My whole life I have never thought too much about AI and how this could be implemented into the classroom. As a student myself I have rarely used AI for my schoolwork, and even in general. It is not a tool that I ever felt I needed or wanted to use to help me in my writing or thought process. I barely even thought about ChatGPT until the end of last year when my friends who go to school for business went over the whole spiel about how ChatGPT is helpful for them. I understand that this tool can be helpful, but when they were talking about it and encouraging me to use it, I already felt off about the idea of me using ChatGPT. I was already thinking, Absolutely not, nope, not for me, thanks though! Towards the end of the school year, I finally indulged into the tool to help me understand some new ideas in words that would make more sense to me. It worked really well for me in a way that I could understand the concepts and better apply them to my work. Even though the tool worked for me, I am conflicted based on my beliefs and values surrounding the mind and environment.
Like I mentioned before, for my own work I don’t tend to use or rely on AI tools. However, I do recognize that these tools are here and used by many students. So, I believe it’s my responsibility to learn about AI with its pros and cons. As well as, how it can be applied effectively in a classroom. Specifically using AI for writing can get tricky with its unreliability with incorrect information and biases. It’s important that students are aware of these negative aspects, and that students know the right steps when using AI to receive more reliable assistance in their writing. I also get nervous about students actually relying on AI too much where it does most of the work for them. Although, through this class I am able to see how AI can be useful as a writing assistant when students need help in receiving feedback for advice. I do believe there is an important and strategic way to go about using AI, cause this will help us use AI more effectively.
From chapter one of Magliozze and Peterson’s book, AI in the Writing Workshop Finding the Write Balance, I find their steps very important in how to utilize AI with the writing process. There was an emphasis to write as much as you can and to struggle in the process and editing. After all the hard work, you can then move onto AI and put as much context, information, the assignment, and what you are hoping to know to help guide the feedback. Once you have read the feedback and maybe asked a few more questions, the writer needs to think for themselves and decide whether or not they are going to utilize or discard the feedback.
I think teaching this strategy for students could be very helpful in getting them to prioritize the writing before they even get to the AI step. Doing the brainstorming and rough draft is the hardest part, and some students might be at different levels with how far they go in this step, but as long as they put as much effort into this part is critical. It allows the student to try and to see what they come up with first. When students do approach AI, putting in all the information regarding the assignment, context, and what you want AI to assist with will produce better and more effective feedback. However, it is important for students to think critically about the feedback they receive and to make their own decision on whether or not they want to apply those suggestions.
Overall, entering AI in writing is new territory for me and I don’t know if I will ever personally use it that much. But AI isn’t going anywhere just because I won’t be using it, I know my students will be, so learning as much as I can and learning with them, about mixing writing and AI will make me a more supportive educator.
Hi Olivia! Thank you for sharing your thoughts about AI and the teaching of young writers. I appreciate how you mentioned hesitancy over including AI in writing because of its tendency to produce hallucinations, a feature that we are all aware of but that many students are not. Last school year, a student was presenting a project in class that he had used AI on and including in his writing and presentation a character from a section of the book that we had not even read yet. However, since that student had not looked over what he had AI generated, questioned why there was a character he did not recognize, or go over revisions he did not notice this until asked questions by his peers in class. Although students are growing up surrounding by AI, they do not inherently understand how it works or what could be effective ways to implement it with their writing.
ReplyDeleteHi Olivia! I'm kind of in the same boat as you when it comes to feelings about AI; I'm very skeptical of it but I do want to address it in my classroom as it becomes more and more of a prevalent tool each day. I really like how you brought up the fact that ChatGPT was able to explain concepts to you in a way that you can understand. This is one of the (only) benefits of AI in my opinion: access. Some students, especially those in lower income schools, do not have the learning resources that other students in high income schools have like tutors, up-to-date textbooks, and adequate teaching staff. ChatGPT can make learning more accessible to kids who would be struggling otherwise without it. But I agree that it's a tool to be used, not a stand-in for student work. Teaching students to be critical of the feedback they receive from AI and to ask further questions about why certain answers were given is a big step in promoting AI literacy. I also like this idea because it doesn't put AI feedback on a pedestal. When you get feedback from your classmate sitting next to you, you don't take all of their advice without question. You as the writer decide what is useful and what is not. We should be treating AI the same way. Just because it's a machine doesn't mean it's always right, and students need to know that. Of course, comparing AI feedback to peer feedback humanizes the system in a way I'm not very fond of, but I think the point stands nonetheless. Great post!
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