Artificial intelligence is the trending edtech topic of the year so far. If you haven’t been asked about it yet, you soon will. If you haven’t tried an AI writing tool yet, you should give it a try because your students are probably trying it out.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence tool that will create documents for you based on some minimal input from you. For example, I simply typed in ChatGPT “Ten Canva Features for Students” and got This article of that. ChatGPT can also be used to create poems like this about sunglasses worn by Tour de France champion Geraint Thomas.
With a little adjustment of what you put in ChatGPT you can create longer articles than the one I posted yesterday. A simple “tell me more” or “what about X” can generate more ChatGPT material.
Magic Writing in Canva Docs
“Magic Write” sounds like the name of a product that a tech company would have advertised ten years ago as part of an April Fool’s Day prank. Today, Magic Write is a real feature of Canvas’s new document tool
Magic Write works in a rather similar way to ChatGPT. To use Magic Write, simply select it from the embed menu in Canva Docs. Once Magic Write opens, you enter a short message like “green screen video tips” and Magic Write generates a short list or paragraph for you (the format depends on the message). You can then insert that script into your document as it was written, or you can edit it before including it in your document. watch this short video to see how Magic Write works in Canva.
living with AI
I remember teachers telling students that they couldn’t use Internet sources in their research papers. And I remember many angry debates about whether or not students should look at Wikipedia. Hopefully, I’ll live long enough to remember the current debates about the use of AI in education.
AI is not going away, so we need to figure out how to teach knowing it exists. I’ve seen some people suggest that students include a level of customization in their writing or presentations that “proves” that they didn’t use AI. The problem with that is that the AI is getting better all the time and soon highly refined customization via AI will be easy to do.
I’m still thinking about how AI will fit into the classroom context. I don’t have a perfect answer and I may never get to a perfect answer. But that’s okay because “perfect” is a moving goal anyway when we’re trying to figure out what’s best for the kids in our classrooms today.
Last week I had to go up to the attic of my 171 year old house. Every time I do that I feel like Clark Griswold in this scene at National Lampoon’s Christmas break. I asked ChatGPT for ideas on how to insulate my attic. This is what he suggested.
50 Tech Tuesday Tips and Workshops
50 Tech Tuesday Tips is an eBook I created with busy tech trainers, help desk staff, and media specialists in mind. In it, you’ll find 50 ideas and tutorials that you can use as the basis for your own short professional development sessions.
I offer face-to-face and online workshops on a variety of educational technology topics. Book me for an in-person workshop in 2023 and I’ll include copies of my eBook for all your staff. Email me or complete this form Learn more.
