I had the opportunity to begin using the Kyron Studio in my class during the last quarter of 2024. When I first began using it, my goal was simple; expose students to a new and cutting edge technology. After a couple of early attempts, however, I realized their interactions with generative AI could provide far more benefit than just a chance to play around with some new tech. Kyron Studio quickly builds out a multi-part lesson based on the information you provide and allows you to shape a conversation-based learning experience. As a math teacher continually trying to emphasize conceptual math and push students to more effectively justify their thinking, I see great potential in this technology.
Let me step back and provide some clarity around my perspective on math. Over the last 20 years or so, a critical shift has taken place in math instruction away from teacher-led, top-down instruction where procedures are carefully modeled and students dutifully execute those procedures (somewhat) mindlessly. As a result, my classroom now places a far greater emphasis on helping students understand what math education researcher Liping Ma refers to as the "profound understanding of fundamental mathematics". This shift has required me to place student discourse and sense making at the center of the learning experience. I've shifted away from racing around my room checking that students are successfully mimicking my work and toward hopping from group to group hearing what students are saying. Getting to the correct solution still matters, but now teachers must also attend to their student's decisions regarding whether the methods used to find their answer are reasonable and what generalizations or conclusions they might draw from their results. With 30 or more students in a classroom, hearing or reading the thinking of each individual student presents a far greater challenge than simply checking if every student got the same numerical answer.
To this end, I have begun using Kyron Studio and their generative AI to assist in collecting these responses. There is a difference between a student being able to calculate the area of a triangle and understanding why it makes sense that 1/2bh would result in the area of a triangle. Ensuring that students understand the relationship between the area of rectangles, parallelograms, triangles, and trapezoids provides them with a fundamentally different relationship to area than memorizing a discrete set of formulas. By seeing the relationships between these shapes, they can extend beyond what they currently know to make conjectures and potentially draw conclusions about how to calculate the area of other shapes. I used Kyron Studio to create opportunities for students to go beyond simply calculating area and interact with the AI to explain their thinking. In this example, students spent a brief portion of the lesson on prior knowledge around what area is and how to find the area of a rectangle. They then reasoned about the relationship between a right triangle and a rectangle, with the program pushing them to explain that, since a right triangle can be thought of as half of a rectangle, its area will always be half as much as that of the corresponding rectangle.
The value here is on multiple levels. First, my ratio of students doing the thinking is as high as possible; every student is in the hot seat! Second, they are all partnered with a thoughtful, patient, encouraging partner who will reveal as little as possible in its attempt to aid the student, and I know this is true because I programmed their partner (through simple prompts written in English, not code) to act this way. Finally, the privacy of a computer-based partner allows students to lean in fully without any fear or anxiety. Students are far quicker to engage and express confusion, allowing them to better understand the concept rather than attempting to hide their ignorance.
Kyron studio provides me with an additional tool to solve one of the trickiest elements of what I define as great math instruction: ensuring all students have frequent opportunities to justify their thinking and draw conclusions from their work. Used alongside a student-centered, high-quality curriculum, I've seen the potential the studio represents and look forward to seeing how it can continue to elevate my students' thinking.