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Stay Gold: Using AI Character Emulation
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What if students could interview an AI pretending to be a literary character — and grade it?
It is indeed possible. This is how we tried it for the first time!
I was so excited to have an immersive collaboration at Malvern Middle School based on The Outsiders novel. Mrs. Terah Rash and I created 4 learning stations to help bring the book and era to life for her 8th grade ELA classes. There was one additional station that we didn't have time to implement. Since learning more deeply about AI in 2025, I wanted to try a character emulation activity with students. The goal was to allow the AI to pretend to be Ponyboy Curtis and have the students evaluate the "performance" based on the accuracy according to the book character. In a world where most activities involve AI answering questions or simply producing a product for use, I wanted to turn the tables and have student evaluate the AI and what it did. I experimented with this in the video below before school started with some success before I attempted it with a student audience.
The Experiment in the Classroom
When we held our Outsiders activity in November, we didn't have time to include the AI experiment in the collaboration. Instead Mrs. Rash invited me to come for a classroom visit a few weeks later. To prepare, I had a student worker help me build a rubric. Mrs. Rash approved of the rubric and was excited to try it with her kids. We set the date and the cellphone video below shows snapshots of what happened in her first class. Thanks to Mrs. Rash for making this quick video! The kids were genuinely engaged. There was even a moment when it seemed like the AI was trying to be humorous like a teen would be in an awkward classroom interaction with other teens. After the initial class experience, I was able to change the voice from female to male which helped the experience be more lifelike.
One of her classes had several ELL students, and I was able to ask the AI to translate to Spanish, which, it did successfully. The ELL students were hesitant at first, then were more conversational with the AI as I recall. Such interactions are truly amazing and encouraging!
Rubric
The rubric (see link below to view the .PDF) is designed to help students evaluate the various components of the AI Ponyboy's interactions. The rubric covers character knowledge, accuracy to the text, personality, and how well the AI draws on evidence from the book.
Looking back, I would spend more time walking students through the rubric before we started — something I'll definitely do next time. Keep in mind, it was our first time to engage with students in this way. I had never used AI in a classroom learning activity. It was scary and fun at the same time! At the end of each class I reviewed each category with the kids and had them share their scores.
Overall this was a success. The students enjoyed a new experience with AI that they had never witnessed before. I was proud of Mrs. Rash for stepping out of her comfort zone and allowing me to try this with her students. She graded the student feedback on the individual rubrics they turned in after the activity.
Next Steps
Moving forward I want to do more activities like this. I can't help but wonder if AI can emulate a hiring manager for students to talk with in a Career Development class or a famous scientist they are studying in a Science class.
How can we think out of the box to give students more meaningful experiences with AI in new innovative ways? In reality I think we've only scratched the surface. Let's keep thinking together. How are you using AI to enhance learning for your students?
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