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A little about me and the purpose of this blog. I am a licensed high school teacher (Language Arts 6 - 12) in the state of Tennessee going on 13 years now.  I have 7 children and drive a school bus.  Love me or hate me, none of my students will tell you that I am a typical school teacher.  I, like many, believe that education is woefully equipped to keep pace with technology.  As a technology enthusiast and educator publishing on a crypto website, I am trying to do my small part to bridge this gap for as many people as I can.  Recently, the development of AI has created an accelerated urgency for education to take its head out of the sand and teach relevant skills in the classroom.  The resources, lessons, and philosophy I publish here, I use in my own classroom, and anyone (especially homeschoolers) can use this blog as a resource to supplement their own instruction.  If you are new to my blog, I suggest starting at the bottom as I will be structuring my lessons here the same way I would for my classroom.  Tips are appreciated.  Questions and feedback in the comments are welcome. So if you are a teacher, student, or homeschooler that is motivated to learn about, teach, or utilize all available technology in education (or know someone who is), I encourage you to give me a follow.  

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Worried about AI and education?  You should be.  It can either be your greatest friend or your worst enemy.

If your head is in the sand about AI, and you are an administrator, teacher, student, or homeschooler, I’m here to remove it.  Since ChatGPT was released to the public in November 2022 and Snapchat released its My AI in February 2023, any tech enthusiast who was paying attention instantly realized that it would have a drastic effect on education — drastic in either a positive or negative sense.  As an English teacher this particularly affected me, as students would be able to write entire essays with the click of a button.  I felt personally attacked lol.  But very quickly we also learned that algebra equations could be solved in seconds by simply taking a picture of the screen or page and asking for the answers, so then I felt slightly better; this technology would affect all of education, not just me.

Almost immediately, people who invented “AI Detectors” came to the rescue, promising a tool much like www.turnitin.com or www.grammarly.com in order to prevent plagiarism.  And right after that, we discovered that these tools were snake oil, created by people trying to make a quick buck.  Let me state that plainly:  AI Detectors do NOT work.  They can be easily fooled, and they do not provide concrete evidence that a student did not write the passage.  

AI is here and here to stay in education. In the beginning, realizing this, I did what any teacher would do <sarcasm>:  I let my kids use it.  In 2023, those kids taught me a whole lot more than I taught them.  I settled with the fact that I would let them think they were “cheating” just to see what they would do.  And, they did a LOT.  I got 30 page short stories, endless rap songs and poems, PERFECTLY punctuated writing samples, and my mind blown day after day.  I kept assigning things that I thought would push the limits of what AI was capable of, and they kept crashing through those limits without end.  As long as they had access to their phones and computers, there was literally nothing I could assign them that they could not produce.  

Once I settled with that fact, I decided it was time to ruin the party.  If you have never seen the look on a student’s face when you call them up to your desk with nothing but their brain and ask them to tell you 5 basic facts about the assignment they just turned in, then you really should; it's epic.  

So then, I got to watch them adjust.  Suddenly, writing assignments became reading assignments.  When they thought I wanted them to write a two page paper on the themes of The Crucible , what I really wanted them to do was read a two page paper on the themes of The Crucible to the point that they could come up and verbally explain it to me.  Lol, bless their hearts, they thought they were getting away with cheating.  All I had to do was tell them I wouldn’t grade their paper until they could explain it to me.

Likewise, when I wanted them to read something, I just told them they had to write it by hand.  Hint:  if they have to copy something AI produced, then they actually have to read it.  As long as they think they are getting graded on the writing turned in, then they will happily read it in order to copy an AI generated text.

And these were just my knee-jerk reactions the first year that it was implemented.  Since that time, I have developed more sophisticated methods of handling the existence of AI in my classroom.  I have attended several conferences and heard from other innovative educators on the practices that they have developed much like I did out of trial and error.  Those are the things that I want to share with you in this series of blog entries:  the methods and tactics that someone can use to make AI their friend, instead of allowing it to undermine your entire education process.  

I will begin by introducing the most simple and important principle of the reality of AI in education:

There is no longer any middle ground with technology and assignments.  You either go into Star Trek Mode or CaveMan Mode. 

Star Trek Mode = you make an assignment with the understanding that they will be using AI.  You create it, set the expectations, and grade it appropriately.

CaveMan Mode = pencil, paper, and physical copy of the text.  No technology period.  Do it right in front of me.  Right now.  

***  if you send an assignment home, you have gone into Star Trek mode by default.  They will absolutely use AI at home.  

If you are not up to date on the capabilities of AI, I highly advise you to start out in CaveMan Mode until you have the opportunity to educate yourself further on AI either through this blog or through other resources.  Do not underestimate what it can accomplish.  If you facilitate education in any way, you really really need first hand experience on what it is able to do.  If you do not, the kids will run circles around you.  The absolute best way to combat the use of AI in your classroom in the beginning is to remove all technology, and have every assessment done on pencil and paper directly in front of you.  

If you are fond of assignments where students have to spend lengthy amounts of time composing a paper or project, I'm sorry, but those days are over.  I have seen countless examples of my colleagues attempting to keep this practice alive by various means, and I have watched the kids use AI in order to do hours of work in minutes write in front of me when they thought I wasn’t looking in such a manner that they effortlessly avoided detection.

For homeschoolers, this has the ability to create an even bigger problem for you.  Many popular homeschool programs involve sitting a kid in front of a computer, logging into a specific program, and having them complete their work.  Without strict oversight, this is a disaster with the introduction of AI, particularly for high school curriculums.

The Good News:

For motivated and involved educators of any type, AI can allow you to do things that you never imagined.  Imagine tailoring reading passages to your student’s specific interest; completing lesson plans and curriculums in minutes; having your student have a conversation with a character from a book they are reading; generating endless algebra problems for no-risk practice; and even, teaching a student questioning by allowing them to communicate with a “tutor” that will not judge them and never tire of re-explaining a concept.

These are the practices (the do’s and the don'ts) that I intend to share in specific detail in this blog, so if you are interested in having access to the resources and practices that I use in my own classroom, then give me a follow.  I will share all my lessons, materials, and the prompts and processes that I use to teach my own students.  If you know someone who homeschools or an educator that is interested in free resources, kindly refer them here.  

This time of year, students in high schools across the country are beginning to focus on the upcoming ACT in the spring, so my lessons will start there in tandem with my own classroom.  I plan to post a lesson at least every two days, if not daily.