Much like in the early days of the Internet, we were all shocked by innovation again over Christmas break. This time around it happened when we saw ChatGPT for the first time. We were stunned by the incredible power of AI search and information provided with a human-ish response. Now that natural language processing and massive data sets are combining with an artificial intelligence engine to provide us with responses that seem more human than machine, we’re stunned and alarmed.
ChatGPT, created by OpenAI, allows users to provide prompts for the AI to spit out answers through its machine learning algorithms. If you think like a secondary English teacher, you know what this might mean to the future of essay assignments. Teachers start to think of dystopian Cyrano de Bergerac style student essays and presentations coming from a robot brain with minimal effort from the student. Given the pace of innovation, data collection and profit potential, We should no longer be surprised. We’re perhaps needing to learn more about this product and it’s ilk, while thinking more creatively about how to use it. The nation’s largest school district quickly got into the news by banning it. Let’s be calm and use our brains.
The truth is that AI writing can be detected and the tools are already out there. Originality.AI allows detection of AI content comparing with percentages of original text vs AI created text. A College student wrote GPTZero in a matter of days to help fight AI plagiarism. Although the ability to detect “AI writing” is available, we need to think bigger. A tool called Jasper, an AI copywriter that caters to bloggers and other content writers, allows rephrasing of the AI generated work to provide “a better AI detection score.” In other words, a more human result. These tools allow faster development of content. If you’re a professional blogger, you can “write” more prolifically, generating 10x your posts and make more cash using AI tools like these. So, that’s good. The blogger’s high school English teacher should be proud. I guess. What can we learn as educators?
As we’ve seen with several tech innovations over the years, these are “Oppenheimer moments” and they keep coming faster at us. Sea changes, disrupting the way we see the world and how we operate in it. These exponential changes and innovations create concerns about the existing status quo. We can all fall into our lesson plan comfort zones, repeating the same assignments year after year. That is being challenged. This is really not a technology issue, but a very human issue. We need to reimagine our assignments and our processes to leverage the opportunity. We’re still at the infancy of these tools and the next years will see a significant acceleration in the use and development of these tools. Eventually K12 schools will pay for them. Betas are free, but these are expensive tools. Innovative educators are iterating new ways of writing assignments to leverage the new AI options and will become accustomed to and expectant of the benefits they provide.
Just as with the Internet, YouTube and Google Drive when we first saw them, the best educators are starting to ask, “How can it be used as a teaching tool?” They are realizing they can help. The internet expanded access to knowledge, but “Search” was the big leap for research. YouTube provided not just videos, but creative decentralization and opportunity for all to participate. Google Drive has redefined project collaboration. Each innovation caused a major change in how I do my work and go about my day. I’m guessing you too. And the innovations keep coming. As educators, we are realizing that this is an opportunity. Writing & project assignments need modification, to align with what these new AI tools offer us. As I wrote this blog post I went ahead and asked ChatGPT a number of questions that helped boost my creativity. This is not different than if I were to bounce an idea off a creative or a knowledgeable coworker. It changes how we write and teach writing, but this can be a good thing should we choose to embrace it. As we’ve seen with past technologies, banning it, really is ineffective. Students have phones after all. Yes, I also know you “need to be 18” to use ChatGPT. Student’s don’t care and this is about something bigger coming our way.
We are realizing the critical importance of teaching ethics around the use of technology. We need to define “what cheating is” in this day and age. Is a AI recommendation for an outline for the assignment okay? This takes us back a few years when districts and EdTech leaders were debating whether to create Acceptable Use OR Responsible Use Policies. My district opted to try and teach responsibility and ethics and make decisions that way. Helping a student value their Chromebook and understand digital citizenship sets a foundation for the conversation on AI based cheating in 2023.
What I think we’re seeing in AI tools like ChatGPT and others is that they perform certain tasks with amazing speed and accuracy, and even with some “human wit”, but at this point ChatGPT is still dutifully a bot and responses can vary, and be way off. Responses often have non descript language and lack of insight. A shepherd knows their sheep and a quality teacher knows the “voice” of their students. Astute teachers are learning that they can use it to generate structure that students can then build on with their own insight and personal figurative language.
As a student I often was not sure what I wanted to write about when given a project. I often just stared at my paper. ChatGPT can help with that! By generating more prompts on a topic than any teacher would want to, the student can think, sort and prioritize and get help in developing some structure and then use those ideas to build off of for a deeper and more thoughtful essay. If part of the assignment was to submit the AI generated ideas and recommended outline, etc, students could also explain their decision making on why they chose or rejected an AI generated idea. This encourages the deeper thinking we’re wanting to develop in a way that I, even as an experienced teacher, was rarely able to attain.
What have we learned as educators so far?
- Don’t panic, be creative.
- AI is only as strong as the human asking the questions.
- Tech disruption forces us to change, and we can get better
- Students need to be taught ethics related to tools like this.
- This is likely to go the way of Google’s Workspace for Education- we’ll pay for it.
- The best educators always rise to the occasion.
- We still have a lot to learn.
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Don’t Ban ChatGPT. Use It as a Teaching Tool
Last modified: January 18, 2023