Riding Through Sand - how AI is changing internet research - Maurice Draggon...

This session was a turbo talk and focused on how AI is changing internet research and some guidelines about how one school district put some boundaries in place. What I got out of this was a few questions that will help form our AI policy.

Maurice's presentation is here

Google uses AI to help give search results regardless of if in AI or not. Sources must be trusted before using AI summary - need to check facts via sources as AI draws from everywhere. Notebook LM puts research in reverse and is google based. It uses AI based only the resources you upload and will build on and enhance what you already have. A bonus is it gives you links of your information. 

Some takeaways:

• Ask one tool to critique another as a comparative step
• Policy must ID areas where AI is not the final decision maker staff are eg:IEP or grading
• Get AI to find the gaps and faults in the wording
• When creating policy get school wide and whanau feedback - AI can summarise stakeholders responses.
• Use AI tools to turn text into graphic display, image, movie
• The question is not whether students will meet AI. The question is whether they will know how to reason with it.
• AI as a research assistant helps you do more thinking. It does not replace your responsibility to think. AI can broaden the field. It can surface patterns. It can find areas of disagreement. It can help compare sources. But the student still has to ask better questions, check the sources, and decide whether the evidence supports the conclusion.
• The goal is to make students stronger at directing, testing, and revising AI-assisted research.
• If we want students to become AI-ready researchers, we need to make the behaviours explicit. These are the classroom routines we need to build.
• We need to remember that no single AI tool gives a complete view.
• If the AI says, "Research shows," the student asks, "Which research?" If it says, "Experts agree," the student asks, "Which experts, and who disagrees?" 
• Paste the answer from one AI into another to analyse it. This helps students spot gaps, assumptions, and bias. Over time, they internalise this critique and start asking these tough questions themselves, shifting them from AI dependence to AI-supported critical thinking.
• One of the most important research lessons in the age of AI is that a fact can be accurate and still be misleading.
• The promise is more visible thinking: broader investigation, better questions, stronger evidence, and more responsible conclusions.

Students need to do these checks with AI literacy and must take an active part in this to find a balance between what they know and what AI generates.

Bringing Decodable Texts to Life With Comprehension Strategies - Jill Lauren...

This session was led by Jill Lauren who wrote the text Jen's Web that we used as an exemplar. I chose this session as my main objective at ISTE is to do something for the Juniors, something for the seniors and something for me. This one was for our junior team.

When looking beyond barking at print effective reading instruction must be grounded in cognitive science rather than guessing. Comprehension is calculated as Word Recognition (WR) × Language Comprehension (LC) = Reading Comprehension (RC). Reading is never just loudly pronouncing words (barking at print) without processing meaning. Reading is highly complex, requiring the simultaneous interaction of the 5 pillars of literacy, working memory, and executive function.

• Readers must build three cognitive levels at the exact same time:

  • Decoding the literal words.

  • Integrating the text with prior knowledge.

  • Generating inferences to create a complete mental model.

Early Comprehension is vital and comprehension instruction should start early alongside phonics, rather than waiting until decoding is mastered. Learning to read and reading to learn happen simultaneously.

Inference: 

• Texts are rarely fully explicit. Authors leave gaps, making inference the ultimate predictor of long-term comprehension success.

• Local Inference: Word-level connections, such as understanding synonyms and tracking shifting pronoun references (a common stumbling block for poor comprehenders).

• Global Inference: Broader text-level themes, author's purpose, predictions, and cause-and-effect patterns.

• Proven Efficacy (Dr Amy Elleman, 2017): A meta-analysis shows explicit inference interventions over 2–10 months yield a strong effect size of 0.58. It significantly increases both literal and inferential outcomes for struggling readers.

• Teachers must actively teach students how to activate their background knowledge and explicitly model how to answer inferential questions.

Follow up tasks to support comprehension:

1. Discover the Cover

• Action: Before opening a text, have students look at the title and illustration to predict the story using a prediction box worksheet or the whiteboard.

• The Twist: Ask students to share a time they felt, thought, or acted like the character on the cover. This bridges prior knowledge directly into the context of the book to keep them engaged.

• Text Selection: Use high-quality, vocabulary-rich decodable books with full narrative arcs early on (e.g., Phonics Books like Jen’s Web or Whole Phonics resources) rather than relying solely on low-word repetitive readers.

2. Prediction Playground

• Action: Write 4 possible predictions on the board at a critical point in the text.

• The Twist: After reading a snippet, students choose a prediction, physically move to a corner of the room to discuss it with peers, and then defend their choice to the whole class using text evidence.

• Benefit: Cultivates essential self-questioning and self-explanation habits early.

3. Sentence Practice (True/False Detective)

• Action: Write two true sentences and two false sentences about the text on the board.

• The Twist: Students must identify the false sentences and explicitly prove why they are incorrect by pointing directly to evidence in the text.

• Benefit: Simultaneously builds sentence comprehension, self-monitoring, oral language, active listening, and text-based justification.

The ultimate goal is intrinsic motivation. Starting early with systematic decodable books allows students to experience immediate success, which in turn drives motivation. Intrinsic motivation leads to children reading more, which directly builds a larger vocabulary and broader world knowledge, allowing for deep comprehension.

The AI Toolbox: Best AI Tools for Schools - Eric Curts...

What a fantastic session! Eric Curts shared so many amazing resources - all of the links are in my notes. I really liked the fast pace of this session that had great visuals and clear explanations. Eric is very generous with his resources and is happy for anyone to make a copy. As he says 'All tools shared have a robust free version and are educationally sound'. Some of the extensions are blocked at the moment for our kura but as soon as I'm back at school I will be asking for these to be unlocked, especially trafficlite that shows students what is needed for different levels of AI use when creating DLOs to show their understanding of a task. The learning in this session will definitely be something I share with our PBS team.

Click here for my notes from the session.

Stop the robotic reading: 5 strategies to promote fluency - MeQuel Bolden...

This session was presented by MeQuel Bolden. Our session began with MeQuel reminding us that we've all seen students racing through a text like they’re trying to win a drag race, blurring words together just to hit a high 'Words Per Minute' target. Reading fast is not reading fluently. When we treat reading like a speed sport, we do our students a massive disservice. True fluency isn't about beating a stopwatch; it’s about creating a bridge to comprehension. We need to unpack what reading fluency actually is, and look at how we can explicitly build this crucial skill in our classrooms.

To get to fluency, students need to be explicitly taught.

• Phonemic Awareness: The ability to isolate and segment individual sounds in spoken words.

• Decoding: Cracking the alphabetic code to turn print into speech.

• Vocabulary: Knowing what the words actually mean.

• Automaticity: Instant, effortless word recognition.

When a reader has these skills, they build sight word recognition and retain words in their long-term memory. Why does this matter? It comes down to brain power. Fluent readers have the cognitive space to think about the text and its purpose. Non-fluent readers spend 100% of their mental energy just working out the words. For them, unpacking meaning is a bridge too far. Because of timed assessments, deep misconceptions have crawled into modern reading instruction. 

• Myth 1: Fluency means reading fast. * Reality: If you read too fast or too slow, meaning is lost. Think of a powerful quote read too fast, it loses its punch; read at a just right pace, it carries expression, power, and emotion. Fluency is more than speed. Refer to the activity below on how to do this.

                                     

• Myth 2: Fluency is age-related. * Reality: It doesn't just "develop" as kids get older. If the skills aren't there, a high schooler will struggle just as much as a Year 3 student. Fluency is needed across the entire curriculum, not just in English or literacy time.

• Myth 3: More independent reading time fixes it. * Reality: Simply telling a struggling reader to "go and read a book" won't fix a broken control panel. We must use diagnostic assessments (like phonemic awareness tests) to see exactly where the breakdown is happening, and then teach the missing skills explicitly.

Old Skool Instructional Steps (That Still Work!)

Building fluent readers requires a predictable, scaffolded routine. These classic programming steps provide the ultimate safety net for learners:

1. Modelling: Students must see and hear what fluent reading looks and sounds like.

2. Assisted Support: Scaffolding the reading so skills can safely evolve.

3. Echo Reading: The teacher reads a line, and the students echo it back. Because they just heard what it should sound like, they are highly motivated to try.

4. Choral Reading: The whole class reads together. This acts as a beautiful safety net for struggling readers to practise without fear of being singled out.

5. Wide Reading: Exposing students to a variety of text structures to build background knowledge and vocabulary.

6. Repeated Reading: Reading a text more than once. To be effective, it must include feedback—whether from a teacher, a peer, or self-feedback via an audio recording.

7. Rhythm and Phrasing: Teaching students to scoop words together for flow, responding to punctuation, and channelling character personalities. Prosody is expression; if a student ignores punctuation, meaning is lost.

We can upgrade our practice by focusing on five key elements:

• Quality of Text: Does the text support the purpose? Is it worth reading over and over, or is it too easy?

• Oral Reading: Opportunities to read aloud are an absolute must!

• Feedback: Teach students that feedback is not criticism—it's coaching. Use rubrics so teachers, peers, or the students themselves can measure growth.

• Repetition (Without Boredom): To keep repeated reading fresh, give students a different focus each time they read the same text (e.g., “This time, focus entirely on how the punctuation changes your voice.”).

• Engagement: Involve students by letting them set their own fluency goals.

Every student will need their own photocopy of the text to annotate.

• Step 1: Prep the Text. Unpack tricky vocabulary and activate prior knowledge.

• Step 2: Teacher Intro. The teacher reads aloud. Students listen and follow along with their eyes.

• Step 3: Clear the Hurdle. Open the floor for questions: “Any tricky words? Anyone need anything explained?”

• Step 4: Choral Read. Read the text together. Give group feedback on the class effort. (Keep engagement high through trust—never single a student out).

• Step 5: The Monday/Friday Check. Have students record their reading on Monday, and record it again on Friday using a tool like the totem camera. The growth they hear will blow their minds.

Every classroom has porcupines or prickly, struggling students who find reading frustrating and push back against instruction. They struggle to connect with the expected norm, but they shine brilliantly in the areas where they do connect. Our job isn't to flatten their quills, it’s to build their creative muscles and hug them. Imagination in reading is nothing less than exploring someone else’s daydreams. When we build trust, elevate our reflection time, and keep going without giving up, even our most reluctant readers will find their voice. Fluency takes time and needs the skills needed to be taught explicitly. 

Click here for session resources

Supporting Literacy Through Creativity Using AI-Powered Tools - Jessica Peck...

I attended a workshop run by Jessica Peck at ISTE in Denver in 2024 so I knew that she was a presenter I wanted to lookout for. This workshop on Supporting Literacy Through Creativity Using AI-Powered Tools did not disappoint. One of the biggest hurdles I face when teaching a reading lesson is getting my students who struggle to understand the complexities of texts we unpack at our Year 7/8 level without diluting the content. This session focussed on 5 ways I could rethink how I do this and I can't wait to trial these in my classroom. I also realise form this session that I need to create posters for my classroom and class site that show how to use AI effectively - eg: How to prompt AI to create images, because once students understand how to create the task the cognitive load shifts from how to do the task to a focus on content. 

Click here for my notes from the workshop. All the resources shared can be found at this padlet

Gobs of Goodies from Google - Wanda Terral ...

Wanda Terral led this session. The focus was on the nuts and bolts of google apps, extensions and add-ons. The bullet points below capture what Wanda shared.This link bit.ly/googlegoodies opens the copy of this doc and will be updated so check back periodically to see updates

• Modify URL of doc to make a copy - Sir Links Alot - preview/template/force copy/PDF

• Customise chrome toolbar

• Reading mode removes ads etc on sites and just gives the text

• Create QR code

• Google translate

• Send to another device - other device needs to be signed into chrome to work

• Split view - opens 2 tabs at same time in split view - allows you to choose another open tab - can open 2 versions of same tab open at same time if need to make adaptations without copious scrolling - can adjust size of split

• Preview allows you to look at a doc or slides without opening it

• Shortcuts - ⌘ + /  in sheets/slides/docs allows you see the specific shortcuts available 

• www.googleforeducommunity.com 

• https://blog.kathyschrock.net/ - have a look at the ideas shared here

• Extensions

• Grabbit will get actual links from other sites etc

• Chrome capture and screenshot creates a 12 second animated GIF - has no audio so can be inserted into a google doc

• Magnifying glass will help enlarge text when you hover over it

• Screen Mask allows you to mask the text you are not using

• Search tools put in topic followed by these highlighted text below to narrow your search

• To find resources on a topic: [topic] intitle:resources inurl:resources 

• To find PDFs about a topic: [topic] filetype:pdf

• Vibe code - write code within gemini canvas

• Google Sheet Macros - Huge timesaver and intro to Google Apps Script.

• File Versions for Drive Files - Change content of a PDF in Drive without changing the URL - lets you make changes without breaking the original PDF link

• Google Earth Flight Simulator - Explore > Tools > Flight Simulator - use the arrows to navigate your flight over an area - good for maths eg: directions 

• Google Workspace Learning Centre - explore this

Google Demo Slam - Eric Curts - Gemini Gems...

 

This session was fast paced and really informative! I love using Gemini gems and use them regularly in my classroom. This session was a fantastic and I came away affirmed in what I was already doing an I came away with a wealth of prompts for a very wide variety of learning experiences. The resources shared are listed below:

• Creating and Sharing Gemini Gems
• EduGems Collection of Gemini Gem Prompts
• EduGems