AI: Re-writer, Info Getter, or Collaborator?

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, […]

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Does Your Dialect Change How ChatGPT Treats You?

After a bit of a hiatus from blogging (life happens), I’m back! We each have our own way of speaking that originates from where we come from–some of these differences are more distinct and systematic than others. What does this mean for how LLMs respond to us? And to our students? A few weeks ago, […]

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ChatGPT Doesn’t Have a User’s Manual. Let’s Not Create One.

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 […]

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Why are we surprised?

Note: This is the first post in an experiment at shared blogging by Punya Mishra, Nicole Oster and myself. Over the past months we have found ourselves engaged in some fascinating conversations around genAI, education, bias and more. This shared blogging experiment is an attempt to take some of these conversations and move them into this sharable […]

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The Battle of LLMs and ELLs

An important feature of a learning machine is that its teacher will often be very largely ignorant of quite what is going on inside. A. M. Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, 1950 Last week at the SITE conference, I talked with Katrina Tour from Monash University about her work with refugees in Australia. She is […]

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Stranger Skills: Guidelines for Learning and Teaching with AI

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 […]

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Stranger Skills at Educators Rising New Mexico, 2024

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 […]

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NMSU Research and Creativity Week

Access resources here! Bad Audio of All Presentations: Bias in LLMs: It’s Not What You Think Full Paper: Warr, Melissa and Oster, Nicole Jakubczyk and Isaac, Roger, Implicit Bias in Large Language Models: Experimental Proof and Implications for Education (November 6, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4625078 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4625078 Beyond Cheating: Using LLMs in Teaching and Learning Higher Ed […]

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RAT Systems
rat made of gears

Note: Post image created with Adobe Firefly. I’ve been thinking about what education should and shouldn’t be, particularly with the flood of AI talk. How we use technological tools for teaching and learning has been a major area of research for decades, but not much has actually changed in schools. I recently read an article […]

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