United States

ChatGPT: Student insights are necessary to help universities plan for the future — from theconversation.com by Alpha Abebe and Fenella Amarasinghe

Excerpt:

In the race to get ahead of new technologies, are we forgetting about the perspectives of the most important stakeholders within our post-secondary institutions: the students?

Leaving students out of early discussions and decision-making processes is almost always a recipe for ill-fitting, ineffective and/or damaging approaches. The mantra “nothing for us without us” comes to mind here.

Evolving Zoom IQ, our smart companion, with new features and a collaboration with OpenAI

On 03/28/2023, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, communications, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, innovation, multimedia, tools, United States, user experience (UX), vendors, videoconferencing, by Daniel Christian

Evolving Zoom IQ, our smart companion, with new features and a collaboration with OpenAI — from blog.zoom.us

Excerpt:

Today we’re announcing that we’re evolving the capabilities of Zoom IQ to become a smart companion that empowers collaboration and unlocks people’s potential by summarizing chat threads, organizing ideas, drafting content for chats, emails, and whiteboard sessions, creating meeting agendas, and more.

To help new students adapt, some colleges are eliminating grades [Marcus]

On 03/28/2023, in assessment, change, colleges, credentialing, experimentation, higher education, ideas, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, student-related, teaching & learning, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

To help new students adapt, some colleges are eliminating grades — from npr.org by Jon Marcus

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Experiences like these are among the reasons behind a growing movement to stop assigning conventional A through F letter grades to first-year college students and, sometimes, upperclassmen.

Called “un-grading,” the idea is meant to ease the transition to higher education — especially for freshmen who are the first in their families to go to college or who weren’t well prepared for college-level work in high school and need more time to master it.

But advocates say the most important reason to adopt un-grading is that students have become so preoccupied with grades, they aren’t actually learning.

Which trends are on your radar? Fantastic resource for #HigherEducation about the changing ecology: Higher Learning Commission’s Annual Trends Report. https://t.co/Lzgph6u3lP

— Melanie Booth, Ed.D. (@boothmelanie) March 25, 2023

Also relevant/see:

“Godfather of artificial intelligence” weighs in on the past and potential of AI — from cbsnews.com
Sketching the Field of AI Tools for Local Newsrooms — from medium.com by Dalia Hashim
Adobe Firefly, Bing Image Creator, Canva’s AI, ChatGPT Plugins, Google Workspace AI, Microsoft Loop, Runway Gen2 – Volume 03 — from heatherbcooper.substack.com by Heather Cooper
Another week of everything, everywhere, all at once in AI news – and get my free AI Visual toolkit!
It takes a few dollars and 8 minutes to create a deepfake. And that’s only the start — from npr.org by Shannon Bond; with thanks to Mr. Robert Gibson on LinkedIn for this resource
We’ve just gone from a simple teacher-learner model to a new world of AI teachers – a new pedAIgogy — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark

ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like. — from technologyreview.com by David Rotman
New large language models will transform many jobs. Whether they will lead to widespread prosperity or not is up to us.
Is GPT-4 Worth the Subscription? Here’s What You Should Know — from wired.com Reece Rogers
The new algorithm is exclusive to ChatGPT Plus, OpenAI’s subscriber-only service. We signed up and put it to the test.
Superhuman: What can AI do in 30 minutes? — from oneusefulthing.substack.com Ethan Mollick
AI multiplies your efforts. I found out by how much…

Duolingo is working on a music app [Mascarenhas]

On 03/27/2023, in 24x7x365 access, languages and translation, music, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Duolingo is working on a music app — from techcrunch.com by Natasha Mascarenhas

Excerpt:

Duolingo, a language learning app with over 500 million users, is working on a music app, TechCrunch has learned.

The Pittsburgh-based tech company currently has a small team working on a music product and is hiring a learning scientist who is an “expert in music education who combines both theoretical knowledge of relevant learning science research and hands-on teaching experience,” according to a job posting listed on Duolingo’s career page.

In October 2022, the company announced Duolingo Math in its first subject expansion beyond its original roots of language learning and literacy. The math app is free and similar to language learning; both require methodical thinking and the ability to apply functions to get to answers.

From DSC:
While I continue to try and review/pulse-check the K12 learning ecosystem, it struck me that we need new, DIRECT communication channels between educators, support staff, administrators, and legislators — and possibly others.

That is:

How can teachers, support staff, and administrators talk directly to legislators?
How can legislators communicate with teachers, support staff, and administrators?
Should we require relevant legislators (i.e., those individuals sponsoring bills or major changes to our k12 learning ecosystem) to go through training on how students learn?
What communication vehicles are present? Can they be anonymous?
Should there be an idea 1-800 hotline or an idea “mailbox” (digital and/or analog based)?

And what about the students themselves and/or their parents/guardians? Should they be involved as well?

Law has a magic wand now — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong
Some people think Large Language Models will transform the practice of law. I think it’s bigger than that.

Excerpts:

ChatGPT4 can also do things that only lawyers (used to be able to) do. It can look up and summarize a court decision, analyze and apply sections of copyright law, and generate a statement of claim for breach of contract.
…
What happens when you introduce a magic wand into the legal market? On the buyer side, you reduce by a staggering degree the volume of tasks that you need to pay lawyers (whether in-house or outside counsel) to perform. It won’t happen overnight: Developing, testing, revising, approving, and installing these sorts of systems in corporations will take time. But once that’s done, the beauty of LLMs like ChatGPT4 is that they are not expert systems. Anyone can use them. Anyone will.

But I can’t shake the feeling that someday, we’ll divide the history of legal services into “Before GPT4” and “After GPT4.” I think it’s that big.

From DSC:
Jordan mentions: “Some people think Large Language Models will transform the practice of law. I think it’s bigger than that.”

I agree with Jordan. It most assuredly IS bigger than that. AI will profoundly impact many industries/disciplines. The legal sector is but one of them. Education is another. People’s expectations are now changing — and the “ramification wheels” are now in motion.

I take the position that many others have as well (at least as of this point in time) that take the position that AI will supplement humans’ capabilities and activities. But those who know AI-driven apps will outcompete those who don’t know about such apps.

Nvidia will bring AI to every industry, says CEO Jensen Huang in GTC keynote: ‘We are at the iPhone moment of AI’ — from venturebeat.com by Sharon Goldman

Excerpt:

As Nvidia’s annual GTC conference gets underway, founder and CEO Jensen Huang, in his characteristic leather jacket and standing in front of a vertical green wall at Nvidia headquarters in Santa Clara, California, delivered a highly-anticipated keynote that focused almost entirely on AI. His presentation announced partnerships with Google, Microsoft and Oracle, among others, to bring new AI, simulation and collaboration capabilities to “every industry.”

Introducing Mozilla.ai: Investing in trustworthy AI — from blog.mozilla.org by Mark Surman
We’re committing $30M to build Mozilla.ai: A startup — and a community — building a trustworthy, independent, and open-source AI ecosystem.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

We’re only three months into 2023, and it’s already clear what one of the biggest stories of the year is: AI. AI has seized the public’s attention like Netscape did in 1994, and the iPhone did in 2007.

New tools like Stable Diffusion and the just-released GPT-4 are reshaping not just how we think about the internet, but also communication and creativity and society at large. Meanwhile, relatively older AI tools like the recommendation engines that power YouTube, TikTok and other social apps are growing even more powerful — and continuing to influence billions of lives.

This new wave of AI has generated excitement, but also significant apprehension. We aren’t just wondering What’s possible? and How can people benefit? We’re also wondering What could go wrong? and How can we address it? Two decades of social media, smartphones and their consequences have made us leery.

ChatGPT plugins — from openai.com

Excerpt:

Users have been asking for plugins since we launched ChatGPT (and many developers are experimenting with similar ideas) because they unlock a vast range of possible use cases. We’re starting with a small set of users and are planning to gradually roll out larger-scale access as we learn more (for plugin developers, ChatGPT users, and after an alpha period, API users who would like to integrate plugins into their products). We’re excited to build a community shaping the future of the human–AI interaction paradigm.

We’ve added initial support for ChatGPT plugins — a protocol for developers to build tools for ChatGPT, with safety as a core design principle. Deploying iteratively (starting with a small number of users & developers) to learn from contact with reality: https://t.co/ySek2oevod pic.twitter.com/S61MTpddOV

— Greg Brockman (@gdb) March 23, 2023

Bots like ChatGPT aren’t sentient. Why do we insist on making them seem like they are? — from cbc.ca by Matt Meuse
‘There’s no secret homunculus inside the system that’s understanding what you’re talking about’

Excerpt:

LLMs like ChatGPT are trained on massive troves of text, which they use to assemble responses to questions by analyzing and predicting what words could most plausibly come next based on the context of other words. One way to think of it, as Marcus has memorably described it, is “auto-complete on steroids.”

Marcus says it’s important to understand that even though the results sound human, these systems don’t “understand” the words or the concepts behind them in any meaningful way. But because the results are so convincing, that can be easy to forget.

“We’re doing a kind of anthropomorphization … where we’re attributing some kind of animacy and life and intelligence there that isn’t really,” he said.

10 gifts we unboxed at Canva Create — from canva.com
Earlier this week we dropped 10 unopened gifts onto the Canva homepage of 125 million people across the globe. Today, we unwrapped them on the stage at Canva Create.

Google Bard Plagiarized Our Article, Then Apologized When Caught — from tomshardware.com by Avram Piltch
The chatbot implied that it had conducted its own CPU tests.

Using AI to Help Organize Lesson Plans [Valenzuela] + several other items from edutopia.org

On 03/22/2023, in education, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, Learning Experience Design, participation, pedagogy, productivity / tips and tricks, teachers, United States, by Daniel Christian

Using AI to Help Organize Lesson Plans — from edutopia.org by Jorge Valenzuela
Artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT can help educators find activities that are set up to teach designated skills.

Excerpt:

My middle school students have to write a personal narrative about their experience with leadership and service. Which two or three specific Common Core State Standards are relevant to this task?
Now rewrite those standards into three to four “I can” statements. Although the chatbot can give you a great starting point, you may need to reword these into learning goals better suited for your students.
What formative assessments (formal and informal) can I use to check my students’ understanding of these standards?
Given your “I can” statements, what lessons can I teach to help my students write their best personal narratives?
Which high-yielding strategies can I use to teach these lessons? I aim to engage all my learners in tandem with increasing academic achievement.
You mentioned using “differentiated instruction.” What methods can I use to support my English language learners to improve their narratives?
Please provide the sources you used for your responses with websites.

10 Powerful Ways to End Your Lessons — from edutopia.org by Andrew Boryga
Instead of cleaning up or going over homework assignments, try these creative activities that can help students make sense of new material—and have fun in the process.

Excerpts:

4. Create News “Headlines” or “Six-word Summaries”: Pair students off and tell them to imagine they’re writing news headlines that summarize what they’ve learned. Challenge each pair to write at least two headlines, then come back together to review the headlines. Alternatively, you can do this as an entire class activity, writing the headlines suggested by students on your whiteboard.
…
5. Traffic Light: …Before students leave the room, they take sticky notes and write one thing they learned in the lesson and place it on the green light, one thing they’re still mulling over and place it on yellow light, and one thing they’re struggling to understand and place it on the red light.

2 Ways to Encourage Better Note-Taking — from edutopia.org by Marianna Ruggerio
Do your high school students think that taking notes during class means writing down everything you say? You can teach them effective note-taking skills that increase their engagement.

Distance Learning Strategies to Bring Back to the Classroom — from edutopia.org by Sarah Cooper
When schools closed, teachers were forced to get creative—and they’ve learned things they can use when they’re back at school.

DC: What a great, smart move! I wish more schools of education would do this!

On 03/22/2023, in colleges, Daniel S. Christian, education, ideas, instructional design, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, psychology, student teaching/teacher education, teachers, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

DC: What a great, smart move! I wish more schools of education would do this!

“TCU is integrating the science of learning into undergraduate teacher education.”https://t.co/Jvd69l37vv #studentteaching #schoolsofeducation #learningscience #cognitivepsychology #learning

— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) March 22, 2023

DC: Other potential curricula would involve instructional design and instructional technology (which now includes using AI).

How AI will revolutionize the practice of law [Villasenor]

On 03/22/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, ideas, innovation, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, society, sociology, tools, United States, by Daniel Christian

How AI will revolutionize the practice of law — from brookings.edu by John Villasenor

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to fundamentally reshape the practice of law.

Excerpt:

BROADENING ACCESS TO LEGAL SERVICES
AI also has the potential to dramatically broaden access to legal services, which are prohibitively expensive for many individuals and small businesses. As the Center for American Progress has written, “[p]romoting equal, meaningful access to legal representation in the U.S. justice system is critical to ending poverty, combating discrimination, and creating opportunity.”

AI will make it much less costly to initiate and pursue litigation. For instance, it is now possible with one click to automatically generate a 1000-word lawsuit against robocallers. More generally, drafting a well-written complaint will require more than a single click, but in some scenarios, not much more. These changes will make it much easier for law firms to expand services to lower-income clients.

Learning Ecosystems

Higher Learning Commission’s 2023 Trends

Bruff: “Did you know that the entire collection of teaching guides written by the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching has been shared?”

Duolingo is working on a music app [Mascarenhas]

DC: What a great, smart move! I wish more schools of education would do this!

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