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AI for Teachers Newsletter by Teach2AI

Author

Sophie Theodorou
May 23, 2024

Hello teachers,

I hope you are maintaining your sanity this May/June season! As hectic as it is, it can also be the most special (and sad) when you have to say goodbye to your students.

TODAY’S AGENDA 📑 

  • A super interesting possible solution to students ‘cheating’ by having AI write their assignments for them. 😲 

  • Email ‘trainer’ or ‘AI expert ambassador’ badges and why we should be weary of them. 🛡️ 

  • 3 ways I used AI in my classroom today. 🦓 (you’ll understand the emoji in a minute…)

An excellent read & practical approach to student ‘cheating’ with AI and maintaining academic integrity

Dr. John Spencer, a former teacher and now professor who is an expert in EdTech, AI, PBL and harnessing creativity recently published an article about promoting academic integrity in the age of AI.

KEY POINTS:

  1. Maintaining academic integrity is nothing new. Technology doesn’t cause cheating and plagiarism, but changes the way that cheating occurs.

  2. Inaccuracy and potential harms of AI writing detectors are highlighted. Check out this shocking stat:

“Imagine a teacher with six class periods that each have 30 students. Throughout a semester, the students each submit five essays. If that teacher uses an AI detection software with a success rate of 94%*, this will still mean that up to 54 students might be either falsely accused of cheating or getting away with cheating.” -Dr. John Spencer

*this comes from his own research testing different detectors.

  1. Use a proactive approach to assist the writing process: sketch note or create an outline physically without a computer. Then, model the co-creation process in writing, using AI as a collaborator.

  2. Getting to the heart of why students are cheating in the first place and why this is important.

  3. Employing “trust-based” transparency - use a Google doc and color code what was AI generated and what wasn’t:

I love the above approach because it highlights in a visual way the interplay between AI and human-generated content.

It is interesting to see what students used AI for and what they didn’t. It adds a layer of critical thinking to their writing - can this sentence be improved? Does it need more research? Or did the AI completely spark a new thought process or idea?

Check it out - I think this is a great exercise to show upper-year students how to use AI properly.

Email Badges - Certified AI Expert, Ambassador, Trainer… Are they legit?

We’ve all seen them in people’s email signatures or social media posts.

This was highlighted by Thomas Hummel, the co-founder of Eduaide.ai’s LinkedIn post, a platform that has not used the ‘certification’ or ‘expert’ badge as a mode of community engagement or marketing strategy. I further added my own opinion to it in my own post.

I write, “Just because someone earns a 'badge' for watching a video or two doesn't make them an expert in AI or EdTech. This is concerning, and questions our professional integrity as educators. Assisting a for-profit company's marketing strategy without compensation is a whole other story.”

"If that badge was worth something, you'd get paid for it. If the company genuinely valued the 'certified' ambassador, then, they would be paid for onboarding new customers. That is not how it works." - Thomas Hummel

Read both of our posts here.

Furthermore, eduaide.ai has launched their own “academy,” where you can learn how the platform can enhance your day-to-day tasks at work… however, you won’t be awarded a badge or expert certification at the end. 😉 

3 Ways I used AI in my classroom today

The only tool used was ChatGPT-4o.

1) I asked ChatGPT to help me explain the difference between voltage and amps to sixth graders. Drawing up an age appropriate explanation of “potential difference” on the spot was difficult and I’m glad I was able to use GPT to help my students learn these complicated concepts. I love its response:

2) I asked ChatGPT to create funny and engaging math word problems for a ratio problem set, which led to the next use case…

🦓 

3) One of the problems ChatGPT gave me was about a “Zebra Zoo,” with zedonks (zebra x donkey hybrids) and zorses (zebra x horse hybrid). Immediately there were laughs, and for added fun, I asked ChatGPT to generate images of these hybrids to display on the board.

Zedonk is way too fun to say.

That’s it for this week! Hopefully something in today’s newsletter helped you as a teacher or inspired something new for you to try with your students.

As always, please hit reply to ask any questions or let me know what types of content you’d like to see from me in my newsletter!

Happy teaching,

Sophie @teach2ai