Last week, I had the honour of keynoting a talk for The Manitoba Association of Computing Educators called Technology as the Ultimate Equalizer in which I shared accessibility tools students with learning disabilities could use to help their achievement match their potential. This included Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools such as Rewordify and Quillbot which students could use to simplify dense text  if they have verbal comprehension issues and Dictation.io which can be used by students with slow processing speed to help them get their ideas on paper as well as many others.

But never until now, has there been such uproar about the impact of AI in the classroom as with the introduction of an open source AI tool, Chat GPT which has everyone talking about The Death of the Essay and other woes in education.  I discovered it other day when one of my grade 12 students said to me, “Ms. Casa-Todd, I will never again be writing an essay.” Intrigued, I said, “Tell me more.” The student proceeded to show me. He put in his theology question in the Chat GPT prompt and it gave him a response that, although perhaps not the most articulate ever, would definitely fool a teacher. When we asked it to write a poem about Christmas in iambic pentameter, it did a decent job. We decided to put the responses into Turnitin (a plagiarism detection tool) and were surprised at the low similarity percentage. We started to attract more and more students: not just students looking for shortcuts but high achieving students as well. One student in particular sat as we continued to experiment with his eyes open wide and his mouth hanging open. “This changes everything,” he said to me, “What would stop any student from beginning any assignment using this technology? As a student who prides himself on good work, I will now in a position where students who spend two seconds using this tool can do as well as a student who worked half the night on an assignment.” The tool was going viral on TikTok which is why everyone was buzzing about it that day and why the server was down when we tried to experiment further. Apparently, they underestimated the attention they would get!

One of the best threads I have seen experimenting with this tool and its capabilities was shared by @ZackTeitel on Twitter. Need an essay? A science paper? A poem? A story? Code? Yup. Chat GPT can generate any of these in seconds. One teacher, Justin Nanu asked the bot to give two students feedback (brilliant-going to ask students how they feel about this one!) and another teacher got it to create a lesson plan for her. Zack also asks really pointed questions about equity and online hate. Check out his thread below.

Afternoon, #OntEd!

So we need to start talking impact of #GPT3 on pedagogy, on curriculum, and definitely on assessment.

Truthfully?

We needed to be talking about this last year but things have been kind of “dumpster firey”, so let’s not be too harsh on ourselves.

— Zack Teitel (@ZackTeitel) December 10, 2022

My friend Michael Drezek asked Chat GPT about the impact on learners by asking it directly. Here is the response that was generated:

Because I had experimented with students, when I tried to sign up, I realize that I am required to use my cell number. This is a valuable media literacy lesson: media has special interests and that almost always means $$$. Currently, the technology is free–but perhaps at the cost of my information? As the platform continues to gain traction, will it move to a freemium model in order to make money and that becomes an equity issue.

If you go into examples on their website you will be AMAZED at what this tool can do!

When I create or teach an assignment, I can’t help but think of Chat GPT now. Students are creating a sustainable city in Minecraft. Can they use Chat GPT for their research-yes-but ultimately what they are creating is going to be unique AND we give constant feedback on the process. In Religion classes, I taught kids how to create a multi-media Google Site on a city and religion of their choice. Will Chat GPT help? I don’t think so. I am stuck on the writing. In this post, Alice Keeler references AJ Giuliani who uses the example of comparing a main character to the librarian. I like it!  I can ask kids in partners to evaluate a Chat GPT response to make it better… The more I have conversations with other educators about this, the more excited I get about the possibilities.

We can’t revert back to paper and pen tasks because we worry about this technology and how kids will cheat; especially since for many students technology is an essential way for them to demonstrate their learning and reach their full potential.  It’s also pointless to ban or block the technology because it exists! I for one plan to talk to my students about the affordances as well as the limitations of AI and continue to have conversations with teachers about the capabilities of the tool as well as how we might change our teaching and assessment knowing this technology exists.

Update:

This AI detector was shared with our staff and suddenly instead of having conversations about changing our practices and/or personalizing learning, I am getting questions like, “Does this mean the student used AI to write this answer?”

I have often gone to Google to check for plagiarism, so this is no different I suppose, but it is so time-consuming and if used as a “gotcha” moment, is doesn’t advance learning. What if we used the AI detector along with Chat GPT to talk to kids about how to strengthen their work and how to use AI as a starting point rather than an end point?

Additional Resources

AI Homework

Alice Keeler’s post, “Is AI Essays the End of Education.” 

Rachelle Dene Poth’s post, Artificial Intelligence in Education

I am going to keep adding resources to this post as I learn more about the tool. Would love your thoughts as well.