Weekly Reflection – Topic 4

Hello everyone! I am really glad we had a class to discuss and explore AI because I think it is so interesting and there are definitely benefits and downfalls. The first prompt I would like to discuss is the major limitations of GenAI. In my opinion, I think AI can be a useful tool for many things, especially for teachers, but there are still dangers around it. There are obviously large ethical and environmental considerations for AI but I also fear for student’s critical thinking skills. Unfortunately I have seen a lot of students in grade 9 or 10 asking ChatGPT for things that they could google or ask a friend or teacher about. This makes me worry because it shows that students are not thinking critically, they are socializing less, and taking major shortcuts that are completely unnecessary. If future students continue to do this, their creative and critical thinking skills will become very weak. Another limitation of GenAI is that it is not extremely reliable for all subject-specific prompts. For example, in my experience of prompting AI with science questions to test the types of answers it gives, it is usually not super accurate or it gives a very basic level of understanding. I don’t think students will fact check AI as much as they should so I am concerned that students will take everything it outputs at face value.

The next thing I would like to discuss in this post is possible cases for GenAI in my subject and grade level. As I have said before I hope to teach Science 9/10 and Chemistry 11/12 but I will likely end up teaching math, physics, or potentially biology as well depending on the school. As I previously stated, I believe AI can be a useful tool for teachers to help save time in a very busy profession, but I do not think students in high schools need to be using it that much. An assignment related to GenAI in a grade 11 or 12 class (depending on the subject) could be beneficial to show students how it can be used and the dangers around it but overall I do not think there is much need. GenAI does not really need to be used in classes like Biology 11/12, Chemistry 11/12, or Physics 11/12, because it is not very good at answering high level science questions. The only assignment I would probably run in one of those classes would be to demonstrate that AI is not good for courses like that. I would create questions and get the students to prompt AI and analyze the responses it gives. I did this in a 400 level chemistry course at UVic and it was not able to answer a single question correctly so that is very interesting. I still believe that teachers need to be able to spot AI when a student uses it, even in upper level science classes, but I do not see much benefit in taking away from the content you have to get through to do multiple AI assignments.

Lastly, I just wanted to discuss what benefits I think GenAI does have for us as teachers in the education system. I know this entire posts sounds like I am just bashing AI but I do think there are some legitimate benefits for us. First off is making a very rough idea for an assignment into an actual description for your class. I have done that for some unit planning or assignment planning projects and it is actually very helpful. Sometimes you have an idea but you don’t know how to put it in a real description yet so GenAI can be very useful for that. Obviously you take that description, read it over a lot, edit it heavily, and format it how you need for the students but this can still be a big time saver. Another thing, as we discussed in class, is helping to build parts of lesson plans. This is very similar to the assignment building I was just talking about but for lessons instead. If you have part of a lesson built, but you want a small in class activity r something to add to it, you could ask GenAI for ideas about that activity. Finally, AI can be useful for helping to create rubrics. Rubrics seem like something that are a pain to create over and over again for a bunch of different assignments so AI can help us with that to save some time and energy. Teaching is a very busy career and can be sometimes difficult so why not take a few well thought out short cuts that will help us in the long run?