Canva creator extraordinaire, AKA Cartmell Elementary Media Specialist Barb Catt, was a featured speaker during an International Spring Virtual Showcase.
Catt is a member of a Facebook group for librarians and teachers that focuses on Canva, an online graphic design and visual communication platform. She presented on how to introduce AI (artificial intelligence) to students so they could create characters to accompany chapter books they have read.
She developed the presentation idea after attending the Kentucky Society for Technology in Education (KySTE) conference and heard a presentation from another educator’s use of AI.
“I always try to bring back something new and use them,” she said. Catt is a Canva creative whiz and has utilized the AI tools on the platform. She created a lesson plan for third and fourth graders.
“I already had a plan to teach creating digital products,” she said, noting her third and fourth grade students were already using Canva to make book trailer videos.
After seeing the results her students created, Catt submitted the AI presentation titled “Use Your AI-image-nation” to the Facebook group. They accepted her work and invited her to present at the international virtual showcase.
Catt’s third grade students created AI images for “The Tale of Despereaux” while the fourth graders created AI images for “Holes.”
She told students to pretend they were graphic designers and authors then create four illustrations to accompany the book they read. They brainstormed as a group about the illustrations then used descriptive language skills to tell the AI function what kind of image they wanted to create.
Catt demonstrated what is created with generic basic language versus using descriptive words to give the AI system details it needed to create the images they desired. Students also learned that AI is not always correct, such as when it created a mouse with two tails. They were able to choose the style they liked, but had to maintain that style throughout their images so they would be cohesive.
“I was so pleased with it and the kids loved it so much,” she said, noting some of the students began the process thinking AI was a robot that would take over the world. “It’s fun to see what they come up with,” Catt added.
This year’s third and fourth graders are likely to get the same experience after the initial attempt was so successful.