Today I had lots of fun with middle and high school students at the New Mexico Educators Rising State Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We did several activities that helped us think about how AI works–it predicts the next token based on its (biased) training data. it doesn’t “know” anything, it fills in the blanks. […]
There’s always a lot of hype around new technologies–my favorite example was how the “educational talking picture” was going to be epochal: The introduction of the use of the talking picture into education may prove to be an event as epochal as the application of the principle of the wheel to transportation or the application […]
The more I use AI–particularly Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT–the more I notice my tendency to get into a mode of thinking where I quickly ask stuff, skim the answer, then move on. This is concerning: it shows my tendency to minimize thinking effort. If a tool will do the hard stuff for me, […]
To use GenAI effectively, we need to shift our mindset from how most other digital technologies work. We’re used to many technologies (such as the printing press and internet) being about access to information. We are used to digital tools giving consistent responses (input/output). We are used to using tools to produce stuff (documents, images, […]
Note: This is the next post in the shared blogging experiment with Punya Mishra and Nicole Oster. This time we question what and how we should be teaching about generative AI. The core idea and first draft came from me, to which Punya and Nicole added revisions and edits. The final version emerged through a […]
Lately I’ve felt like I’m living in parallel universes. On one hand, I am trying to get the word out of the bias in GenAI, the problems that can cause, and the caution we should be using when these technologies are applied in educational contexts. For example, ChatGPT 3.5 provides lower average writing scores when […]
I have the honor of sharing some ideas about teaching, learning, and AI with New Mexican Educators Rising members at the 2024 Conference. Here are some concepts and resources that might be useful. Ideas for using LLMs in Learning Ideas for using LLMS in Teaching Additional Resources Videos Santa Fe Institute: The Future of Artificial […]
Another term, another reflection on teaching, learning, and technology. This time I add a social justice perspective.
Today I presented a paper I wrote about how design principles informed the work I did for my dissertation–a responsive professional development program that ended up having to respond to COVID-19 school closures. The result was an unexpected stress test for the design principles. The figure below outlines the theoretical structure of the program, with […]
This week, I asked my students to draft a “learning, teaching, and technology statement.” Their thoughts and insights pushed me to think more about my own beliefs. Although I have been exploring the relationships between learning, creativity, design, and teaching, I hadn’t ever articulated where “technology” fit in. (A bit ironic, seeing that I am […]