Category: Weekly Reflections

–image generated using chatGPT–

Before attending class, I asked chatGPT “write me a critical blog post on the use of AI in education.” This is what it spit out:

The Double-Edged Sword: A Critical Look at AI in Education

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often hailed as the next frontier in education, promising personalized learning, enhanced efficiency, and broader access. While these possibilities are exciting, a critical examination reveals significant challenges and potential pitfalls that should not be overlooked. From ethical dilemmas to the risk of exacerbating inequities, the use of AI in education is far from a one-size-fits-all solution.

Loss of the Human Touch

One of the most pressing concerns about AI in education is the potential loss of the human element in teaching. Education is not just about imparting knowledge; it’s about fostering relationships, understanding emotional cues, and inspiring learners. Teachers bring empathy, creativity, and adaptability to their classrooms—qualities that AI cannot replicate. Relying heavily on AI tools risks reducing education to a transactional exchange of information, undermining the rich, interpersonal experiences that define meaningful learning.

Privacy and Ethical Concerns

The use of AI in education often involves collecting vast amounts of data on students, including their learning patterns, behaviors, and even personal information. This raises significant privacy concerns. Who owns this data, and how is it protected? There are also ethical questions about how AI algorithms make decisions. Bias in AI systems can reinforce existing stereotypes or disadvantage certain groups of students, particularly if the data used to train these systems lacks diversity. Without stringent oversight, AI could inadvertently perpetuate inequality rather than mitigate it.

The Digital Divide

While AI has the potential to democratize education, it can also deepen the digital divide. Implementing AI-powered tools requires reliable internet access, modern devices, and technological literacy—resources that are not equally distributed across schools or communities. Students from low-income families or underfunded schools may find themselves further marginalized as education increasingly relies on technology. In this context, AI could widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots instead of closing it.

Overemphasis on Efficiency

AI is often celebrated for its ability to streamline administrative tasks, such as grading or lesson planning. While this can free up time for teachers, it also raises the question of what is lost when education prioritizes efficiency over depth. Automated grading, for instance, may struggle to assess complex assignments that require subjective judgment, such as essays or creative projects. This focus on quantifiable metrics risks reducing learning to what can be easily measured, neglecting critical thinking, creativity, and emotional intelligence.

Dependency and De-skilling

As educators and institutions increasingly rely on AI, there is a risk of dependency that could erode essential skills among teachers and learners. Teachers may lose the ability to create lesson plans or assess students without AI assistance, while students might rely too heavily on AI tools for answers, undermining their problem-solving skills. Over time, this could lead to a de-skilling of both groups, weakening the foundational competencies that education is supposed to cultivate.

Conclusion: Proceed with Caution

AI in education is undoubtedly a powerful tool with the potential to transform learning. However, its adoption must be approached with caution, critical reflection, and a commitment to equity and ethics. Policymakers, educators, and technologists must work collaboratively to ensure that AI enhances, rather than detracts from, the educational experience. By addressing these challenges head-on, we can harness AI’s potential without compromising the core values that make education a deeply human endeavor.

–the above was generated using chatGPT–

It was very interesting to see the AI essentially criticize itself based on other blog posts and articles out there on the topic of AI in education. I think that it took a very critical approach because of that word in the prompt, but I did honestly expect it to paint itself in a better light. I do, however, agree with many of its points as of right now. The rest of this post will be completed after the lecture, and I will determine if I still agree with the AI’s critical analysis.

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I am interested by the fact that ChatGPT did not identify the use of AI for students to cheat on assignments and essays as a potential issue of AI in education, beyond just “dependency.”

I like the idea of focusing on the learning journey rather than the product to remove this probability of cheating. By emphasizing the journey a student took to get to a product, you can more closely monitor their process and make sure that they are not relying on AI to complete their work.

I never thought about how submitting students’ work to an AI to check for the use of AI is just feeding the AI more data, this time generated by my student. This means that my students’ work is now being used by a company, and the AI is now “learning” from its own work, which I think would lead to pretty weird results.

I also notice that the AI blog post did not tough on the unreliability of AI when it comes to math and other computational errors that AI commits often. That is a huge concern I have when using AI, even using AI in my own work for small projects, so I hope that students are aware of these potential errors. It will be something that I address when I talk about the use of AI with my students (assuming that AI hasn’t improved a thousand times by then).

Finally, the AI did not acknowledge the massive environmental impact that generative AIs have. This is something that I care very much about and it drives me to use AI minimally in my life, so I hope that this is a value that I can impart onto my students.

Overall, my approach to AI is going to involve reducing the amount of opportunities that students have to use it, while also educating them on the proper way to supplement their work with AI and the various problems with it. I will have many on paper assignments to limit opportunities to complete online assignments using AI. When I do online assignments, I will require students to show their entire thought process, either by submitting many drafts or by explaining to me the process that led to every decision in their work. I will unfortunately always be critical of student work that seems “too good,” but hopefully once I actually see some assignments done with AI, I will get better at recognizing it and better at motivating my students to avoid it.

I was struck by the amount of exclusion that students with disabilities face in classrooms. After the activity with the sticky notes, I went to the BCEd Access website and found their Exclusion Tracker reports, which report the number of student absences and instances of exclusion faced by disabled students. Looking through this document was a huge wake-up call for me as a future educator; when I was in school I never noticed instances of exclusion, or if I did, I assumed that they were due to “bad kids” misbehaving and not because the classroom wasn’t meeting their needs.

The fact that the school district receives additional funding for students with designations, but that the money doesn’t go directly to the students in need, doesn’t sit right with me. I feel that as an educator I should try to advocate for these student needs during department and staff meetings where discussions about funding arise, hopefully persuading the administration to think about where they money they are receiving comes from and where it should be going.

As somebody who has waited for well over three years on a waitlist for a psychological evaluation, I sympathize with students who are waiting for the same thing right now, especially those who need that evaluation to get the supports that they need to succeed in school. I hope that as a teacher I can understand these students and help them out in my classroom regardless of what designation they were or were not able to receive.

I have never considered how ephemeral the resources that I rely on can be in terms of how fluid the internet can be. This lesson made me think about how easily I could lose any folders that exist on my Google Drive or other platforms that exist relying on the internet or the cloud, and made me realize the importance of having reliable digital copies that I can access easily at any time. I wanted to create a place where I can store downloaded copies of digital resources on my computer, and make them easy to transfer to external drives to keep them safe. This will also make it easier and quicker to access resources when I need them.

I created a new folder on my desktop called “Teacher Resources.” The folder is located on my desktop, so it is easily accessible on my computer with minimal searching.

I then created two files within this file, “Lesson Plans” and “Unit Plans.”

Inside these file, I created additional files for each subject that I am likely to teach throughout my career. It would be easy to add more subjects if I get hired for unexpected contracts, but this set seemed like a good start! I did this for both the Lesson Plans and Unit Plans folders.

Finally, within each subject in the Lesson Plans folder, I added additional folders: “Worksheets” and “Quizzes” for all courses, and “Labs” for science courses. This is where I could download and save resources that I want to be able to use year to year without relying on the existence of the resource’s source.

I hope that this new file system helps me curate my digital resources for teaching, and allows me to easily transfer them to external drives, access them quickly each teaching day, and have a smoother time planning.

I greatly enjoyed listening to Jeff Hopkins speak about the school he founded, the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry (PSII). I admire how he reacted to the need that he saw for an alternative way of teaching and learning. I am glad to hear that the goal of the school is for it to function like a public school and be accessible to all learners that could benefit from this style of education.

I have thought a lot about how to reach every student at their own personal Zone of Proximal development, and though I think that UDL helps to address that need, Inquiry based education and emergent curriculum is a very creative way to deal with the “issue” of student diversity. This model seems like such a great way to reach students who have struggled with traditional schooling in a multitude of ways. Increased learner agency and self-regulation is invaluable to offer for neurodivergent students, and I think that I would have benefitted from more options like this in my schooling experience.

Image from the PSII website: https://learningstorm.org/inquiry-tools/

I am excited to see a school that is so encouraging towards student questioning and creativity, and I can’t wait to see more schools like this gain popularity as the world continues to change. Inquiry skills are invaluable in the world of AI and in a world where skills like that can get you much further than a standardized test or even a university degree. To have students learn how to ask good questions and subsequently how to find good information to answer their questions (and to keep questioning after that) seems so beneficial to their lifelong learning. I am excited by the fact that I may get to teach in a school like this where my job is more about facilitating student creativity and inquiry rather than content teaching.

I greatly enjoyed Trevor Mackenzie’s talk on honouring student agency in classroom environments.

One thing that I loved learning more about was how to give feedback outside of giving a grade. His triangulation for assessment example helped me understand that I can assess a students’ learning based on transient experiences with them, such as observing a powerful learning moment or having a conversation that reveals something about the student’s learning. I will definitely be adopting a version of his report card/grading method that revolves around a portfolio showing evidence of learning and negotiating a grade from their with each student, while also giving deep feedback. I think that this aligns beautifully with the new assessment style pushed by the Ministry which we discussed in the seminar at Parkland this week.

I also really appreciated Trevor’s advise on how to guide students towards free inquiry using a scaffolding approach. I am eager to implement as much free inquiry as possible into my classrooms, but I never understood how you could teach a student how to choose appropriate topics and ask good questions to lead them to a project idea. The question triangle flipping to show the “direction of learning” really helped me visualize how to guide students to creating effective and enjoyable inquiry projects, which will then allow them to customize their learning in ways that will motivate them to succeed.

Finally, I was touched by Trevor’s discussion about bodily autonomy in classroom environments, especially allowing students to do what they want with their bodies while learning (sitting, standing, moving, stimming, etc). As someone who often performs much better at a standing desk and while being allowed to move and stim, I really resonated with the young student shown in the video, and I can’t wait to continue brainstorming ways to implement vertical learning and flexible seating in my future classes.

I really enjoyed Jesse Miller’s talk on cell phones in schools. I thought that it was refreshing to listen to someone with a positive outlook on the place of personal devices in schools, since most of the discourse I’ve encountered about cell phones has been quite negative.

Photo by Le Buzz Studio on Unsplash.

I had never considered the implications of taking away phones when it comes to student safety and autonomy in situations where they have less power over their situations. As a student who is fully under the authority of their teacher’s at school, I can imagine that retaining as much of your own power over yourself as possible feels very important; I remember this feeling well from my own time in high school as well. I would not take kindly to my own cell phone being taken away, so it does not feel quite right to do the same right off the bat to students who are already less powerful than they’d like to be in the school environment.

I also agree with the perspective that cell phones will be a part of life outside of school and that will not change anytime soon, so it is more valuable to teach students how to effectively use their devices rather than banning them. I think that encouraging students to build healthy relationships with their technology and helping them build skills like self-regulation of screen time is infinitely more valuable than restricting phone time in the classroom. It is an opportunity to teach some skills that could really benefit students in the rest of their lives and help them combat dopamine addictions and other negative side effects of using cell phones.

I am a big fan of the idea of Open Education principles. In academia I learned that most knowledge is kept behind paywalls in pay-to-read journals, making knowledge widely unavailable to the public. Since learning that, I have become a huge proponent of Open Access academic materials so that the public can have access to the best possible sources to inform their lives and knowledge base. In a similar way, the idea of educational resources being trapped behind paywalls so that not all educators can access them seems foolish. I am so excited to learn that there is a movement existing to make these resources open and free to access to better benefit all learners.

Image by Photo by Ousa Chea on Unsplash.

I looked into the Open Education Commons, and I was impressed with the different search fields you can use to find content in the appropriate grade level/subject/activity type. I looked at some Life Science labs for high school, and I was returned 162 results. I looked closer at the first result, which was called Greenhouse Effect Lab by Krista Larsen from Carleton College. The resource could have been more detailed in how it described the carry-out of the lab, but it definitely would serve as an excellent starting point for a new teacher developing their own collection of labs.

Overall, I think that OER is a resource I will definitely use more as a new teacher searching for activities to do in my classroom, especially for thinking of science labs!