Weekly Reflection #3

Issues with GenAI

With things changes so frequently with the technologies we have available I imagine my opinion on all this may also be in flux. Right now I have been thinking a lot about the ways we can frame our assignments so that learning is still happening in a world with AI. I have seen in English classes that hand written drafts and planning sheets are more and more common, and I do think that is a great way to ensure that students are still thinking about what they are writing. The biggest concern I have with the rise of AI in the classroom is the decline of creative and critical thinking, and the worsening of literacy rates. So I think we need to get creative in the way that we approach teaching and learning. I also think that assignments that are not just written have always been beneficial to student learning anyways.

Another big issue I have with the use of AI is specifically in relation to it’s image and video creation. I don’t really see a reason for this want to automate creative jobs, not to mention the fact that art from real artists are being fed into these programs often without consent. I think the use of GenAI is really bad for many creative industries (Animation, Film, etc) and for the people that have dedicated their lives to those crafts. It feels like another assertion that creative fields are not as important to society (something I wholeheartedly disagree with) and I feel like the rise of AI is just going to add to that. I have a lot of other big feelings about this but I will leave it at that, but I think this TedX talk is a really good watch.

Using AI in Teaching

Again I think that we are prioritizing saving time and energy over possible creativity when using AI. Sure AI can now help make a lesson plan, and I acknowledge that sometimes we will not have the ability to do everything. Something that I personally will be doing to supplement my own lesson/assignment creation will be using sites like teachers pay teachers .

While I don’t like to use it for many things, especially anything that is content creation, I have found AI to be helpful for research and think that could be a useful tool to teach students. I think it has it’s uses to save time finding sources and to helping to find information in longer articles and texts.