Episode 27 - How to NOT Stupefy Students with AI
00:00:00 Jon Bergmann: Welcome to the second episode of my rebooted podcast where we seek to reach every student. Hey, this is John Bergman and I've had a crazy career in education, almost four decades working with students and teachers. I've had the privilege of teaching amazing students for thirty of those thirty-nine years, and I did a stint as Director of Tech, and I also had the amazing opportunity to consult with schools across the globe after my first book, which was co-written with Aaron Sams, took off, Flip Your Classroom. That gave me a global perspective on education that has, I hope, enabled me to have a voice in today's educational landscape. If you recall, in the last episode, we talked about how we need to be cautious with AI, especially with regards to young novice learners. In my experience with my own students, By the way, I'm recording this in my classroom. Students are just too quick to take the easy way out with AI and have it do the work for them. And I'm not just talking about cheating with AI, but rather having it do some of the higher cognitive thinking for them. One metaphor I shared in a recent article is that using AI is like using a forklift to lift weights. You don't get the benefit of the workout. And as I promised in the last episode, what I want to talk about in this episode is I want to talk about six things we can do to prevent what I call AI foolishness or to be blunt, what I've called AI stupefaction. We don't want to stupefy our students. We want them to be the leaders of the world and use AI in an appropriate manner. And so at the article, I'll link in the, in the show notes, um, I, I called, I called it AI will stupefy our students unless we do these six things. And today I want to talk about those six things. And actually I'm going to add a seventh. Since that arc went out, I've thought some more about it. So let's have at it. What can we do? So my main premise is that AI When used poorly will reduce the cognitive abilities of our students because they will over rely on it and they will be stupefied. John Hattie said, In his article that I cite in the article, he's got two articles there, is that there'll be a downgrading of human intelligence. And as a teacher, I do not want that for my students. I'm sure you don't for yours. So is there hope? Is there hope to prevent the stupefaction of students? And I believe the answer is yes. So as I've thought about this, and you know, I would love to hear your comments. This may not be an exhaustive list, but this is the list that I've come up with so far. In the work I've been doing with AI for the last year or so.
00:02:46 Jon Bergmann: My number one comment is I think we need to reimagine what happens in the classroom. You know, what we've been doing for many years, we've sent the cognitively complex tasks home. And when the students take the cognitively complex tasks home, sometimes they will do that and sometimes not. But in the age of AI, they can do the cognitively complex tasks at home. Well, they can't do it necessarily, but they can have the AI do it for them. All right. Many of us would call that cheating. But as I've thought about this, and some of you know, I'm known for flip the classroom model. In a flipped model, that's the whole idea. That's the whole premise of flipped learning is that a student does the cognitively Uncomplex thing as homework. They, they get exposed to the pre-learning activity, which should be done at say a lower level blooms activity. And then in class you do the more cognitively complex task. And so in this age, my thinking is, is that flip learning is even more of a model in the age of AI because it's going to allow. You to have them do the harder thinking in your presence where you have more control of the environment, less access to AI. What I want my students to do is I want them to think on their own, build their own neural networks And not offload them to AI. Again, I'm not negative on AI. Hear me carefully. Um, yeah. Number two, so number one is re-imagine what happens in the classroom. Number two is de-emphasize inappropriate use of tech in the classroom. I think there's a temptation, and I've seen this in my own class, is To jump on your phone or your device, whatever device your students might have in the classroom. And ask the AI agent to help you solve the problem. I have seen this with my own students. Some of my most advanced students who have jumped onto an AI platform on a laptop. Their phones have to be put away. Uh, and then they've jumped too early to do the work. And I think we want to maybe sound weird, but to ban the AI when you want them to do that mental work themselves. I'm not sure how to do that except to tell them don't do it. Uh, but now in my room I have more control over that setting. I can't do it when they do these things So number two is de-emphasize inappropriate use of tech in the classroom. Number three, use AI as a tutor when in class. So here's where I think there's a really positive use of AI. The AI tutorials that are out there The AI tutor software that's out there is getting way, way good. And in fact, in the next class period, I am, it's, it's lunchtime right now. And what I will do with my students is I will have them. Um, do a five minute AI activity based on last night's video. So it's flipped classrooms. My students are going to have watched a video in theory, at least. And I have a five minute AI thing. That's going to ask them some questions about the video, two questions actually. And it's going to grade their performance. I want it just to be a five minute activity. It's a bell ringer, et cetera. Now, if we're, I, And when I do AI in the classroom in the future, I'm going to use tutorials or a tutorial program, a tutor, I guess you call it AI tutor. To help them with difficult concepts. Um, I've especially seen this work. Say let's you're, you're, you're teaching, um, a, a second language, a world language, you're teaching Spanish or Mandarin, Or maybe you're teaching English and you don't work in a school, you know, in a country where English is not the dominant language. And you are... These AI tutors are amazing. They could... Teach you to talk in the target language and you could just have a conversation with the AI. I am a, uh, big time user of, uh, uh, AI software language learning models. Uh, I've been using Duolingo now. I think I'm on 1700 days in a row. I know that's crazy. And now one feature it has is that I can have a chat with Lily. Lily is their AI agent and I have a chance to talk to her. Or really it's, she's not her, she's in it. I get to talk to it and we can have a conversation and it corrects my mistakes. And, uh, really it's just been such a good thing to now just move into conversational Spanish. As I am learning the language. So number three, use AI as a tutor when in class. Notice not out of class because then there's just too much of a temptation. Number four, teach students how to use AI as a collaborator to enhance their learning. So the AI can be very powerful. When we allow it to take us to the next level, to collaborate with us, to brainstorm those kinds of things. Again, I still think this probably should happen in the class to give us new ideas. Don't use it as the beginning. But as something to take it to the next level. That's what I want to get at with this. Teach students how to use A as a collaborator when in the classroom. And number five. I want you to implement mastering model at scale. So mastery model, the mastery learning model says that students can move through the content at a flexible pace. I've written an entire book on this concept. It doesn't have the AI piece. It's now a couple of years out. Or the Master Learning Handbook. And in this model, not all students have to be on the same page at the same time in the same class. Uh, because I don't believe all students learn at the same pace. And so if we allow them to move through the content at a flexible pace, then what you can have is that the AI tutors can help students where they're particularly at. Not where they are also sitting at the same time. You see the one size fits all educational model. I don't think works. We need a model where students can master content as they move forward. All right, so to review the first five, I'll get to number six and seven. Reimagine what happens in the classroom. Number two, de-emphasize inappropriate use of technology. Number three, use AI as a tutor when in class. Number four, teach students how to use AI as a collaborator. Number five, implement master learning. And number six, I think we need to expect more. So if you teach English or something where you're expecting writing, I do as a science teacher even, I teach them how to write lab reports and things like that is because they have access to some AI programs or they could do it in class or whatever. They should be able to do. Just think of some grammar and punctuation. It can really clean things up. Um, as an author, I mean, my process, I would sit down for three hours at a time when I wrote my last book. And I would write for three hours at a time. I was a summer. I would go swimming in the morning. And then for three hours, I'd go to Starbucks and sit and type. But when I was done with a chapter, now key, when I was done with a chapter, I'd turn on the Grammarly. And I have Grammarly like fixed stuff. Um, uh, Grammarly has come a long ways since I wrote that book, by the way, and Grammarly has become almost too helpful, but I still use it, I guess, to help clean up my language and make it sound more, uh, Uh, yeah, like I'm smarter than I am. So, uh, but I think we can expect more because if we're going to expect AI, then a lot of the Things that AI can do should make their communication, um, their assessments more at a higher quality. So let's expect more of our students in the midst of AI. And my bonus content, number seven, is I think we need to stop sending homework home that's chat GPTable, so to speak. if you're sending something home that you know that ChatGPT or whatever AI is going to really be able to solve that problem, you can't send that stuff home because I don't believe you can trust that your students will. Actually do the work. Um, unless, uh, your students are different than mine. I mean, I teach at a high performing school and even my students, I know, yeah, they, they sometimes will cut corners. And so don't send home chat GPTable things. I know that's, that's hard to figure out what that looks like. That's again why I would go back to kind of the flipped classroom model where you could say, hey, watch this short video about this particular topic, whether it's like how to, uh, read a particular, uh, a topic sentence or the theme of, of, um. Shakespearean play or how to solve this math problem or What's your best understanding of atomic theory in a chemistry classroom or you're teaching about the, uh, beginnings of World War II or whatever it is you do, then that's something that's not chat GPT-able. Now there's still some AI stuff that could like summarize a video, things like that. But if you're doing it right, then From a perspective of a teacher who knows how to flip their classroom well, for example, what that's going to allow you to do is that if you keep it short, then the best thing for them to do is to say, you know, just watch whatever video you've assigned. So I am not anti AI. I do believe that AI is, is here to stay. It's not going away. The worst AI that our students have ever seen is the one that's out there right now. It's only going to get better. More powerful, quicker, and it's going to make less mistakes. So I get that. But my fear, as I said, I don't want my students to become stupefied. I want them to be the ones who achieve success. Um, so much more and for them to do that, um, I believe we in the classroom need to take some responsibility and begin thinking how we can use AI in an appropriate ways so that our students brains will grow. Appropriately grow and learn and take the hard road. In the next episode, I want to talk about A conversation I had with my students yesterday, in fact. I had a conversation with my students yesterday and the conversation, the key thing that we talked about was, I actually had them read this article about stupefaction and AI. And I challenged them to say, you have to be the one Who goes the extra mile to work hard because the only person you're going to hurt is yourself. And they had some really candid thoughts that I want to share with you guys in the next episode. Hey, this is John Bergman. Hey, if you want to follow me, follow me on Twitter. I'm at John Bergman. John has no H, so J-O-N, and Bergman has two Ns, or you can simply go to johnbergman.com. By the way, you can sign up for my free newsletter there. You can also take courses. I've got courses on how the best practices of flipped learning, both in K-12 and higher education. I've also got a mastery learning, uh, Course on how to do mastery learning, uh, in, in your class. So I encourage you to take that course too. And the podcast, uh, this podcast, you can find us at reach every student.com. That's right. Reach every student.com to listen to this podcast. Share it with your friends. Like it on Spotify or Apple or wherever you happen to listen to this podcast. Have a great day.
