MSM 664: Choose Your Own AI Adventure
Summary:
Shawn and Troy talk about AI, Metacognition, banning water, and more. Dave plays around.
Jokes:
To everyone that received a book from me for Christmas, they’re due back at the library next Monday.
While most puns make me feel numb. math puns make me feel number.
I know a man who can chop down trees in his sleep.
- He’s a slumberjack.
My friend said he didn’t understand what cloning was. I said that makes two of us.
To the person who stole my glasses.
- I will find you, I have contacts!
I’ve been teaching myself to juggle clocks.
- People are saying I’ve got too much time on my hands.
What do you call a man in a slow cooker painting a portrait?
- Stuart.
Middle School Science Minute
by Dave Bydlowski (k12science or davidbydlowski@mac.com)
K12Science Podcast: Playful Classroom
I was recently reading the May – June 2025 issue of “Science and Children”, a publication of the National Science Teaching Association.
In this issue, I read the section, “Editor’s Note” written by Elizabeth Barret-Zahn. She wrote an article entitled, “‘Prioritizing Play.”
We can’t turn every lesson into an open-ended discovery session. But where can discovery, creativity and fun be sprinkled in? With a subtle mindset change, we can make learning feel less like work and more like play.
http://k12science.net/playful-classroom/
Reports from the Front Lines
- DHMO Update
- Seeking Socrates
The Social Web
Happy Last Day of School 2025 to all elementary thru high school students whose last day of school for the 2024-2025 school year is today!
Today’s Word of the Day with @MerriamWebster is ‘apotheosis.’
https://twitter.com/i/status/1096423953218879488
Keep Indiana Learning @keepinlearning.bsky.social
Discover a wealth of professional development opportunities on the Keep Indiana Learning YouTubechannel! 💡It is packed with options for teachers, administrators, and counselors, and we’re constantly adding new content. Check it out & subscribe today – youtube.com/KeepIndianaL… #EduSky
Our celebration of advisory wraps up this week! As the school year also closes, it’s a great time to reflect on how your team advocated for students this year. Share what worked in the comments! Need advisory support? Check out these resources from AMLE: ow.ly/L8wX50VZ8kN
Mike Shaw @mikeshaw.bsky.social
Word of the day
ALT
Strategies:
What Happens to Reading Comprehension When Kids Focus on the Main Idea
Why do so many students struggle to understand what they read, even after they learn how to read?
One camp has been arguing that schools have been going about it all wrong. These critics say that instead of drilling students on the main idea (similar to questions students will see on annual state exams), teachers should spend more time building students’ background knowledge of the world.
“If we want all the children to read, we have proven that they can be taught with the right strategies,”
…drilling students on the main point or the author’s purpose isn’t helpful because a struggling reader cannot come up with a point or a purpose from thin air. (She’s also not a fan of highlighting key words or graphic organizers, both common strategies for reading comprehension in schools.
…first step is to guide students through a series of questions as they read, such as “Is there a problem?” “What caused it?” and “Is there a solution?” Based on their answers, students can then decide which structure the passage follows: cause and effect, problem and solution, comparisons or a sequence. Next, students fill in blanks — like in a Mad Libs worksheet — to help create a main idea statement. And finally, they practice expanding on that idea with relevant details to form a summary.
Affirming Neurodiversity Through Our Practices
Neurodiversity recognizes that every person’s brain functions uniquely, contributing a wide array of perspectives, skills, and ideas to society.
Neurodivergent, however, specifically describes individuals whose neurological characteristics diverge significantly from what society has established as norms. Conditions typically classified under neurodivergence include autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, epilepsy, and Tourette’s syndrome.
https://www.middleweb.com/52270/affirming-neurodiversity-through-our-practices/
Resources:
Chat-Animator
https://motion-tools.com/chat-animator
AXIS The Culture Translator
Meme of the Week: “Holy Airball”
This trend is much easier to understand if you see it, so here’s an example! “Holy airball” is a social media trend that involves someone (usually a girl) saying something about themselves, a faceless responder (usually a boy) misunderstanding what they mean and asking a presumptive question, and then an image or response proving their ignorance, accompanied by the phrase “holy airball!” The expression offers a tongue-in-cheek commentary about the often incorrect assumptions people make when they are getting to know someone. It also plays on some cultural idioms, with the term “airball” referring to missing a shot in basketball so badly that it only hits the air, as well as the idea of “shooting your shot” being the moment someone tries to ask someone for a date.
Screentime Regrets
What it is: A handful of Gen Zers explained to The Guardian why they plan on implementing significant restrictions in their own kids’ smartphone and social media use. Se also The World from A to Z at https://youtu.be/VSfBQ48w8MM?t=193
Web Spotlight:
‘Metacognitive Laziness’: How AI Helps Students Offload Critical Thinking, Other Hard Work
Tech evangelists may be dazzled by the promise of AI, but two well-designed new studies — one in China and one by a leading AI company — signal trouble ahead.
Many students are letting AI do important brain work for them.
To the researchers’ surprise, the students in the ChatGPT group improved their essays the most — even more than the group with human writing teachers. But the ChatGPT group didn’t learn more about the topic they read and wrote about, nor did the ChatGPT students feel more motivated to write and learn than students in the other three groups. Indeed, there were signs that the students who enjoyed the assignment the most and maintained interest were those who merely received the writing checklist but otherwise completed the assignment without AI or human handholding.
As the researchers analyzed how students completed their work on computers, they noticed that students who had access to AI or a human were less likely to refer to the reading materials.
“This highlights a crucial issue in human-AI interaction,” the researchers wrote. “Potential metacognitive laziness.” By that, they mean a dependence on AI assistance, offloading thought processes to the bot and not engaging directly with the tasks that are needed to synthesize, analyze and explain.
“This raises questions about ensuring students don’t offload critical cognitive tasks to AI systems,” the Anthropic researchers wrote. “There are legitimate worries that AI systems may provide a crutch for students, stifling the development of foundational skills needed to support higher-order thinking.”
The hope is that AI can improve learning through immediate feedback and personalizing instruction for each student. But these studies are showing that AI is also making it easier for students not to learn.
AI advocates say that educators need to redesign assignments so that students cannot complete them by asking AI to do it for them and educate students on how to use AI in ways that maximize learning. To me, this seems like wishful thinking. Real learning is hard, and if there are shortcuts, it’s human nature to take them.
“Writing is not correctness or avoiding error,” she posted on LinkedIn. “Writing is not just a product. The act of writing is a form of thinking and learning.”
I was a first-round MLB bust. Here are 5 lessons I learned
- The hard moments teach you what the easy ones never could
- Your identity must be bigger than your achievements
- Sometimes the greatest growth comes after letting go
- Letting go of something allowed an even better version of myself to emerge
- What feels like a loss can actually be relief in disguise
But what if you ask an AI? Here’s what it says:
Bloom’s Taxonomy Levels and Perplexity Usage
| Bloom’s Level | Definition & Example Activities |
| How Perplexity Supports This for 13-Year-Olds | ||
| Remember | Recall facts, definitions, lists.“List Newton’s laws of motion.” | Perplexity provides quick, accurate retrieval of factual information, dates, names, and definitions, helping students memorize and recall key concepts. |
| Understand | Explain ideas, summarize, interpret.“Summarize the plot of a novel.” | Students can ask Perplexity to explain or paraphrase concepts, summarize readings, or clarify confusing topics in accessible language. |
| Apply | Use knowledge in new situations.“Solve a math problem using a formula.” | Perplexity helps students apply learned concepts by guiding them through problem-solving steps or showing how to use information in practical scenarios. |
| Analyze | Break down information, compare, contrast.“Differentiate between two theories.” | Students can use Perplexity to compare sources, analyze arguments, and break complex topics into parts for better understanding. |
| Evaluate | Judge, critique, defend positions.“Assess the credibility of a source.” | Perplexity’s citation feature allows students to evaluate the reliability of information, critique arguments, and justify their opinions with evidence. |
| Create | Produce new work, design, invent.“Write a story or design an experiment.” | Students can synthesize information from Perplexity to generate original projects, essays, or creative work, using the tool to gather and combine ideas. |
Key Points
- Bloom’s Taxonomy is hierarchical: each level builds on the previous one
By mapping Bloom’s Taxonomy to Perplexity’s capabilities, educators can design activities and assessments that leverage AI to foster higher-order thinking skills in young learners.
Perplexity’s features—such as natural language querying, source citations, and summarization—support learning objectives at every level of the taxonomy.
For 13-year-olds, this means Perplexity can be used not just for memorizing facts, but also for deeper understanding, critical thinking, and creative synthesis, aligning with modern educational goals
Click the Play button below to listen to the show!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
