Introduction • 00:00

• Teddy Lane, a former high school teacher, recently joined the Flint team.

• The team attended the ATLIS conference in Columbus last week, meeting independent school leaders and educators.

• Flint is prioritizing in-person engagement, with team members aiming for monthly school visits.

Ice-breaking news • 06:30

• Sparky, Flint's AI character, was introduced about a year ago and has become popular among students and teachers.

• A question arose regarding whether Sparky should remain a personable character with a face or become "faceless" to avoid blurring lines between a chatbot and a companion.

• The team's view is that companionship stems from AI responses, not its appearance, citing ChatGPT as an example of a faceless AI with which students have developed relationships.

• Sparky is designed to be a strict teaching assistant, not providing direct answers, despite its friendly appearance.

• Plushy versions of Sparky are currently in production and will be sent to schools in the coming months.

New features • 13:40

• Activity Folders

  • Allows teachers to organize activities within classes, similar to Google Drive folders.

  • Supports drag-and-drop functionality for easy organization.

  • Can be used for various organizational needs, such as grouping lessons by topic (e.g., exponents, quadratics) or by student groups (e.g., debate teams).

  • The folder structure will remain intact when classes are archived or moved to a different term.

  • A request was made to extend folder functionality to the "My Activities" level for personal organization and sharing with other teachers without student access.

• Multi-Dimensional Rubrics

  • Enables grading across multiple categories (e.g., mathematical accuracy, work shown, grammar, synthesis of material, voice development).

  • Categories can be customized and assigned numerical values.

  • Sparky can generate rubrics and provide quick summative assessments, saving teachers time.

  • Teachers can edit Sparky's rubric feedback and scores for individual students.

• Multimedia Generation

  • Allows for the creation of multiple media types (e.g., slides, images, worksheets, flashcards) from a single prompt.

  • Example: Generating a fraction worksheet with visuals and questions, along with flashcards.

• Images and Documents

  • Sparky can generate documents with embedded images.

  • Teachers can replace AI-generated images with their own historically accurate or preferred visuals.

  • The whiteboard feature allows users to annotate images, download them, and then prompt Sparky to make changes based on the annotations.

Feature recap • 24:56

• Slide Generation

  • Slides can be used for character recaps, personality traits, key quotes, and flashcards.

  • Encourages interactive and multimodal lesson building.

• Videos

  • Provides immediate, visual feedback to students on quizzes or assignments.

  • Features Sparky narrating content with visuals, promoting reflection and deeper learning.

• Coding in Flint

  • Students can now run their code and receive immediate feedback.

  • Sparky guides students to understand errors, building a strong foundation in syntax and computer science.

  • Supports differentiation, allowing coding activities to be used in various subjects like health class for data analysis.

Q&A session • 32:50

• Chat Functionality: Initial issues with chat access for external users were resolved during the meeting.

• Archived Chats: A request was made to allow teachers to access and continue using chats from previous grading periods, as current chats are hidden.

• AI Behavior: An instance was reported where Sparky's "sub-agent" went rogue during writing generation, which the team will investigate.

• Essay Grading: Sparky can assist with grading essays based on a provided rubric and offer feedback, though it requires feeding essays one by one.

• Math Accuracy: Sparky's math accuracy is still a concern; it is recommended to upload a perfect answer key for grading to ensure correctness.

• Lecture Creation: Sparky is effective for creating lecture templates and generating good examples, though some editing is required.

• Quiz Generation: Sparky can create new versions of quizzes with similar problems, saving time for teachers.

• OneDrive Integration: A user reported an ongoing issue with connecting OneDrive, receiving an error message about failing to fetch user drive information.

• Study Guides: Sparky is being used to plan weekly study guides for students preparing for final exams.

• Science Map Questions: Sparky can generate images like graphs or system drawings for science questions (e.g., life science, physical science, earth and space science) that students can analyze for multiple-choice answers.

• Geometry Drawings: Sparky can generate geometrical drawings based on prompts, with the ability to refine them using the whiteboard annotation tool.

• Rubric Reports: A request was made for a single report summarizing rubric scores for all students in a class, rather than individual student views.

• Flint for Public Schools: A user inquired about using Flint in a public school district that does not currently subscribe.

  • Access to almost all teacher features is available.

  • SIS/LMS integrations are not included in the free version.

  • The 80-student limit can be circumvented by creating multiple workspaces (e.g., "Section A," "Section B").

Have a use case you'd like us to cover in a future Campfire? Reach out and let us know!