The Oregon Open Learning team at the Oregon Department of Education includes those involved in the effort to support Oregon educators with learning about, adopting and implementing generative AI related tools and lessons into their instruction.

Open Educational Resources (OER) are an ideal way to build, access, revise, curate and implement new AI-related learning opportunities for both educators and their students. They have started the Oregon Artificial Intelligence group that already has over 80 AI-related resources for teachers to use in their classrooms.

Since AI is here to stay, it's going to be important for our schools to teach students how to use it safely, responsibly and effectively. They provided a test run asking both Microsoft Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT:

Explain why you think (1) it's important for K12 classroom educators to learn about and teach about the use of generative AI tools with their students, (2) what are the most important skills specific to generative AI teachers should have and (3) what important safeguards teachers should teach to their students when using generative AI tools themselves. Use a conversational tone so someone without a deep understanding of AI can easily comprehend your output and keep it to fewer than 200 words.

Copilots response:
Sure thing! Here’s the lowdown:

1. Why it’s key: Think of generative AI as a new member of the classroom. It’s a tool that can help with learning, creating, and even thinking in new ways. For teachers, knowing about AI is like having a superpower—they can guide students to use this power wisely and creatively.
2. Top skills for teachers:

   • AI Savvy: They should know how AI works and what it can do.

   • Ethical Compass: Teachers need to navigate the tricky waters of AI ethics, importantly understanding privacy and fairness.

   • Learning Mindset: AI’s always changing, so staying curious and up-to-date is a must. Student safeguards:

   • Critical Lens: Students should learn to look at AI’s answers with a bit of skepticism and do their own fact-checking.

   • Privacy First: They need to know what info to keep to themselves when chatting with AI.

   • Bias Detective: Understanding that AI might not always be neutral helps students use it more thoughtfully.
   In short, AI’s a big deal, and getting the hang of it now is like getting a head start in a race. Teachers can pass the baton of knowledge and caution to their students, prepping them for a tech-smart future.

ChatGPT (3.5) response:
Sure! So, here's the scoop!

1. It's crucial for K12 teachers to dive into generative AI with their students because it's shaping our world big time! Think about it: from chatbots to creative writing assistants, these tools are everywhere. Teaching kids about them helps them understand the tech they'll be encountering throughout their lives.
2. When it comes to skills, teachers using generative AI need to be rock stars at explaining complex concepts in simple terms. They should also be wizards at guiding students to think critically about the ethical and social impacts of AI.
3. Safety first, always! Teachers should make sure students know to use these tools responsibly. That means understanding things like plagiarism and the importance of fact-checking. Plus, they should stress the importance of not sharing personal info with AI systems.

In a nutshell, diving into generative AI isn't just about staying ahead in tech—it's about empowering students to navigate a world where AI plays a big role while also staying safe and savvy.

One of the featured open educational resources is a video on Ethics of AI Bias for classroom use, which delves into the human problems brought out by issues in artificial intelligence, specifically with respect to bias. It is set in a college classroom of five students taking a deep dive into making AI unbiased. They somewhat conclude that AI overrides choice when not used appropriately, and possibly without knowing it. “Those that build and therefore control AI, will build AI systems for their own benefit… All systems of AI are biased in some dimension no matter what you do.”

Interestingly, their answer to an unbiased AI is capitalism, which they call transparency so consumers can buy well-developed systems that are unbiased, and the market weeds out the bad actors. However, that may be shifting the bias according to the purchaser’s point of view.

Let’s face it, AI has been around from the beginning of the Internet, sorting and directing our searches to what influences us with a bent toward corporate thinking. It confirms our thinking and drives the left and right further apart until “unite” became the campaign that set up sides, which separates even more. Then they introduce Serie and her siblings. She collected all your favorites and what will influence you. Now Google wants to take it to the next level by incorporating all it learned about you into AI to think for you as your brain substitute, making us hybrids, boiling you like a frog in a pot, never knowing what is happening.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Michael Rectenwald, Ph D, wrote the Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty; and Google Archipelago, The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom. He is running for U.S. President for the Libertarian Party, not to win, but to expose where freedom has gone. He says wokeness is a totalitarian idea on how to control the whole being. Government is the source of most problems – housing, education, economy. They are creating their reality for you. AI will be creating our “lived” experience. He says, "with AI in the hands of the state, it’s a recipe for total and complete totalitarian rule", and writes how AI is going to displace people’s cognitive functions. "We are outsourcing our brain functions to AI so much so that we won’t have the executive functions as people did in the past. If the brain isn’t exercised, it will atrophy like any other muscle."

Browsers are becoming more transparent identifying information generated by AI, but it still takes the human brain to identify errors and biases. If AI stimulates thinking to assess and determine what is right as truth and what is wrong with the wrong, then students can advance their thinking.

Parent and teacher info on AI tools are available at Oregon Open Learning.


--Donna Bleiler

Post Date: 2024-05-02 13:04:53

Last Update: 2024-05-02 15:59:57