Today’s topic was AI use in education and so I used Gentype to create a title for todays’ post, using the prompt “pencils and kittens”. This is what it conjured up!
Not too bad if I do say so myself. I think this tool could be fun to use to make a title page for a slideshow or something like that to get the students laughing or intrigued before beginning a lesson.
It was mentioned in todays talk that in 1993 the internet became accessible to non-experts and in 2023 AI became accessible to non-experts. It’s crazy to me how much has changed in so little time. The fact that the internet and AI have both become such engrained parts of our day-to-day life in such a short period is crazy. For example, we don’t even realize how much AI is a part of our technology today. It’s in everything from Netflix, to Spotify, to google, to Siri, and beyond and it’s only going to continue to be more engrained in our day-to-day life.
While I use AI fairly regularly for idea generation for lesson plans, to better word emails, and such, I had no idea that AI could be used for things like podcasts, videos, or songs. We listened to a bit of a podcast in class and the voices and dialogue sounded so real, I would have never known that it wasn’t real people talking. I thought it would be fun to try this on my own and see if AI could make a decent song. I used Riffusion and my input was “a country song about teachers learning how to use technology in the classroom”. This is what it came up with in less than a minute, have a listen!
It’s shockingly good. I’m excited to use this in the future, I think you could make funny or educational songs for your students with this!
AI can be so fun and such a great way to engage students or encourage students to be creative. With that said, we also talked about the downfalls of AI which are incredibly important to know as a user, but also to teach to our students so they can make informed decisions. Some of the downfalls we discussed were that AI:
- can provide false and misleading information
- is often biased (based a lot on western resources) which can then reinforce stereotypes
- produces tonnes of carbon emissions
- uses huge quantities of water (in a time where water resources are only getting scarcer)
- has no regulations (policies have not caught up with the tech)
- may be infringing on copyright
- promote a culture of mistrust between students and teachers (not believing that students did work themselves)
Overall, AI is another tool in tech that we as users need to use with care. Teaching students how to use AI, how to detect AI images/audio/writing, and the costs and benefits of it, can allow students to make informed decisions on when and how to use it.