Category: AI & Education

One of the issues associated with the advances in the application of digital technology is that the rest of society can’t keep up. For example, advances allow new services and opportunities before the political process can implement laws that redistrict damaging applications. Once applications are widely used, it is difficult to implement constraints that may prove burdensome or expensive for citizens and companies that have invested in new capabilities. 

Education (K12 and higher education) faces similar and related issues. Rapid advances move the workplace faster than educational institutions can generate skilled practitioners and educated consumers to contribute and benefit from new opportunities. In K12, there is a time delay caused by the need to generate expectations (e.g., standards) that guide what exactly should be taught in specific areas of the curriculum and at specific grade levels, and the delay in hiring or developing skills and knowledge in the appropriate faculty members. For long-term commitments, the delay is exacerbated by the time span required to first develop future teachers with the appropriate skill sets and experience.

We closely follow K12 expectations in North Dakota because we worked for many years before retiring in North Dakota and were involved in working with preservice and inservice educators. What is happening in North Dakota may be of little interest to educators in other states. I raise what is happening in ND because education leaders within the state have made the claim that they are the first to mandate, at the insistence of the legislature, universal coding and cyber security experiences for all students.  Even more recent expectations were just established by the state legislature providing another example of politicians requiring commitments from educators. 

One of the components of the ND expectations that may be of use to educators in other states are some of the concrete descriptions of what educational experiences are required of educators. Aside from the standards (which were actually established in 2019, but now have a political mandate for demonstrated application), there are guidelines for educator credentials/certificates. As you might expect, various organizations (colleges and other) are seeing opportunities when only professional development is required and practicing educators need to catch up.

North Dakota CS and Cybersecurity Credentials (guidelines extracted from the document I link to above)

The NDDPI issues three levels of Computer Science (CS) and Cybersecurity Credentials. Each requires a valid teaching license issued by the ESPB.

• Level 1 – Allows the recipient to teach any CS or Cyber-related course, including advanced courses, at any grade level corresponding with the recipient’s teaching license. Applicants must complete one of the following:
  • 200 or more hours of CS or Cyber training; or
  • 15 or more credits in CS or Cyber; or
  • 3 stacks of micro-credentials in CS or Cyber.
     
• Level 2 – Allows the recipient to teach introductory and intermediate-level CS or Cyber-related courses, as determined by the department, at any grade level corresponding with the recipient’s teaching license. Applicants must complete one of the following:
  • 40 or more hours of CS or Cyber training; or
  • 6 or more credits in CS or Cyber; or
  • 1 stack of micro-credentials in CS or Cyber.
     
• Level 3 – Allows the recipient to teach integrated CS or Cyber-related instruction in other contents at any grade level corresponding with the recipient’s teaching license. The recipient also may teach CS or Cyber-related courses in grades kindergarten through grade eight as applicable to the recipient’s teaching license.  Applicants must complete one of the following:
  • 15 or more hours of CS or Cyber training; or
  • 3 micro-credentials in CS or Cyber.

I would argue that while these expectations are being promoted as ground breaking and innovative, the skills and knowledge expected of educators are already lagging behind significant developments in what technology now is and the impact it is having. For example, AI tools now available to all have already changed what coding is and who can code. With the development of ChatGPT, a large language model trained by OpenAI, the relevance of teaching coding in the classroom has shifted. There is still a need for coding education, albeit with a shift towards teaching transferable skills and working with pre-existing machine learning models. Natural language coding is also becoming more prevalent, allowing programmers to write code in a way that is similar to how they would communicate with another person.

For additional reading on the expectations of teaching coding in K12, I would point those interested to this paper in Technology Review. This article provides a history of the emphasis on coding in K12 offering insights into what was taught, who benefited, and how the perceived importance of coding in the classroom has varied over time. Unlike the importance of technology in general that has grown linearly, the interest in coding waned after a peak in the 1980-90s which at the time emphasized vocational opportunities and now has been on an upward trajectory promoting benefits for all again with an expanded emphasis on computational thinking. The Technology Review article suggests that a technology emphasis was often justified as an equity issue encouraging women and minority students to learn the skills necessary to compete in lucrative areas of the economy, but educational efforts were typically disappointing in increasing more equitable access to more financially beneficial employment. 

The applications of technology in society represent an aspect of education that presents serious challenges to the education establishment. 

I presently make use of two subscription social bookmarking services (Diigo and Memex) and one service that is presently free (Glasp). If I was forced to select one for its capabilities, it would be Glasp. While I am annoyed when a service I have used for years adds new features I never use and then expects a bump in the subscription price, I have the opposite opinion of Diigo. It does what it has always done, there just have been no new developments in years.

To be fair, most of the features I find most interesting about Memex and Glasp have little to do with the social components. I have written about both services in previous posts so I will not review most features, but concentrate on how Memex and Glasp use AI.

When it comes to AI, my primary interest is how AI can be used to process specific content I have already identified. At present, these two systems differ in how they stored content. Glasp assumes I want to ask questions or ask for the processing of content I have accumulated over time (all bookmarked sources). Memex assumes I want to ask questions of a specific source. There are cases in which each is what I want.

Memex Garden (the computer-based and not the tablet/phone Memex Go) allows the user to apply AI to a selected source (Ask and then select summarize selection, summarize the entire source, or general question). In general web pages are short enough that my highlights and annotations are easy enough to scan that these options are not particularly useful. However, Memex allows the annotation of PDFs which are long enough, and because I mostly read journal articles as PDFs complex enough that summarization may be helpful.

In contrast, Glasp applies AI across all of the content that has been collected. Note, this applies only to web content and not Kindle book highlights and annotations which can be accessed through this service. Glasp does not presently allow the highlighting and annotation of PDFs. The nice thing about the AI application in Glasp is that it identifies the specific sources that are used in responding to inquiries.

While I said I would not focus on social capabilities, Glasp does have an interesting AI social capability. Glasp allows a user to designate the account of another user and ask questions of that user’s public annotations. This may seem a little creepy, but the mission of Glasp clearly emphasizes the collective intelligence or efforts of users.

The following is an example of the content from one of the developers I was able to ask AI to query.

Almost there

I have been able to exchange texts with both the Memex and Glasp developers expressing my interests. I am most interest in having an efficient want to explore the highlights and annotations I have applied to Kindle books and PDFs because these are the sources I mostly focus on in my professional work. I can understand why copyright issues may be factor to consider in sharing highlights from commercial products (books, journal articles), but I would hope there would be an easy way for access to be limited to the sources I own. Perhaps notes could be treated as shareable, but not highlights. Goodreads allows the sharing of some highlights so some sharing must be allowed.

Like so many educators I have been reading about and exploring ChatGPT. I recently read an article in the NYTimes that among other arguments made the point that all educators have a responsibility to prepare students for their future and AI will be an important factor in their future. So, while I was thinking about the role of educators and how they would deal with traditional issues such as student evaluation, I had not considered the broader goal of helping rather than preventing students from using AI.

I have not spent a great deal of time thinking through this new perspective, but it does seem important. Help students make use of ChatGPT rather than worrying about preventing the use of this tool.

For example, in their immediate circumstances, students might use ChatGPT to help themselves study. Note – I was originally trained as a biologist and to teach high school biology so I still often use that content area in my examples.

write 10 multiple choice questions about mitosis and meiosis and add an answer key at the end

1. What is the process of cell division that results in the formation of two genetically identical daughter cells?

a) Mitosis

b) Meiosis

c) Binary fission

d) Asexual reproduction

2. Which stage of mitosis do the chromosomes line up in the middle of the cell?

a) Prophase

b) Metaphase

c) Anaphase

d) Telophase

3. In which stage of mitosis do the sister chromatids separate?

a) Prophase

b) Metaphase

c) Anaphase

d) Telophase

4. How many cells are produced during mitosis?

a) 1

b) 2

c) 4

d) 8

5. In which stage of meiosis do homologous chromosomes pair up?

a) Prophase I

b) Metaphase I

c) Anaphase I

d) Telophase I

6. In which stage of meiosis do the cells divide?

a) Prophase I

b) Metaphase I

c) Anaphase I

d) Telophase I

7. How many cells are produced during meiosis?

a) 1

b) 2

c) 4

d) 8

8. Which of the following is a characteristic of meiosis?

a) The formation of genetically identical cells

b) The formation of genetically diverse cells

c) The formation of cells with half the number of chromosomes as the original cell

d) The formation of cells with twice the number of chromosomes as the original cell

9. What is the process called when homologous chromosomes exchange segments of DNA?

a) Mitosis

b) Meiosis

c) Crossing over

d) Chromosome segregation

10. What is the purpose of meiosis?

a) The formation of new cells

b) The formation of genetically identical cells

c) The formation of genetically diverse cells

d) The formation of haploid cells for reproduction.

Answer key:

1. a) Mitosis

2. b) Metaphase

3. c) Anaphase

4. b) 2

5. a) Prophase I

6. b) Metaphase I

7. c) 4

8. b) The formation of genetically diverse cells

9. c) Crossing over

10. d) The formation of haploid cells for reproduction

Or, maybe I am getting ahead of myself here. Maybe the first step would be to generate a quick review.

Explain mitosis and meiosis to a 9th grade student

Mitosis is the process of cell division that results in the formation of two genetically identical daughter cells. During mitosis, the cell duplicates its chromosomes, which are the structures that carry the cell’s genetic information. The duplicated chromosomes are called sister chromatids, and they are held together by a structure called a centromere. After the chromosomes are duplicated, the cell goes through several stages of mitosis: prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. In prophase, the chromosomes condense and become visible under a microscope. In metaphase, the chromosomes line up in the middle of the cell. In anaphase, the sister chromatids separate and are pulled to opposite ends of the cell. In telophase, the cell divides and two identical daughter cells are formed.

Meiosis is a type of cell division that occurs in the reproductive cells of organisms, such as sperm and eggs. During meiosis, the cell goes through two rounds of division, resulting in the formation of four genetically diverse daughter cells. In the first round of meiosis, called meiosis I, the cell duplicates its chromosomes, just like in mitosis. However, during meiosis I, the homologous chromosomes, which are pairs of chromosomes that carry the same type of genetic information, pair up and exchange segments of DNA. This process is called crossing over and it results in the formation of genetically diverse chromosomes. After crossing over, the cell goes through the stages of meiosis I: prophase I, metaphase I, anaphase I, and telophase I. In meiosis II, the cell divides again, resulting in the formation of four genetically diverse daughter cells.

So, to sum up Mitosis is the process of cell division that results in the formation of two genetically identical daughter cells, while Meiosis is a type of cell division that occurs in the reproductive cells of organisms, such as sperm and eggs and results in the formation of four genetically diverse daughter cells.

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My personal interests are in instructional design and student study behavior, but I think creating suggestions for preparing students to use AI is an important perspective for some curriculum person to take. Here is an Edutopia article with some ideas and resources for introducing AI concepts to students.