A pencil, the typewriter, Google Bard, and… ChatGPT. What do all of these things have in common? Innovation.
French inventor Nicolas-Jacques Conté developed the pencil out of necessity and his passion for mechanical arts and portrait painting. Rapidly prototyping a variety of solutions for Napoleon, his pension for innovation during the French Expedition was impressive.
Christopher Latham Sholes, a printer and newspaper publisher, is credited as creating the modern typewriter along with Carlos Glidden and Samuel W. Soulé. Their innovative keyboard layout optimized the keys to prevent jamming and maximize efficient typing. The QWERTY layout is still the most commonly used.
Google Bard is a tool developed by Google that assists in generating coherent and grammatical text for language models, particularly for poetry and creative writing. It uses a technique called "neural text synthesis" to generate lines of poetry or prose that follow a specific structure and rhyme scheme. It is designed to help poets and writers with writer's block or to generate new ideas and inspiration for creative writing.
How does it work? Watch ChatGPT generate a prompt in the video above.
What is ChatGPT? ChatGPT is artificial intelligence that gathers information from the internet and collective world knowledge to provide information in a conversational tone, also known as natural language processing. For example, I asked ChatGPT, “What is Google Bard?” and the results are what you read in the previous paragraph.
There are some limitations with ChatGPT. For example, the AI bot currently has a knowledge cutoff date of September 2021. It has gotten some flack for spreading false truth about historical figures and making condolences less than genuine. And, if you ask any English teacher, it could make student essays a bit tougher to grade. However, there are also some cool stories of song lyric generation, creating automation with Python script, and everyday ways to improve your life.
What does this mean for education? Digital literacy and digital citizenship. Nurturing responsible daily decisions and increasing supervised opportunities to interact with technology are key. Highlight the beneficial impact of technology in your classroom by promoting appropriate digital tool use and developing positive language surrounding technology. This helps foster a culture that destigmatizes social media and online interaction. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are not new to the scene – you encounter these each day (like predictable text in an email or text message), and the more these are used, the better the results. When there is a healthy competition of tools, the user typically wins. (Check out this comparison between ChatGPT and Google Bard.) As with all tools, ChatGPT will only be as good or bad as the intentions of the human who wields it. Therefore, as educators our role remains the same: learn as much as we can and TEACH our students how to use the tool responsibly.
ChatGPT is here, so we have to make space. How will you use it? How will you teach students to use it? Consider investing some time and energy into exploring this tool firsthand. Check out this lesson plan from the New York Times for integrating ChatGPT into your classroom. And if you don’t have time to devote a full lesson to ChatGPT alone, explore AI/ML tools within Google Workspace for Education. For example, the explore tool and embedded summary feature in Google docs create a chance to learn something new in a familiar digital environment. Resources like this collection from the Indiana Learning Lab will be invaluable as you continue to support your staff, colleagues, and students.
As the renowned innovation guru Clayton Christensen once said, "Innovation opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming," but they also come with the challenge of "navigating the organizational and cultural barriers that can impede progress. - generated with ChatGPT
With any new innovation, there will always be challenges and opportunities to learn and grow. It’s time to get on the bus!