Category: Weekly Reflections

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I used ChatGPT to write me a blog post:

The Benefits and Drawbacks of AI in Schools

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has made significant inroads into the field of education. From personalized learning platforms to administrative automation, AI promises to revolutionize schools. However, like any powerful tool, its implementation comes with both advantages and challenges. Let’s explore the benefits and drawbacks of using AI in schools.

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Benefits of AI in Schools

1. Personalized Learning

AI-powered platforms can tailor instruction to meet the needs of individual students. For example:

• Adaptive learning tools like DreamBox or Khan Academy adjust the difficulty of lessons based on a student’s progress.
• AI identifies gaps in understanding, ensuring students master concepts before moving on.

Why it matters: Personalized learning boosts engagement and helps struggling students catch up while allowing advanced learners to move ahead.

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2. Improved Accessibility

AI tools can make education more inclusive:

• Speech-to-text technology supports students with disabilities or language barriers.
• Tools like text readers and real-time translation apps ensure that resources are accessible to all learners.

Why it matters: AI levels the playing field, ensuring that every student can access quality education, regardless of their needs.

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3. Streamlined Administrative Tasks

AI can automate repetitive tasks such as:

• Grading multiple-choice exams.
• Managing attendance records and scheduling.
• Analyzing data to identify trends in student performance.

Why it matters: This allows teachers to spend more time focusing on instruction and student engagement.

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4. Real-Time Feedback

AI provides immediate feedback to students through platforms that evaluate responses and suggest improvements.

• Students benefit from instant clarity on mistakes, promoting better retention.
• Teachers gain insights into where the class as a whole may need further instruction.

Why it matters: Immediate feedback encourages active learning and prevents small misunderstandings from snowballing into larger issues.

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5. Data-Driven Insights

AI can analyze vast amounts of data to help schools make informed decisions:

• Predict student performance trends and provide early interventions.
• Assess curriculum effectiveness through data analytics.

Why it matters: Schools can improve outcomes by addressing problems proactively.

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Drawbacks of AI in Schools

1. Equity Concerns

Not all schools have the resources to implement AI technologies.

• Wealthier schools are more likely to benefit from AI, exacerbating existing inequalities.
• Students in underserved areas may lack access to the devices and internet required to use AI tools.

Why it matters: Without equitable implementation, AI risks widening the digital divide.

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2. Dependence on Technology

Over-reliance on AI can diminish critical human interactions:

• Students may miss out on the mentorship and emotional support that teachers provide.
• Teachers might rely too heavily on AI for lesson planning, reducing creativity and adaptability.

Why it matters: Education is as much about relationships as it is about content delivery, and AI cannot replace human empathy and understanding.

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3. Privacy and Data Security

AI systems collect massive amounts of student data, raising concerns about:

• How data is stored and who has access to it.
• Potential misuse of sensitive information.

Why it matters: Schools must ensure robust security measures to protect student privacy.

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4. Job Displacement

As AI takes over administrative and even instructional tasks, some worry it could:

• Reduce the need for certain teaching and support roles.
• Undermine the importance of teachers in the learning process.

Why it matters: Teachers are irreplaceable in fostering creativity, critical thinking, and emotional growth.

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5. Ethical Concerns

AI decisions can reflect biases present in their programming or training data:

• Algorithms might perpetuate stereotypes or unfairly disadvantage certain groups of students.
• Over-reliance on AI grading could lead to inaccurate assessments for creative or nuanced work.

Why it matters: Ethical oversight is necessary to ensure AI benefits all students fairly.

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Striking a Balance

AI in education is not inherently good or bad—it’s a tool. Its effectiveness depends on how it’s implemented. To maximize its benefits while minimizing drawbacks, schools should:

• Provide teacher training to integrate AI effectively without diminishing human interaction.
• Ensure equity by prioritizing access for underserved communities.
• Safeguard data privacy and establish ethical guidelines for AI use.

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Conclusion

Hi there, me again! Interesting how my own personal writing style and formatting so obviously stands out from that of the AI. I found this to be a very broad and accurate description of our conversation in class today on the subject of AI, but it does lack some of the nuances and natural skepticism which we uniquely bring to the table as humans…. for now.

The most interesting part of my query was when ChatGPT asked me to pick which response I favored out of two options:

This is clear evidence of the program using my user feedback to continue adapting which was interesting and unsettling at the same time.

References:

OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT (November 26 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat

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Tracy is the founder of the BCEdAccess Society, an organization devoted to equity and inclusion for all students in British Columbia. From the very start of her presentation she was very open with us in disclosing her intent in founding the group being rooted in her own disabilities and those of her children. I found this honesty to be very brave and refreshing.

BCEdAccess is a volunteer-run non-profit organization serving families of students with disabilities that has grown into a support group of around 3500 parents. This organization helps families navigate the school system and advocate for their children through designations and psycho-educational assessment.

Some of the specific tech tools mentioned were speech-to-text, dictation, AAC/communication boards, translators, microphones and hearing aids, AI generated notes, closed captions, and tablets. While these resources are common in schools, they can only be effectively used when we as teachers are familiar with our students individual needs and IEPs.

In addition to the content, the presentation methods themselves were very transparent and accessible; from the way Tracy and Kaori both gave a visual description of themselves, to the the land acknowledgment, to the closed captions running on the screen. I can tell that they really practice what they preach which makes me trust the ethos of their program more, and gives me a direct model of how to implement inclusion strategies in the classroom.

As someone who really struggles with giving my uninterrupted attention during lectures that go on for hours, I appreciated how this presentation was broken up into different interactive elements like responding to prompts with Mentimeter or the sticky-note simulation activity.

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For this session of our Ed Tech class we kicked off by discussing where and how we are organizing our online resources as teacher candidates. This was a good reminder for me because my digital footprint is the equivalent of a student who shoves their papers straight into their backpack without care. This system may have worked for me in the past, but the reality is that as a teacher I need to model good behavior for my students in an increasingly technological academic landscape.

We then flowed into a sort of open forum for professional development called “Ed-Camp” where we picked the topics that we wanted to discuss. This style of professional development was really interesting to me compared to past experiences where we are just stuck in a room forced to listen and learn without regard for our personal interests.

Topics ranged from the death penalty to how to better support LGBTQIA+ youth, and the wall was quickly covered in topics that we generated in a class brainstorm session. I was really impressed by our ability to rapidly generate ideas because it showed the natural creativity and curiosity of the cohort. I chose to focus in on the conversation about how to develop higher quality presentation skills in our students. This depends on increasing their general communication skills, and also draws upon the tools we have been discovering in this class like Prezi and Canva.

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Jeff came to speak with our class about why he decided to quit his teaching career in order to co-found a new school (PSII) in Victoria centered around the philosophy of inquiry. In his presentation on successful learning strategies, Jeff focused in on the zone of proximal development of each individual student, as well as contextualized learning in a collaborative setting. In practice, this involves student-centered learning where they each students follows their own intellectual passions. Although this is definitely not standard practice in teaching because at a large scale it is very difficult to manage each student’s individual inquiry process, it has been incredibly effective at PSII.

PSII focuses on developing a greater depth of knowledge over quantity of knowledge because as Jeff put it, they want to encourage “knowing” vs. “knowing about” a topic. The main thing that guides their inquiry process is the intrinsic motivation associated with self-guided learning.

In this context, the role of the teacher is to be a professional facilitator rather than micromanaging students which promotes learned helplessness.

The guest speaker, Trevor Mackenzie, came into our class to present on the topic of Inquiry. According to Trevor, the most powerful tool to facilitate growth in students is feedback. Effective feedback should be presented before marks are delivered to ensure that students actually take it in. Feedback should also be kind, specific, and helpful because it is meant to encourage student work. Practicing giving feedback with students improves the quality of both self and peer reviews because it sets an example and gives them the language to express themselves. Trevor accomplishes this by having a station with feedback prompts, for students to transition to doing this process independently.

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A powerful lesson I took from this presentation is the idea of co-construction where if you as the teacher find yourself doing something for a student that they should be doing for themselves then you should be doing it together. I think this is very important because as teachers we don’t want to burn ourselves out, so we should be checking ourselves not to be working harder than our students on their own assignments. No matter how much we may want to help them, they can only succeed in the long-term through self-efficacy. Scaffolding co-construction entails setting success criteria for students to move towards self-assessment.

Trevor also emphasized how curricular competencies, such as promoting thinking and communication, should always be the priority over specific content. He achieves this in class through strategies like Vertical Learning where students participate in more dynamic ways than simply receiving information from a lecture. 

My initial feelings about taking a technology in education course were honestly not very optimistic. I would say that I am a bit intimidated by technology, especially in an age where it is evolving faster than we as a society can regulate it. The rising popularity of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for example presents new challenges such as the environmental impact of processing so much data worldwide. In addition, as certain human-operated jobs become obsolete compared to AI, the lack of protections like universal basic income become apparent.

Looking back on my own high school experience in relation to technology integration in education, I have mixed feelings. While at the time I understood that iPads were a tool that we were privileged to have access to, I also resented the overreliance on technology. I found that some teachers would become more disconnected or come off as lazy when they assigned week after week of self-directed learning via online resources with little class instruction. I felt like the burden of responsibility to stay focused and motivated was fully shifted to us as students by handing us screens. Sometimes the initiative to switch my highschool into more integrated technological learning appeared more superficial than actually helpful due to the loopholes with privacy and distractions in class. This constant access to all the information in the world felt overstimulating for me, when I really craved a more focused learning method as a student. Another more petty reason that I disliked the iPad movement in highschool was that I didn’t have a proper stylus or smart pen, and as someone who needed to write in order to retain information, my poor fingers constantly ached. I think that even though these past experiences have shaped my perception of technology, there is always room for growth in my personal and teaching practices.

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Despite my reservations, Jesse Miller’s discussion with our class about privacy, professionalism, and media literacy surprised me because it changed my perspective from rigid black and white thinking to a more neutral opinion on tech in the classroom. My main takeaways are that regardless of my feelings about it, tech is foundational to our society and inherently linked to our lives. Therefore, what is our role as educators with regulating and implementing technological resources?

I doubt that I will ever be the techiest teacher, but I hope to provide as many resources as possible in my teaching practice which includes navigating online content. This naturally provokes the question of what online boundaries I will have, and how too I can teach my students about how to be decisive about their digital footprint. 

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Within the past year both of my parents have independently preached to me about the dangers of using TikTok. They have repeatedly warned me about the threat of foreign governments harvesting my data and using it against me. Unfortunately for them, like many others in Gen Z, my main concern with the app is not my cyber security. If anything, I am happy to let the algorithm get to know me intimately because it means the content will be better tailored to my tastes.

I think that this complacency with the intrusions of technology into our lives is a common reaction to an increasingly chaotic world. With an overwhelming amount of forces outside of one’s individual control, who has the energy to care what rights they are signing away by clicking accept on the terms and conditions policy?

In addition, many young people can’t be bothered to care about who is harvesting their data when the practice is so omnipresent in modern society that you would have to live fully off the grid to avoid having your data bought and sold by tech oligarchs. This mindset is exactly what huge tech companies are hoping for because it enables them to better mine user data in order to make profits.

Not only are kids today especially susceptible to compromising their privacy on social media, but they must also be aware of the threats of phishing scams and online predation. This honestly challenges one of my core beliefs as an educator which is allowing kids to be kids without forcing them to grow up too fast via premature inundation with adult content.

While I don’t plan on deleting TikTok any time soon, I am starting to question my relationship with technology more, and consider my future responsibility to my students. I hope to provide them access to technological tools and simultaneously protect their right to privacy.