Beautiful work, Nick. The strategy of human brainstorming followed by AI integration with an AI-Mentor prompt disallowing the introduction of new ideas is spot on. I’d call it a “full brainer” vs a “no brainer.” It taps the strength of a human and uses the bot for scaffolding. I’m wondering what your students thoughts were during the writing when the cut and paste feature prevented lifting AI text. A suggestion: pick four of your most metacognitively aware writers and ask them to do brief think alouds when they note interesting micro situations and analyze the tapes for themes and patterns.
I’d also be interested in having half of them get the option of asking AI-Mentor to discuss how well the thesis statement squares with the bot outline. With the preemptive command “do not introduce new ideas” this discussion could return some control over the outline back to the students. I’m uneasy about asking the bot create the outline. At that point the bot has control of the macrostructure of the text, which I as a writer want to control even more than I want to control word choice. Text structure is importance for emphasis, which is a writer-reader dimension.
Your study supports an additional conclusion as well. If our society truly cares about AI doing a coup on human heads, it’s going to have to allocate resources and it needs a central, enlightened, scholarly national headquarters. This nonsense about fearing the unknown needs to morph into public dollars going to schools to support teachers like you with the knowledge and skills to implement and monitor highly complex instructional designs. This is a new world where teachers will need to know their students better than before. Let’s stop the social moaning and get to work eh?
Thanks, Terry. I am with you indeed. I have really pivoted the Substack since the summer. No more moaning, time to do the work. Notably, the overall popularity of the posts have taken a real hit. But no worries on my end. I truly want to be part of the solution, as they say. I appreciate your feedback. I was in a massive time crunch at my school after they threw yet another special schedule at us at the last moment. I honestly had no time to offer the students to prepare their own outlines in class---that was gobbled up by the special schedule---and I already had leased out homework time to finishing a college application essay. So I decided---let's bring in an AI infusion. I had written out my standards so that they were focused primarily on source integration and argument development. AI provided the source structure. And we were off and running. But yes, I did feel conflicted about turning that dimension of the essay over the bot. I will be interested to see what the final results look like. More on that soon!
Over the past 50 years we've heavily resisted homogenization as if it were a terrible thing while also suffering from crazy fractures in tribalism, nativism, ethnocentrism, etc. America went from the melting pot to hyphenated and lengthy identifiers. English has become the decfacto language of business and western civilization largely created the economies and technologies we enjoy.
I know I'm saying this from the dominant side but do we need more or less divisions within humanity? Could AI help bring us together by accelerating the homogeneity?
Intriguing ideas, Michael. In all likelihood, we aren't dealing with an either-or situation, as greater diversity of texts get input into these models and thus complicate the algorithmic processes operate within the black box. But more to your point, do we need more division? Certainly not. The dream of a universal language runs deep in the human story, and yet none of those narratives seem to end well for humanity. Here's hoping to a better narrative, I guess.
There are critical elements to consider such as that eastern culture tends to view the future behind us, like a rower in a boat, and the past is all we can see to navigate vs. western culture does the opposite. These are reflected in our writing as well. Heck, even writing from left to right or right to left changes the perspective of the world. I can see why many would resist being absorbed since the risk is being deleted.
Yeah. PN is about 10 bucks a kid. In a high school setting, that isn’t too pricey as one account gets coverage for all classes. But I am finding you don’t really need all the capabilities. Just a closed environment with coy and paste alerts would be enough for a college setting. I think we are getting to the point where teachers just need to start making the spaces and interfaces. Big tech is asleep at the wheel or overselling.
Extremely valid and relevant points. Still, let's not forget that there are many humans in the classroom that have been doing this for decades, e.g. fairy tale = Little Red Riding Hood, "good" English literature = something British. How many choose Indian or African authors? Also, the TikTok effect is already working towards homogenization - teenagers across the globe adopt similar tastes and opinions. But YES, this is valid and real and should be tackled.
Also, I'd love to be a fly in the wall in your classroom. :)
TY for introducing this subject of considering the global cultural influences around AI. Will definitely be giving it more thought and checking into the resources you included.
Kudos for your integration of AI in an educational setting. This is the forefront of where we will head. Well done. TY for sharing.
“It seemed to strike a balance between leveraging AI's capabilities and preserving individual expression.”
Beautiful work, Nick. The strategy of human brainstorming followed by AI integration with an AI-Mentor prompt disallowing the introduction of new ideas is spot on. I’d call it a “full brainer” vs a “no brainer.” It taps the strength of a human and uses the bot for scaffolding. I’m wondering what your students thoughts were during the writing when the cut and paste feature prevented lifting AI text. A suggestion: pick four of your most metacognitively aware writers and ask them to do brief think alouds when they note interesting micro situations and analyze the tapes for themes and patterns.
I’d also be interested in having half of them get the option of asking AI-Mentor to discuss how well the thesis statement squares with the bot outline. With the preemptive command “do not introduce new ideas” this discussion could return some control over the outline back to the students. I’m uneasy about asking the bot create the outline. At that point the bot has control of the macrostructure of the text, which I as a writer want to control even more than I want to control word choice. Text structure is importance for emphasis, which is a writer-reader dimension.
Your study supports an additional conclusion as well. If our society truly cares about AI doing a coup on human heads, it’s going to have to allocate resources and it needs a central, enlightened, scholarly national headquarters. This nonsense about fearing the unknown needs to morph into public dollars going to schools to support teachers like you with the knowledge and skills to implement and monitor highly complex instructional designs. This is a new world where teachers will need to know their students better than before. Let’s stop the social moaning and get to work eh?
Thanks, Terry. I am with you indeed. I have really pivoted the Substack since the summer. No more moaning, time to do the work. Notably, the overall popularity of the posts have taken a real hit. But no worries on my end. I truly want to be part of the solution, as they say. I appreciate your feedback. I was in a massive time crunch at my school after they threw yet another special schedule at us at the last moment. I honestly had no time to offer the students to prepare their own outlines in class---that was gobbled up by the special schedule---and I already had leased out homework time to finishing a college application essay. So I decided---let's bring in an AI infusion. I had written out my standards so that they were focused primarily on source integration and argument development. AI provided the source structure. And we were off and running. But yes, I did feel conflicted about turning that dimension of the essay over the bot. I will be interested to see what the final results look like. More on that soon!
Thanks for this context. Ingenuity and inquiry. Very nice work, top notch teaching from every perspective
This is great, Nick!
I really like this for an in-person class! I am also looking for an alternative to Power Notes, just because I don’t have money for it!
Over the past 50 years we've heavily resisted homogenization as if it were a terrible thing while also suffering from crazy fractures in tribalism, nativism, ethnocentrism, etc. America went from the melting pot to hyphenated and lengthy identifiers. English has become the decfacto language of business and western civilization largely created the economies and technologies we enjoy.
I know I'm saying this from the dominant side but do we need more or less divisions within humanity? Could AI help bring us together by accelerating the homogeneity?
Intriguing ideas, Michael. In all likelihood, we aren't dealing with an either-or situation, as greater diversity of texts get input into these models and thus complicate the algorithmic processes operate within the black box. But more to your point, do we need more division? Certainly not. The dream of a universal language runs deep in the human story, and yet none of those narratives seem to end well for humanity. Here's hoping to a better narrative, I guess.
There are critical elements to consider such as that eastern culture tends to view the future behind us, like a rower in a boat, and the past is all we can see to navigate vs. western culture does the opposite. These are reflected in our writing as well. Heck, even writing from left to right or right to left changes the perspective of the world. I can see why many would resist being absorbed since the risk is being deleted.
Yeah. PN is about 10 bucks a kid. In a high school setting, that isn’t too pricey as one account gets coverage for all classes. But I am finding you don’t really need all the capabilities. Just a closed environment with coy and paste alerts would be enough for a college setting. I think we are getting to the point where teachers just need to start making the spaces and interfaces. Big tech is asleep at the wheel or overselling.
Extremely valid and relevant points. Still, let's not forget that there are many humans in the classroom that have been doing this for decades, e.g. fairy tale = Little Red Riding Hood, "good" English literature = something British. How many choose Indian or African authors? Also, the TikTok effect is already working towards homogenization - teenagers across the globe adopt similar tastes and opinions. But YES, this is valid and real and should be tackled.
Also, I'd love to be a fly in the wall in your classroom. :)
TY for introducing this subject of considering the global cultural influences around AI. Will definitely be giving it more thought and checking into the resources you included.
Kudos for your integration of AI in an educational setting. This is the forefront of where we will head. Well done. TY for sharing.
“It seemed to strike a balance between leveraging AI's capabilities and preserving individual expression.”