AI

 

AI has been in the news a lot recently.  And as I sit here looking at some IGCSE coursework that has obviously been done by chatgpt, I find myself pondering just how much education will be affected by what seems to be an unstoppable tide of new technological advances.

I think the truth is that we just don’t know.  I did a postgraduate course in Learning Technologies only three and a half years ago and the things we looked at on the course are already out of date because of just how quickly AI has invaded the technological sphere.

And in this regard I’m extremely wary of self-appointed Educational Experts in AI given that in order to be an expert in anything surely you have to have studied it for many years, no?  And how long, really, has it been used fully by the teaching profession anyway? 

Of course there will be People Who Guess The Future of AI but the technology is so new that there hasn’t been enough time to become expert in it, isn’t that self evident?

Yes, there are certain things we do know.  We know, for example, that written coursework as part of IGCSE is finished.   Not a single one of my students has failed to use AI to ‘help’ write their essay.  And we really can’t blame them, can we?  I would do the same if I were in their shoes.

We also know that many students are using AI more and more at home to complete homework and research and find out answers to questions that they would otherwise be doing their own research on.

And is this a bad thing?

Well, yes.  It’s not great. 

Is it the end of the teaching profession and of schools and of learning and of life as we know it?

Well, no.  Probably not.

I’m seriously old.  I can remember the moral panic that came about when the first computers were being sold en-masse, you know the ones;  ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64, those BBC machines.  Well, guess what, the world didn’t end then and neither did teaching.  Teaching was still done well and students still prospered.

I can also recall the gnashing and wailing of the ignorant majority when the internet was invented and smoothed for use by the public and by children.  The world didn’t end then either.  Sure, there was more porn and more evidence of What I Did When I Was Drunk And Stupid that many teachers wished there wasn’t around but teaching prevailed.  Teachers still taught good stuff and taught it well. 

My only prediction with AI is that it will change the way that teachers work and it will change the way that students learn but it will not replace either activity.  Schools are an institution that has survived all kinds of technological advances including Smartboards and whiteboard pens as well as phones that can take pictures.  Hell, it survived television, another invention that created lurid headlines about the end of civilisation, values, the Empire and certainly the end of innocent childhoods. 

I am pretty certain that back when the printing press was first invented that there were teachers (obviously working with rather well off students because plebs weren’t to be educated of course) who were told that printed books would signal the end of their careers.

New technology has always been with us.  It has always been a bit frightening and also a bit exciting for teachers and their students. 

Teaching in schools endures.  It has done for over a hundred years.  It will endure for longer.  It will change with the advent of AI, of course it will, but the fundamentals of a teacher being in front of a group of impressionable young people will never change.  Lady Plowden asserted this back in the 60’s in her landmark report on primary teaching and I have not seen any evidence that she was wrong. 

And as for AI experts, well, really?  How many experts in pedagogy AND AI are really out there right at this moment?  And do you think we teachers aren’t already trying out ways to make it work for us?   You think we aren’t rather excited about using this new technology to help us become better teachers? 

Will we need some help with this, of course we will.  We rely on teccy people with teccy brains to show us how to use stuff that we’re a bit less confident with but please remember that we all have university degrees and we are all fairly intelligent so our understanding of what we can do and do well will unfold.

AI isn’t going away.  We can’t just put it back in its bottle and wish it away.  It is here and it will fundamentally alter many aspects of life but it will not stop teachers teaching and it will not stop students learning.  This is the lesson from history. 

Teaching has been remarkably adaptable over many years and over many changes and it will adapt again. 

Thus ends today’s sermon, brought to you by a human being.

For now…

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