Wednesday, January 29, 2025

The Generic Effect of AI

Yesterday in the Japanese Ab intio class I am supporting, students were asked to write a diary typical day. The directions were sparse. It just it just said right about your day and add thoughts and feelings and what you did. This is why I advocate for putting some sort of objective on all assignments - it helps the students and support teachers!

I'm knowing these two students and knowing that Japanese is progressing and knowing that they needed something, I knew they needed something a little more. Putting thoughts together is not always easy in a foreign language.

I opened ChatGPT and put in the assignment and then asked it to make a vocabulary list as well as sentence stems for this assignment.

It was pretty good, but it definitely needed a little bit of work. I wish I had had more time to spend on this. With a little prompting with a little experience these will get better.

But this is also a problem with AI. This kind of generic, generalization for an assignment is not helpful unless done in a pinch.

For this case, my students relied on me more than for this scaffold. 

One thing I didn't do - that I'll do next time - was add furigana to the kanji.

Monday, January 13, 2025

Take a Pause when Things Get Nuts

Photo by Adam Birkett on Unsplash

In the beginning of my career, my default classroom strategy was from a les of power. I was the teacher, the students were students, they should listen to me. End of story.

Now that I am further along in my career, I would love to write that I have all the answers, but that's not true. I do have a tendency to resort to that dictator when I am stressed. This happened a few weeks ago.

When this happens, I feel awful. It is also not effective. I find that students at this school at this time are less likely to respond to that way as well. - Well, when it comes from me. It's not my nature to be like that.

One thing I have found to be effective is to open my computer and start writing a behavior note. I usually look up at the student while I am doing it and sometimes they notice, but more often, they calm down when they notice they are not getting a response.

This morning I listened to an episode of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast that talked about a similar strategy. 

I should use this more.


The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast - EduTip 23: Calm an out-of-control class with a notebook.