AI in the Classroom— 4 must Read Books

The Nature of the Dance Between Humans and Machines — David Price OBE

The release of ChatGPT, a creation of OpenAI in November 2022 and then the rise of it’s users to about 1 million in just five days created a stir in the the world. Everyone started talking about the cons of this new Generative Pre-Trained Transformer and it emerged as a villain who will be responsible to wipe out human cognition. Then the waters calmed down and people began talking about the pros as well. People came to the terms with this cognition exterminator and started to dig deeper in the reality of this powerful tool. Now the race began and companies started using the power of this LLM to incorporate AI into every app they could offer. Now the tech industry is swarming with the AI apps.

Hollywood is responsible for spreading this negativity towards AI. The first movie that included AI as a villain was released in 1926. The one we saw in 2023 was Mission Impossible 7, the entity was so powerful that it could not only work faster than the humans but could also manipulate people for it’s cause. I understand the fear our tech giants had because mankind has always been scared of the unknown. They are making these breakthroughs in technology and know the consequences of not being able to control the power it might attain.

The end of school year 2023 saw a lot of students getting help from chat GPT or Quillbot to complete and submit their end of year assignments. Some got in trouble because of the cheating element that these LLMs brought to light. We as educators should understand that this is here to stay and we have to make our students ready to embrace this new way of learning and understanding. We have to make this technology our teaching assistant instead of calling it an enemy.

I was searching for a book to learn the role of AI in the field of education. There were four books that caught my attention. I could read only three of them and got so overwhelmed that I got lost in the AI apps after reading these. The fourth book has to wait until I absorb the stuff that is written in these three. All three of them are so relevant with the changing times. In my humble opinion every educator should read these to understand that the students we are teaching in 2023 need to be equipped with these tools to be able to work as successful teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs, researchers and tech gurus of the future.

1. AI for Educators by Matt Miller
2. The AI Infused Classroom by Holly Clark
3. The AI Classroom by Daniel Fitzpatrick
4. Artificial Intelligence in Education by David Kent

1. AI for Educators by Matt Miller

Image by the author

This is a thin 120 page book, that you can finish in a single day and get the strategy for your classroom for the years to come. When the chat GPT caught our attention we as educators were more worried about not letting our students use the technology because how will you detect the work of chat GPT when it has the capability of synthesizing the information and creating it. The author talks about the changes we have to make to our lesson plans and instead of making it an enemy we have to make it our teaching assistant. Students can ask the AI tools to write the essay for them and the current plagiarism checker tools won’t be able to detect. According to the author, we have to rely on verbal responses, creative demonstration of learning, class discussions and more. Matt Miller has used the Gartner Hype Cycle to understand the adoption of new technology by investors. Matt has applied the Gartner Hype cycle to AI and education.

STAGE 1: Conflict and Panic — The faster we get over this stage the better it will be for us and our students, we were at this stage before the summer break.

STAGE 2: Experimentation — These AI tools can do some cool stuff and we have to learn them whether we like them or not. This is where the educators are now.

STAGE 3: Struggle — It’s a struggle for the educators because they are so accustomed to their own ways that it’s hard to learn new things and get rid of the old habit. Learning new things and leaving the old habits behind is always a problem.

STAGE 4: Progress and Dissemination — These tools are here to stay and we can save time in our planning and content building. I created a 10 question multiple choice quiz using chat GPT and viola! it was ready in less than 2 minutes. All I have to do is get it printed and I have a ready to use formative assessment.

STAGE 5: Progress at Scale- Now I have learned some of these tools, this will not only make my work easier but it will save my time to complete other tasks at hand. The AI infused classroom.

The education community will benefit from the experience of others because we love to collaborate and share our work with fellow teachers and social media. Matt Miller has listed 30 ways AI can support teaching and learning. His list is ingenious and all 30 will up your game with AI in the classroom. The author has included some survey responses about cheating and plagiarism with AI in the classroom and believe me, you will see a reflection of your own thoughts in most of these responses. Whether you understand this or not, it’s true that AI is here, it’s our student’s future. And it’s out future too. AI is constantly changing. It doesn’t mean that you have to be on the cutting edge. You just need a little understanding and a lot of application to be at par with this changing entity.

I loved this book because it is short and gives a lot of examples and strategies to be used in the classroom especially for the language arts teachers. It has definitions of all the important terms that might be handy when understanding the AI and its applications.

2. The AI Infused Classroom by Holly Clark

Image by the author

It’s only the beginning of the AI revolution. The possibilities are truly astounding. Earlier this year, I happened to go to Dubai for a conference and I was amazed to see the work of AI and robots right from the airport. The self driving taxi without human interaction. Wow! I was in an awe and then our hosts took us to the “Chocolate Bar Cafe” in the heart of Dubai Mall and we were served by the server robots. When I was little girl I used to imagine about another world where there were flying cars and robots roaming the cities. This imagination seemed to be somewhere in the far future, never thought that I would see this happening around in this world of our own. This is something I was not expecting to see in my lifetime.

I’m so grateful for the teachers who taught me to be a curious learner. By encouraging me to look around and look ahead and to ask questions-Why? How? What are the possibilities? and For what purpose?-those teachers did their jobs right!

This book is dedicated to that kind of teacher. The timeline mentioned in this book gives us an idea of the gradual advancement of the AI technology. 2011 — A lab was founded in 2011, where the scientist were not creating a robot but a kind of a brainthat could use deep learning algorithms to answer bigger questions than humans could alone.

2017 — Google transformer developed in 2017 paved the way for the development of LLMs, like GPT.

2018 — researchers at OpenAI created a new language model called GPT-1. This Generative Pre-Trained Transformer was trained on a massive amount of text datato generate contextually appropriate text in response to prompts.

2020 — OpenAI released a new language model called ChatGPT that could mimic human conversation.It’s ability to generate natural and contextually appropriate response made it a powerful tool for communication and collaboration between humans and machines.

2022 — November 2022 ChatGPT is released

2023 — Everything changes

Until now, we’ve witnessed a gradual unfolding of technologicalprogress. Today, as we teach, a large-scale shift is happening -at a much faster pace than we expected. And there’s no stopping it.So we have a choice: Stick our heads in the sand and hope for the best, or make the best use of the amazing innovations at our fingertips.

The needs of students are changing, the Alpha Generation has a rule-breaking approach, there is a growing demand for personalized learning experience, this generation’s seamless relationship with technology is making them adapt the technology at a much faster rate. The teachers who are willing to embrace AI have the opportunity and power to transform their classrooms into vibrant hubs of learning.

AI can help teachers level the playing field for all learners. The author has outlined six ways to create more equitable access to resources and learning experience.

1. Broadening Horizons — exposes students to new ideas
2. Expanding Vocabulary — exposes students to new vocabulary
3. Breaking Down Language Barriers — provides them with instant translation
4. Supporting Students with Learning Challenges — offer targeted support to students with learning difficulties
5. Curating Resources for Educators — provides educators with efficient ways to create and curate content
6. Fostering Collaboration Locally and Beyond — provides translation and interpretation tools for real-time interaction in multiple languages.

This book can serve as an integral tool for Language Arts teachers as their students have to work on their essays. AI assistant will prove to be their best friend.

3. The AI Classroom by Daniel Fitzpatrick

The author has emphasised on the responsibility that the educators have, as they have to prepare the students for the future. This is the era of Digital Transformation. Our thinking and ways towards preparing the students have not changed much since the printing press era. The solution lies in providing a comprehensive guide for the educators that enables them to harness the power of AI and create engaging and innovative experiences for their students.

“We’ll experience more technological progress in the coming decade than we did in the preceding 100 years put together”- McKinsey and Company

The future we are looking into is where the AI has become an integral part of our lives. AI works hand in hand with humanity providing higher levels of efficiency and productivity. AI is capable of solving the pressing challenges the world is facing. The future is full of promise and potential, if we work with machines we can see a future full of prosperity and advancement. This looks optimistic, yes we have to make sure that we use this digital transformation era to improve the world and get rid of the problems we have created.

We are already using the AI in the form of voice assistants, social media,smart home devices, online shopping, and health care. It’s also being used in finance, transportation, education and many other industries. Let’s be very honest, it has already improved the way these industries work. Another industry where AI will impact the most is Education. These platforms will provide personalised learning experiences catered to the specific needs of the students. It could also be used to free up some teacher time by grading the assignments and providing feedback.

Now you might be thinking what will happen to human creativity? Human creativity matters because it fosters growth, drives innovative solutions and brings the expressions of joy and fulfilment. Artificial Intelligence can assist us with this creativity. We should use it to generate ideas and counter ideas and then use our own creativity to guide it to achieve our goals. Most LLMs have a degree of spatial reasoning but they lack in the area of temporal reasoning, however human intelligence is multifaceted, encompassing reasoning, critical thinking, decision making and problem solving. But the problem is, it’s constantly being trained and it’s building more neural connections the enormous amount of data it’s acquiring with human interaction every passing moment.

The Language Arts educators can benefit from AI’s power and resourcefulness, however it lacks in the field of mathematics. ChatGPT struggles in arithmetic reasoning, which involves using mathematical concepts and logic to solve arithmetic problems. It struggles with large number multiplication, finding roots, computing powers, or working with irrational numbers like π or Euler’s number (e). There are other AI systems that are being trained in the field of mathematics. Century Tech is an education tool that uses AI to customize learning experiences for each individual learner across many mathematics curricula. Photomath is another mobile application that optical character recognition (OCR) technology to read and solve equations, providing step-by-step instruction on how to solve problems including arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, calculus and more.

According to the author this is the most exciting time to be an educator. We need to create a culture of trial-and-error methods. Project-based learning for instance is an option, where students work on real-world problems and projects. This will help students learn from their failures, develop critical thinking, problem-solving and collaboration skills.

The author has outlined five steps you can take to select the best AI tools for your needs.

1. Use the right tool — Research and select the right tool
2. Familiarize yourself with this tool — learn how to use it effectively
3. Start with Small Tasks — start with creating small pieces of content
4. Evaluate the tool’s effectiveness — regularly assess its effectiveness
5. Share — Share your learning with your colleagues and other educators

There are hundreds of apps and it’s going to be hard to sift through all of them to find the right AI tool, we have to stick to these simple steps to find the needles we are looking for in this haystack.

The AI-infused classrooms will bring these three most compelling benefits for the educators.

1. The streamlining of teacher workload — by automating repetitive tasks and enhancing accuracy
2. The enhancement of Assessment — by providing faster and more assessments, consistent assessments and personalized assessments.
3. Inclusivity — The key to future education

Another interesting feature of the book is the understanding of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL), it is designed with the aim to make learning accessible to all students regardless of their strengths, challenges, and learning styles. The UDL framework provides a set of guidelines to address these challenges to help every student succeed. It has three main components: Engagement, Representation, and Action and Expression. UDL is not a one-size-fit-all but rather a flexible framework that allows educators a lot of room to play and tweak their lessons to maximize student learning.

There are several AI platforms that adapt learning materials to the needs of individual learners: namely Knewton, Carnegie Learning, DreamBox Learning, ALEKS, Smart Sparrow.

There are some Chrome Extensions that employ AI to help learners deepen their understanding.

Canva — integrated a translation tool into their platform.

Chrome Extension YouTube — summarizes the video content

Chrome Extension Wordtune — highlight and rewrite the text and the tone feature can write to reflect.

Chrome Extension Wisdolia — generates flashcards from articles, and a tool for teachers to create lesson plans, assessments, and student performance tracking.

Handtalk — A Brazilian startup app — helps translate Brazilian, English, Portuguese and Libras into written and spoken language.

There is an Armada of AI tools for educators and students. This life will not be enough to learn and use all that is there, with this digital transformation era and I am seriously thinking to get my digital twin to complete some of these learning tasks for me and fill me in on the go.