Week 2 Reflection
“Most Likely to Succeed”
Before our class on Tuesday, we were asked to watch the movie “Most Likely to Succeed,” by Greg Whiteley and Ted Dintersmith. This movie was extremely eye-opening into the future of education. I loved the way they described the history of education in the beginning as it set up their argument perfectly. They explained how our educational institutions are kinda behind in relation to what types of career options are out there in our world today. At High Tech High, the school in the movie, they had students participate in these big projects instead of tests or worksheets. At the end of each term, these projects would be presented to the entire school, plus the families of the parents. I think that projects like these can facilitate a lot of growth within a student’s life and allow them to develop more confidence, voice, personality, as well as collaborative skills from working so closely with others. And, even better, the content isn’t forgotten a couple of months later, which was a big point argued within the movie. There were many skeptics who feared the high school would not set up students for post-secondary, that they wouldn’t be ready for SATs, or that they would be lacking in knowledge. However, despite the uncertainty of the outcome of High Tech High, I say why not at least try? Because if we don’t try how will we ever know? And even if it’s not fully successful, I’m sure there would be a lot to learn from the journey! I would love to work at a school
ChatGPT
Today in EDCI 336 we were introduced to ChatGPT an AI that can tackle almost any prompt you give it. It can be used for writing stories, essays, and scripts, and can even explain theories or concepts. We also found that it could craft entire lesson plans in any subject! I think that this opens us up to a whole new world, not only for teachers but students too. I believe this could change how teachers or professors assign things such as papers. Since it’s suddenly easier to write a story or a paper, the expectations may increase. There may be more criteria to fill or you may have to link your points directly to what you learned in class. Either way, I believe it will hugely affect expectations for assignments, in both high school and university. I don’t think it will affect elementary school learners too much as they aren’t exactly tasked with writing academic papers. Additionally, a lot of their work is done in the classroom under the supervision of the teacher. Perhaps older grades, such as middle school students, would be more likely to utilize ChatGPT as they deal with more advanced assignments and have more out-of-class work. Though there are many problems that come along with students not creating their own work, such as plagiarism, I think that there are many positives that come along with this tool. One example we talked about in our class today is new teachers who find themself subbing could use it for quick lesson plans in classes/subjects they aren’t accurately prepped for. Another helpful idea I thought of what using it to learn how to properly format essays or form topic sentences by seeing how ChatGPT does it. This could be great for new writers, or anyone practicing developing their writing. Altogether I think that this AI will only grow to be useful in classrooms, and other disciplines, as long as we learn to see it as just another tool instead of something to fear.
