Dan, I could not agree with this more. AI can never ever be a substitute for teachers, great teaching and, perhaps most importantly, the relationships of trust, belonging and identity that adults transmit to children. The question for me is can AI help humans optomize these relationships by carrying some of the load of sharing content, addressing the hidden complexity created by large class size and the work it creates, and the need to personalize content. The ability to diagnose error in real time, IMHO, is a power that can enable all teachers to play an even greater role in the lives of their children. That is why as we think about introducing AI into classrooms, it is critical to think through the use cases where it will work and where it WON'T work. It is critical to acknowledge that learning is a social, collective process as much as it also requires deliberative practice to master skills. These understandings can only be coconstructed by developers, teacher, students and their families. As you suggest, lab setting are not, in this case, a place for learning. Keep being thoughtful and provoking! I love reading your work. Bob Hughes
It's refreshing reading an acknowledgement of what it can be like teaching sometimes, "in schools where the demands of the job are heightened beyond what outsiders can even imagine and their categories change by the day and hour."
Last Friday, for example, a student found a bug on his sweatshirt in the middle of a quiz and everyone in the room immediately had something to say or do -- including another student falling out of his chair with excitement -- while the student tried (unsuccessfully) to crush the poor insect against the wall with his workboots. Not all situations provide enough time to consult AI haha. Fortunately, I remained calm, gave the class five seconds to quiet down, reminded them of class expectations, and whisked the insect outside in a Tupperware (it was fine) while my co-teacher watched the class quietly continue their quiz.
So many aspects of teaching relate to setting expectations and working with a range of behaviors in addition to teaching students mathematics!
What you write about is pretty wild and I could see it being useful for the calmer moments, even for novice teachers not just novice tutors. One thing I'm curious about: how long before the strategy is built in to the GPT model, or will we need to continuously think of good prompts to help adjust responses? I'm not super familiar with GPT despite having played around with it: are there different libraries or structures expert teachers have made already that you can upload, or even copy and paste in, to give GPT a good starting point on teaching strategy?
As a student teacher this was an interesting read because we just talked about how AI can be used in the classroom last week, but it was from more of an English teacher perspective, and as a future math teacher I wanted to hear a math perspective. I'm not sure if I would feel comfortable using it with a student in person because I would have to wait for the AI to respond, which is an uncomfortable waiting period. But for an online situation I could see it being pretty helpful!
I bet they will build these responses into the ChatGPT bot soon, but I wonder how it will look in the end.
This opened my eyes to the possibility of AI in the classroom which I had never thought of before. As a future educator, I had only ever heard of AI in education as teachers using it for materials, or students using it for answers. This option of students using AI as a tutor or learning assistant is a super fascinating one because it reaches the best of both worlds. As a teacher, I cannot possibly be there to help my students with understanding math at any time of the day, so my students having a possible AI to help them understand math could be a powerful tool. While I don't think I will ever use AI in an in-the-moment lesson, teaching our students how to properly use these chatbots as a last-resort resource to help them problem-solve could go a long way. Maybe someday there will even be a "tutor-bot" that is specifically designed to not give students direct answers, but help them work through the problem themselves. Your post has given me a lot to think about in terms of how I plan on incorporating AI into my own practice.
Very interesting, looking forward to digging into the underlying research. For some time I have wondered whether AI might be most useful in training scenarios for teacher-candidates, which might obviate some (not all) of the lab-to-classroom gap concerns you rightfully raise.
Dan, I could not agree with this more. AI can never ever be a substitute for teachers, great teaching and, perhaps most importantly, the relationships of trust, belonging and identity that adults transmit to children. The question for me is can AI help humans optomize these relationships by carrying some of the load of sharing content, addressing the hidden complexity created by large class size and the work it creates, and the need to personalize content. The ability to diagnose error in real time, IMHO, is a power that can enable all teachers to play an even greater role in the lives of their children. That is why as we think about introducing AI into classrooms, it is critical to think through the use cases where it will work and where it WON'T work. It is critical to acknowledge that learning is a social, collective process as much as it also requires deliberative practice to master skills. These understandings can only be coconstructed by developers, teacher, students and their families. As you suggest, lab setting are not, in this case, a place for learning. Keep being thoughtful and provoking! I love reading your work. Bob Hughes
It's refreshing reading an acknowledgement of what it can be like teaching sometimes, "in schools where the demands of the job are heightened beyond what outsiders can even imagine and their categories change by the day and hour."
Last Friday, for example, a student found a bug on his sweatshirt in the middle of a quiz and everyone in the room immediately had something to say or do -- including another student falling out of his chair with excitement -- while the student tried (unsuccessfully) to crush the poor insect against the wall with his workboots. Not all situations provide enough time to consult AI haha. Fortunately, I remained calm, gave the class five seconds to quiet down, reminded them of class expectations, and whisked the insect outside in a Tupperware (it was fine) while my co-teacher watched the class quietly continue their quiz.
So many aspects of teaching relate to setting expectations and working with a range of behaviors in addition to teaching students mathematics!
What you write about is pretty wild and I could see it being useful for the calmer moments, even for novice teachers not just novice tutors. One thing I'm curious about: how long before the strategy is built in to the GPT model, or will we need to continuously think of good prompts to help adjust responses? I'm not super familiar with GPT despite having played around with it: are there different libraries or structures expert teachers have made already that you can upload, or even copy and paste in, to give GPT a good starting point on teaching strategy?
PS Teaching is the most difficult job in the world, particularly in underresourced schools. We need to address that to have impact.
As a student teacher this was an interesting read because we just talked about how AI can be used in the classroom last week, but it was from more of an English teacher perspective, and as a future math teacher I wanted to hear a math perspective. I'm not sure if I would feel comfortable using it with a student in person because I would have to wait for the AI to respond, which is an uncomfortable waiting period. But for an online situation I could see it being pretty helpful!
I bet they will build these responses into the ChatGPT bot soon, but I wonder how it will look in the end.
This opened my eyes to the possibility of AI in the classroom which I had never thought of before. As a future educator, I had only ever heard of AI in education as teachers using it for materials, or students using it for answers. This option of students using AI as a tutor or learning assistant is a super fascinating one because it reaches the best of both worlds. As a teacher, I cannot possibly be there to help my students with understanding math at any time of the day, so my students having a possible AI to help them understand math could be a powerful tool. While I don't think I will ever use AI in an in-the-moment lesson, teaching our students how to properly use these chatbots as a last-resort resource to help them problem-solve could go a long way. Maybe someday there will even be a "tutor-bot" that is specifically designed to not give students direct answers, but help them work through the problem themselves. Your post has given me a lot to think about in terms of how I plan on incorporating AI into my own practice.
Very interesting, looking forward to digging into the underlying research. For some time I have wondered whether AI might be most useful in training scenarios for teacher-candidates, which might obviate some (not all) of the lab-to-classroom gap concerns you rightfully raise.