WICOR® and AI: Organization

In today’s episode, we'll explore six ways teachers and students can use AI to help improve organization. Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

#267 — WICOR and AI: Organization

10 min
AVID Open Access

Keywords

tools, ai, students, resources, files, organized, find, users, tasks, content, organization, develop, access, number, locating, goblin, stored, learn, notes, powered

Speakers

Paul (99%), Transition (1%)

Paul Beckermann  0:01  

Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I'm your host, Paul Beckermann. 

Transition Music 0:06

Check it out, check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? So, what's in the toolkit? Check it out. 

Paul Beckermann 0:17

The topic of today's episode is WICOR and AI: organization. This week, we're under the fourth component of AVID's WICOR model: Organization. To make sure we're all on the same page, here's what I mean by organization. Organization involves managing materials, time, and thinking through systems and routines. That includes keeping track of where resources are stored, putting ideas and resources into meaningful sequence or arrangement, and being able to access and process those resources when you need them. With that in mind, I'm going to share an experience I had when I was involved in rolling out a one-to-one laptop program in our high school. Every student was given access to a laptop everyday during school hours, and it transformed a lot of the things that we did. At the end of the first year of having the program in place, I surveyed students and asked them what they liked best about having their own personal computing device available to them every day. You know what they overwhelmingly rated as the number one benefit? They said it helped keep them organized. Rather than having papers scattered all over the place, everything was either stored in their online account, or available in their learning management system. They said it kept them more organized. And that's a big deal. 

In the years since we introduced our one-to-one program, the world has been through a pandemic, where the majority of students were sent home to learn remotely. That transformed the Ed Tech landscape and accelerated the introduction of one-to-one programs all across the country. Almost overnight, students and teachers were connecting remotely and sharing almost everything digitally. Although those digital tools still had the potential of helping us be more organized, they also could cause people to feel a little bit overwhelmed. With so many files to manage, it was easy to misplace files and really drown in the sheer quantity of them. Even when people start out with a very organized digital folder structure that keeps everything in an easy-to-find location, over time, things get messy. We might get busy or have to quickly add a new resource, and then files might get saved outside of our neat little folder structure. Or perhaps we're in such a hurry that we don't even name the document. We might not even remember if we put it in a file at all, or if it's still living in our overcrowded email account. It can all get to be a little bit overwhelming. I have seen countless adults struggling with digital file management, and students are no different. In fact, they're often much worse because they haven't yet learned the value of organization or some of the strategies to get there. 

So where does artificial intelligence fit into all of this? I think we're just beginning to scratch the surface of how AI tools can help us stay organized. That being said, let me share some of the tools and strategies I've already seen emerging that have the potential to help not only our students, but ourselves as well. To get you started, let me share six ideas with you. 

Transition Music  3:14  

Here are your six, here are your six, here are your six tips. 

Paul Beckermann  3:20  

Number one, search functionality. In my mind, this is the greatest benefit of storing content in a digital format. Nearly every storage system or content management tool has some sort of integrated search tool. These tools are powered by sophisticated algorithms, which are a form of AI. They become so common that we might not even think of them as AI. But they are. I would argue that if we can help our students learn how to effectively search their own notes and materials, we can help them have more control over their resources. While AI-powered search is good at finding keywords within documents, it can still be helpful to teach your students to develop a consistent naming convention for their files. This will not only help them keep the files organized by title within an online folder structure, but it will also make it a lot easier to find related content by searching for an element in the naming convention. Knowing how to find and access content is a key part of organization. And that will help. 

Number two, advanced search. This is very related to the first point, but very few people take advantage of advanced search features. In Google Drive, for instance, most users simply type in a keyword and hit Enter. What they don't realize is that they can click the little slider icon on the right side of the search bar to reveal an advanced level of search limiters. They can limit by file type, owner of the document, keywords, words in the title, location, date modified, and more. By teaching students to use these features, we can empower them to take more control over locating their resources and more efficient access can save them time. 

Number three, AI notetaking tools. A few episodes ago, I highlighted one of these tools--Google's Notebook LM, this is just one of many such tools that are being developed. Evernote's another one. These AI tools let you store resources in a central location. While that's handy in and of itself, the true power is the AI integration that's built into these platforms. In Notebook LM, for instance, users get an instant summary of longer documents, which can save a lot of time locating relevant information. Users can take notes, which are connected to the original resource. And even more impressive is that users can ask questions about one or more of the stored resources inside the notebook. It's like having a learning assistant there to help you filter through your notes and find cross-connections amongst the ideas you've posted there. It's really cool. 

Number four, time management tools. Let's face it, time management is hard for a lot of people, adults included, and many students struggle mightily with staying caught up and on schedule. There are many tools being developed all the time to help people with this. One really cool one that's gaining popularity is the AI-powered website Goblin Tools. You can find it by going to goblin dot tools in any browser. Goblin.tools describes itself as a collection of small, simple, single-task tools, mostly designed to help neurodivergent people with tasks that they find overwhelming or difficult. I think we all know students that fit into this category. It might even be us. Within Goblin, there are three tools that can help with time and project management. The main one is Magic ToDo. This tool allows you to build your own to-do lists or enter tasks and click the magic wand icon to have the AI generate a list of sub-steps automatically for you. If the autogenerated steps seem a little off, you can edit them. Then, as you complete tasks, you can check them off the list. Another tool within the Goblin ecosystem is the Estimator. This tool helps you estimate how long it will take to complete a task or project. The other tool that I really like is the Compiler. This lets you paste in a brain dump of ideas, like a brainstorming list, and then with a click of a button, the compiler turns the brain dump into a bulleted list of tasks that need to be completed. Of course, you can fine-tune and edit these as you need. This can be really helpful for students who might be overwhelmed at the beginning of a large project. 

Number five, accessibility tools. Sometimes students have difficulty simply accessing the information they've collected, and accessing content is the first step to being able to organize and manage it. If you can't read it, for example, you can't make sense of the content that's in the resource. Fortunately, there are some really powerful tools to help these students out. Speechify is one example. It's a great tool that converts text-to-speech for students who are struggling with reading. Otter.ai does the opposite. It converts recorded speech into text. This can be really helpful for students who prefer to initially capture their thoughts using an audio recorder. Or maybe they want to take notes from an online meeting that they've had. There are also a lot of translation tools available for students who are accessing content that is not written into their primary language. Google Translate is probably the most popular one. And now generative AI apps like Google Bard and ChatGPT can also be used to translate text. There are more accessibility tools being developed all the time. But these are some popular ones. And they're making a significant difference for students and adults who struggle to decode or access text-based content. 

And number six, AI assistants. Both Google and Microsoft are beginning to integrate AI assistants directly into their production tools. For instance, Google Bard has a plugin that connects a user's email, drive and docs together. With one search box, you can ask the integrated AI to answer questions or find resources located in any of these file locations about the query that you've entered. Microsoft is developing their Copilot AI that works in a really similar way. In some respects, this could seem is encouraging users to be less organized since they have access to content from any space and production suite ecosystem. It's a fair argument. However, it also may be changing the way we define organization. After all, organization is largely about making sense of the materials we have available to us and being able to access what we need when we need it. AI might be changing how that works.

Time will tell how this will evolve. But there is value to teaching students how to use these features and tools as a way to access the content available to them. As AI tools continue to evolve, so will the concept of what it means to be organized. And it will continue to be important for our students to be able to use the tools available to them and to develop the skill to use these tools in meaningful ways. This list of six ways can get you started on that journey, and I encourage you to explore further on your own, and share those ideas with your colleagues. As the AI landscape continues to develop, it will change the way that we do things. 

To learn more about today's topic and explore other free resources, visit AvidOpenAccess.org. Specifically, I encourage you to check out our collection of articles about AI. You can find it by going to AvidOpenAccess.org and searching for AI in the K-12 Classroom. And, of course, be sure to join Rena, Winston, and me every Wednesday for our full-length podcast, Unpacking Education, where we're joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening. Take care, and thanks for all you do. You make a difference.