Over the last few weeks, I have been exploring what it means to be a maker in the education space through my CEP 811 course, primarily using videos, A.I. technology, and Universal Design of learning (UDL). Through my exploration, I have determined that a maker does not need to be a TikTok star or a person who creates super intricate Youtube videos. A maker only needs to be a person who creates something for the purpose of enhancing the world around them in some way, shape, or form.
The first thing I did in CEP 811 was make a TikTok introduction video for the course. Although I did not know it at the time, I was channeling the idea and spirit of UDL. In essence, the entire idea of UDL is to create inclusive and accessible learning environments for our students (CAST, 2018). When I was making the TikTok, my mindset was to try to make something that I might want my students to do in the future. To make something that, while I had never done something like it before, I thought could be a useful tool and activity in the classroom. In my video, I had posited that I may make future videos and continue making TikToks. This was my first foray into failure in this class, as I never made another one. Failure is something that all of us, both students and educators, need to become more comfortable with.
Another point of failure for me was my initial work with A.I. and ChatGPT. My first time working with ChatGPT, I did not know what to expect. Although I had chosen it as my “innovative technology”, I had never seen it or worked with it, only heard about it on the internet or through word of mouth from other teachers. I had assumed it would be some all powerful A.I. that could create perfect responses and essays based on prompts and inputs from the user. Based on this assumption, I tried using it to make purposefully flawed essays with the idea to have students fix the mistakes in the paper. What I quickly discovered, however, was that the A.I. was far from perfect and when prompted to create flawed papers, it would output papers that mentioned that they were flawed but were totally acceptable creations otherwise. I was stuck, as using the A.I. to make flawed papers had been my plan for my innovative technology lesson plan.
Funny thing about A.I. generated responses: they might be technically correct on most things, but they also lack the human element that makes writing great. After reflecting on this, I changed my plan, instead choosing to create a lesson in which students would compare their own writing to A.I. writing, then they would critique both pieces as a group. Overall, I found this experience to be an even better potential learning tool for my students, as it allowed for collaboration and outside the box thinking, much like what is described and used in 21st Century Learning (EF Explore America, 2012).
As my final creation for CEP 811, I synthesized a mock walkthrough of how I might want students to analyze A.I. writing, looking both for what made it good as well as where it fell short. My video analyzes a ChatGPT generated response to the prompt “In 3 paragraphs, explain how Red, not Andy, is the protagonist in Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption by Steven King”. I am hopeful this year that I will be able to implement this lesson, or at least some version of it, into my class, so that my students may grow as writers, and see A.I. generated responses as tools to learn, not the cheating strategies many teachers believe they are.
In this case, I made a video, but also the very act of creating a new type of lesson for my students makes me a maker. My mindset around “making” in general has really been altered through my work with this course, and it will definitely be something I carry with me as I continue forward as a teacher, and a maker.
References:
CAST. (2018). The UDL guidelines. CAST. https://udlguidelines.cast.org
EF Explore America. (2012). What is 21st century education? Youtube: What is 21st century education? EF Explore America. Retrieved June 10, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax5cNlutAys.
OpenAI. (2022, November 30). ChatGPT. https://openai.com/chatgpt
Spencer, J. (2021, August 24). What is Universal Design for Learning (UDL)? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL2xPwDrGqQ
TikTok. (n.d.). Explore - find your favourite videos on Tiktok. Explore - Find your favourite videos on TikTok. https://www.tiktok.com/