KBLOG 18: The AI Elephant in the Classroom: Part 1: November 30, 2022, The Day That May or May Not Live in Education Infamy

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The Challenge:

Education is influenced and driven by technological change. Some of the most important technological innovations that have impacted education include chalk boards, film strips typewriters, film projectors, record players, photocopy machines, televisions, tape recorders, calculators, laser disks, personal computers, the Internet and smart boards.  Many of the listed innovations are gone and forgotten, in fact newly minted teachers will never use a chalkboard or have to unjam a tape recorder.  Technology comes and goes. When I first started teaching it was a time of technological transition. Copy machines were just coming into vogue, we called them Xerox machines. The machines were slow and would usually jam and were very clunky. You sometimes had to use the, Thomas Edison patented mimeograph machine . Anyone who ever used one will remember your purple stained fingers from the carbon sheets. School computers were still a few years off but when they came into play, typewriting classes were doomed, as these new computers introduced us to word processing.  In those days you had to remember to save your typed work on a 5.25-inch real floppy disk. Computers were not yet used for research, no Internet,  you still had to go to the library and use a card catalog to find your information. Towards the end of my formal teaching career smart boards were taking over.  Essentially except for the Internet, all these tools, did not alter the way I fundamentally taught; they helped make teaching and learning more convenient, but I still worked with students in a traditional way. The World Wide Web really shook things up and eventually educational institutions have integrated the web into learning and curriculum.  Considering the many changes in education over the past fifty years, those changes will be dwarfed by the technological revolution that is now upon us!

This technology, in the form of Open Artificial Intelligence, which became more known with the launch of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, is shaking the foundations of all our educational institutions. Artificial intelligence will have a greater impact on teaching and learning compared to all other former technological educational shifts.

 A Solution:

I have not yet figured out any solutions on how this technology will change our education system and the adaptations that will have to be made.   I do know that school districts have already started to ban its use (probably futile), students are using it to write essays and do homework.  In the first five days of ChatGPT’s operation it gained more than one million users. Presently, during certain times of the day you cannot access it as there are too many users.  It will possibly be valued at thirty billion dollars after about a couple of months of operation.  We must start developing solutions as to how it can be effectively used (and not abused) in education.  I strongly suggest you try it. I suggest you take a homework or test question that requires the student to write out an answer and put it into ChatGPT.   I typed in an Advanced Placement Biology Free Response (non-lab) question.  The result scared me. I plan to add more about AI in the education realm in my next KBLOG.

Leave a comment if you have any questions.

Resources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFIUm0DWA74 – Mimeograph Machine

https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/ - Place to tryout ChatGPT (be aware that there may be a wait time to use, use it a 8 and 6 am)