Musings on Mombasa Road
It’s been a busy week and thus far my IDEL work has consisted of a lot of thinking and spending time on Twitter, exploring the ‘bot world’.
I look forward to seeing if this week’s musings will radically change after doing the required reading.
So what are my preconceptions and initial thoughts?
No significant learning happens without a significant relationship.
James P. Comer’s comment has been very much at the heart of my experience of education. I became a much better teacher when I realised after a few years that establishing a relationship with my pupils really made a difference. When I started thinking of the pupils as ‘real people’, rather than a row of terrifying faces in front of me, and empathy became an important teaching attribute my pupils blossomed. That awareness of the other means I think about how my lessons come across; is what I’m doing boring? Is it challenging? What experience are the pupils living in a lesson with me as a teacher? As a result I have been a successful teacher and my pupils have been successful learners.
So what will happen to that essentially humanist idea of a significant relationship if a Bot comes into play? How will that empathetic relationship between the learner and teacher be affected? Does it matter? Will the learning be as successful? Is a bot a threat or a potential of what is to come?
Does the teacher need to be part of the design of the AI revolution?
Will the bot be a teacher or merely an assistant?
On hearing about this week’s IDEL tasks, my 19 year old showed me this video:
https://youtu.be/kopoLzvh5jY
A great visual example to show intelligence in development.
But how will a bot that might actually ‘educate’, get it right? Olivia Taters the Twitter bot is a good example of the algorithm getting too literal. What if my bot starts choosing the wrong information to tweet? The human capacity to make a judgement is missing in the ‘bot world’.
AIEd within education should be more than creating bots to make the teacher’s life easier. Whilst a bot to remind me about deadlines might be useful, it’s not terribly interesting. Sian Bayne and her constructivist arguments backs up this instinct.
I permanently rail against my children who no longer read for Information. I have to remind myself they’re still learning, and learning very effectively. How do they glean their information? Through technology.
Let’s see if I can answer any of my questions in a week’s time? Will I think differently?
That’s a good point about recognising the need to build relationships with your pupils. I wonder if the significant attrition rate of teachers (at least in the UK) is partly because these teachers fail to make that realisation?
The video is really interesting and useful explanation of machine learning – especially the mentions of the volume of work and data involved, eg, “they practiced millions of times”. Teacherbots can be pretty interesting – useful in terms of automated FAQs responders but also as something more playful as in Bayne’s examples. One of the more successful TeacherBots is “Jill Watson” at Georgia Institute of Technology – see https://gvu.gatech.edu/research/projects/virtual-teaching-assistant-jill-watson
I think the bot was nominated for some teaching awards *before* the students knew it was a bot. That in turn raises a key ethical question of whether students must be informed that they are being ‘taught’ by a bot. Although, what distinguishes a bot from any other algorithm (including Google search) from an ethical point of view is a moot point.
Anyway, I’ll be interested in your next set of thoughts on this topic.