1. I was very impressed with the part of the video describing the Criterion Interactive Prototype. It is a web-based, instructor-led automated writing tool that helps students plan, write, and revise their essays. This AI tool is designed to help students with the planning (brainstorming), the instant feedback, and editing of their essays, without replacing the teacher (yours truly) in the process. This is extremely helpful and useful in a social studies classroom where the students are writing several different essays throughout the course of the school year. In regards to US History, students needs to write a Short Essay Question (SEQ Essay), along with a Civic Literacy Essay. Both essays involve students analyzing documents and explaining the relationship between the documents, while citing and using textual evidence from the documents to address the stated task. In the SEQ, students need to include one or two documents (depending on Set #1 or Set #2) and for the Civic Literacy Essay, students need to include four documents in their essay response... So allowing the teacher to use this AI technology to help students brainstorm ideas (historical context- which students struggle on), organize their thoughts/paragraphs, correct their grammar/punctation, and provide instant feedback is super beneficial to both the student and teacher. Again, it doesn't remove the teacher from the equation, but provided the teacher and student with a new "teaching assistant" in the classroom.
