<aside> 👋🏽 Reflections on introducing educators at Brooklyn Collaborative Studies to Playlab. By Jessenia Martinez, a Playlab Coach.
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On March 15, 72 educators and paraprofessionals gathered at Brooklyn Collaborative Studies (BCS), a NYC Outward Bound School that serves students 6-12. BCS received professional development on how to use Playlab AI for the first time. The PD was led by Ed Castro, Family Leadership Coordinator at the Office of Superintendent Alan Cheng and Playlab AI PLC alumnus. His co-facilitators included Jessenia Martinez, Ethan Castro, and Jin Kim (an alum of BCS!).
At the beginning of the PD, Ed gauged the room’s experience with AI. There was a mixed bag of experience around the room ranging from 1-4 (1 being very limited use of AI and 4 being using AI consistently on a daily basis.) There were some educators who shared that they had some reservations about using AI in their classrooms but as they began to build on Playlab’s workspace, the room filled with questions, collaborative discussions, and realizations from building on Playlab
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12th Grade ELA teachers, Andrew and Maria worked together to create, “What’s the Story,” a tool that would list literary elements for students from stories that they were reading together as a class. Their prompts were driven by their goal to help students write accurate summaries and analyses. They quickly learned how to use prompt engineering to create a tool that would successfully list accurate literary elements. When their tool was providing information that was not accurate, they uploaded resources so that their tool had the correct context.
Jessy, a 6th grade ELA teacher created, “Sentence Structure,” a tool that would provide feedback to her students on their writing. Her goal was to help her students write using complex sentence structures, which did not necessarily mean using complex vocabulary. This is something that she learned she had to explicitly instruct her tool to avoid.
Mercedes shared that she was hesitant to use technology but that she wanted to learn how to use AI to help students in grades 6-8 regulate their emotions. Mercedes stated that she appreciated the PD because she was able to follow along and understood how to use Playlab. Mercedes built, “Supporting Emotional Behavior.”
Java is a 9th Grade paraprofessional at BCS. She wanted to create an app that would help students get started on coding. She is pictured here with Mercedes, a 7th grade paraprofessional who thanked Java for helping her get started with her prompts on Playlab.
Java and Mercedes, paraprofessionals at BCS, hard at work!
Jin, a BCS alum, joined as as a facilitator. He’s been coaching people on Playlab since Fall 2023.
After building time, the educators at BCS were encouraged to share their tools with the room. In this clip, Lauren shares her process on building two tools using Playlab with her colleagues. She explains the steps that she took to create the tools that she was so proud of! As Scill Chan, principal at BCS, closed the PD, she expressed her gratitude to the team for leading the PD and reminded her team that they are at the cutting edge of technology and education by using AI responsibly in their classrooms.