When ChatGPT came on the scene, instantly, educators started considering its implications on the classroom. Would students use it to do their homework for them? (That's an easy one. Yes.)
What will the future of education look like with artificial intelligence in the equation? And how do we proceed right now as we learn more about it and what it can do? Those are harder questions.
That's why we assembled this panel of educators to talk about it. As of the recording of this video, ChatGPT had been available to the public in a research preview for less than two weeks.
Our panel includes:
Victoria Thompson, Microsoft education executive and former classroom teacher
Donnie Piercey, fifth grade teacher and 2021 Kentucky State Teacher of the Year
Holly Clark, education consultant and National Board Certified Teacher (formerly in the classroom)
Dee Lanier, author, speaker, and former classroom teacher
It's moderated by Matt Miller, author and creator of Ditch That Textbook ( ) and former classroom teacher.
This video is part of a bigger project by Ditch That Textbook to think about impacts, considerations, and classroom ideas surrounding artificial intelligence and the classroom. You can find that content at:
I hate this constant calculator comparison to the impact on education. The first calculators only did basic arithmetic problems, but they are to this day only allowed to be used starting in the upper middle school high school levels of education. This implies that they use the calculator to do routine tasks that they already know how to do. Elementary kids still need to know basic math facts and how numbers work. ChatGPT Can do pretty much any task a student would be required to do at any grade level. ChatGPT makes learning what use to be important skills to know how to do (writing, complex math problems, etc.) obsolete if implemented at any primary or secondary education level.
This basically moves society in the direction of where knowing anything or the process of anything is not important, as long as you can reasonably communicate and read you can do anything. However, ChatGPT is not always available in life to solve basic problems so it really hurts people in the long run. Imagine if you needed a calculator every time you were presented with 2 numbers to add together to figure it out. Now picture that with every problem in life, and that is where ChatGPT will lead us if it is just willy nilly implemented in the educational system.