Some thoughts on ChatGPT / Education

Some thoughts / questions on ChatGPT and how it will impact education.

  • How many students are already using it to write essays, book reports, etc.?
  • What is the current awareness of educators about it and how many schools already have written policies in place about it this technology?
  • Should it be highly discouraged for students, or could it be a good tool – eg to get a basic outline for an essay and then authentically write the essay based on that outline?

Here’s an example of ChatGPT providing an outline for a book report. Using this verbatim would be cheating of course but what if the student just used this as a framework for their report? I can see this also being useful for teachers for lesson planning.

Update:
The Hard Fork podcast interviewed a teacher who is very optimistic about using Chat GPT in the class room. This is in contrast to other stories that have developed around this – like the New York City school district banning Chat GPT in the classroom and another school teacher calling this the end of high-school English.