Using AI to talk about Pedagogy – and then write a book.

This was a fun one…

What started with me just wanting to collate my ideas to work with a colleague on questioning techniques, very quickly spiraled out of control and became me writing the first in what will hopefully be a series of books!

I found that ChatGPT was brilliant for talking through teaching strategies when I asked it the simple question of “are you familiar with the works of Doug Lamov?”

What happened next was a frenzy of pedagogical ideation as I worked alongside ChatGPT to develop and refine questioning techniques specifically for the economics classroom. What I found was that using ChatGPT as a soundboard for sharing ideas was incredibly powerful. I would type in the equivalent of a ramble about some of the ways I ask questions in my teaching. Chatty would then help me develop the ideas further and generate very clear examples. Next step was to take our long and disjointed conversation and collate it into something clear and easy to share with my colleague.

The whole process took a few hours, with a lot of back and forth and refining/reframing of ideas. Once the book was finished, I then used ChatGPT to generate an image for the front cover. Happy with that, I then read through “our” work…

Decent I thought. But what can we do to make it more lighthearted? I know… economics jokes. In stepped Chatty again who helped me come up with some economics jokes according to themes I suggested. This gave me the icing on the cake – each chapter would start with a ChatGPT generated cartoon sketch of a teacher telling an economics joke to their class. Job done.

Whilst not strictly AI, I also cannot recommend Canva enough. I used it to edit the covers and cartoon sketch for each chapter. I’ll have another post soon about how I combine ChatGPT and Canva to make some amazing resources and displays.

For now, adios! Lookout for the book below on a best seller list near you!