From Chalkboards to Chatbots: AI Tools for Adult Literacy Educators

About This Session

Description

From Chalkboards to Chatbots is an interactive session designed to help adult educators integrate artificial intelligence into their instructional planning.

With the growing need for contextualized and workforce-aligned instruction, AI tools offer practical support in creating engaging, standards-based lessons that are relevant to adult learners’ goals. This session introduces participants to AI as a teaching assistant—one that can save time, spark creativity, and support learners’ content and language development.

Educators will walk away with real examples, hands-on experience, and practical tools they can immediately apply in the classroom.

What we'll cover:

Contextualization Basics: We’ll begin with an overview of what contextualization is and why it matters in adult education. Participants will learn how connecting lessons to real-world applications increases engagement and skill transfer.
Challenges in Practice: Many educators struggle to create contextualized lessons due to limited time and resources. We’ll discuss common roadblocks and how AI can help overcome them.
Meet Your New Assistant—AI: We’ll introduce user-friendly AI tools and demonstrate how they can generate reading passages, vocabulary lists, discussion questions, and formative assessments aligned to College and Career Readiness (CCR) standards and Texas AEL Standards 3.0.
Prompt Writing Techniques: Participants will explore how to write effective prompts that generate useful, contextualized output. We’ll break down examples and help educators build their own prompts during the session.
Hands-On Practice: Attendees will use their phones or laptops to try AI tools in real time. Working in small groups or independently, they will generate content and assess its instructional value.
Ethical Use of AI: We’ll briefly discuss responsible AI use, including accuracy checks, equity considerations, and best practices for classroom integration.
Templates and Resources: Participants will receive access to a curated set of tools and templates to support continued exploration of AI in instructional design.

By the end of the session, attendees will have gained confidence in using AI to enhance instruction while keeping it learner-centered and standards-aligned.