11 Utilizing Plaito AI in High School Classrooms

The Cross-curricular Competencies are four interrelated areas containing understandings, values, skills and processes which are considered important for learning in all areas of study (Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, 2013). These competencies reflect the Common Essential Learnings and are intended to be addressed in each area of study at each grade (Saskatchewan Ministry of Education, 2013). Plaito can help to achieve these competencies:

Developing Thinking: Having access to a powerful learning tool like Plaito provides curious students with the chance to always be learning about the world around them.

Developing Identity and Interdependence: Students are able to become self-sufficient while utilizing Plaito. This will help them to become better prepared for life after high school where there will not be a teacher available to them to guide them.

Developing Literacies: Working with Plaito will make students more familiar with AI at an early age. This will help them to use the strengths of AI and also avoid the potential drawbacks.

Developing Social Responsibility: By teaching students the skills needed to use Plaito, they will better understand the ethical concerns associated with AI like plagiarism and hopefully will be able to make decisions and will not fall victim to those misusing the technology.

Affordances

• Answers questions quickly: Students do not need to wait for the teacher to become available to ask a question. Students can simply ask Plaito and receive the answer almost immediately. With Plaito, the teacher is no longer the only keeper of knowledge in the classroom. It allows teachers more time to build relationships with students and guide their thinking toward mastery.
• Homework help: Students can utilize Plaito when they are doing school work at home or in the classroom. It can be used in multiple subject areas such as math or history. When used properly, Plaito gives students access to a world of information.
• Summarizer: If students have trouble with comprehension or get overwhelmed with large bodies of text, there is a summarizer tool that can be used to ascertain the main information from a paragraph or short story.
• Smartphone app: Plaito also offers a smartphone app that is user-friendly for students. If a student is struggling with a math question, they can quickly take a photo of the problem and see how the question should be solved instead of waiting to ask a teacher who is helping several other students.

Constraints

• Potential misuse: There is an essay writing feature in the app. Students could have Plaito write an essay for them and claim it as their own work.
• Lack of thinking development: Some would argue that true learning comes from the struggle to obtain knowledge (OpenAI, 2023). With Plaito, answers are given to students immediately without them having to put in any real effort to obtain the knowledge.
• Lack of social interactions: While Plaito can be useful for helping overwhelmed teachers, it is no replacement for the human interaction that the students will be missing out on.
• Advertisements: The mobile app has occasional popup ads that do not have a skip option. This can be annoying and time-consuming. Students also have to watch advertisements to unlock more questions if they run out on the free version.