Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
This is the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan:Hello and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. In today's episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles provide a book review of Sal Khan's book, Brave New Words. Thanks for joining us.
Rob:Well, Jared, we are finally here. We wrote this book quite a while ago.
Jared:I read it a year ago. Yeah. It's been a while. Thanks to my friend, doctor Jodi Penrod from Marshall for bringing it to my attention.
Rob:Well, she did the same for me as well, and I picked it up probably about the same time that you did. Yeah. I was thinking we would just do a a what, why, and how Yeah. In terms of what we got out of of this book. And for me, Salman Khan came forward and he basically said that, you know, the what that AI in education is transformative.
Rob:We need to approach it. We need to embrace it. Why he believed that it made learning more personalized and equitable. And then it got into ways that essentially, you know, Khan Academy has been doing it with Conmego. Right.
Rob:So, I mean, in a nutshell, at least from my perspective, that's the what, the why and the how. Yep. And, you know, we can we can dig into it a little bit deeper, especially given, you know, things that you reflected upon, things that that I saw. What were in your opinion, you know? First of all, do you agree with his what?
Rob:Is AI truly transformative in education?
Jared:Yeah. I mean, a resounding yes. It's it's one of those adapt or die situations for me when it comes to education and generative AI. And you talk about AI in general, it's been around since spell check and before that. I mean, so this new generation of generative AI is going to have a lasting impact, and I don't think it's a fad that's going to go away.
Jared:I mean, it's already we've already seen since we started talking about generative AI two years ago, just think how much it's already been embedded more into our society, not just in education.
Rob:Yeah. It's in our phones.
Jared:It's yeah. Even though poorly in
Rob:some cases.
Jared:I mean, like, even last night, I was talking with my sister, and she sent an Instagram reel of a guy who had taken a picture of his pet and asked generative AI to make it into a human. And she immediately forwarded it to me and said, Do this with your dog. So what did I do? I just opened up my MacBook, opened Bold AI, enabled Dolly, and uploaded a picture of my dog, and I sent it to her within two minutes of us having this conversation. I mean, like, but that's two years ago that was like, all the iteration you had to do with Dolly at the very beginning were like, no, that's not even a dog.
Jared:Did you not even look at the picture? And then the amount of time it would take to generate it for free, and now you can do it in heartbeat. And so, yeah, in us not using it in education at this point is kind of being behind the curve. It's so ingrained into culture, it's going to get ingrained into education. We talked about in our episode on closing up the serving the new college student, we talked about how the current generation of students are going to grow up in an environment where generative AI is commonplace as the calculator.
Jared:I mean, it's just gonna be at a point where we have to yeah. So Salma Khan's right. We have to be open to it and be welcoming to it and finding ways of using it.
Rob:Yeah. So I think many of the reviews, I I wouldn't disagree. Is it going to be transformative? Most certainly. I think it already is.
Rob:The question will be, how do we use it? Yeah. He obviously, you know, we'll get into implementation here in a minute. But with Conmigo, if you know anything about it, if you've you've played with which I think you have.
Jared:Yes. Definitely.
Rob:It's more Socratic. So they immediately use that. And I know that they have something like a 500 word instructional prompt that they use and they refine it all the time to make sure that the AI that you're using, which is ChatGPT, by the way, with Conmego, is actually doing what they want it to do. And then they're constantly doing checks as well. It'll be interesting to see how that progresses as these things, the reasoning models, they start using those if they're using them.
Rob:I'm not sure yet. But, you know, aside from the part that Sal's book seemed to be more of just a, you know, a PR for Conmigo, I think he did bring up some real interesting issues. One was the example that he really highlighted. It seemed it was his daughter experiencing interaction with telling stories, creating stories, interaction with literature, things that she wouldn't have probably been able to do and allowing her to explore and learn beyond what she just had to know for passing a test. Yeah.
Rob:And and just opening things up in a way where, you know, she could synthesize and explore. So I I definitely see that. Definitely agree with it. I've seen it myself. You know, why?
Rob:I don't know if I agree with his why, though, which is equity and personalized learning. Maybe the personalized learning. Maybe. I think more so than now. But again, it's really based on the instructional prompt on the forefront.
Rob:You know, if you're not using Conmigo and you're doing chat GPT, chat GPT now is saving a lot. It's got a lot of memory or using what's called rag in the technical parlance Mhmm. Which is remembering the way you've interacted in the past with it and using that as vectoring for future conversations. Yep. And what I mean by vectoring is it's basically taking what you've talked about and and your perspectives and the things that you've said into account.
Rob:And then it's basically, you know, personalizing it and predicting to you.
Jared:So
Rob:that sounds good. But at the same time, it could go awry. Right? Yeah. If it just makes it all about the student and doesn't push them outside of their own comfort zone, which I don't think that's AI's place.
Rob:That is something that he talked about. Others have talked about in review of this book is that, you know, we need to be talking about AI ethics.
Jared:Yeah. How do we use it? It's not going to replace educators.
Rob:Correct. It can't and it But what can it do? And then how do we do it? Just because we can doesn't mean we should. But I don't disagree.
Rob:We've there is a sense in which you cannot ignore it.
Jared:Yeah. It's going to be there. To me, we can't just ban it or abolish it. Right. Because it's going to happen.
Rob:So the other piece that I don't know if I agree with is the equity. And here's why I don't I don't know if I agree with it because not everybody has access to the same models.
Jared:Right.
Rob:And the cost for those high end models like Grok three right now as we as we record this.
Jared:It's Grok three. April 20 five.
Rob:It's Sonnet 3.7. That's from Anthropic.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:It's Gemini what is it? What's it called? It's like 2.5 pro or something like that. I don't know if it's flash 2.5 pro. And then chat GPT is 4.5, which is a beast.
Rob:It's expensive. Right. Super expensive. So there's no way as and and then Grok three is a perfect example of this out of x AI. They have spent so much money on the data center.
Rob:It's the largest supercomputer in The United States that we know of. Right? Yes. So much so that they have to back up, you know, semis with generators on them just so they could train the model because the grid didn't have enough power to feed to that thing. We're talking hundreds of semis backed up to their data center to run that supercomputer.
Rob:Yeah. That's ridiculous.
Jared:Just so someone could ask it to make a picture of
Rob:your dog. Tell me that's not costing millions of Yes. Exactly. It's costing millions of dollars.
Jared:Just for me to generate a picture of my dog as a human.
Rob:So the expense is ridiculous. Right?
Jared:Which you did a horrible job of, by the way.
Rob:The the the expense is ridiculous. And I know, you know, we've we've talked over and over about just connection to the Wi Fi or connection to the Internet Yeah. Or computers. What kind of computers do you have for students? Right.
Rob:Right? So how are they gonna have access to these high level?
Jared:It also depends on your district too because Abby, you know, in our district that they're in, she she was telling me that she has Khan Academy. Her teacher, her AP US history teacher opened up Khan Academy for them to use. And I said, oh, can you use Conmigo? She said, no, it's been the districts have to enable. Yep.
Jared:So there's even that as well where, you you as an educator could come in expecting to be able to use these tools, then you've got district policies, which there's nothing wrong with the district policy of that stuff. I mean, there is some merit to shutting it down until you understand what goes on and the potential of student abuse of it or whatever, even with even though the the guardrails that they've put in place at Khan Academy, I mean, there's still concern of improper usage of it.
Rob:Yeah. So Well, it just seems to me saying out of the gate that it's it's gonna make education equitable. Yeah. I don't think that's the case. I just don't.
Jared:It's a it's a it's a kind of a pipe dream, I think. Yeah. Or a
Rob:that's harsh. I'm sorry, Sal.
Jared:Yeah. Sal, if you're listening, we apologize. We love your book. Yeah. So he's one of
Rob:the ones that's I think Conmigo is awesome. Yeah. I think it's a great implementation. Yeah. You know, get to the the how.
Rob:What he's implemented, what they've implemented as a team is pretty cool.
Jared:Oh, yeah. And it's it's I mean, it's an incredible usage of it. Like I've talked about before on this podcast is that we use it to help Abby with her, the first semester of Algebra two, and we didn't have it work directly with her. My wife and I used it as a way, because there's a reteach thing in Conmigo for educators. Oh, okay.
Jared:I'm not clear on this, I need to teach this tomorrow, help me out. And so we used that as a way of supporting her, tutoring her without giving her the answers.
Rob:So you were using Conmigo to help Correct. Guide your daughter.
Jared:Correct. That's cool. As a way of being like, hey, I don't know how to teach her this stuff. What is factoring? I don't know.
Jared:But then Emily took over and she knows her stuff. And I'm like, uh-uh. You know, Lynn Allen tried her best, but I I just couldn't pull it off. But Emily Emily's taking care of it, you know, but we use that and it was a you know, Abby's getting As and Bs now in the class because she helped we helped Conmigo helped build that foundation for her to succeed this year. That's awesome.
Jared:It's a great tool. I do wonder so this book has been out for almost a year. I'm afraid that it's almost on the verge of being obsolete. Some of it is still universal and that's what I like about the book so much is how universal and how inspiring it is because it's not necessarily Yes, it's about ChadGBT or OpenAI, but it's the utilization of a new tool to further something else. Yeah.
Jared:So it's inspiring in that way. Like when I read it, I immediately came away with ideas of using it myself in education. So from that aspect, I don't think that is going to become obsolete, but I think some of the specifics that he mentions will become obsolete sooner than later because it won't date itself, but it's pretty close to that. It's for me to explain because I feel like the qualities of it, the framework that he uses won't die off because it's all about a problem and finding a solution, elevating innovation for usage in practical, imaginative ways. But I just feel like there's parts of it where you're like, okay, well, was applicable a year or two ago, but now it's not necessarily useful now.
Jared:But and again, this book came out last year, and I'm already talking about the idea
Rob:that part of it was obsolete. Yeah. Well, because the models have have changed already. But I think I think in his book, he kinda sees where that where where that's heading, and he he does discuss it. He also does a really good job of discussing the historical parts of how we got here technologically.
Rob:And he does tend to be more positive and not so Fahrenheit four fifty one.
Jared:Yes. Great book, by the way.
Rob:So That's
Jared:our next book review.
Rob:So he's he's more he's more towards the utopian technological future, not the dystopian Right. Novel, if you will. But I think somewhere, maybe a little in the middle is probably where it's gonna where it's gonna land just because there are so much money invested in this thing. Yeah. And so much power.
Rob:I mean, literal electricity going to drive these models. It's not a small amount, and I don't think people really realize how much energy is being consumed by these massive data centers, not just here in The United States, but around the world.
Jared:It's interesting, though, like, you talk about Utopia. When I taught Utopian literature back in the high school days, we always talked about Utopian literature in 1984 and Fahrenheit four five one, but, you know, that's a dystopian. Those books are dystopian literature. But I always come from the angle that what's a utopia for one group of people isn't always a utopia for everybody. It's a dystopia for someone else.
Jared:So this idea of Sal Khan coming up with this utopian ideal of using generative AI, you can spin it in utopian way, there's always a group that's marginalized, and it could be the power thing you're talking about, okay? Those resources could be better utilized somewhere else. Who is who is being without because of the power that's being used for this? So that's something to keep in mind
Rob:as well. I think there are those who are trying to, I mean, bridge that gap, bridge the gap of connection, you know, or regardless of what you think about him. Elon Musk's Starlink does bridge the connection gap for those who don't have access to high speed Internet. So it it definitely that's a possibility in terms of bridging those equity gaps. You know, when you're using one to 1.5% of the world's electrical supply.
Rob:That's not a small piece, and I think it's gonna get larger. Well, I know it's gonna get larger.
Jared:We're putting people on hamster wheels before too long. Yeah. So Maybe that's a dystopian novel.
Rob:The runners. We'll all be
Jared:Five part series. It's gonna be a movie.
Rob:No. We're all Twenty twenty nine. We're all gonna be on spin bikes with generators on them so we can feed the beast. Hey.
Jared:Look. Maybe that's secretly what, that what's the bike that you Peloton. Maybe that's what secretly Peloton is. Maybe these people are generating electricity and energy for these supercomputers. You don't know?
Jared:No. You don't know.
Rob:I don't.
Jared:So would you recommend Brave New Words?
Rob:I think it's a good read. I would. I would not just read it by itself, obviously, and take it all at face value, but I think he does have some arguments in there that you gotta deal with. You know, you need to interact with those things. I think there's gonna be more what's the reality gonna look like.
Rob:We're starting to see to some degree, and I the overarching refrain from most, at least in the educational space, is still students are cheating.
Jared:Yep. They're using it to cheat.
Rob:And we need to get back to what I think, like, Barbara Oakley from Uncommon Sense Teaching talks about is using AI in a way to help us learn. She'll talk about this in some of her podcasts and also in some of her books about spaced recall and how important that is for learning and deep learning and that AI can help. You can set up AI in ways that will help you do that instead of just always giving you the answers. You use it as a tutor, if you will, much to the same degree as what Conmigo is doing.
Jared:So Yep.
Rob:From that perspective, if you wanna get an idea of what that looks like, how to use it, I think Sal Khan does a really good job of taking AI and putting it into a box, if you will Mhmm. That is beneficial for learning.
Jared:Yeah. I I would have to agree with you on that. So when we were at OATC and we heard Kristen Dasurbo, who was the chief learning officer at Khan Academy speak, You mentioned how using generative AI or Chad GPT specifically for educational purposes and put it in a box. She was walking through their process. And you, me, Doctor.
Jared:Ye kind of looked at each other and said, we could have done this. You know, because it's not necessarily, you know, you and I, you definitely have been in it more than I have, but I've been in it for in generative AI and playing with the prompts and writing prompts and prompt generation. And I don't it's not necessarily the most daunting of tasks to seem that way, but once you get into it, just like most technology that you use, it just takes a little bit of a onboarding process, a bit of a steep climb at the beginning. So it's not necessarily out of the realm of possibility that other people can generate with the Obviously Khan Academy has so many more resources than we do at CTL.
Rob:Well, they just keep working on the prompt. That's what she made clear to us in that.
Jared:So they have people that just refine the prompts and everything else. But it's not without it's not out of the realm of possibility to do something like that by yourself, but it just won't be as cool as but, yeah, I totally recommend the book. I think it's great. Sounds like you do too. Yep.
Jared:So maybe Ryan should read it. Would you read it, Ryan? I'd read it. Yeah. Sure.
Jared:Okay. Great.
Ryan:I have no issues with reading it.
Jared:You have no issues with reading? That's good.
Ryan:With reading it. Okay. Gotcha. And with reading in general, I do struggle.
Jared:Okay. I understand that.
Ryan:That's basically my whole program is reading. Thanks for joining this episode of Transform Your Teaching. Don't forget to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you have any questions about Doctor. Rob MacDowell and Doctor.
Ryan:Jared Pyle's review of Brave New Words, How AI Will Revolutionize Education, and Why That's a Good Thing, feel free to reach out to us on LinkedIn or send us an email at ctlpodcast@cedarville.edu. And as always, don't forget to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.