You’re just learning about GPT-3, but folks are already working on GPT-4. Here’s what it might look like (emphasis on might)
The end-of-year recommended book lists are beginning to appear. I’ll have mine out closer to the end of December. Here are a few from reputable sources:
When AI is smart enough to write an essay, then what happens?
GPT3 is back in the news, because, as expected, it’s getting better and better. Using a simple chat interface, you can easily ask it a wide range of questions (write a 1,000 word essay about Clara Barton) that certainly feels like a diligent high school student wrote it.
Of course, this changes things, just as the camera, the typewriter and the internet changed things.
It means that creating huge amounts of mediocre material is easier than ever before. You can write a bad Seinfeld script in about six minutes.
It means that assigning rudimentary essays in school or average copywriting at work is now a waste of time.
But mostly it reminds us that attention and trust don’t scale.
If your work isn’t more useful or insightful or urgent than GPT can create in 12 seconds, don’t interrupt people with it.
Technology begins by making old work easier, but then it requires that new work be better.
I think it’s always important to consider the work we ask students to do in our schools. As my teacher cohort works through implementing the 4 Shifts protocol, we ask questions around deeper learning and authentic work like:
Is student work deeply rooted in discipline-specific and -relevant knowledge, skills, and dispositions?
Do learning activities and assessments allow students to engage in deep critical thinking and analysis?
Do students have the opportunity to design, create, make, or otherwise add value that is unique to them?
Is student work authentic and reflective of that done by experts outside of school?
Are students utilizing authentic, discipline-specific practices and processes?
Are students creating real-world products or performances for authentic audiences?
Of course, not every lesson or activity can be (nor should it be) an exercise in critical thinking and authentic, real-world application. But if our biggest concern about AI is whether or not students will use it to cheat, perhaps we have work to do on our classroom plans.
No, it is not converging upon human-like intelligence or for that matter AGI. Still, the broader lesson is you can build a very practical kind of intelligence with fairly simple statistical models and lots of training data. And there is more to come from this direction very soon.
The question remains is this original thought? The probing questions are mine, the responses are from the AI… Did I create something new by asking unique questions?
– Micah Shippee, Ph. D.
There will be more discussions about AI and tools like ChatGPT and how they affect education.
The most important thing we can do as educators is not to ignore these tools. They’re not going away. Students will find ways to use them. Educators should find ways to use them. But if we choose to ignore them and move on as if they will not affect what we do in schools worldwide, we’re failing our students.
Don’t get caught in the aftermath of significant change. We do too much of that in education already.
Honor and revere the gods, treat human beings as they deserve, be tolerant with others and strict with yourself. Remember, nothing belongs to you but your flesh and blood—and nothing else is under your control.
I’m always adding books to my TBR – it’s actually gotten ridiculous in length – and I’m always on the lookout for more. My interests range from biographies and histories to epic fantasy and hard sci-fi. Call me weird, but I like what I like.
I ran across this thought from Alan Jacobs and have decided that it’s my new guide for choosing new books…
Wondering how to decide what to read? Here’s a simple but effective heuristic to cut down the choices significantly. Ask yourself one question: Does this writer make bank when we hate one another? And if the answer is yes, don’t read that writer.
BTW, I asked ChatGPT to “explain what ChatGPT is to a fifth-grader,” and here is the response:
ChatGPT is a type of computer program that is designed to help people have conversations. It uses advanced algorithms and a lot of information from previous conversations to understand what you are saying and respond in a way that makes sense. It’s kind of like having a really smart friend who always knows what to say!
Another month of 2022 has come and gone, with it, another round of books. I’m very much on track to finish 100 books this year. Actually, I may hit 103-105 before it’s all said and done. A holiday break is an excellent chance to get some extra reading time in while recharging for the new year.
Plus, I’ve been down with the flu for almost a week, allowing me to read when I haven’t been asleep.
This month, as in October, includes several short audiobooks. With a busy fall, I was behind in hitting my reading goal for the year. I focused on getting caught up the past couple of months with audiobooks. I can listen while I’m working or driving, and I’m also able to play the titles at around 2.5x normal speed. I stumbled across several very interesting titles (especially the John Scalzi titles) that I enjoyed immensely.
Here, in no particular order, are the books I read or listened to in November 2022.
416 Pages – 10/30/2012 (Publication Date) – Tor Fantasy (Publisher)
Final Books of the Year
Later this month, I’ll have a final wrap-up of my “best books of 20222.” It’ll be the first time I’ve published a list like this, so bear with me. I want to communicate the reasons behind my selections and hopefully encourage you to begin making your own “best of” lists as you progress through your reading each year.
Reviewing what we read helps to remind us what we learned from the book (yes, you can learn from fiction just as easily as non-fiction). Also, it gives us a chance to practice those ever-important communication skills with another chance to write. It doesn’t matter if you publish your list or keep it in a journal, summarizing and telling someone your thoughts (even if it’s just you) is excellent writing practice.
This post was first published in August 2014,so please forgive any outdated references. I began my student teaching and carried many dreams and plans in my mind. Looking back on these words, I still carry many of these ideas with me eight years later. Maybe I was on to something…
I’m a huge movie fan. Many of my favorite films are science fiction, which, if you know me, is probably a foregone conclusion.
I love Star Wars, Star Trek, The Last Starfighter, Dune… the list goes on for days.
One of my favorite sci-fi films is Contact, based on the book by Carl Sagan. If you’re unfamiliar with the book or film, the plot revolves around what might happen if the human race received a message from another world.
Spoiler alerts ahead if you haven’t seen this nearly 20-year-old movie yet…
In the film’s climax, the main character speaks with a member of an alien race in the guise of her dead father. He explains a bit about how they were able to contact our planet and how things will progress in the future.
Our fearless heroine wants all of her questions answered at once, excited at what this incredible discovery could mean for science and the human race. However, she doesn’t get her wish.
The alien explains to her that progress and communication will come slowly over time. He tells her…
“Small moves, Ellie. Small moves.”
Change is a good but incredibly difficult thing. Especially in education. No matter how great we think some new technology or process is or how much we will benefit from it, the implementation will not come quickly. Not will it come free of pain, problems, and complaints.
Writing this post, I’m in my second full week of student teaching. Of course, I bring with me a fairly large amount of tech experience with a boatload of tools that teachers can use in the classroom. I am not, however, an experienced classroom teacher.
But, I can still show other teachers a few small ways that technology can make their lives easier, engage students, and bring some 21st-century methods into their classrooms.
But it has to start small. A friend of mine introduced Plickers in his classroom as a way to perform formative assessments. He called me over to see the trial run.
Of course, the students loved it. It was cool to see this app grade their responses instantly rather than waiting for their answers to be graded. I knew the kids would love it, and I knew my friend would love it, as we’ve been talking about using it since long before school began.
What I didn’t know would happen was the response from other teachers around his classroom. The buzz in the hallways after school about this little app was astounding. One of the guys from the district IT department even came over to see what we were doing.
Small moves.
Sometimes as tech evangelists, we forget that not everyone is as comfortable with tech as we are. There are teachers in your building right now that have been teaching long enough that they can remember a time when the only computers in the school were in a computer lab, and no teacher had a school email address.
And now we’re asking them to implement tools like GAFE, Microsoft LYNC, iPads, laptops, Chromebooks, and tablets….
Small moves.
If we really want to be great digital leaders, we have to be willing to meet others where they are with tech. Too often, we get carried away with the latest and greatest shiny app that will “revolutionize” our classrooms. We don’t understand why EVERYONE doesn’t use it the day it becomes available.
It’s not about beating other teachers and administrators over the head with new technology. It’s about showing them how one tool can improve or help them. How one tool can ignite a student’s interest in a new way.
It’s about small moves, not giant leaps.
We must be ready to make those small moves quickly and guide others to do the same. When that happens, teachers, administrators, and students win.
Sure, there will always be those asking, “Well, why are you doing this? What’s your motivation? What do you want to get out of it?” They balk at every suggestion and idea made.
But if we’re making small moves, those people will soon be drowned out by the gathering crowd of people making their small moves toward a better system for us all.
And soon, that gathering crowd will no longer be the minority that wants change; they will be the overwhelming majority that drives change and sends our education system in a new and exciting direction.
But it all starts with small moves.
Small moves, Ellie.
As leaders, that’s what we have to do.
Thanks for taking a stroll down memory lane with me.
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The Connected Educator is more than just someone that uses technology in the classroom. The connected educator is a lifelong learner, ready to adapt and use the tools available to improve their practice. They embrace new ideas and viewpoints throughout the connected world. Through the development of connected learning communities, the connected educator can improve their practice, encourage the work of others, and build an ever-changing repository of shared knowledge to benefit the education community as a whole.
BECOMING A CONNECTED LEARNER AND EDUCATOR
As educators of 21st-century learners, we must embrace different models of learning and connectivity that are native to our students. Learning happens for our students in a connected world. The same should hold for educators. Collaboration between educators of diverse backgrounds and levels of expertise allows for creating connected learning communities: an amalgamation of communities of practice, professional learning communities, and personal learning networks. Connected learning communities provide the same benefits as the three aforementioned communities but on a scale not previously achievable due to the connected tools available today.
BUILDING CULTURE THROUGH COLLABORATION
Conversations with a community of practice can lead to deep, connected learning. Learning as a connected educator is important to connect with global educators in a globalized world. Educators can make learning relevant for themselves and their students through communities of practice. The focus of connected learning is on a collaborative culture that includes having a shared vision, shared values, and opportunities for inquiry.
In the past, connecting outside of the classroom was relegated to professional development opportunities and conferences that only a few educators attended. With tools like Twitter and Facebook, teachers can participate in groups and chats based on grade levels, content areas, teacher leadership, and more. Bookmarking and sharing sites such as Diigo and Wakelet allow teachers to curate resources around any topic and share them with the larger community. Blogging tools like Blogger, WordPress, Squarespace, and more allow teachers to reflect on professional learning with a worldwide audience.
BUILDING COMMUNITY THROUGH CONNECTIONS
Educators must have a plan and purpose for how they will build their personal learning network (PLN). Tips for getting started creating a PLN include:
Begin with one tool and add others when comfortable.
Establish a consistent username across all networks.
Find a mentor to help along the way.
Choose well-respected and familiar educators, see who they follow, and select connections from their list.
Educators assume roles and responsibilities in a PLN: linking, lurking, learning, and leading. Linking and lurking involve staying on the sidelines and being reluctant to share thoughts. Learning and leading members are frequent users who share ideas and help shape the community. The learning and leading roles should commit to bringing those linking and lurking into action.
While forging ahead in new connected realms, it is important that educators work to sustain these communities and foster growth. Through appreciative inquiry, educators can sustain the initial work begun in newly connected virtual communities by focusing on their strengths and asking “what if?” to explore possibilities. Community members can keep a positive perspective on what can be accomplished using the 4-D model of appreciative inquiry: discovering what they feel the group is at its best, dreaming about what it would be like to see those discoveries happen, designing the community to make those dreams happen, and fulfilling the destiny for the community by implementing those designs.
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP THROUGH CONNECTIONS
Transformational leaders collaborate, encourage connected learning, and believe in distributed leadership. Distributed leadership is shared throughout the school by many people to strengthen the community. To shift to transformational leadership, traditional leaders must let go of control to move forward. Distributed leadership requires having a shared vision and shared responsibility in problem-solving. In a connected world, solving these problems includes making online connections with experts to inform ideas. Being connected allows teams to collaborate outside of the school day in a shared space.
CONNECTIONS TO LEADERSHIP
Being a connected educator goes hand in hand with teacher leadership. It is important in leadership to be an effective communicator and collaborator, which are also important aspects of being connected. Connected educators build their personal learning networks, or communities of practice, to continue professional learning and build connections outside of their school community.
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