Naturally, we need to temper the excitement about AI's benefits with an understanding of the downsides. We know that AI companies are using huge amounts of electricity to run their servers, but I had not considered the impact on water supplies especially in some of the drought-impacted places in which these companies are expanding.
This article tells the story plainly: https://www.context.news/ai/video/forget-jobs-ai-is-coming-for-your-water?s=09
]]>Many educators—myself included—fear the same outcome as these Special Education teachers. That students will lose empathy and personal contact is a real concern, but I don't think it's caused by AI. The growth of personal electronics is likely a bigger part of that change.
https://time.com/7018588/special-olympics-ai-idd-artificial-intelligence/
This research article has been making the rounds, so I figured I would chime in with my two cents. I use AI tools myself and I teach my students how to use them productively as a lever to enhance their learning.
As the authors state in the abstract from the research paper, "Results of the experiment suggest that students tended to rely on rather than learn from AI assistance. If AI assistance was removed, self-regulated strategies could help fill the gap but were not as effective as AI assistance." In other words, students who were given access to AI tools (like personalized tutors) did learn more, but if the AI was taken away, they ended not gaining any ground over kids without AI.
I struggle with this conclusion because I don't think that most teachers see AI as helping to close learning gaps. I certainly don't use it that way. I think that it can make the work of students more efficient, which often boosts engagement and reduces academic fatigue, but that's not really the point either. The real idea here is that AI truly is the new calculator.
No math teacher thinks that kids with calculators learn faster. No one suggests that giving calculators to struggling math students will help them build skills that will lead to them not needing the calculator any more. The calculator is a tech tool that acts like a step ladder. It lifts students up to a place where they can reach more. But they still have to reach up and grab those higher things.
The true power of AI in education is that after students learn basic writing or research skills, they can use it to do the low-level draft work, freeing them to learn the higher order skills of proofreading and editing. Tomorrow's adults will be able to write even more and read even more because of the AI assistants.
Perhaps some students who would not have had the basic writing skills to do normal tasks in the past will now be able to do those tasks with the help of AI assistants. In the mid-1970s, one college professor said of calculators, "I have yet to be convinced that handing them a machine and teaching them how to push the button is the right approach. What do they do when the battery runs out?”
Now, we laugh at the idea that anyone would be without a calculator at any point in today's world. In a few years, we will feel the same way about AI tools. They will become an indispensable ever-present tool that helps with the basics so that we can do the more complex things.
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While I believe that there is a place for AI assistance in the providing of feedback to students, I agree that the purpose of teachers is to evaluate students.
Will the future bring more of a partnership between educators and AI models?
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As we look at how to shift our instruction in a world where students can plagiarize easily using genAI tools, we can't ignore the important roles of motivation. As Andy Famiglietti writes here, plagiarism and cheating become pointless when the learner wants to master the content, not simply receive the credentials for doing so.
]]>What strikes me the most about this research article is NOT the power of "asset-based instruction" (that focuses on a student's strengths rather than their deficiencies) but rather than this is not just a big problem in edtech applications but also in the education at large. We spend so many words and so much funding trying to close "learning gaps" and that kind of language must have a negative effect on students.
]]>I’m really looking forward to reading this new book about the perils of grading
www.press.jhu.edu/books/tit...
hechingerreport.org/opinion-a...
