Lose the Lectern

I’ve seen enough Terminator movies to know that the future of artificial intelligence (AI) is not all it is cracked up to be.

Do I think there’s an AI bubble that’s about to burst? Maybe. Do I think all these AI tools are going to go the way of 3D movies in the late 2000s or NFTS like three years ago? Also maybe.

Do I think that AI is this big, scary, terrible thing that is going to have horrendous ramifications for our students and education as we know it?

You guessed it: maybe.

I don’t think AI is all that bad as I’ve seen some things my students can do with it. One senior student of mine who takes all the career and tech ed classes was talking about this with me, and he used AI recently to aid in his proofreading for college essays. He typed out a full essay and used the AI almost as an extra set of eyes for feedback, and he THEN took his essay in for feedback to his teachers.

I liked this! This is what I would call a solid use of AI in education! The student didn’t use it to write his essay, but he used it as another set of eyes to make his writing juuuuuuust a bit better before taking it into someone else. Totally cool!

Or, in my ELL classes, some students use ChatGPT as a translation tool. I’ve found some of the translator options to be pretty great, especially when it comes to translating emails for parents.

Both of these examples, however, remind me of my favorite “source” on the internet: Wikipedia. Yeah, yeah, you’re not “supposed” to use Wikipedia on a research paper or a project or a speech or whatever.

But…can’t you use Wikipedia? And can’t you just use ChatGPT the same way?

This brings me to my main point here about using AI as a tool in the classroom:

“Start with it, but don’t finish with it.”

My ELL students, for instance, just finished doing a speech about folklore. Their job was to inform the audience about a folklore-oriented subject from either their country of origin or elsewhere around the world. They spent a few days finding research about the subject, and then they had to cite at least two sources about the subject and turn it into a 2-ish minute report.

It was all about low-stakes speaking so that these students could build confidence, use their voices in a projected way, but also show off what they learned through very baseline but substantial research. I could have spent more class time focusing on the research process, but I also found an eye-opening trend of my students using “According to ChatGPT” as a verbal citation.

I gasped when I heard it. Not only because I had realized what I had done as a teacher in not considering how my students might be using an AI tool in their research. But also, it was a great teaching opportunity for me AND the student. Despite my relatively negative predispositions toward AI, I know that I am not going to stop all students from using it. On the other hand, if my students are using it, they should learn to use it the right way.

For instance, I sat down with this student who said, “According to ChatGPT,” and we dug a little deeper. We asked ChatGPT where it got the information it did. We didn’t stop there. We then researched the links and sources and were able to find the source information. This led into a brief conversation of “why” we do this, and it led to a fantastic discussion about what a source truly is. Is it a place where you just find the information, like Google, ChatGPT, or Wikipedia? Not if the information aggregated on those sites came from other reliable places.

Just like using the footnotes on Wikipedia, my student was able to find the actual source and information from ChatGPT, and she verbally cited it correctly in her presentation a few days later. All was well, and it was a nice little lesson for both of us.

My point is, AI is here, and man, is it here. When I got into teaching, I never expected anything like this to affect my day-to-day instruction the way it has the last few years. However, I was glad to see that my students were receptive to using it as a research tool and not stopping once they got the first answer they wanted.

It also led me to another great conclusion about research: Research is supposed to be a struggle! Just a little bit of one at least! If it’s too difficult, something is wrong. When it’s too easy, something is also wrong. Teachers who push their students to use tools at their disposal while also knowing the importance of digging deep and finding a wide swath of information in a challenging way are pushing their students in the right direction.

And, yes, AI is a great tool just like Google or Wikipedia. It’s a great starting point, but it’s never where we should end up. The more we dig, the better we get.

Plus, we are never, ever going to beat AI. There’s been like seven Terminator movies for a reason I suppose.

Lose the Lectern!