Dear parents,

As we go into the Spring Break, I wanted to touch base with all of you about something that has been at the forefront of discussions lately.

My wife is the techie in our family and made me aware of this long before it was on anyone else’s radar.  She makes a conscience choice about explicitly teaching digital citizenship in her classroom and we often have discussions at home about the implications of technology on our learners.

I thought it might be the time to share some of this information with you.  We have all heard of ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence tool made by OpenAI.  I was amazed by how quickly it can answer and or suggest on any type of question given to it. I then thought of my teaching staff and how they had to deal with this phenomenon.  Technology definitely moves quicker these days and its pretty difficult just to keep up.

You can ask ChatGPT anything about books, history, sports or even write an essay or summary. It´s like a living encyclopedia and you only need to ask. It can even help our students do their homework, which has already taken place. The IB has informed us that students can use ChatGPT but must site this source on any research or paper they turn in.

This creates a problem for us as educators when we seek to verify students work. For now, we have the tools to identify plagiarism, even with ChatGPT.  Here at ASB we utilize a program called Turnitin. This system works with many schools around the world to detect student plagiarism.  Turnitin is a highly effective software as it checks through the web and it can identify if a student copied from a previous paper or information that is out there such as Wikipedia.

ChatGPT is not perfect, and you can detect if a student has utilized the program by its responses, but it is learning and will continue to improve as it receives more data over time. What does that mean to us and the future of education?

As a community we have to learn how to utilize ChatGPT for what´s best for students and I don´t mean copy and paste.  ChatGPT can assist students when they are stuck and need information.  It can assist with ideas and topics to assist a students essay.  In fact, it´s like having a personal tutor 24 hours 7 days a week.

Here at ASB we will continue to strive for the best education we can offer to our students and try to see the advantages and disadvantages of all technology that is available. Believe me, this is only the beginning of the many changes we will see in the future.  But we will be ready for whatever comes our way.

I want to wish you and your family a Happy Easter and thank you for your continued support.

As of this writing, we now have GPT4.0.  Here are some interesting stats:

Our students will need to study much harder to catch up, or they will need to learn to use this technology to stay competitive.  I am sure this will be an ongoing discussion and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter.