I know some parents may be worried about AI and ChatGPT diluting the quality of their kids education.
AI is something that we need to help our kids understand, it’s the next tool in education and the workplace. My staff and I use GPT every single day and it’s a fantastic tool when used correctly and an obvious lazy move when used poorly. As an assessor, I can tell if my staff or students have used it to enhance their output or replace it.
I wanted to provide two simple examples from Zach’s work, as many of you know, Zach is dyslexic, he’s learning to overcome that brilliantly and GPT is just one tool in his arsenal, along with site memorization, daily reading, the David Method, and more. However, all kids can benefit from GPT as a tool and I encourage parents to get involved in this as too many schools are banning the technology.
Assessment 1-
Zach was to read a persuasive report on recycling and answer a few questions. Instead, we did the basic activity, then we built on it with GPT, we reviewed the letter line by line, and Zach highlighted in green, orange, and red what he agreed and disagreed with.
Then I asked him what we wanted to change. We put all of this into GPT and asked it to spit out a response.
Again, line by line, we reviewed and tweaked what he liked, what he thought worked, and what didn’t.
You can see the initial letter and the final product and if you asked Zach, he’d tell you why he thought it was more persuasive. Outcomes from this:
1. Learning how to think about persuasion
2. Learning it’s ok to have nuanced perspectives about topics
3. Learning how to use technology
4. Learning to read, review and edit carefully
Content covered-
Technology
Environment
English
Assessment 2-
We went to a wildlife park and listened to a 20-minute talk about the environmental importance of Dingoes and their role as trophic regulators and apex predators. It was a great talk, and I asked the boys to remember the terms apex predator and trophic cascade for later. They had an awesome time with the dingoes.
Today, Zach and I read a book on dingoes and two short documentaries (12 min each on youtube) about trophic cascades to reinforce and look at different examples.
Then again, we put the parameters of what we wanted chat gpt to create. Again, we read line by line, deleted, removed, and added. Only after Zach was happy and could read it through and explain what each paragraph meant in his own words, did we finalize.
Skills-
1. Using technology
2. Researching using various sources of information
3. Reading
4. Editing, writing, reviewing
5. Presenting (at the end he had to present and read the report to Mike)
Content covered-
Environment – trophic levels, trophic cascades
Government- discussion about government policies (we also decided on a petition to sign and donate to)
English- reading, writing, persuasion, editing
We use ChatGPT as a tool in the Hollows school, to speed up the content creation and research phase, so that we can spend more time on more meaningful activities such as verification of information (GPT doesn’t always get it right, so you need to check), engaging more deeply in the content, and ensuring that topics are more deeply understood and therefore positions can be more strongly supported. These are the skills I know my kids will need as they move out into the world and workforce.
If you are a teacher or trainer, please consider speaking to your school to allow this technology to enhance your practices.
If you are a parent, talk to your schools about their decision and talk to your kids about how to use this technology, if your school doesn’t allow it at school, I actively encourage you to sit with your kids and apply this strategy to their assessments outside of school.
Schools may not want to adapt but fair warning to the education system, there are those of us who are not afraid of this technology and we will use it to get ahead and eventually, start our own schools or help parents homeschool because our kids need specific skills for the future that they are not getting. There are amazing teachers in our schools, I know many, but bad policies and curriculum are getting in the way.
Hollows Homeschool? Aniwaya Academy? 
