S'more Info Session — Interactive Artifacts

00:00 Welcome and agenda

Teddy Lane explains that interactive artifacts are tools teachers design with Sparky to fit their own classroom and teaching. The session starts with teacher spotlights, then Teddy's demos for subjects the teachers didn't cover, and ends with Q&A.

01:08 Teacher spotlights

Teachers at four schools shared what they built and why. Stacie and Kimberly present live, and Teddy presents for the three teachers whose time zones kept them from joining.

01:26 Stacie Higgins: ASL sentence order

Stacie teaches American Sign Language to 8th grade and high school students at Fort Bend Christian Academy. New ASL students tend to apply English word order, so she wanted them to practice putting concepts in ASL order. Every app she and Kimberly tried had a limit: it wouldn't show the correct answer, didn't have enough boxes, or didn't give her enough control. She described her idea to Flint, and it built what she was looking for.

03:37 Dragging sentence parts into ASL order

Stacie entered 48 English sentences and the blocks for each. Students drag the blocks into order and press Check answer. Correct blocks turn green, and notes explain the order: time first, then topic, then comment, then referent. Stacie also entered other acceptable orders, and students see those too. Students can't move on until they fix a wrong answer, and the sentences include questions as well as statements.

05:19 What Stacie's students said

Stacie used the tool in stations, and her 8th graders told her they loved it. Immediate feedback let them practice until they got each sentence right, and some asked for more. She plans to add more sentences and blocks. She says Flint took her feedback and made the tool exactly how she wanted it.

06:53 Kimberly Carroll: Greek mythology flashcards

Kimberly is the instructional technology specialist at Fort Bend Christian Academy, working with teachers and students from pre-K to 12th grade. She shows students how to make their own flashcards in Flint so they can study on their own. In a Greek mythology activity, a student flips each card for a principal deity and marks it "got it" or "still learning". The flashcards track what the student knows. Sparky then reviews the concepts that need more work and quizzes the student on them.

09:13 A flashcard builder for Shakespeare

For an ELA teacher who wanted students to rethink how they study for literature tests, Kimberly built a flashcard builder. Students build the cards themselves. They pick a question from the list Kimberly gave the activity, such as "Who was Shakespeare's wife?", and work toward the answer with Sparky, which gives clues instead of the answer. They then add the card to their deck and can edit any card against their class resources. Students can also open the builder full screen and work without Sparky. Kimberly says that writing the cards gives students more ownership of their learning than getting a finished deck from an AI tool.

13:09 Q&A: wrong answers on student-made cards

An attendee asks what happens if a student puts a wrong answer on a flashcard. Kimberly says the student can ask Sparky to check their flashcards and then review what they got wrong. Teddy adds that Sparky checks students' answers as they work, and the teacher can see how students use the activity.

14:53 David Doherty: Sentence Types Lab

David teaches upper school English at McDonogh School. His Sentence Types Lab has a Learn tab that explains each sentence type and a Practice tab where students identify sentences. Students can open the lab from a link on its own, but David put it in a Flint activity so Sparky works alongside it. In one student's session, Sparky checks their understanding and sends them back to the Learn tab for compound sentences. Students who want more challenge can ask Sparky for harder questions.

17:36 Hélène Marquet: picture flashcards in French

Hélène teaches French at the International School of Paris. Sparky made her a deck of picture flashcards for the rooms of a house, and for the furniture in each room. Students who rely on pictures to recall vocabulary flip each card to check the French word. Hélène told Teddy the design "went far beyond my expectations".

18:53 Erann Zlotnik: a French Wordle

Erann teaches French at Upper Canada College in Toronto. His Le Mot du Jour works like Wordle: students guess a French word and see which letters are right. A vocabulary list with definitions sits below the game. Teddy plays a round and notices that several words end in -er, the kind of pattern that links back to a lesson on verb conjugation. Erann built the game to teach spelling and meaning, and to lead into using the words in sentences.

21:38 Sparky checks French sentences

Erann put the Wordle in an activity. After solving it, students write a French sentence with the word and Sparky checks it. One student explains the word in English instead, and Sparky still answers. A teacher can choose which language Sparky speaks and which language it assesses, so students can work in French only or get help in English.

22:47 Building an interactive in Flint

Teddy starts building from any chat with Sparky: on the home page or in a class. Teachers can describe what they want, or open the Generate content menu, which lists graphs, 3D models, live simulations, flashcards and practice problems alongside videos, images and slides.

24:25 Calculus flashcards for derivative rules

Inside a class, Sparky knows what the class is studying from the syllabus, activities and unit plans already there. In his 12th grade math class, Teddy asks for graphs and a set of flashcards on derivative rules, each card with a formula and a practice problem, and the solution on the back. He then asks for 10 more cards, and Sparky extends the deck. Teddy suggests changing what each card shows, such as only the rule name, to fit how students learn.

26:29 Free response and multiple choice cards

Teddy asks Sparky to make half the cards free response and half multiple choice. On a free response card, a student types the derivative and gets "try again" if it's wrong, before seeing the solution. Multiple choice cards mark a wrong choice right away. Like Stacie's and Kimberly's tools, the cards give students immediate feedback so they can fix their understanding as they go.

28:33 Q&A: math notation and spoken answers

An attendee notes that math in the interactives isn't shown in proper notation. Teddy says Flint doesn't render LaTeX in some interactive tools yet, and the team will look into it. Another attendee asks whether world language flashcards could take a spoken answer and assess pronunciation. Teddy hasn't tried it yet and asks attendees to try it and tell the team if it doesn't work.

29:19 World government map quiz

For a 10th grade comparative government class, Teddy built a map quiz on forms of government. Sparky can draw real map data in interactives. Each round names a form of government, such as presidential republic or theocracy, and students click a country that has it. A wrong click marks the country on the map. A right answer shows every country with that form of government. Instructions sit inside the interactive, so students don't need directions written on the board. Teachers can ask Sparky for more or fewer rounds, more or less scaffolding, or a time limit.

31:29 Adding fractions, step by step

Teddy shows a lab for adding fractions with unlike denominators, a topic 3rd to 5th graders find hard because it takes several steps in order. A "why not just add them?" button adds the tops and bottoms of 3/10 and 3/4 to get 6/14, and the fraction bars show that 6/14 is shorter than 3/4 alone. Rows of multiples help students find the least common multiple, 20. Students then type each multiplier and new numerator, and add 6/20 and 15/20. Each wrong answer brings a hint, such as "What do we multiply 10 by to get 20?", and Teddy reminds teachers to try wrong answers before giving a tool to students.

36:41 Free body diagram lab

Teddy's physics lab gives students a set of problems: a box at rest, a box on an incline, a pendulum and a box dragged at constant speed. Students draw each force as an arrow from the box and enter its size in newtons, then press Run. If the forces are wrong, the box moves when it should stay still. With only gravity, the box falls through the table. With the wrong forces on the incline, it slides down. Unlike a worksheet, students can see whether their diagram is right without waiting for a teacher.

41:19 Publishing to the Library

The free body diagram lab is in the Flint Public Library, where teachers can search for interactives others have published. Publishing is always opt in. To publish, open the interactive in the chat where you made it, click the share icon, and choose your school library, where colleagues can find it, or the Public Library.

42:40 A link to just the interactive

From the same share menu, Copy link gives students a page with only the interactive, without Sparky or an activity.

43:12 Adding a Library interactive to a class

To use an interactive from the Library, click its three-dot menu, choose Add to class, and pick a class. It then appears in the class's Resources tab, alongside worksheets, slides and videos. Teddy views the class as a student, opens the lab from Resources and makes it full screen.

44:48 Wrap-up

Teddy says the interactives from the session will be shared to the Public Library for teachers to use in their classes, and he looks forward to seeing what attendees publish there.