Hi all!

My major project is now complete. You can watch it at the youtube link at the end of this post.

For my project, I chose to combine a look at the ethical implications of AI with an experiential journey through using AI technology in my classroom. I summarized everything in a video that describes my process of “learning to love AI”. I learned so much about this new and important technology through this project and for that I am very grateful! The process of creating the video in itself was a journey and hopefully shows that as you watch!

Some of the sources I used in the project are listed in the description of the youtube video.

Thanks everyone for the fantastic semester!

Watch here!

Hi all,

Consider this the penultimate update to my major project! I am about halfway done production of my video on AI. Thinking through the process, I realize that I haven’t done much updating through these blog posts, but I believe that the “journey” is shown more accurately through the actual final product itself. Specifically, the concept of the video is how I am slowly learning to love AI, and the ups and downs of the roller coaster that is created by that. Therefore I hope that watching the video enables you to follow along with that journey along with me while enjoying the final product. I have seriously had a great deal of growth from the beginning to the end of this class when it comes to my learning (especially around AI). I wanted to include in this update that as I edit my video and pull everything together, I am realizing that this is far from the ending of my journey with artificial intelligence. In fact, it is just the beginning. I tried to leave the ending of my video purposely ambiguous to that effect.

Anyways, I hope to have that final product posted by this weekend!

Hi all, quick major project update here.

I am essentially completed the “script” of my major project video but have to get down to the nitty gritty of filming. This is where I start to become concerned that my eyes are bigger than my stomach so to speak and I’ve written something unwieldly that will have to be chopped down. I’m slightly resigning myself to the fact that the final product might be more ‘process’ than product and might not be exactly as I envisioned due to time constraints. I also am realizing that my technological abilities and materials don’t match my vision. Oh well! Excited to see how it turns out.

From working through the readings and thoughts of myself and my group members this week, I think we all have come to the conclusion that the concept of media literacy is one that is extremely difficult to define and pin down.

I think that in order to be fully literate in today’s world you have to be able to streamline information. Echo discussed in her chosen article that gatekeeping is an essential skill in the modern information age. To me, this means being able to selectively pare down the gigantic wealth of information we are bombarded with constantly. I think that a lot of the disinformation and misinformation issues we see in today’s world are the result of individuals becoming completely overwhelmed with the amount of information they are intaking, and therefore failing to completely analyze it.

From all of this, the question that has been rolling around my mind lately has been – how much does media literacy matter? That seems like a loaded question. Of course it matters, and matters quite a bit. At least at some intrinsic level, there is obviously value in being able to separate fact and fiction and engage authentically with ideas presented to us in the media.

What I mean when I ask that question is more of a ‘cynical’ take I suppose. How much does media literacy matter when our social systems seem to take no punitive measures against those extremely powerful individuals and collectives that are consistently and intentionally deceitful? In the past ten years, the concept of a “post-facts society” has become more and more prevalent. The idea behind post-fact society is simple: it is a “political culture where facts are considered irrelevant”, to quote Wikipedia. Since the 2016 election (which as noted in my reading was a pivotal moment in media literacy), the term post-fact has been used increasingly to describe the world we live in. It seems to me that we are heading deeper into this world. So this is where my question (basically rhetorical at this point) comes from. What does the ability to separate fact and fiction actually get me if “fact” doesn’t really matter anyways?

Again, of course I still see the value in media literacy. I’d like to believe there is an inherent “good” in being able to demonstrate media literacy regardless of the political culture we live in. As Jennifer’s article (Teach Them Well) points out, media literacy still has the positive potential to impact things like sexism and racism. It allows people, specifically our students, to interrogate the biases that many hold on to since early childhood.

As a major project update:

The script for my major project video is coming along nicely. I’m in the stage right now I often find myself in where I need to find a focus and narrow down my topic. I like to put a lot down on the page and then pare it down from there, so that’s what the next few weeks will be looking like. I’ve also been able to experiment even more with AI this weeks which helps me in this experiential journey. Part of my project is about opening myself up more to use AI tools as an educator. For instance, I used ChatGPT this week to quickly generate an extra practice worksheet for my science 10 class.

Looking forward to hear your thoughts.

I’ve been reading a LOT about the ethics of AI this week. This is something that I am deeply interested in and referring back to my last post, why AI makes me so uncomfortable in theory. The most fascinating of articles has been this one from Mark Ryan (2019). Essentially, Ryan discussed how AI by definition CANNOT be trusted as it “does not possess emotive states or be held responsible for its actions” (Ryan, 2019). This is a fascinating position to me and I think if it is to be believed throws much of the contemporary thinking around AI into question.

In addition, I chuckled when I read the first line of the abstract to this paper on AI and ethics this week: “one of the main difficulties in assessing artificial intelligence (AI) is the tendency for people to anthropomorphize it” (Ryan, 2019). Oops. Anthropomorphizing AI is going to be a large part of my final product.

For my ECI 832 major project, I’m exploring the world of Artificial Intelligence. I’ve picked this topic for a variety of reasons, but chief among them is the fact that for the most part, I am incredibly resistant to AI and it’s consequences. While I certainly don’t consider myself a technophobe, since the surge in popularity of AI over the last few years, I have felt nothing but discomfort following this technology as it develops.

Through this project, I want to dissect, challenge, and analyze where these feelings come from by exploring and researching AI tools and concepts. To begin, I’ve started by playing around with AI tools in my day to day life, including in my teaching practice (for example, using AI to translate exams and assignments to other languages). I’ve also begun research on the ethical considerations around AI technology.

The working title of my project is “Learning to Love AI”. I’m not sure if that will be the end result, but already through this process I have learned much more about how AI works and the ways it can be utilized. I’ve started on a basic script as I hope to create a 10-20 min video as a final product. I’ll be posting on here more frequently now that I have really gotten the ball rolling!