Been to the Desert on a Google Search with No Name
A Review of the Educational Resources for AI Educational Impact/Uses
a hands on practice session with ai and its educational potential
I was all set to do some serious deep dives into the academic literature about the use of Artificial Intelligence in education. Got rid of my kids (temporarily) and had snacks at the ready. I was prepared to read, research and synthesize all the good work Google (and other Boolean search tools) could offer.
Alas, Google, Google Scholar and even Siri could not guide me to an oasis in the parched land that is the online academic analysis of AI in schools. Loads of articles on AI or on inquiry itself but since the evolution of AI as it pertains to education is so new, there just isn't much to dig into. Not much of significance with legitimate, peer reviewed legs at any rate.
What is a good TL to do in such a situation?
Pivot!
This blog was supposed to do a deeper dive into the research and articles, the key take away is that many teachers and TLs will be forced to do their own deep dives and assessments of the subject in the absence of literature.
In my previous post, I linked to the 4 most common AI generators or platforms that I thought would be of most use to educators to know about. I think this is where a good TL would begin their research and begin to understand how each work. Without a working knowledge of the AI, it would be impossible to properly teach students to use them for good or how to support teaching colleagues to create AI resistant assignments that better reflect truer, deeper learning.
To jog your memory, the four AI tools are...
Jasper - a writing tool that markets itself as an "on brand AI content creator" that will actually write just about anything you ask it to. The good news for education is that it's not free. The bad news is that it's pretty cheap and students will overlook the cost for the benefit of getting through.
The Research Task
As a student in research mode, I did what any good digital native would do when tasked with an assignment they didn't know quite how to complete: I turned to AI for the answers!
First, I asked Gamma to create me a website that "explained AI and its educational uses in secondary education". I then narrowed the parameters to be specifically Canadian. This is the result: Gamma created post. Click it then come back as I don't yet know how to embed it here. It's an incredible result that I wish I could take credit for. Gamma created everything you see - I added nothing. While it doesn't completely give the answers that I was looking to present, the efficiency with which it created the entire post (less than 1 min) and knowing I could easily edit to improve the presentation was very appealing. And a little scary to someone who is still trying to figure out how to make a blog look good even as I create each one for the course.
Since that didn't take all that long, I went to Pictory loaded my last blog post, Can you dig it? , into their very user friendly generator and asked it to create a video. The Pictory created video was unbelievably easy to use and while the results need editing, for a first attempt and only a few minutes of noodling around in the site, the end product is pretty solid.
There are some key drawbacks and issues with the site like its lack of representation of multicultural people and an absurd series of images when you search "Indigenous" but those will improve and could be overcome with a better understanding of the product and how to use it. I deliberately tried to use as few minutes as possible to get a proper idea of the ease of use and accessibility to students. Another drawback is that it took quite awhile to prepare the video for download but you could easily just link to the video on Pictory's site. And there's the added gatekeeper of a paid membership. There is a 14 day free trial but once that's done, you need to enter a credit card number. Which many students, or their parents, would do for access to such a valuable resource.
The TL Takeaway
Knowing these tools is going to be very important if a TL wants to be a digital mentor or any other kind of knowledgeable authority on significant technology going forward. I know I am very far behind so the depth of skill and comfort that I, and other new TLs or teachers, will need to acquire is daunting. Maybe there's a great lesson in here where our students become the teachers?
References - the same oasis of info from my first trip into the desert (see previous post)
Dr. Louis Volante, Dr. Christopher DeLuca. “How Can Teachers Integrate AI within Schools?” EdCan Network, 7 June 2023
Fontichiaro, Kristin. "Framing Inquiry with Scenarios." School library monthly, vol. 31, no. 3, 12/01/2014, pp. 50.
Hari, Johann. “Your Attention Didn’t Collapse. It Was Stolen.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 2 Jan. 2022, www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jan/02/attention-span-focus-screens-apps-smartphones-social-media.
Miller, Shannon, and William L. Bass. Leading from the Library: Help Your School Community Thrive in the Digital Age. International Society for Technology in Education, 2019.
Woolf, B. P., Lane, H. C., Chaudhri, V. K., & Kolodner, J. L. (2013). AI Grand Challenges for Education. AI Magazine, 34(4), 66-84. https://doi.org/10.1609/aimag.v34i4.2490
AAI AI Websites:
“Chatgpt.” ChatGPT, openai.com/chatgpt.
“Gamma.” Gamma App: Generate AI Presentations, Webpages & Docs, gamma.app/public/GammaAi-Your-Solution-for-Advanced-AI-and-SelfLearning-h4bysfondj6tgfl.
“Jasper - Ai Writer: Ai Marketing Co-Pilot.” Proof Icon SVG, www.jasper.ai/.
“Pictory - Easy Video Creation for Content Marketers.” Pictory.Ai,
This is a strong post that outlines your research, thinking, and learning thus far. Your writing style is engaging and thought-provoking. I appreciate your willingness to experiment with the tools and learn from your experience. If these reading reviews will form the basis for your final vision project, you might want to start to consider what your digital artifact might look like. Something else to consider would be to create hyperlinks to the original sources in your references. These would be good takeaways for your reader.
ReplyDeleteI'm also inquiring into AI and also found a real lack of peer-reviewed information! It makes sense that not much has been published yet because AI is still relatively new and I'm sure peer-reviewed articles take some time to go through all the phases before being published. I haven't looked into different AI tools yet (apart from ChatGPT), so I'm definitely interested in trying out the ones you listed!
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