13 Comments

This space is moving so crazily fast... this was a great little update! Have you figured out how we can actually use ChatGPT4o free? When I log on to my free account I can't seem to tell when it's GPT 3.5 vs GPT 4o doing the work...

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I think it is the default model... I have a paid account, and I get to choose between 3.5, 4, and 4o. 4o is very fast. But not noticing much difference in quality between 4.0 and 4o. But if you have been using 3.5, you will notice a major jump in quality.

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May 25Liked by Nick Potkalitsky

You know, sometimes it's easy to just read articles, nod your head, and move on. But when you phrased it like that, aggregating these stories, I didn't realize we had so many announcements at once. Crazy! Thanks as always for help keeping us informed!

And as a post script, thanks to great AI posts, I'm learning more about priming AI and developing new materials for the classroom. Many things I can do on my own just fine, but the productivity boost is incredible!

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May 22Liked by Nick Potkalitsky

AI literacy needs to be grounded in critical thinking about AI, the companies that create it, the uses to which it is put, and the effects children can expect it to have on them. It will require a level of reflection by the student on their own experiences and on technology, society, culture, politics, and the economy of a sort that no part of our political establishment is likely to welcome.

The constant flood of changes, which may or may not be related to substantial improvements to the LLMs themselves, but more to interfaces, is causing us to literally update presentations as we make them and may make institutional policies obsolescent while they are being drafted. Is it even possible to develop AI literacy at this point or is it already dead on arrival?

Some of the latest developments open up even greater privacy and security nightmares than we have had. Everything around AI should now be approached with caution and healthy skepticism. We cannot afford to leave any aspect of these and other announcements unexamined.

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Thanks, Guy!!! I was hoping to hear from you. Yes, toss all the old presentations aside. The door keeps getting push open wider and wider and wider. It is impossible to anticipate what the landscape will look like in a month, let alone a year. "Greater privacy and security nightmares"--spot on!!! In the K-12 context, I am starting to reconsider the value of some of the more closed work environments like Power Notes, but I do so knowing full well that such moves are only half measures... when we actually need what you point to at the beginning of the post: critical thinking about AI.

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Nick, are you thinking about using PowerNotes or stopping using them? I'm curious. The Law School at MU has been piloting their use in their legal research classes.

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Great round up of recent and exciting AI enhancements. Thank you, Nick!

I’m wondering if the enhancements are enough to turn teachers’ attention to AI for personalized learning for students, and not simply for automating teacher tasks, like grading, feedback, and lesson planning. My gut tells me we still have a ways to go on that front, but these recent enhancements are encouraging!

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Thanks, Tom. Yes, things are moving very slow... But as my recents' articles are indicating, the tech still has a way to go for student case uses. My sense is that next year will be a teacher onboarding year, but meanwhile, our students keep using it largely unguided and for efficiency purposes. If we can just get the teachers to sit down to down some materials building training, we can begin to talk about student AI literacy as well. That where I am heading in my work... Getting at the more pressing concern of student use through teacher onboarding. What do you think?

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Using it. It has a lot of nice features... plus it is a closed writing environment. Students have to write inside the embedded fields which are actively monitored. Anything copied and pasted from outside sources is immediately flagged. PowerNotes is browser enabled. You can hop on EBSCO, copy and paste from docs right into a PowerNotes field. Pretty cool stuff. Not so sure I want to go the full monitoring route. But this is an option that is available.

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May 22Liked by Nick Potkalitsky

Are you using the version that gives you a closed AI environment - I think there is a choice of which AI - so that you can follow the interactions of students with the AI and suggest things they might do differently?

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May 22·edited May 22Author

Experimenting with the closed environment. I imagine at the level of law school, a more open space would be preferable. At the same time, I have been pretty resistant to rely on AI detectors thus far. PowerNotess offers a slightly different method of monitoring---more multi-prong---closed environment + screening of AI use inside environment. I have made contact with some teachers who are using PT in their secondary school environment and I am hoping they will write a post walking my readers through the impact of this monitoring process on instruction, assessment and teacher-student relationships.

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May 22Liked by Nick Potkalitsky

Thanks Nick certainly the pace of change is not slowing and as anticipated is accelerating without the necessary system checks and balances being in any way ready!

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What Khan Academy has done with AI to help students, teachers, and parents is nothing short of a miracle. American public schools desperately need this reboot. Nick: thank you for your relentless work on this topic and for educating all of us on AI in education.

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