School and artificial intelligence what the future will look like
Is the school on high alert? The new chatbot ChatGPT writes texts, performs translations, and solves math problems by fishing in the universal encyclopedia that is the Web. And it threatens to retire a 100-year-old model. But solutions exist. Let’s try themThe new chatbot ChatGPT, which threatens to change some of our writing habits forever, for now, is doing better at producing a Formula One article than a paraphrase of a literary classic.
But give it a few months and it won’t: OpenAI’s intelligent software, released in November, is not just a search engine like Google, sorting the results found on the Web. It can write texts, generate reports, invent poems, solve complex problems, and much more by “fishing” in the universal encyclopedia that is on the web and processing them according to the directions it receives.
Teaching experts, professors, and principals are on high alert: Is this the end of homework because anyone can copy from an “artificial” partner who is better than him or her? Or is it even approaching the end of the educational model of a school that risks preparing students for yesterday’s world instead of tomorrow’s?
First BAN
The alarm went off, as a matter of course, in the United States: the heads of school districts in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle have banned students from using computers that have access to Artificial Intelligence systems. Goal: to take time to find effective teaching solutions. Australian universities are considering whether to return to pen and paper.
“Search engines sort our search results according to relevance, ChatGPT is a true digital assistant that, if queried correctly, can create coherent and correct original texts.I understand the concerns and disquiet because it risks making homework based on text compilation or problem-solving obsolete in a few months.”
Not only traditional homework, however, is in danger of being outdated. It could also retire a 100-year-old school model: too easy for students to be replaced by ChatGPT and copied, too difficult for professors to discover. “ChatGPT’s potential is immense, what we can do is check its work, but apparently with writing it is faster and more accurate.”
Theory, practice, education
Schools should teach students how to use the Internet. Teachers should assign homework that demands originality, the skill to establish links, and analytical thinking, instead of rote learning tasks. Students could carry out paraphrasing and summarizing activities exclusively during class hours.. However, to compete with ChatGPT, students need to understand that the purpose of going to school is to learn, and copying is unnecessary.
Gpt’s advice to the professor
A Lecturer took a test asking ChatGpt how to prevent students from cheating? “Among the seven pieces of advice,” he recounts, “it suggested the use of anti-plagiarism software and to modify my teaching.” Smart answer, no doubt, and a nice suggestion for teachers:
“Meanwhile, Artificial Intelligence poses a much broader problem than school starting with intellectual property rights. As for the school, we teachers will be forced to revise our obsession with control and copying. It would undermine an outcome- and performance-driven school system in what is now an ongoing war between students and professors, who do not always remember that the purpose of school is learning and not just verification of learning.”
But there is no need to be afraid of technology: in perspective, once ChatGPT has learned poems and authors, including Italian ones, according to Galiano, it could also be a useful aid to which to delegate some tasks: “After all, no one today would dream of going to the library to do school research.
What students will need more and more in the future is not information gathering but the ability to critically read what artificial intelligence is telling you.” Easier said than done, however: it would take “additional training courses for teachers to enable everyone to be able to communicate with a generation that is faster than we are at interacting with technology.”
The urgency to change
ChatGPT raised the issue of changing teaching and homework in the age of the internet. The apps on the internet solve complex equations, translate languages, and provide ready-made papers on various topics. Due to this, educators consider asking students to do research papers as an incitement to plagiarism.
Although some professors have not adapted to the technological shock created by the Covid-19 pandemic, tens of thousands have taken online courses offered by universities to adjust assignments and tests. The European Commission has an Action Plan for Digital Education 2021-2027, and the Italian Ministry of Economic Development has published an Artificial Intelligence Strategy that emphasizes the need to redesign school curriculums to include learning in the field of AI and data, and to invest in updating students’ and teaching staff’s skills.
School Plan 4.0
Last August, Europe announced the School 4.0 Plan as part of the NRP investments. The plan aims to build one hundred thousand innovative classrooms and laboratories for digital professions of the future by 2025, with an investment of more than two billion euros. This initiative goes beyond the traditional flipped classes, which have been at the forefront of education during the web era.
Digital education is crucial, and it must include responsible technology use, cybersecurity, programming, and data analysis. People should govern and introduce Artificial Intelligence in schools through a set of rules, rather than fearing it Proper teacher training is necessary to achieve this goal. If well-guided, students can enhance their skills and cultivate their talents, which is the true purpose of schools that are ready to meet the challenges of the future
