genAI in the learning process as it is primarily geared toward teacher use. It includes mention of the now-common “human in the loop” requirement and provides almost no guidance for student use of AI.

Are you curious about the recent surge in “vibe coding” using AI tools? Well, so are your students. As part of a project that has historically asked students to make card or board games as one of the product options,I helped my Professional Learning Team implement an AI-assisted video game option. Here’s how I did it.

I started by exploring how easily Google Gemini (our district’s supported chatbot) could produce computer code. I asked it to make a game using the constraints from the original project. What it produced was a stream of unintelligible (at least for me) HTML code.

I knew that a big part of the problem would be making the code able to run and be accessed online. After some thought, I realized that Google Sites has an “Embed” module that can be used to put documents and other bits of HTML into a block on a webpage. I tried putting the code from Gemini into one of these blocks and it worked perfectly. I could publish the webpage to just my students or to the world at large, just like with any other Google Site.

Beyond the motivational benefit that made many of my students more interested in the project overall, there were several additional advantages of adding this option:

I started with our existing project and made some small adjustments to the project description and rubric. Overall, though, I wanted to keep the rigor and expectations the same as for board and card games. Here’s the project outline: Because We S.A.I.D. So Project

To help my PLC-mates, who were less comfortable with the actual steps that I’ve described above, I created a separate document to help students make their game, iterate it, and embed it in a Google Site. Check it out: Building the Pathogen Protector: A CDC Digital Game Guide

Give these steps a try yourself and tell me how it went. If you’re already doing vibe coding with your students, I’d love to hear what they are making and how you think it’s going.

Since returning from Stockton, California and getting ready to spend the summer working on the manuscript for “The Learning Forge”, I’ve been booking work all over the U.S. In May, I head to Plano, Texas to work with some teachers who are eager to learn about AI tools right after they finish the school year.

This spring will also bring more of Solution Tree’s “AI for Educators” workshops all over the country. Check out ST’s website to sign up or to schedule an event near you.

In April, I’ll share more of the Learning Forge here, giving you a sneak peak inside my latest book.

Paul (and the Codium Educational Consulting team)

P.S.

Don’t forget to email me with examples of how you’ve used the tools and strategies that I’ve shared.