Spring Cleaning: Small News Bites

Busy times for all of us lately, and a lot of little updates and changes trickling in. Here's a quick roundup of some current digital learning developments:

MCAS Proctors: Here's a Visual Step-by-Step

For teachers proctoring MCAS sessions, we have updated a short slide deck that can be used as a full-color visual supplement to your Test Administrator Manual (TAM). 

The deck walks through only the most essential steps that proctors take to start, manage, and end MCAS test sessions. Each visual slide is explained in the speaker notes. Feel free to check it out and have it open on test days.

Google Updates the Look of Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides

You may have noticed a change in the look of Google Drive, Docs, Slides, and Sheets. You can read more about it here, if you like. Google has updated these areas with cosmetic changes to text, toolbars, buttons, and search/select tools. If you have any trouble finding anything on these pages, just reach out to a TIS for help.

Regarding the AI Language Tool, ChatGPT

OpenAI's product ChatGPT has made a real splash upon entry into the public sphere. In education, folks are talking a lot about how to identify AI-written work. We're also thinking about how to ask different or better questions of students.

Some folks have asked about how to really embrace and wrestle with these types of tools in the classroom. One warning as you work: ChatGPT is a tool that has Terms of Service, and those terms state that users must be 13 or older to have an account. If under 18, students must have caretaker consent to have an account, even with a school email.

This is primarily meant to shield young users from sharing private data with an online service. However, as with many other online services, this age restriction is not consistently enforced or enforceable. Therefore, we know a lot of young people will make accounts to experiment with the tool.

For now, it's against their terms for us to request that students under 13 make or use an OpenAI/ChatGPT account. One workaround that we've discussed is that you, the teacher, can make a free account and model its use for students in class. Students can even feed you questions to send into the chatbot so that you can evaluate its answers. For teachers interested in helping students navigate this new feature of the internet, this use case is within bounds.

There are many respected voices out there sharing thoughtful and positive ways to integrate ChatGPT (hands-on or not) during classroom activities. Check out a handful of ideas from Edutopia, for starters. 

Edit: here's another very practical, very vulnerable approach by a HS English teacher who's trying to roll with the changes (even though her school has blocked ChatGPT).

Originality Reporting for Suspected AI Writing

On a related note, teachers will be pleased to hear that there is already a very well-received AI writing detection tool on the web, for free. It's called GPTZero, and it allows you to paste text in a submission field for analysis by its system. The developer is actively seeking teacher input and engagement so that the tool can continue to be improved. Have a look and let us know what you think.

We're going to keep monitoring developments within all the emerging AI writing tools to spot potential opportunities as well as liabilities. We'll keep you posted.

Spring Caretaker Consent Checkup

As you just read above, there are many learning tools that put the responsibility on us as teachers to get caretaker consent before students, especially younger ones, set up accounts. This landscape will become easier to navigate over time, but for now, we have to be very careful.

As a way of spring cleaning, take a moment to think about the tools that you use that are not paid for by the district. Have you checked out their Terms of Service? Are you bound to send a parent opt-out before the kids dive in? Have you done so?

This is a pain to have to keep in mind when there's so much else to do, but remember, it's a matter of student safety. We don't want students sharing too much data with a corporate entity, and we don't want that entity doing things like serving ads to students who are just trying to learn. Take a pass through the relevant terms, and be sure to shoot a message home about any that require you to do so.

As with any other tech issue, please reach out to your TIS if you're confused by Terms of Service or just need some further understanding.

That's it for this time...and no, we didn't have ChatGPT write this blog post! No promises about the next one, though. : )