About Birkel

I was first introduced to AI in 2022 shortly after ChatGPT was shared publicly with the world. At the time, I was impressed, but not so much that I did much with it that year. At the time, AI was a huge leap forward from any chatbot I'd seen before, and though it could do basic programming (I'm a computer science teacher), it wasn't nearly as impressive or worrisome as the hype led me to believe. At that time, AI had major limitations (or at least the free version was super limited). It could not provide me any useful information from the past 3 years (2019-2022), it could not generate images, it didn't cite sources, it wasn't nearly as accurate as it should have been, and it had grown in popularity so quickly that the services were often unavailable.

Fast forward to April, 2023. I'm at an educator's conference in Seaside Oregon. I decide to attend an AI presentation. The advancements in AI over the previous year blew me away. AI had just launched image generation and though it wasn't without issues, it was scary how good the images looked. It was significantly better at programming and could solve just about any program I'd ask my students to do. It could generate apps (like Tetris, or the color-memory game Simon). The free version was still limited in that it couldn't get any recent news/research, but it was significantly better at reasoning and the paid version ($20/month) could get new information/reasearch, use better reasoning models, and generate more images than the free version allowed. The presenter explained how he used AI in his classroom and how it was helping him as an educator.

That conference started me on an AI journey and down rabbit holes I never thought I'd explore. Since then, I've been diving deep into how AI impacts education. I took a cybersecurity class that opened my eyes to the policies that educators have to be aware of related to AI. I used AI inside and outside of the classroom. In the classroom I'd use it to help me develop lesson materials (worksheets, lesson plans, unit plans, etc.) and to align my content with frameworks my school had adopted (like IB and AVID). Outside of the classroom I mostly played with the image generation tools... I made a lot of Sasquatch images. But I also started using AI to make recipes for me, or help me plan for camping trips.

My exploration into AI and that initial conference presentation I attended inspired me to present to educators on the fun ways I use AI in and out of the classroom, which very quickly expanded to a 2-hour presentation covering 25+ different things I use AI for and examples of them.

I began to notice that AI was moving forward at a rappid pace (the fastest growing technology the world has ever seen), but education was not moving forward with it. Educators are being introduced to this technology and not being given training on its use. Educators are inputting student information into systems without realizing they just disclosed a student's Personally Identifiable Information to a machine that stores that data and is therefore breaking student privacy laws. Teachers are being encouraged to use AI without discussing the ethical concerns that come from generating images that have bias built into them, and without ensuring that the information is accurate.  I started taking some of these concerns and developing resources for them and that's how this site was formed.

I hope you get something useful out of these resources. I hope they help you become more AI literate.

Judson Birkel is an educator working @ South Salem High School, teaching computer science (CS).

His main focus is to provide a breadth of CS opportunities at the entry level and funnel those classes into more advanced programming classes that prepare students for college and careers.

His courses predominantly focus on the following topics

• Robotics (VEX)

• 2D Game Development (Gamemaker)

• Web Development (HTML, CSS, JS)

• Programming Fundamentals (Python)

• College-preparatory Computer Programming (Java)

• Issues & Ethics in  Technology (Cybersecurity, AI, and technology impact)

Judson completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Technology and Engineering Education (TEE) at Brigham Young University (BYU) and his Master of Science degree in Education: Information Technology at Western Oregon University (WOU). He's currently working on a Graduate Certificate in Cybersecurity through the University of Arkansas: Little Rock (UALR).

Judson spends most of his free time with his wife, their 3 children, 2 dogs, 5 chickens, and tiny pond of goldfish.