Over the past few months I've been building an agentic teacher's assistant that handles a significant amount of my day-to-day tasks. This tool connects to my school's learning management system and acts as a chatbot loaded with 83 atomic tools and skills: planning and posting lessons, assignments, assessments, rubrics. It can create, read, and update any content on Canvas, Google Docs, or Slides. It can grade student work and provide feedback that is more helpful and comprehensive than what I can consistently produce by myself. I have a pedagogical council of AI advisors that help me plan lessons, projects, and assessments. The council is made up of three voices patterned after Seymour Papert, John Dewey, and Maria Montessori. Papert pushes me toward constructionism and learning by making. Dewey keeps me honest about experience and inquiry. Montessori watches for student agency and the prepared environment. I give them a draft lesson, and the council reads it, argues with it, and hands back a revised version. It knows Franklin's core philosophy and organizes learning around nine Transdisciplinary Competencies: skills that cut across every subject and define what it means to be a Franklin graduate. The Serendipity Generator skill looks across all my colleagues' curricula and identifies transdisciplinary project opportunities aligned to student interests. All of this happens in one chat. No copying or pasting. Once I approve a draft, I push it to Canvas. It cannot publish and that's a design choice. I want a final check before anything becomes viewable by students. Student names and identifiers are replaced with anonymous IDs before anything hits the model. Because I built this as an AI Agent with small tools plus access to our LMS, it can combine them to express emergent capabilities it was not designed for. When one of our science teachers unexpectedly had to leave mid-year, I generated a transition report for administration and the substitute: where each class was, what had been taught, what hadn't, and how each student was doing. When the grade level deans needed a daily report on students who got D's or F's, I spun it up with a few prompts and a Slack bot that now automates it. Department Leads used to spend hours each week checking every Canvas page for compliance with Franklin guidelines. I asked my tool to automate it. Now they get a Google Doc each Friday flagging any issues. To see how a student is doing on their nine Transdisciplinary Competencies, I can pull every assignment and assessment they've ever done and curate a portfolio that demonstrates those skills. I love building with AI and for AI Agents. In January, I started with a few small tools that could accomplish specific tasks. I linked them together and learned about Agent Native Architecture. Thanks, @danshipper and @every! I realized that I was growing software rather than building it. I am planting seeds and wondering: what will this become?

In the #FabEducatorsSummit learning about the definitive history of blocks based programming languages from one of the inventors of Scratch (and Blockly, and App Inventor, and MicroBlocks!) John Maloney!

One of my students made a drone that he can control with a glove. Check out his documentation video. youtu.be/fs8P4V7zm3s?si=9wFe…

Hands-on AI workshop @jaymesdec at the @make Education Forum. Learning to code chatbots is SO much fun! I can see lots of ways students could use this to learn computer science and more. #STEM #STEAM #MakerEd #coding make.co/educationforum/

Recently organized a weekend hackathon for 31 teams from 7 schools around the world. We worked with The Ocean Concervancy on challenges related to plastic pollution. I'm super proud that the two teams from Franklin won first and second place! franklinjc.org/about/news/fr…

Try to guess which ones were my ideas! Can't wait to support teacher makers at this workshop this summer!

Just submitted four conference proposals in three days. 💪

Seeking teachers experimenting w/ LLM APIs for automating teaching, learning, or admin tasks. Organizing an online sharing / workshop event. Fill out this form if you might help or interested in participating. forms.gle/Lsqj445XyrNzzu8t8 #edchat #edutwitter #aiclassroom

My favorite week of the year, Constructing Modern Knowledge, is back with a BANG this year! Guests include @stockers1001, @CRosenMusic, and @DrHowardGardner!! July 11 - 14, 2023 in Manchester, NH. And this year I'm bringing my family! constructingmodernknowledge.…

Come work with me! Franklin School is hiring Art, Design, and Technology teachers for next year. Jersey City, NJ franklinjc.org/about/careers… Great work environment. Awesome students!

What a variety of projects happening today in the @franklinschooljc Fab Lab! Cutting out furniture, making robots, sewing clothing, laser cutting coasters, and using math and code to design jewelery. instagram.com/p/ClpCM4yOrrh/…

After two years of zoom teaching and one year of teaching kids in acrylic cages, it feels amazing to be back working with students in a brand new maker space!

Makerspace PSA. Be careful about how you store batteries. Tossing coin cells on top of exposed 9 volts is a bad idea!

The deadline for our Young Innovators' Competition is April 1 ⏱! #ICYMI, check out a clip from our live session with Director of Innovation Jaymes Dec and Dwight School Director of Innovation & Technology Matt Moran as they shared what it's all about! #wednesdaywisdom

Just posted a photo @ Dwight School instagram.com/p/Cax9_aduku4/…

Breaking News: We're launching our incubator, Franklin Student Ventures, ✈️ with a Young Innovators' Competition! Join us to bring your ideas to life! For all the details, click here: bit.ly/33jhUZe #innovation #jcmakeityours #edtech #studentventures #youngentrepreneurs

This week I realized how small my town is when I ordered a cord of wood from the local farm stand and it was delivered by the mayor.

No. But I wish I did! Sounds like a great paper!

Just received an email from a former student telling me she got accepted to Stanford. She thanked me for her middle school years in the Fab Lab @MarymountNY. What a great feeling to know I've made a difference in even one child's life.

Keynotes at in-person conferences are back! I'll be speaking and leading two workshops at the Atlanta Area Technology Educators meeting on November 11th. Come say hi! aateconnect.org/event-453016…