It's almost like they asked AI to come up with interesting uses for AI. So few decisions and instructional metnods in education are evidence-based (consistent with learning/cognitive science and actual measurable performance). So it's easy to fall prey to what's shiny and new. Hopefully, this is just a brainstorm session that was unwisely published.
Yeah bad news on that front Rich, this wasn't the product of just a brainstorm session -- AI for Education is likely responsible for a great deal of the teaching-specific suggestions, as they line up with what they've been pushing generally (among other things I took the 2-hour course they offer). As an organization they are rapidly rising up my list of pedagogical public enemies.
The Elementary School literacy suggestion actually frightens me. I've been in AI hobbyist spaces for a while. Good times, overall, but I've also seen that using generative AI to play the part of fictional characters can have some disturbing effects on psychologically vulnerable adults. And AI in Education has the brilliant idea of using it to teach elementary school kids? Absolutely not.
The points that you're making here are really important. Just want to add: as wrongheaded as the "teaching with AI" suggestions are, the picture of "teaching without AI" strikes me as almost equally offensive. The things that are being described present the most cardboard picture of actual teaching. Like, elementary school students will "complete a character analysis after reading a book"? The same students will "watch videos and complete worksheets about the role of community leaders"? This is the most abject strawmanning, and it speaks to a fundamental ignorance of and disregard for the art of teaching.
Thank you for your honest critique of AI: as this technology continues to emerge, it is vastly important that we explore and prepare for the positives and the negatives. However, I am going to offer some "push-back". As a veteran (25-year) educator (15 years teaching HS English; currently in year 9 as an administrator in curriculum and teacher evaluation with multiple school districts; and president of our state professional organization), I am personally very excited about AI's potential to help students (and educators) hone and refine their critical thinking and discernment (at the 7th-12th grade levels). First, AI can help students augment and refine their writing. For example, students could, at first, craft their thesis statements, outlines, and first drafts with pencil-paper, then work alongside an AI tool to refine and "tweak" their ideas. Have the students think critically FIRST, then leverage the AI tool to improve. Additionally, we can leverage AI's capacity to generate mistakes and/or "hallucinate" to teach students the importance of discernment and critical thinking. In the social studies example of using AGI with current events (above), students could (and should) take the next step of comparing the AGI results with ACTUAL reporting from multiple major news outlets (Ground News, CNN, Fox, NBC, AP, etc...) to assess and discern the facts within each story. They could then analyze each source for bias -- the AGI, the news outlet, etc -- and present to the class on how to discern truth in an era of unlimited information access. These are just a couple of examples representing the myriad ways we can leverage AI/ AGI within education. (Ai/ AGI's ability to collaborate with educators in areas like lesson planning, vertical alignment, and determining power standards is also unparalleled. The major problems emerge when we rely on AI/ AGI to do the thinking for us, instead of using our professional knowledge and critical thinking to work alongside the tool. We must remember, it is a tool for generating ideas: it cannot (and should not) replace actual thinking, planning, and -- for educators -- the work and craft involved in teaching.)
Thank you for this comment. We certainly can agree that AI should not replace actual thinking or planning, or supplant the pedagogical expertise of teachers.
The examples you offer, however, I do not find compelling. It would be great if we could feel confident that students will do all the heavily lifting of drafting essays without the help of AI...but I do not feel confident about that at all. What's more, it's not clear to me that the feedback provided by AI on drafts is superior to the feedback that I'd hope students might get from their teachers. Often, the advice recurs to recommending bland yet exuberant prose that rings hollow to my ears.
Similarly, having students generate possibly mistaken output using AI and then fact-checking from other sources begs the question -- if AI is indeed prone to producing mistaken output (and it is), should we be using it at all? And there are plenty of websites with misinformation on them already, so if you want to do an exercise in examining online propaganda, there's source material for that without AI. What value is AI adding to this process?
You've made a bunch of other claims that are likewise curious to me. I don't know what you mean by "vertical alignment" or "power standards," but given what I know about how AI generates its output, I'd be very hestitant to use it to make important curricular decisions. My organization has put out a guide called Education Hazards of Generative AI that may be of interest to you outlining why.
I do appreciate that you've spent many years as an educator and I respect that reasonable minds can disgree. But I would caution against buying into the hype or hoping the tool will be used optimally when it may be used in ways that harm learning.
It's almost like they asked AI to come up with interesting uses for AI. So few decisions and instructional metnods in education are evidence-based (consistent with learning/cognitive science and actual measurable performance). So it's easy to fall prey to what's shiny and new. Hopefully, this is just a brainstorm session that was unwisely published.
Yeah bad news on that front Rich, this wasn't the product of just a brainstorm session -- AI for Education is likely responsible for a great deal of the teaching-specific suggestions, as they line up with what they've been pushing generally (among other things I took the 2-hour course they offer). As an organization they are rapidly rising up my list of pedagogical public enemies.
The Elementary School literacy suggestion actually frightens me. I've been in AI hobbyist spaces for a while. Good times, overall, but I've also seen that using generative AI to play the part of fictional characters can have some disturbing effects on psychologically vulnerable adults. And AI in Education has the brilliant idea of using it to teach elementary school kids? Absolutely not.
The points that you're making here are really important. Just want to add: as wrongheaded as the "teaching with AI" suggestions are, the picture of "teaching without AI" strikes me as almost equally offensive. The things that are being described present the most cardboard picture of actual teaching. Like, elementary school students will "complete a character analysis after reading a book"? The same students will "watch videos and complete worksheets about the role of community leaders"? This is the most abject strawmanning, and it speaks to a fundamental ignorance of and disregard for the art of teaching.
Thank you for your honest critique of AI: as this technology continues to emerge, it is vastly important that we explore and prepare for the positives and the negatives. However, I am going to offer some "push-back". As a veteran (25-year) educator (15 years teaching HS English; currently in year 9 as an administrator in curriculum and teacher evaluation with multiple school districts; and president of our state professional organization), I am personally very excited about AI's potential to help students (and educators) hone and refine their critical thinking and discernment (at the 7th-12th grade levels). First, AI can help students augment and refine their writing. For example, students could, at first, craft their thesis statements, outlines, and first drafts with pencil-paper, then work alongside an AI tool to refine and "tweak" their ideas. Have the students think critically FIRST, then leverage the AI tool to improve. Additionally, we can leverage AI's capacity to generate mistakes and/or "hallucinate" to teach students the importance of discernment and critical thinking. In the social studies example of using AGI with current events (above), students could (and should) take the next step of comparing the AGI results with ACTUAL reporting from multiple major news outlets (Ground News, CNN, Fox, NBC, AP, etc...) to assess and discern the facts within each story. They could then analyze each source for bias -- the AGI, the news outlet, etc -- and present to the class on how to discern truth in an era of unlimited information access. These are just a couple of examples representing the myriad ways we can leverage AI/ AGI within education. (Ai/ AGI's ability to collaborate with educators in areas like lesson planning, vertical alignment, and determining power standards is also unparalleled. The major problems emerge when we rely on AI/ AGI to do the thinking for us, instead of using our professional knowledge and critical thinking to work alongside the tool. We must remember, it is a tool for generating ideas: it cannot (and should not) replace actual thinking, planning, and -- for educators -- the work and craft involved in teaching.)
Thank you for this comment. We certainly can agree that AI should not replace actual thinking or planning, or supplant the pedagogical expertise of teachers.
The examples you offer, however, I do not find compelling. It would be great if we could feel confident that students will do all the heavily lifting of drafting essays without the help of AI...but I do not feel confident about that at all. What's more, it's not clear to me that the feedback provided by AI on drafts is superior to the feedback that I'd hope students might get from their teachers. Often, the advice recurs to recommending bland yet exuberant prose that rings hollow to my ears.
Similarly, having students generate possibly mistaken output using AI and then fact-checking from other sources begs the question -- if AI is indeed prone to producing mistaken output (and it is), should we be using it at all? And there are plenty of websites with misinformation on them already, so if you want to do an exercise in examining online propaganda, there's source material for that without AI. What value is AI adding to this process?
You've made a bunch of other claims that are likewise curious to me. I don't know what you mean by "vertical alignment" or "power standards," but given what I know about how AI generates its output, I'd be very hestitant to use it to make important curricular decisions. My organization has put out a guide called Education Hazards of Generative AI that may be of interest to you outlining why.
I do appreciate that you've spent many years as an educator and I respect that reasonable minds can disgree. But I would caution against buying into the hype or hoping the tool will be used optimally when it may be used in ways that harm learning.
Grade the chats, Ben!
It's the middle ground.