It is back to school week and we have lots of things we need to think about. From helping to get our students to class on time and getting them excited about being in our rooms, to getting our technology to work as intended and helping our colleagues adapt to new expectations (Yondr anyone?) But have you considered what role artificial intelligence (AI) places in your classroom?
What would you do if your students came to you with a paper generated by an AI? Would you even be able to tell? Recently, in the truest sense of the term meta, an AI, called GPT-3, wrote an academic paper about itself. Here is an article in Scientific American: https://bit.ly/3wAUKJ9. The company, OpenAI, is training the AI to recognize billions of words and parameters to produce human-like text for a variety of writing types. They are also making this technology available to students in middle and high school. (https://bit.ly/3AVoJy3)
AI is one of several emergent technologies that teachers rarely think about now, but will rapidly be changing the landscape of education in a few short years. AI is already heavily embedded into our lives whether you are liking a song on Spotify or searching for shoes on Amazon. Every time you talk to Siri you are improving the AI algorithm that is working behind the scenes to create a ‘better’ user experience. It should not come as a surprise that the implications of AI technology is being considered for the future of education (like the AI auto-generating corrections as I type this newsletter).
Whether you find the prospect of this new technology terrifying or invigorating, one thing is for sure, it is coming. In the meantime, I look forward to an excellent school year. I hope you are too.
Tech Tip of the Week
Build your Documents in Slides
Do you find it frustrating to try to make your Docs fun and visually appealing? Try building those same resources in Slides instead of Docs. By simply changing the page dimensions in Slides to be custom 8.5 x 11 inches, you can easily add images, tables or text-boxes wherever you need to make your document dynamic (read less boring).
Featured App: Flip (formerly Flipgrid)
Inclusive Use:
Language practice for ELs or others learning a new language
Knowledge showcase for students that may not be comfortable sharing during class
Storytelling, novel summation, history analysis, etc.
Extension Opportunity
Have students create videos for the procedures in your classroom. Attach QR codes to them and post the QR codes around your room. Direct students to the QR codes when you need to reteach a procedure throughout the year. (Yes QR codes work with Chromebooks.)
Other related Resources
Loom, Screencastify
