Exploring the Use of ChatGPT in the Classroom: A Teacher’s Perspective
As a teacher, it is essential to strive for professional growth and development constantly. As the famous quote from Vince Lombardi goes, “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.”
Similarly, in the rapidly changing world of AI, one technology that has the potential to revolutionize teaching is ChatGPT.
Initial conversations about ChatGPT often center around concerns of cheating and fear from teachers. However, as a teacher who has spent the last three weeks exploring the use of ChatGPT in the classroom, I can confidently say that these narratives are simplistic and can be addressed if teachers take on the responsibility of exploring new tools and weaving them into their teaching as soon as they reach a certain level of comfort.
I have used ChatGPT for various tasks, including lesson planning, assessment planning, and even grading. Additionally, I have also acted as a student to see how ChatGPT can support students in their learning. One specific technique I have found to be particularly effective is using ChatGPT to provide accessibility to writing for students who may be intimidated by the writing process. Writing can often be an intimidating space for students to showcase their thoughts and learning. I wanted to see how I could use ChatGPT to support struggling writers create content and a written passage they could be confident about. In the process, scaffolding and creating access points help a writer’s ability to flourish and develop. Here is what I did:
- I began by opening a Google doc and turning on Voice to Text assistance.
- I then began to speak my thoughts as oral content.
- Once the passage was finished, I opened ChatGPT and asked it to take my oral thoughts and organize, construct, and articulate them into a blog post.
- I then added a few personal anecdotes to make it more personal
- Then used Grammarly to smoothen out some of the robotic language
I spoke and shared my thoughts and ideas for nearly five minutes on my Google document. Within 2.4 seconds, ChatGPT transformed my somewhat random and repetitive oral thoughts into a polished and refined written argument, like a sculptor chiselling away at a block of marble to reveal a beautiful statue.
Though the initial output from ChatGPT was impressive, it did lack some personal experiences and connections that I wanted to include in the written piece. I took the passage, read it, and inserted personal anecdotes and specific examples to emphasize my content and infuse my personality into the writing, just like adding the personal touch of a signature to a masterpiece. The result was a well-written, well-organized, and highly polished blog entry.
As a teacher, I now realize that I can provide these same spaces for anxious and apprehensive writing students to find ways to create written pieces that are articulate, comprehensive, and well-organized. These tools can serve as access points for writers to develop their writing, build confidence in their thoughts, and ultimately elevate their learning experiences, just like a ladder to climb to greater heights.
This is not to assert that ChatGPT erases the need to write, but it creates an opportunity for students that don’t always see themselves as writers to witness that their thoughts and insights are the foundation of competent and successful writing. Repetitive use of these strategies can build capacity and confidence for anxious and hesitant writers to develop the skills to write, and write without hesitation.
As teachers, it is our moral and ethical responsibility to strive for professional growth and development constantly. By exploring new tools such as ChatGPT and weaving them into our teaching, we can provide students with innovative and accessible learning experiences, just like planting a seed and nurturing it to become a beautiful flower.
As the famous quote from George Couros states, “Innovation is not about saying yes to everything, it’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.”
Let us embrace the power of ChatGPT and use it to enhance our teaching and benefit our students.
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This blog was constructed using the same methodology shared in this post, with a few more iterations
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