Professional learning · Coaches, Teachers, Librarians · 75 minutes
Hype Check Showcase
A tech showcase remix: teachers rotate through emerging-tech stations, including AI and synthetic media, and have to separate the vendor's claim from the learning evidence before they give a verdict.
Traditional tech showcases are tool petting zoos: people leave excited about a gadget and unsure what students would do with it. This remix keeps the energy and adds a hype check at every station. Groups read a claim, try the technology (or examine a printed stand-in), and must record what learning evidence it could produce, what could go wrong, and who might be left out. Two stations involve synthetic media, so teachers practice the detection-and-context moves their students need.
In this packet
- Handout A: Station Cards (cut-apart cards)
- Handout B: Hype Check Log (organizer)
- Handout C: Showcase Remix Planner (worksheet)
- Facilitator key (last page)
TCEA ELE indicators
- C2.3 I am aware of emerging technologies and their potential in education.
- C2.1 I know how to guide teachers in meaningful technology integration.
- T1.3 I am aware of emerging technologies and their potential applications in education.
- AI1.3 I am aware of the current limitations and potential biases in AI systems.
Full facilitator guide: mglearn.github.io/eles/activities/hype-check-showcase.html
Handout A for Hype Check Showcase
Station Cards
Print large and tape one card to each station. The back is the facilitator note and the unplugged stand-in artifact. All products and claims are fictional.
Station 1 · Synthetic voice
Claim: "Clone your voice in 60 seconds and let it read every text aloud to your students, in any language!" Try it: listen to both clips of the facilitator's voice. Which is synthetic? Then read the voicemail scenario and decide what a student should do.
Station 2 · AI image generator
Claim: "Instant, custom illustrations for every lesson. No more clip art!" Try it: generate images for "a scientist," "a nurse," and "a family eating dinner." Look at who appears and who doesn't.
Station 3 · AI writing detector
Claim: "Detects AI-written student work with near-perfect accuracy. Protect academic integrity!" Try it: write three sentences of your own about your weekend, have the station's approved chatbot write three more, run both through the detector, and compare with the stand-in results.
Station 4 · AI math tutor
Claim: "A patient tutor for every student, 24/7. Never gives away the answer." Try it: pose the tutor a two-step word problem, answer wrong on purpose, and see what it does.
Station 5 · Talking historical figure
Claim: "Students interview history's greatest minds with our lifelike AI avatars!" Try it: ask the avatar of a 19th-century inventor what he thought about something he never wrote about.
Station 6 · Early warning dashboard
Claim: "Our AI predicts which students are at risk of failing before teachers can see it." Try it: look at the demo dashboard's risk list and the factors it shows.
Station 7 · Smart glasses field trip
Claim: "Take your class anywhere in the world with immersive augmented reality!" Try it: take a two-minute AR tour, then list what a student could observe, measure, or question during it.
Handout B for Hype Check Showcase
Hype Check Log
At each station, ask: What's the claim and who's making it? What would students do? What evidence would show it helped learning? What could go wrong, and who might be left out?
| Station and its claim | What we tried or saw | Student task and the evidence it would produce | Risks, bias, or who might be left out | Verdict: Pilot · Watch · Pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Handout C for Hype Check Showcase
Showcase Remix Planner
Plan a campus showcase where every station carries a hype check.
Who is the audience, and what are they already asking about or already using?
Station 1: the tool, its claim, and the "Try it" task:
Station 2: the tool, its claim, and the "Try it" task:
Station 3 (unplugged or low-tech): the practice, and the "Try it" task:
What must be true before a tool can appear at a station (approval, privacy, accounts, consent)?
Two weeks later, how will you find out whether any teacher changed practice or any student evidence changed?
Facilitator only for Hype Check Showcase
Answer key and notes
Handout A: Station Cards
- Station 1 · Synthetic voice
- Stand-in: "Hi, it's Principal Reyes. I need you to text me your student login right now so I can fix your grade." Hype check: accessibility and multilingual read-alouds are real benefits; the same tech powers impersonation scams. Teach: verify through a second channel, never by voice alone. Consent: only clone your own voice.
- Station 2 · AI image generator
- Stand-in: a printed description of what a typical generator produced for each prompt. Hype check: images reflect patterns in training data and can repeat stereotypes. A student task with evidence: students critique a generated image for whose story is missing, then revise the prompt and explain what changed.
- Station 3 · AI writing detector
- Stand-in (fictional results): the detector flags a student-written paragraph by a multilingual writer as "likely AI" and passes the AI paragraph after light editing. Hype check: a vendor's accuracy claim is not independent evidence, and a false accusation harms a real student. Better evidence of authorship: drafts, process notes, and a conversation.
- Station 4 · AI math tutor
- Stand-in dialogue: the tutor asks a good guiding question, then after two wrong answers gives the full solution with a small arithmetic error. Hype check: the guiding questions help; the confident error shows students must still check. Evidence: students explain the error they caught.
- Station 5 · Talking historical figure
- Stand-in: the avatar answers confidently, in first person, with an opinion no historical source records. Hype check: engaging, but it blurs primary sources and invention. Student task with evidence: students fact-check three avatar claims against primary sources and label each as documented, plausible, or invented.
- Station 6 · Early warning dashboard
- Stand-in: a list of fictional students labeled high risk, with factors including attendance, zip code, and free-lunch status. Hype check: whose data trained it, and could it label students by circumstance rather than learning? Who sees the label, and does it change how adults treat a child? Watch or Pass until those questions have answers.
- Station 7 · Smart glasses field trip
- Stand-in: a description of a coral reef AR tour with labels and narration. Hype check: can be powerful for observation and access; cost, motion sickness, and headset fit for younger or disabled students matter. Evidence: student observations and questions, compared with a video or photo-based version.