AI Use at Current Events Hub
Since starting my website, I’ve had a number of teachers ask me how I use AI as part of my lesson planning process. It’s helpful, but the lessons are mine. AI use at Current Events Hub is limited and always supervised. Every lesson is designed by me, Paul Korczyk, a practicing teacher and IB Coordinator in British Columbia, Canada.
A lot of what I still apply in my everyday teaching I learned from my B.Ed at the University of British Columbia that I completed in 2010. I have continued to develop my lesson structure and pedagogy over my 15+ years of teaching. So, in short, these lessons are all created by me through the lens of my professional experience and what I’ve learned makes good, engaging lessons.
What I Create Myself
- The teaching design of every lesson: the framing, the concepts, the inquiry questions, activities, and how the parts fit together.
- All PowerPoints and worksheets.
- I find and review every video used in the slides.
- The final wording of the readings and questions.
Where AI Helps
I use Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic, for specific drafting tasks:
- Adapting each reading and its questions into three grade levels (Level 1: Grades 6-8, Level 2: 9-10 and Level 3: 11-12)
- Drafting curriculum connections, guided by a master-framework I developed for this site using the curriclulum documents for all the courses I make connections to.
- Initial drafting of some of the teacher notes, based on my input.
- Parts of the website’s design and copy, especially for SEO purposes.
- Occasionally, a simple graph created from published data.
How AI Drafts Are Checked
I review everything drafted by AI before it is published. I decide what to keep, and I revise the readings myself. Every source named in a reading is a real article or report I researched, and is linked in the lesson’s resources.
Images and Credits
The photographs and images in my lessons come from the public domain, from royalty-free libraries such as Pexels and Unsplash, or from Creative Commons licences that allow commercial use, many of them through Wikimedia Commons. Credit is always given where available. AI is never used to create photographs, illustrations or video. I firmly believe that AI generated imagery should never replace the hard work of talented artists and photographers whose images I use in lessons. The only AI-assisted visuals are occasional graphs or diagrams built from published data where alternatives don’t exist.
Why This Statement Exists
Teachers should know how their classroom materials are made. AI saves me time on drafting and especially differentiation, and that time goes into the pedagogy, the slides and the revision. Using AI ethically and responsibly is something I’m teaching my students to do – and I hold that same expectation for myself.
Help Keep the Lessons Accurate
Curriculum links cover IB, AP, C3, Common Core, Canadian provincial curricula, the Australian Curriculum and other frameworks. If a link, fact or source looks wrong to you, please email me at paul@currenteventshub.com. I’ll review it and correct the lesson.