In a follow up to our #5 Digital Transformation in FET Podcast from March this year, Dr. Michael Hallissy speaks again with John Heffernan, TEL Coordinator in Tipperary ETB, to drill down on the use of AI in FET teaching, learning and assessment across the county. John is joined by three colleagues, Ester Mackey, Susan Dunne and Amy Cullen who chart their initial forays using these emerging technologies in their classrooms.
The focus of the conversation initially is to discuss in general the possibilities (And pitfalls) of using Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in the classroom and the impact there use could have across the FET sector. All agreed that whilst undoubtedly the potential is vast it’s incumbent on us as teachers to remember that all of these tools are built on machine learning so errors and misinformation will occur requiring continual review and factchecking. To put it more succinctly and as Matthew Cantor from the Guardian wrote this week…
You’re a human, it’s a bot – take it all with a big grain of salt. Or vinegar, which it recommends as a substitute.
Incredibly smart or incredibly stupid? What we learned from using ChatGPT for a year – The Guardian
The discussion then comes around to sharing what practical AI-powered tools teachers are using. Ester speaks about the powerful literacy supports already built in to MS Teams like Immersive Reader, Dictate and Learning Accelerators. Susan talks about using Chat GPT and Bing Chat and how they are tweaking their assessment practice to ensure academic integrity with a transition to more AI-resistive assessments, whilst Amy runs through some of the tools she finds most useful in the Magic School toolkit, including text levelers, YouTube video question generator and rubric generators…