S14: 265 Let’s Talk ChatGPT
For the past few months I’ve heard rumblings about this new AI technology called ChatGPT. I read about it and still had no real idea of what it was. Honestly, I still don’t have a full understanding of it. But I’m starting to play around with it because I know that some of my students (or many… or all) are also playing with it. Testing it out to see what it will do, how it will provide information, share ideas, answer prompts and also - to work out what some of my hesitations and uncertainty about this new technology are. I believe that technology has a lot of power for good and also for harm.
Technology brings opportunity for innovation, sharing ideas in ways we couldn’t without it, creative opportunities, ways to express ourselves through video, audio, and graphic design. We can create music online and share what we’re creating with others. It allows us to interact with family members and friends through social platforms. Technology has changed my classroom and allowed my students to stay informed of school assignments, access content, and develop musical skills in ways they couldn’t without it.
This said, technology can also have negative effects: lowered attention spans, social comparison, major distraction, makes plagiarism easy, access to inappropriate content, and opportunities to negatively impact others. I tend to be wary of new technology and often somewhat resistant when it comes to AI until I’ve had time to understand what it is and make more informed decisions for myself in how it will function for me. And then figuring out what to do about it in the classroom.
I’m still in the beginning phase of figuring out how ChatGPT could be used for good in the classroom. My initial thoughts were that this technology makes it more challenging for students to create authentic work and instead have AI think for them. If students are using this AI to generate answers to math problems, write introduction paragraphs for essays, or provide answers to work they are completing, how can we evaluate what they truly know for themselves? And how will this impact how students can produce individual content that is generated from their own unique and capable minds? How do we help students think for themselves? And express themselves?
Then I listened to episode 66 from the podcast “Stuff you don’t learn in school” (though it’s a different ‘s’ word) with Steph Smith and Calvin Rosser. This episode is called The AI Debate: Where do you sit? My answer: I still don’t know. But I do know that now that AI technology like ChatGPT is here, we can’t ignore it. Because our students aren’t ignoring it; they’re using it. And interacting with it and discovering what it can do.
So let’s break down what ChatGPT is, how it works (in a general sense and as much as I understand right now), and three ideas for how you can use it for good.
WHAT IS CHATGPT
According to Techtarget, ChatGPT is an AI (Artificial Intelligence) chatbot that uses natural language processing to create humanlike conversational dialogue. It was released on November 30, 2022. It reached 100 million users in 2 months. It’s the fastest growing app in history.
The language model can respond to questions and compose various written content, including articles, social media posts, essays, code and emails.
ChatGPT is similar to the automated chat services found on customer service websites, as people can ask it questions or request clarification to ChatGPT's replies. The GPT stands for "Generative Pre-trained Transformer," which refers to how ChatGPT processes requests and formulates responses. ChatGPT is trained with reinforcement learning through human feedback and reward models that rank the best responses. This feedback helps augment ChatGPT with machine learning to improve future responses.
Medium.com describes ChatGPT as having the following capabilities: translate languages, summarize text, answer questions, and do a sentiment analysis (analyze the sentiment of a piece of text to help understand how people feel about a particular topic.
HOW CHATGPT WORKS
It’s an LLM, Large Language Model, which is basically like a technology brain that is trained to understand and create human language. The LLM is trained on massive amounts of text. It uses the information learned to make patterns and relationships within our words. Then it can use what it knows to create responses one word at a time.
WHAT I’VE TRIED
I’m still at the very basic beginner level of using ChatGPT. Here are some things I’ve tried:
I signed up for the free version.
I tested it by asking questions that I thought my students might ask.
I thought about things I’m doing this summer and asked for ideas (local summer ice cream places)
I’ve asked questions about the Orff and Kodály approaches to see how much it really knows. And specific questions about guidance for teaching musical concepts. Wasn’t personally very impressed with the directions given.
HOW YOU MIGHT USE IT
Use it as another search engine
Think of this as asking questions about things you want to know more about. A few questions I’ve asked ChatGPT recently:
What pop songs can be played on the ukulele using only chords G, Am, D, C, and Em?
What are some great choir warm-ups for middle school choir?
What are the best two part choral octavos for a beginner middle school choir?
Share ten dessert places to try in Dallas this summer.
2. Follow @askyourdigitalagency on Instagram.
Sharma Deepak has some fantastic prompt ideas to get you started! Two of my favorites:
Improve decision making (Prompt: I’m trying to decide if I should ____ (put in decision). Give me a list of props and cons that will help me decide why I should or shouldn’t make this decision.
Save time in your profession with this prompt: “I am a ___ (your profession). Generate a list of the most powerful prompts that will help someone in my profession get more done and save time.”
3. Ideas for posting on social media, writing blogposts, or summarizing thoughts
As I’m preparing to launch a book with F-Flat in the fall, I’ve been playing around with how to best share about my book called William’s Song and fully share what teachers can expect. I tend to overwrite or overexplain and want to share more concisely, but with details. I entered several key phrases, the book title, details about the book and relevant information. Then I prompted ChatGPT to “write an instagram post telling others about the book release.” Once I received the response, I copied it into a Google Doc and edited it until it was condensed more and put it in my words. It was incredibly helpful to get a rough draft, of sorts, so that I could see how to pinpoint the purpose of the book and what others should know.
I’ve also asked ChatGPT to write a blogpost with five bullet points about a music ed topic. I found this to result in very generic information. However, I likely needed to provide more details as to what I was thinking or to then expand on the bullet points in my own words. I could see how this could come in handy for brainstorming ideas based on a topic.
With the release of ChatGPT there will be some challenges and some opportunities. I think it’s wise for us to be informed about it, to experience it (if you’re interested) so that you can see how it works and responds and to make decisions about how to use or not use it.
This week I’d encourage you to do one of the following if you want to know more:
Watch a video clip or read a few articles about ChatGPT. See links posted throughout this post.
Sign up for the free account and provide some prompts. See what you think.