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Welcome to this episode of the EduMagic podcast, where we dive into the magic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help preservice teachers.
Have you ever interacted with Alexa or Google Home to turn on your lights or play music? I have daily. From asking Alexa to play the news, or my favorite Alanis Morrisette song, asking a question, or telling me the weather for the next few days, these types of technology play a role in my life. These are forms of AI. Chat GPT is just one form of AI that we can interact with. In this episode of the EduMagic podcast, we explore
What is Chat GPT?
What can it do?
What impact will it have on education?
What are the limitations?
How can teachers use it?
What's next?
What is Chat GPT?
Chat GPT stands for Generating Pretraining Transformer. It is a free (currently in beta mode) chatbot that you interact with. I'm sure you've interacted with chatbots before. The difference between Chat GPT and other chatbots is that other chatbots are trained only to review their knowledge or database from their website. Chat GPT can search for data from as recent as 2021.
You can create a free account here: https://chat.openai.com/.
Chat GPT has released at the end of November and has been gaining popularity in the world of education. Questions like:
How will students use this tool?
How can I, a teacher, utilize this tool to save me teacher time?
What do I do if students use this tool to cheat?
I don't have all the answers, but as we play around with this tool and learn more about it, I encourage you to think about how you can help your students learn how to use it effectively.
What can Chat GPT do?
Chat GPT can do a t. For each response it gives you, you can regenerate the respo se. Meaning it won't give you the same response twice. You can also have Chat GPT provide a rationale for some responses. Here is a short list of things it can do:
Tell a joke
Write a poem
Write a play
Write lyrics to a rock song
Explain a topic like a five-year-old or teenager
Give you a recipe
Write a different ending to Lost (Hey, I know. I loved the original ending)
Write HTML code
If Chat GPT is incorrect, you can provide feedback on the response. It will "learn" in a way to correct itself.
"We as teachers need to embrace this tool" – Dr. Tyler Tarver
What are the limitations?
Can only access data from 2021 and before
It may respond that it doesn't know the answer, or it might make something up.
Doesn't cite information (yet)
Could provide biased information
What can it do for teachers?
Chat GPT can help teachers
write lesson plans
write an IEP goal
provide a creative writing prompt
provide activity ideas
email templates to families or students
create a rubric
student feedback on assignments
A word of caution: these are fantastic ways to save teacher time. However, chat GPT doesn't know your students - you do, So use these responses as a place to work from, add to them, tweak it, edit it, and make them your own That way, you cannot have to start. From scratch.
How will it impact education?
The short answer, we don't know yet. We need to find out more and learn with the tool. It is a tool, and we must teach our students how to use it effectively. How to use a discerning and critical eye when using tools like Chat GPT in the classroom and for homework assignments.
As of now, tools like Turn it In can't detect information created with AI. There are some tools out there that can do that, but they may not be 100% accurate. These include GPTZero and GPT 2 Output Detector. Each will give you a percentage based on the response.
What do we do now?
We must continue learning about it and how to effectively use it in the classroom with our learners. Instead of banning it, as we did with Wikipedia initially, use it as a teaching tool. Have students participate in tasks like authentic learning, collaborate more, and think critically about the responses provided by Chat GPT, and have students make and create. Be sure to use the higher end of Bloom's taxonomy questions to engage students in learning. Also, consider the questions you ask your students. Is the question googleable? Can a student type it into Chat GPT and get a quality answer? If so, reconsider your question and how students show what they know.