Scale Up Your Projects With AI

One of the things I get most excited/passionate about in education is having the opportunity to create large-scale projects that combine multiple content areas. When I first started as a video production teacher, I was involved in the planning and execution of a project called "CSI: West High".

When we started, it combined criminal justice, biotechnology, photography, art, video production, journalism, and law classes. The students started the day with a staged crime scene (complete with a "dead body" of a beloved teacher). The criminal justice students collected evidence while the photography class took official crime scene photos. My video class and the journalism class played the role of the media, staying behind the crime scene tape and trying to get interviews from witnesses. As we moved forward with the project, my class produced 1-2 "breaking news" segments per day about the case (check them out here!), even opting to edit some of their interviews to make the assistant principal look guilty! When a suspect was apprehended, it moved into the trial phase. Overall, the project took two weeks to complete and the entire school was engaged. We didn't have block scheduling at the time, we didn't get any of the classes together in the same room beyond that initial "crime scene". It was nothing short of amazing.

What does this have to do with digital learning? Well...these things are complicated to plan. They take time and dedication. They take organization. They take leadership and creativity. We volunteered weeks of lunch periods and prep periods to figure it out. Not everyone is willing or able to put in that amount of time. But AI can help make these major projects a little easier to manage!

Let's do a quick demo. We'll stick with this mock crime scene concept. I might go into my school sanctioned AI tool (I personally prefer using SchoolAI for all of my curriculum related questions rather than something like Gemini or CoPilot) and prompt it with something like this:

"I am a high school video production teacher working with 6 other teachers (criminal justice, biotechnology, photography, art, journalism, and law) to develop a school-wide mock crime scene and mock trial project. We want the project to last two weeks and we will only be able to get the classes together for an initial kickoff at the "crime scene". Give me some suggestions on how to organize/structure this project. What would each class be working on and how could we keep everything organized? Also suggest any other classes that might be able to contribute to this project."

The result? An 11-page document that is pretty darn close to exactly what we planned over multiple weeks...with a few suggestions that we hadn't considered at the time that would have gotten even more teachers and students involved.

You don't need to start at this scale. Imagine a project you have that was already successful for you. Consider asking AI how you could make it interdisciplinary. Maybe give the AI a list of the other classes offered during that period if you want to have the students work together. Use it as a sounding board. Use it to help you break down a timeline. These projects are worth the time and effort, but when the technology exists to help reduce that time? It's a no-brainer. Dive in and have fun!