Students Exploring ChatGPT for the First Time
Over the last few weeks, we spent some time with our students playing with ChatGPT. For those who still have not tried, ChatGPT is a computer program that has been taught to understand and generate human-like language. It can answer questions, carry out conversations, and even write stories or poetry, among other things. It was created by a team of researchers at OpenAI and is designed to learn from a vast amount of text data and improve its ability to generate language over time.
What Students Found Exciting
According to our students, ChatGPT is a cool tool that offers several benefits and is highly valued among the student community.
Last Saturday, our students shared their reflections:
During a weekend session, students shared their reflections:
- “ChatGPT is very interesting.” – Daeron, 12
- “It saves me time searching for schoolwork and is great for language translation.” – Arief, 11
- “I can even find recipes just by typing keywords.” – Dani, 14
Concerns About Misuse
Not all feedback was positive. Some students warned of potential misuse:
- “It’s dangerous because students might use it to cheat on assignments.” – Bing Yuan, 12
- “It could be used to reply to messages automatically.” – Hong Shun, 11
- “It’s useful for essays, but academic integrity matters.” – Evangelia, 11
Suggestions for Educators
Interestingly, students also saw opportunities for teachers: “Educators can integrate AI tools like ChatGPT into lesson planning.” – Vincent, 17
They suggested using ChatGPT as a resource for creativity, efficiency, and enhancing classroom learning.
What This Means for Education
Students recognize both the potential and the risks of AI in schools.
For educators, this means:
- Encouraging responsible and ethical AI use.
- Moving from “sage on the stage” to facilitator of growth.
- Focusing less on rote learning and more on life skills—creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking.
- Adopting holistic assessments like project showcases and presentations.
ChatGPT is a tool that students will find both valuable and problematic in the world of education. While students appreciate its ability to save time and make language translation easier, they also recognize the potential for misuse and cheating.
No doubt technology is here to stay. Teachers will be responsible for ensuring that students use AI tools like ChatGPT responsibly and ethically, while also taking advantage of their potential to enhance the educational experience.
For more on how teachers can use ChatGPT, we recently stumbled upon this episode, from the amazing podcast “Cult of Pedagogy” by Jennifer Gonzalez, on “6 Ed Tech Tools to Try in 2023” who shared that, “If we focus on the fear,” she says, “we’ll be in trouble. If we focus on ways we can use this tool to help our teaching and learning, we’re going to have a lot of fun with it.”
Listen to the episode here.
We all know that what we learned in school may not apply to our jobs today. Even more so, jobs of the future will not require our current generations of students to be the “know-it-all”. And that “know-it-all” includes coding & programming skills.
With ChatGPT, education may never be the same.
All the more reason, we shall shift the attention to growing life skills (empathy, courage, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication) among the children.
All the more reason, we shall expose students to working with smart machines, as early as possible, to use them effectively to solve the next real-world problems.
All the more reason, we shall move educators’ role away from the “sage on the stage” to “facilitator for growth & learning”. This then allows educators to give students the space and time for exploration, character building, development of socio-emotional skills, and instilling motivation.
All the more reason, we shall shift the role of exams into a more holistic assessment of a person’s overall growth (e.g. our Chumbaka’s assessment methods, such as project-based assessment, showcase on Open Day, and Viva before Yodas). This then redefines the purpose of the school serving as a “co-learning” space for growth to happen, talent to be discovered, and values to be embedded among the young people.
Disclaimer
This piece was co-written by Ainul Daleelah & Chong Zhi Xiong whose view are based on his years in education and his interest in technology. He co-founded Chumbaka, together with Nigel Sim and Choo Wai Heng, after his 2-year stint in Teach For Malaysia.
Next in Blog: we hope to share with you some of the teacher’s perspectives on ChatGPT, as well as principals and the board of directors from the school.
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