“ChatGPT is, quite simply, the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public… For most of the past decade, A.I. chatbots have been terrible — impressive only if you cherry-pick the bot’s best responses and throw out the rest. In recent years, a few A.I. tools have gotten good at doing narrow and well-defined tasks, like writing marketing copy, but they still tend to flail when taken outside their comfort zones… But ChatGPT feels different. Smarter. Weirder. More flexible. It can write jokes (some of which are actually funny), working computer code and college-level essays. It can also guess at medical diagnoses, create text-based Harry Potter games and explain scientific concepts at multiple levels of difficulty.
“There has been a longstanding belief in education that, after the early years of their career, a teacher’s experience has little to no influence on their ability to help pupils learn (Rice, 2003; Hanushek and Luque, 2003; Rockoff, 2004). It has been thought that teachers undergo a steep learning curve upon entering the profession, lasting three to five years, before plateauing for the remainder of their careers (Rivkin et al, 2005)… However, some more recent research appears to contradict this longstanding hypothesis. In their review of US research published on this subject since 2003, Podolsky et al (2019) suggest that effectiveness increases throughout a teacher’s career… In their review of 30 studies, Podolsky et al find that, after a steep initial incline upon entering the profession, teachers tend to follow an upward trajectory of effectiveness that continues into the second, and at times third decade of teaching.”
““I don’t know anybody my age who’s like, ‘Yeah, I want to have kids,’” said… a 15-year-old junior.”
“Many Republicans believe most Democrats want to teach a history defined by shameful oppression and white guilt. Many Democrats believe most Republicans want to focus on the white majority and overlook slavery and racism. But we found that both impressions are wrong.”
“This school year in particular, it seems like every interaction between teachers and administrators is contentious. Most leaders have done their level best to respond to the malaise sweeping through the teaching profession… Still, teaching is such a demanding profession that these measures seem meretricious, even insulting. On top of that, an education leader’s job is not merely to respond to teachers’ problems, but to enact innovation. Pushing for change now , of all times, can make you feel like a monster—a sociopathic tyrant bludgeoning hardworking teachers with unwanted initiatives. If you had impostor syndrome before, it’s most likely on overdrive these days.”
“Colorado’s law – passed in 2019 – is pretty extensive. It requires school districts to completely overhaul their reading curriculum. As of this school year, all districts must use an “evidence and scientifically based” reading program, teachers all have to go through 45 hours of training on it, and they even banned curriculum rooted in balanced literacy.”
““The TikTok algorithm is designed for doomscrolling,” Volland says. “Being so overwhelmed by the volume of information makes it harder to be able to distinguish high- from low-quality content. It can make us feel more anxious, and we should be cognizant of that for young people who are spending so much time on the platform.””
“I share my story, one of love of science and discovery, in hopes of inspiring the next generation to enter health-related careers — and to stay the course, regardless of challenges and surprises that might arise.”
“How can managers and organizations that need or want to leverage these technologies protect multiple values in their decisions and routines to avoid the tyranny of technique? We propose that adhering to three principles can help: 1) Beware of proxies and scaling effects. 2) Strategically insert human interventions into your algorithmic decision-making. 3) Create evaluative systems that account for multiple values. We’ll look more closely at each of these principles below.”
Copyright
Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.
Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.
– Peter Nilsson