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Teachers In the Middle

Author: Paul Allison

14 additions to document , most recent 11 months ago

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In this chapter, you will see examples of teachers and students thoughtfully, ethically, and effectively integrating Artificial Intelligence into their classrooms Teachers in the Digital Discourse community are at the forefront of interrogating AI in classroom practices. These teachers are finding the time and the tools they need for designing to design their own AI technology. Instead of a slow and spotty process of a few teachers adopting AI tools that have somehow arrived in their classrooms, ours is a story of teachers finding many creative endeavors to accelerate with AI because they make and deploy the tools themselves. We see students starting with their own authentic, purposeful, human creations, then choosing appropriate AI assistants to help them to see what they have created and how to level up to new challenges.

Teachers in the Digital Discourse community are at the forefront of interrogating AI in classroom practices. These teachers are finding the time and the tools they need to design their own AI technology. Instead of a slow and spotty process of a few teachers adopting AI tools that have somehow arrived in their classrooms, ours is a story of teachers finding many creative endeavors to accelerate with AI because they make and deploy the tools themselves. We see students starting with their own authentic, purposeful, human creations, then choosing appropriate AI assistants to help them to see what they have created and how to level up to new challenges.

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In these stories you will see that teachers are finding plenty of opportunities to show students how to pay close attention to how helpful, honest, and harmless the AI output is when it is sitting next to their deeply committed work. We know that AI will never quite give students as much wisdom, care, calibrated challenge, or insight as they get from a parent, a friend, or a teacher who knows then them well. We spend time reflecting on the gap between the best response our students could receive from a human who truly sees them and knows more than they do about the content of their work and what an AI assistant or Thinking Partner can give them. We are working to fill in the gap by continually revising our prompts and redesigning our AI assistants to meet our students' needs.

In these stories you will see that teachers are finding plenty of opportunities to show students how to pay close attention to how helpful, honest, and harmless the AI output is when it is sitting next to their deeply committed work. We know that AI will never quite give students as much wisdom, care, calibrated challenge, or insight as they get from a parent, a friend, or a teacher who knows them well. We spend time reflecting on the gap between the best response our students could receive from a human who truly sees them and knows more than they do about the content of their work and what an AI assistant or Thinking Partner can give them. We are working to fill in the gap by continually revising our prompts and redesigning our AI assistants to meet our students' needs.

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The tools we've built for ourselves on NowComment (nowcomment.com) and Writing Partners (writingpartners.net) allow us to shape and customize the output that comes from AI models to iteratively improve their capabilities so that their feedback on our students' work . Instead of robotic, standard White computer-speak, our students get AI-guided feedback that comes closer and closer what the most amazing human mentor with endless time, energy, and focus would give them.These are tools and platforms we are building for ourselves, tools that give us the ability to strive to fill in the mentor-machine gap. And we want have developed ways to share our insights and promoting prompting strategies widely and often.

The tools we've built for ourselves on NowComment (nowcomment.com) and Writing Partners (writingpartners.net) allow us to shape and customize the output that comes from AI models to iteratively improve their capabilities. Instead of robotic, standard White computer-speak, our students get AI-guided feedback that comes closer and closer what the most amazing human mentor with endless time, energy, and focus would give them.These are tools and platforms we are building for ourselves, tools that give us the ability to strive to fill in the mentor-machine gap. And we have developed ways to share our insights and prompting strategies widely and often.

In the months after the release of ChatGPT, our Community of Practice (CoP) evolved into an incubator for Participatory AI Design (Delgado 2023). Our group has been convening online as "Teachers Teaching Teachers" (TTT) once a week, every week since 2006. We check in with each other, reflect on our teaching, share what we are doing with our students, collaboratively describe student work, create multimodal text sets and projects together, and design the technology tools and platforms our students need.

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A good number of us in the TTT CoP are involved in the Digital Discourse Project and local sites of the National Writing Protect (NWP), although many other K-College educators are regulars as well.We organize our meetups and collect the videos of our conversations at NWP's Write Now Teacher Studio (studio.nwp.org) and on YouTube (youtube.com@PaulAllison). TTT has always been a place where teachers work together to design and use online publishing and discussion platforms. In the last several years, many of us also started sharing ideas for using NowComment (nowcomment.com) , a site and Writing Partners (writingpartners.net), sites where images, text, and videos become conversations through social annotation. Adding AI to the platforms we were already using became a design challenge that inspired us week after week.

A good number of us in the TTT CoP are involved in the Digital Discourse Project and local sites of the National Writing Protect (NWP), although many other K-College educators are regulars as well.We organize our meetups and collect the videos of our conversations at NWP's Write Now Teacher Studio (studio.nwp.org) and on YouTube (youtube.com@PaulAllison). TTT has always been a place where teachers work together to design and use online publishing and discussion platforms. In the last several years, many of us also started sharing ideas for using NowComment (nowcomment.com) and Writing Partners (writingpartners.net), sites where images, text, and videos become conversations through social annotation. Adding AI to the platforms we were already using became a design challenge that inspired us week after week.

Our longstanding commitment to weekly meetings is indicative of a strong Community of Practice as described by Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder (2002). After nearly two decades, TTT offers the "familiar comforts of a hometown, but... also has enough interesting and varied events to keep new ideas and new people cycling into the community." The familiarity of our weekly online meetups "creates a comfort level that invites candid discussions.Like a neighborhood bar or café," TTT is "a 'place' where people have the freedom to ask for candid advice, share their opinions, and try their half-baked ideas without repercussion... People can drop by to hear about the latest tool, exchange technical gossip, or just chat about technical issues without fear of committing to action plans."

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Core members of the TTT community were moved by the spirit of possibility that surrounded ChatGPT's release to the public on November 30, 2022 to begin iteratively and collaboratively creating an AI system for teachers and students -- and any other users on NowComment and Writing Partners. Perhaps our story of a CoP becoming a site for Participatory AI Design can add to the literature on the question of when and how CoPs sponsor teacher innovation.(Lui 2022).

Core members of the TTT community were moved by the spirit of possibility that surrounded ChatGPT's release to the public on November 30, 2022 to begin iteratively and collaboratively creating an AI system for teachers and students -- and any other users on NowComment and Writing Partners. Perhaps our story of a CoP becoming a site for Participatory AI Design can add to the literature on the question of when and how CoPs sponsor teacher innovation.(Lui 2022).

We also see our project as an unusual example of stakeholders--students, teachers, consultants, administrators, researchers, eductional leaders--taking ownership over the design process for AI development (Delgado, 2023), which will likely lead to more effective use of AI tools in the classroom and improved learning outcomes for students. When we "participate in decisions about the design of AI-enabled technologies, participate in selecting the technologies, and shape the evaluation of technologies," we are more likely to know when and how to bring these tools into our planning process and when we "make moment-to-moment decisions" in our classrooms.(U.S. Department of Education, 2023)

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In the months after the release of ChatGPT, our weekly meetups became something of an AI laboratory where we explored tools and platforms and learned to how to use them together. Beyond the platforms, it was arguably more important for us to test old and new pedagogies in the context of these new tools, and to share both our tacit concerns and our nascent ideas about adopting AI technologies. Communities of Practice like Teachers Teaching Teachers are built for this kind of inquiry (Rettler-Pagel, 2023). Together we built a new AI application applications on NowComment , GPT Thinking and on Writing Partners, that promised new experiences for readers and writers.

In the months after the release of ChatGPT, our weekly meetups became something of an AI laboratory where we explored tools and platforms and learned to how to use them together. Beyond the platforms, it was arguably more important for us to test old and new pedagogies in the context of these new tools, and to share both our tacit concerns and our nascent ideas about adopting AI technologies. Communities of Practice like Teachers Teaching Teachers are built for this kind of inquiry (Rettler-Pagel, 2023). Together we built a new AI applications on NowComment and on Writing Partners, that promised new experiences for readers and writers.

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Our team of educators who wireframed and beta tested a new rapid-authoring AI makerspace where students and teachers dan can easily generate, distribute, and selectively employ personalized AI workmates called Thinking Partners, Writing Partners, and Reading Partners. These AI assistants become our learning allies because, when we train them well, they can enable us to leverage computers for any number of intellectual, creative, and social-emotional challenges.

Our team of educators wireframed and beta tested a new rapid-authoring AI makerspace where students and teachers can easily generate, distribute, and selectively employ personalized AI workmates called Thinking Partners, Writing Partners, and Reading Partners. These AI assistants become our learning allies because, when we train them well, they can enable us to leverage computers for any number of intellectual, creative, and social-emotional challenges.

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Teachers and students can now pause while reading, writing, or chatting and, within seconds, author AI tools that they design for themselves and for each other to fit their ideosencraric idiosyncratic needs at any particular moment. AI gives us this power to be in control of the human-computer interactions (HCI) in our classrooms. It is up each of us to boldly step into this power and not cede it to tech companies by trying to force fit their commercial products into our students' learning processes.

Teachers and students can now pause while reading, writing, or chatting and, within seconds, author AI tools that they design for themselves and for each other to fit their idiosyncratic needs at any particular moment. AI gives us this power to be in control of the human-computer interactions (HCI) in our classrooms. It is up each of us to boldly step into this power and not cede it to tech companies by trying to force fit their commercial products into our students' learning processes.

The examples of reading and writing with AI Thinking Partners in this chapter are signposts pointing to a future where teachers and students use AI to take control of the digital discourse at the center of their teaching and learning together. These stories map a way forward for those of us who feel torn between managing our students' use and misuse of AI products on one side and, on the other, an onslaught of new AI tools angling to push their way into our lesson plans and classrooms.Instead of trying to keep up with the latest developments in technology, AI is making it easier than ever for anyone of us to reconfigure computer learning to meet our needs.In seconds, we can design and co-create AI assistants by and for ourselves.We don't need new AI tools from the edtech industry. We can craft and iterate on our own AI tools and infuse them with our perspectives, personalities, and pedagogies.We can also invite students to build their own AI assistants.Then, instead of using the commercial products that are programmed for mass market appeal, students may see the value of engaging with an AI ecosystem of self-designed, peer-shared, teacher-vetted AI assistants.

Scientists describe light as a form of energy. Similarly, Artificial Intelligence can be seen as a source material that educators can use to create new tools. The teacher-designed AI apps that you will read about in the remainder of this chapter amplify students' creativity, capabilities, communication, and connections in the classroom. When teachers and students become makers, not just adopters and users of AI applications, cheating and misuse of AI as well as concerns about bias, safety and privacy, and the spread of misinformation are all managed collectively by the teachers and students who are building the apps for themselves. Who better to be in charge of educational uses of AI than the AI participatory design teams inside of our classrooms?

To keep educators at the center of AI design and development, budgets will need to be reoriented away from purchasing shinny new AI apps from edtech companies and toward giving us more dedicated time and expert support to make and iterate on the AI tools we can design ourselves for teaching and learning.It would also help if keynote speakers, researchers, publishers, reporters, and grant providers could turn away from big tech tools that were not designed for classrooms and towards telling the stories of groups of teachers and students who are creating and sharing AI tools for each other. Here are some of those stories.

DMU Timestamp: October 04, 2024 22:43





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