I didn’t want to be the only person without a ChatGPT article (read: FOMO). Here is one I wrote for ATLIS (Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools), a professional organization to which I belong.
Aside from discussions of the benefits versus pitfalls of ChatGPT, there is a larger narrative about the adaptability of education vis-a-vis other industries. All sorts of people and organizations are playing with ChatGPT in order to learn more about its capabilities and limitations. At the same time, schools are wrestling with whether to ban it or not. I would not ban it. I would use it as a catalyst for change that will exceed the impetuous of the pandemic.
Why are schools hesitant to use ChatGPT? Schools have been around for hundreds of years and they were designed as bureaucracies, which are resistant to change. More so than other industries. ChatGPT will expose schools’ overreliance on text. Scott Rosenberg said it well, “any discipline or business built on foundations of text is in the blast radius.” Maybe schools will invest more time in rekindling relationships (a major positive indicator of engagement and achievement) with students and using more oral conversations to assess understanding.
