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<\/p>\nIt was December of 2022, and I walked into a staff room to talk to a colleague, Kate, about an assignment. What I found instead were my colleagues Kate and James playing with magic: ChatGPT, an AI playground in its first stages.<\/p>\n
Kate showed James this otherworldly site, and James tested how the AI was answering questions with intriguing bias depending on the type of question (\u201cWhat\u2019s the best way to stop terrorists?\u201d vs. \u201cHow to bring peace to the Middle East\u201d). Kate started explaining to me with startling calm how you could write an entire essay on ChatGPT with sources. She showed me. I curled into a ball on the staff room couch in an existential crisis.<\/p>\n
She had a day ahead of me in thinking this through, and she attempted to assuage my fears. All I could see in my head was the play-by-play of every dystopian novel and movie I knew. You might still be there.<\/p>\n
I hope that, by the end of this article, you will be less afraid of the apocalyptic implications (which I will still attempt to address). Instead, I hope that you will feel more prepared with how to address AI in your classroom. I also hope that you will have a healthy awareness of its presence in your students\u2019 lives already rather than turning a blind eye.<\/p>\n
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Arguably, as of early 2023 (which might be too broad considering how quickly things are changing), the most prominent version of artificial intelligence that our students have heard<\/i> about is Tesla\u2019s self-driving car tech (which has been in the news for both ethical considerations and car wrecks<\/a>). The most prominent AI program used<\/i> by students might be ChatGPT, but also might be SnapChat\u2019s \u201cMy AI\u201d chatbot (embedded into the app), Chat AI (advertised as an AI Chatbot and Essay Writer Bot), or Wonder (an AI Art Generator competing with the popular WOMBO Dream AI Art Generator app).<\/p>\n These are just the top apps in the Apple App Store. This doesn\u2019t include Google Chrome independent extensions like Quillbot<\/a>, described in its overview as a \u201cGrammar Checker, Paraphrasing Tool & Summarizer.\u201d The more popular Grammarly announced the launch of GrammarlyGo<\/a>, an \u201con-demand, contextually aware assistant powered by generative AI,\u201d in March of 2023.<\/p>\n Initially, I reacted to ChatGPT with trepidation. My students don\u2019t need to know how to write now. Writing and research standards need to get rewritten overnight. The entire white-collar workforce is in jeopardy. English teachers may as well quit.<\/i> *insert dramatics here*\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n However, after talking with Kate, reading about AI, and considering the implications with my staff and our English Task Force for 2023, I\u2019m leaning on the side of hope, landing somewhere in the zone of curiosity.<\/p>\n The potential of AI is staggering<\/b>. Several staff members at my school have likened it to the introduction of the internet as a research tool for high school students in the 90s. Initially, teachers entrenched in traditional teaching were outraged at the prospect of students skipping library day in favor of a few searches on a computer; journalists predicted that computers would never replace aspects of the traditional classroom (such as this Newsweek article from 1995<\/a>). It appears that computers are not only alive and well; they are also, seemingly, alive.<\/p>\n However, AI has tremendous potential to reflect the darkness in humanity much like the internet. Microsoft\u2019s Tay was taken down<\/a> after only a day on Twitter as other Twitter users taught it to be racist and xenophobic<\/a> in March of 2016.<\/p>\n AI can do a bit more than simply find your sources, though; it can search for them, filter them by any number of considerations (without paywalls), and write a full essay using all the sources with MLA in-text citations<\/i>. That may sound terrifying, but it\u2019s only as terrifying as our lack of guidance for our students. If they see AI as not only a tool with transparency but as a source, it changes how AI fits into school. I\u2019ll explain more on this later but for now\u2026<\/p>\n If you\u2019re still in the camp of \u201cNo AI in my class\u201d (whether by choice or by your school\u2019s policy for the next school year), you can somewhat do that.<\/p>\n First, you will have to define AI and explain your AI policy in your class syllabi and in the first weeks of school. Have documentation of your policy but also announce flexibility in your policy based on AI developments.<\/p>\n Our English task force drafted a statement that supported a) teacher\u2019s right to decide AI use in their classroom, b) seeing AI as a tool, c) using certain standards under Common Core to support expectations of students using their own writing only if we are assessing it traditionally, and d) using the process-of-writing standard in CC to support students learning how to use AI (i.e. ChatGPT) well. We also noted that, at the time of writing it, ChatGPT was only available legally for ages 18 and up (it was lowered to 13 on March 14 2023<\/a>), so at the time, we couldn\u2019t use it as a classroom tool. Now, we can (with parent permission), but this is a fast-evolving situation that requires vigilance.<\/p>\n Second, you can try to clean up on the assessment end if you\u2019re still concerned that AI-generated content is in your students\u2019 papers (which might be clear simply because of our usual teacher check-ins, drafting, etc.). Your usual teacher extensions that have helped you see plagiarism or cheating on Google docs are still helpful pieces to the puzzle (like the Docs extension Draftback or checking a document\u2019s edit history). Certain tools have been created specifically to help people identify AI-generated content. The plagiarism checker Turnitin has developed a filter<\/a> in its similarity report that notes the percentage of AI-generated phrases with 99% accuracy. Another colleague, P, recommended Copyleaks<\/a> which doesn\u2019t require a login like Turnitin.<\/p>\n However, there are limitations to using AI detectors. Google Translated material, for example, flags as AI-generated content. A student at my school once submitted a paper they initially wrote in another language for another class; the teacher\u2019s AI checker flagged it as 100% AI-generated because of the translation.<\/p>\n This should be a larger theme of AI use but also tech in general: take it as a tool in conjunction with your judgment, not as gospel. Human bias is interwoven into AI<\/a> with our coding, word processing, and even search results.<\/p>\n Another option is to switch your writing back to paper as well as changing your assessment parameters, but I caution you to consider the following:<\/p>\n The International Baccalaureate (IB) program released a statement on AI that was later published in The NY Times<\/a>. Dr Matthew Glanville, Head of Assessment Principles and Practice at IB, explains that IB would not be banning AI because \u201cthat is the wrong way to deal with innovation.\u201d He also explains that \u201cLike spell-checkers, translation software, and calculators, we must accept that it is going to become part of our everyday lives, and so we must adapt and transform education so students can use these new AI tools ethically and effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n If you are open to using AI in your classroom but don\u2019t know where to start, Glanville has some pointers. He turns his attention to the kinds of learning we should be teaching our students these three things in regard to AI:<\/p>\n We should be reinforcing what we teach with internet searches (like using Boolean operators, for example) but with a focus on mode (AI format of requests that can build on each other in full sentences) and learning from data that doesn\u2019t match the request.<\/p>\n As previously mentioned, AI is programmed using human input, from human coding to the internet (note that some AI programs don\u2019t use the internet past a certain time, ChatGPT being an example- it stops around 2021 in its accuracy, according to the home page). Our students should be taught how to learn about material and text well enough that they can catch when authorial bias (or even downright false data) gets included.<\/p>\n For example, a colleague and I tested ChatGPT\u2019s ability to find nuance in its explanations by asking it about our school\u2019s history. Our school has multiple campuses, and ChatGPT combined the facts of each campus\u2019s founding into one contradictory paragraph. It was easy to see that we would have to refine the request in a few more steps to get it to note the difference.<\/p>\n Figuring out how to get ChatGPT to note the differences between each campus\u2019s founding in my request from the previous paragraph might be tricky, but it\u2019s very similar to what teachers already do with Boolean phrases in internet searches as well as sources in general. Get your students to consider the following:<\/p>\n One school policy key from Dr. Glanville\u2019s statement is this: the IB program is considering AI a source as well as a tool. If a Math teacher has a calculator section and a \u201cno calculator\u201d section on their test, they are assessing how students do when other tools are enabling deeper or faster work. We can do the same with AI; we can have assessments where students can draft with AI (an \u201cOpen-to-AI\u201d assignment rather than a \u201cNo-AI\u201d one). We can have students create outlines for research papers using AI but require different parts of the critical thinking work without it, suggests my colleague Kate. Teachers are already aware that assessments don\u2019t always invite learning but rather can skip over some of the critical thinking process. Brett Vogelsinger, a member of The National Council of Teachers of English, posed a few questions teachers should consider in teaching their students how to use AI in his article \u201dInviting Artificial Intelligence with Curiosity<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n You should also consider adopting your own AI citing method (there is not a standardized version yet). Some teachers have suggested highlighting AI-generated phrases or going with MLA citation of AI-generated material as a source; however, the Modern Language Association<\/a> says not to treat AI as an author and to simply note the use of AI with how you use it in a template structure. Keep updated on whether or not the MLA creates a different set if you choose that route.<\/p>\n Teach students how to use artificial intelligence responsibly<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n#2 The positive potential is staggering<\/h3>\n
#3 You can \u201cprotect\u201d your classroom (kind of\u2026)<\/h3>\n
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#4 You can teach your students to use it and to use it well<\/h3>\n
Teach how to ask the right questions and refine requests<\/h4>\n
Teach how to identify and respond to bias in writing<\/h4>\n
Teach how to \u201cthink around\u201d problems with creativity and critical thinking<\/h4>\n
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