Latest / Azadeh and Guy on AI / From Grief to Curiosity

Transcript

From Grief to Curiosity · Azadeh and Guy on AI

0:02
SPEAKER_01: Hello, everyone.
0:03
SPEAKER_01: Today we are recording the seventh episode of,
0:06
SPEAKER_01: oh, I need to say season three of Azadeh and Guy on AI.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: Happy that I entertain you every time.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: And we're hoping that by next time we will have some music to help you transition
0:22
SPEAKER_00: into the episode.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: So here we go.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: Today we have a very special guest, Dr. Evi Vosk.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: and she is an assistant professor of secondary education in Nebraska Wesleyan University.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: Evie, do you want to introduce yourself more?
0:44
SPEAKER_02: I would just like to say thanks for having me and I think my real claim
0:48
SPEAKER_02: to fame is I've known Guy for a long time.
0:53
SPEAKER_02: But no, I come to this originally as a middle school English teacher who's
1:01
SPEAKER_02: I danced in high ability learning and library.
1:05
SPEAKER_02: And now I have this,
1:07
SPEAKER_02: I think, really cool split placement where I'm half teacher prep and half English.
1:12
SPEAKER_02: And so I'm humanities and I'm teacher prep all at once.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: Could you tell us a little bit before we start asking our question,
1:21
SPEAKER_01: your experience with generative AI?
1:25
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so I guess that's been a number of years ago.
1:31
SPEAKER_02: I sat in a session with Lynn Herr, who's one of my mentors, and watched AI fill up the screen.
1:37
SPEAKER_02: And I remember sitting pretty still after that session because literacy and writing
1:45
SPEAKER_02: and reading and students have been the driving passion of my education, right?
1:51
SPEAKER_02: And then here's this.
1:52
SPEAKER_02: And it kind of felt like when we figured out
1:56
SPEAKER_02: the earth circles around the sun and now okay well this is my earth is shifting and
2:01
SPEAKER_02: so then I spent the next two years after that getting really curious like I'm
2:05
SPEAKER_02: a high user I'm playing with this trying to figure it out
2:11
SPEAKER_02: and for better or
2:12
SPEAKER_02: for worse just running at it and then also in that time been trying
2:18
SPEAKER_02: to facilitate critical conversations among
2:22
SPEAKER_02: undergraduates mostly of like okay you guys are for this and
2:25
SPEAKER_02: you're against it. And can we actually talk about this where
2:28
SPEAKER_02: we're not just
2:29
SPEAKER_02: like a fake Facebook like or dislike button that
2:33
SPEAKER_02: we're actually trying to understand all
2:36
SPEAKER_02: of it? And more recently I'm just
2:37
SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to figure out how to be an English teacher in
2:40
SPEAKER_02: this brave new social science experiment that
2:43
SPEAKER_02: we've all been
2:46
SPEAKER_02: thrown into this Wild West and just figuring it out.
2:49
SPEAKER_02: So I guess at the base of it,
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SPEAKER_02: I'm a writer person,
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SPEAKER_02: a teacher person who's AI curious and continues to be and tries
2:56
SPEAKER_02: to ask good questions about it.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: And I love the metaphor that kind of talks about earthquake,
3:03
SPEAKER_00: the earthquake moment,
3:05
SPEAKER_00: because I've experienced my first earthquake when we lived in California.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, here's this thing that has always existed around me.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: and has always been stable.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: And that's the one thing.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we talk about grounding, right, as something that helps you.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly this whole thing shakes and suddenly
3:25
SPEAKER_01: the whole world looks like this was not as safe and secure as I thought.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's exactly what we're experiencing with AI.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: There's all of these assumptions and all of these behaviors and all
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SPEAKER_00: of these thinking about we're so special.
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SPEAKER_00: Only humans can do this.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: and now it's not only humans can do this whatever that thing is it's
3:47
SPEAKER_00: a really good facsimile of something mm-hmm and it just that makes me think of
3:53
SPEAKER_02: the word wobble I just wrote a piece about being a hiker my friends
3:58
SPEAKER_02: and I got too brave and we were up on this trail in
4:02
SPEAKER_02: new hampshire and when you got to the top it was a pile of rocks and the only way
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SPEAKER_02: through was to follow the kerns or however you say it and every step was wobbly
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SPEAKER_02: and that's how ai has felt to me and i think if you're engaged in
4:14
SPEAKER_02: the conversation right now the path is wobbly that's a sign that you're on the path
4:21
SPEAKER_02: as opposed to feeling really sure-footed because even
4:25
SPEAKER_02: folks who are running directly at this are like, hmm, what does this mean?
4:30
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's,
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SPEAKER_02: I think, wobbly,
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SPEAKER_02: but also when the path is wobbly,
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SPEAKER_02: there's lots of things we can do to be more sure-footed.
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SPEAKER_02: And so just trying to find those,
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SPEAKER_02: find the Carnes,
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SPEAKER_02: find the grown-ups telling me where to go,
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SPEAKER_02: I guess, and what works and lean into that.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: So maybe my question is,
4:52
SPEAKER_01: when Generative AI became widely available,
4:55
SPEAKER_01: what surprised you most about its impact on students, teachers, and also writing?
5:04
SPEAKER_02: I think personally I was most surprised by my own grief around it,
5:08
SPEAKER_02: I want to use that word,
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SPEAKER_02: that as an English teacher this just made me profoundly sad
5:13
SPEAKER_02: and I didn't quite know what to do with it.
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SPEAKER_02: what does it mean that I've spent all this time learning how to write as a craft
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SPEAKER_02: and teach other people how to write and now here AI can do this so
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SPEAKER_02: that was disorienting to me in a way where at first you're just trying to learn
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SPEAKER_02: about it you don't want to be the dummy that doesn't know how to play with the AI
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SPEAKER_02: but in the background of my head there's a lot
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SPEAKER_02: of just oh this thing I love now is I don't know if tainted is the right word
5:41
SPEAKER_02: but it's changing it's evolving um
5:45
SPEAKER_02: I don't think it's cheating for me to put in my map on my phone how to get
5:50
SPEAKER_02: to this place we are at today and park.
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SPEAKER_02: And that's a technology that's assisting me.
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SPEAKER_02: And so what does it mean to be part of this shift in my profession?
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SPEAKER_02: And what does writing look like for my kids and our students down the road?
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SPEAKER_02: That's a question that is evolving.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: And as I think about this you talk about this grief and this is something
6:16
SPEAKER_00: that I think is really important because I think that as a technology you talked
6:21
SPEAKER_00: about the map right my dad still feels the loss of and he refuses to use any way
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SPEAKER_00: that shows him the way even if he'll show a better way or show him how to avoid
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SPEAKER_00: a traffic jam he doesn't know exists is like no
6:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: I have worked years to exercise this skill set and I will use it, which is fine, right?
6:46
SPEAKER_00: But the difference, I think, between the map and AI is that AI covers so many things we do.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: It's not one technology for one thing.
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SPEAKER_00: It's a technology that covers such a spectrum of things that not just people
7:00
SPEAKER_00: who specialize or think a lot about writing thinking, but really almost every
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SPEAKER_00: profession is thinking how does this impact what I do how I am and so
7:14
SPEAKER_02: the grief is more universal yeah a time this came up recently was when I was at
7:20
SPEAKER_02: a wedding and it was beautiful and the for a lot of reasons
7:23
SPEAKER_02: but too I love creativity so a couple things I loved were
7:27
SPEAKER_02: the best man's speech was hilarious and funny and awesome and great and also
7:32
SPEAKER_02: the father of the bride sang the song that he had written for her and I
7:36
SPEAKER_02: you know I'm a humanities person I cry at commercials so I'm touched
7:40
SPEAKER_02: by these moments and then as the AI person I am in the car on
7:43
SPEAKER_02: the way home I'm like I really hope they both wrote that and then and
7:48
SPEAKER_02: then my brain goes in 50 directions like well what does that mean to write that
7:52
SPEAKER_02: and do I actually hate it if the best man leaned into AI to make a speech that made
7:57
SPEAKER_02: that moment beautiful is that wrong bad these are kind
8:00
SPEAKER_02: of like ethical creative ownership questions that
8:06
SPEAKER_02: some people are like even this idea of authorship is outdated right now and
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SPEAKER_02: that makes me grab my chair like no I love it the things that I have made
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SPEAKER_02: and that's very intangible but like in my house I have a quilt my mom made
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SPEAKER_02: and it's different from a blanket or quilt I can buy at Walmart it's got something
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SPEAKER_02: in it and is that cheapened if I used AI like as a helper or as a
8:36
SPEAKER_02: I don't know these are questions I don't know the answer but I just I get
8:40
SPEAKER_02: a little bit existential about it because like for me as
8:43
SPEAKER_02: a writer recently I was trying to write this paper
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SPEAKER_02: and I couldn't sorry I'm taking us I keep talking okay but I was trying
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SPEAKER_02: to write this thing that I really cared about and I took a shot
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SPEAKER_02: at it three different days you know I'm like okay just run at it again try to get
9:00
SPEAKER_02: through your notes and I couldn't get it out and so
9:04
SPEAKER_02: Kind of with the deadline and exasperation,
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SPEAKER_02: I put my notes into AI and I said, help me organize this thing.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: And it helped me organize it around questions, which I love questions.
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SPEAKER_02: And then I could write it.
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SPEAKER_02: And now that writing exists.
9:18
SPEAKER_02: And so it takes me back to one of my students said this thing that's been like
9:23
SPEAKER_02: a non-wobbly rock for me is, is AI helping me to get out of work?
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SPEAKER_02: Which is a way to use it.
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SPEAKER_02: But also, where are the ways it can help me get into the work?
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SPEAKER_02: Where can it be a thinking partner?
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SPEAKER_02: Where can it goad me when I don't have a writing group?
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SPEAKER_02: I think that's an interesting place to lay in my brain.
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SPEAKER_02: Is it helping me to get out of it or get into it?
9:47
SPEAKER_00: And those boundaries are squishy.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: It's like if I get too used to
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SPEAKER_00: Leaning on it, would I stop looking for a writing group?
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SPEAKER_00: Or I will not organize a writing group because I have somewhere to go.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: So that squishiness is still there, right?
10:06
SPEAKER_00: In what we're doing.
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SPEAKER_00: And I'm constantly wondering about this because we're writing a lot.
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SPEAKER_00: We're doing a lot of research.
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SPEAKER_00: We use AI to help us think,
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SPEAKER_00: to help us reformulate, help me rewrite this research question, right?
10:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there's productive struggle that trying to rewrite it for three hours
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SPEAKER_00: or having to take a break and go somewhere and rewrite it,
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SPEAKER_00: maybe that would have been better.
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SPEAKER_00: But there is this thing here that can help me do this much faster.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: And so it's unclear, right?
10:40
SPEAKER_00: And I have no way.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we just talked before we started.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: before we started recording.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: Probably should have recorded some of that at least.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: We talked about restaurants.
10:50
SPEAKER_02: I made a really great joke about guy that we missed.
10:53
SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
10:54
SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
10:55
SPEAKER_02: Remember, let's all pretend how funny it was.
10:57
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: And you didn't use AI to write that joke.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: But we're constantly grappling with this.
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SPEAKER_00: I just went last week to the Omaha AI conference, which was lovely.
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SPEAKER_00: and but the two first speakers got up and the first thing they said is here's
11:15
SPEAKER_00: a speech and i didn't use ai to write it which was a really interesting moment
11:19
SPEAKER_00: in all of that because this is why you got here yeah
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SPEAKER_00: so it's like maybe you should say ai help me write this or maybe not but that was
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SPEAKER_00: an interesting things because they also left it kind of laying there
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SPEAKER_00: without doing anything with it and i would i'm like
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SPEAKER_00: That moment of reflection would have helped,
11:38
SPEAKER_00: like maybe it would have gone faster or maybe I on purpose did this because I'm
11:44
SPEAKER_00: a master of my craft.
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SPEAKER_00: I've been in this public speaking thing for so long
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SPEAKER_00: that I don't actually feel like AI can help me, but I can imagine how a novice
11:53
SPEAKER_00: would get some help here so they could have played with it they didn't
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SPEAKER_02: but it's all squishy and the one thing I want to add
12:00
SPEAKER_02: to what you just said is I don't feel like a lot of people are talking about
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SPEAKER_02: the value of going slow that a lot of this has to do with expediting things
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SPEAKER_02: that take a lot of time and that's got a value but I mean I'm a farm kid
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SPEAKER_02: and sometimes the plants need a while to grow or like the fact
12:19
SPEAKER_02: that I took three tries at writing that thing did reorganize some things
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SPEAKER_02: in my mind like the writing process does something to me as a writer and as
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SPEAKER_02: a thinker that goes beyond just can this make a thing like the act
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SPEAKER_02: of writing is really rich like when we talk about
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SPEAKER_02: literacy for reading that Scarborough's or active approach to reading
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SPEAKER_02: the same things happening with writing and now we have this other layer
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SPEAKER_02: of like another braid in the rope of oh an AI can be collaborating with us
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SPEAKER_02: and it's there's just a lot going on I don't want to get too heady about it
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SPEAKER_02: where it's not practical but like the idea of being not just writing but being
13:01
SPEAKER_02: a writer someone who writes is pretty darn complex and now we've just
13:07
SPEAKER_02: made it a lot more complex.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: With the fear, because that's what I heard.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I heard a few things in what you said,
13:15
SPEAKER_00: and one of them is there's the ability to use it as a co-creator,
13:21
SPEAKER_00: but there's also the ability to kind of delay everything.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: And so when you're talking about the speed, right,
13:31
SPEAKER_00: one of the advantages of the writing process as it unfolds for different people
13:36
SPEAKER_00: a little bit differently is that you take the time.
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SPEAKER_00: But if you know you have an AI that can help you, maybe you're not thinking at all.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: And then you get you sit in front of the AI and you start with,
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SPEAKER_00: hey, I need to write something about this.
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SPEAKER_00: Can you give me some ideas?
13:51
SPEAKER_00: Can you develop idea number three?
13:53
SPEAKER_00: And so there's a lot less agency and a lot less rolling around.
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SPEAKER_00: I fairly recently restarted with the Substack but in general writing weekly
14:02
SPEAKER_00: so blogging weekly about obviously AI because I don't think
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SPEAKER_00: about anything else except my granddaughter and but one of the things that that does
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SPEAKER_00: to my brain is I think about what am I going to write about all week
14:19
SPEAKER_00: this doesn't start on Sunday morning I'm like I need to find an idea no
14:24
SPEAKER_00: on Monday I start thinking about what are some ideas about things I want to explore
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SPEAKER_00: in my writing and I spend all week thinking about it and then
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SPEAKER_00: by Sunday morning I have an idea and I have some I don't do a lot of pre-writing at
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SPEAKER_00: that moment but I have solid ideas around how this is going to coalesce I use AI
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SPEAKER_00: a little bit to organize my thinking but that's about it which
14:49
SPEAKER_00: That can all go away if you just say,
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SPEAKER_00: hey, I don't know what to write about, but I know who will.
14:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
14:56
SPEAKER_02: I love it.
14:56
SPEAKER_02: The people that say prompt the human, like prompt yourself first.
15:00
SPEAKER_02: Can you be thinking about this before?
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SPEAKER_02: Because I've noticed in myself,
15:03
SPEAKER_02: if I just have AI write something for me, there's like less juice in it.
15:09
SPEAKER_02: I don't know the right word of just.
15:12
SPEAKER_02: But you and I have been writing for a while.
15:15
SPEAKER_02: And maybe we'll get to this with your questions but it makes me think
15:19
SPEAKER_02: about how do we scaffold this for young writers who are just trying to write
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SPEAKER_02: a sentence to write with clarity to write with organization and use the right words
15:28
SPEAKER_02: and say them correctly like how do we give them the situated practice
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SPEAKER_02: and how do we create that like give them the space for
15:37
SPEAKER_02: the productive struggle they need to learn how to write when
15:42
SPEAKER_02: The AI is just in the water of for in Nebraska a lot
15:45
SPEAKER_02: of our schools are Google schools that have Gemini automatically.
15:49
SPEAKER_02: It makes me think of like if you're trying to lose weight or not drink
15:52
SPEAKER_02: that you throw away the junk food or you don't have bottles of booze
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SPEAKER_02: in your kitchen like we're talking about adolescents and so and they have this at
16:00
SPEAKER_02: the ready.
16:01
SPEAKER_02: So some of me parts of me maybe all of me sorry all of me would like
16:07
SPEAKER_02: to have some magic stair step
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SPEAKER_02: umness to this with young people because i do think in junior and senior year and
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SPEAKER_02: on we got to be talking about ai it's in the water that it's going to be part
16:19
SPEAKER_02: of their working life they we can't ignore this but i don't know if
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SPEAKER_02: a fourth grader maybe they do i disagree with me but i don't know if
16:28
SPEAKER_02: a fourth grader needs to think about this when we're just trying to do like subject
16:32
SPEAKER_02: and get our verbs going and um
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SPEAKER_02: I don't know that that gradual release of responsibility piece feels hard.
16:40
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if policy can fix that or I don't know.
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SPEAKER_00: And that's part of the problem is that AI is everywhere.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: So it's really hard to contain this and everybody's trying to and we've got some
16:52
SPEAKER_00: um some of the you know no devices maybe zero devices in school
16:57
SPEAKER_00: and i'm i definitely don't agree with that but i do agree with you that at least in
17:01
SPEAKER_00: the learning process in school we need to be very careful especially
17:05
SPEAKER_00: with young kids all the way into early adulthood where at least in schools
17:10
SPEAKER_00: where we have some control because once they're out of school we have zero control
17:15
SPEAKER_00: over what's going on it's up to parents it's up to community it's up to um
17:20
SPEAKER_00: what devices they have access to and they all have access to yep and so thinking
17:25
SPEAKER_00: about but the truth is we don't know so i think the most important thing
17:30
SPEAKER_00: to admit is we don't know and the do not harm kind of way
17:35
SPEAKER_00: of thinking will be let's not rush to putting it in in access
17:40
SPEAKER_00: to every fourth grader who's trying to learn how to write
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah and I think I'm 42 it makes me wonder if I'm becoming the old curmudgeon
17:48
SPEAKER_02: because when I was first starting teaching I was the one who was like come on we got
17:52
SPEAKER_02: to get we got the internet it's the real world let's run at this and be real and
17:57
SPEAKER_02: with this for some reason I feel different or I
18:00
SPEAKER_02: I'm just I feel myself pulling back in a way like what because we don't know even as
18:06
SPEAKER_02: the adults in the room what this is doing to our interiors to live with this
18:11
SPEAKER_02: to have it seem so much like a friend and to have it be in a lot of the like
18:16
SPEAKER_02: the big large language models so encouraging to me no matter what I'm doing
18:21
SPEAKER_02: and those are evolving those are changing but just
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SPEAKER_02: I think there's sort of big existential questions that we don't know
18:29
SPEAKER_02: and we're all just kind of figuring it out as we go.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes, we are.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: So if you could change one thing about the way educators are approaching AI today,
18:39
SPEAKER_00: what would it be?
18:44
SPEAKER_02: I like to tell this story about when my daughter was afraid of the dark when she was little.
18:49
SPEAKER_02: I would take her hand and we would get up really close to the thing she said she was scared of.
18:56
SPEAKER_02: And that's been my party line for the last few years of like,
19:00
SPEAKER_02: let's figure out what this is before we say we're afraid of it.
19:03
SPEAKER_02: Because when I say AI, people mean such different things.
19:07
SPEAKER_02: Or people have just gone to see the Toy Story movie and they're like, screens are bad.
19:11
SPEAKER_02: And not that they...
19:14
SPEAKER_02: aren't a Pandora's box but just I think we need some clarity in our language like
19:21
SPEAKER_02: when I say AI what do I mean that's a really big bucket of what I'm trying
19:28
SPEAKER_02: to articulate and I think these conversations need some nuance and what in the sort
19:33
SPEAKER_02: of tech lash I heard that word for the first time at ISTE last week
19:37
SPEAKER_02: that people are pro and con and there's a lot of richness that
19:44
SPEAKER_02: The technological infrastructure we've built
19:46
SPEAKER_02: in schools can do really cool differentiation and can do really cool things
19:50
SPEAKER_02: for supporting like special education needs that if we just throw out all
19:54
SPEAKER_02: the screens, there's a lot that we've built that's really cool.
19:58
SPEAKER_02: So I guess that would be my one thing is can we stay in this conversation longer
20:04
SPEAKER_02: and ask a better question before just saying pro con, cheating not.
20:09
SPEAKER_02: I just think there's a lot more going on if we will continue to talk.
20:16
SPEAKER_00: And I love the metaphor of Pandora's box.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: And the reason is because you buying a screen or not buying a screen
20:25
SPEAKER_00: for your kid does not solve the problem.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: When Pandora opened the box,
20:31
SPEAKER_00: everything was released into the world, not into your kid's bedroom.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: And that is when AI was opened, it's open and it's accessible universally across the world.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: Anybody with a device can access it.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: And there's really no way to put it back in the box.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what we learned from Pandora.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: Once you opened it, it's there.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: We love the tech pros.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: We hate the tech pros.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: They made a mistake.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: It really in some ways does not matter.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: We cannot put it back in the box.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: So we have to look at it.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: I love that idea of looking at it up close, examining it.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: What is it that we're afraid of?
21:12
SPEAKER_00: How can we mitigate that?
21:14
SPEAKER_00: That's a great metaphor to think about.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: Another question is about using AI for students.
21:24
SPEAKER_01: Based on the information that we have about you,
21:26
SPEAKER_01: you advocate for a human-centered approach to writing.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: What does human-centered writing look like in a classroom where students have access
21:36
SPEAKER_01: to tools like ChatGPT?
21:39
SPEAKER_02: I want to start by saying this is not new.
21:42
SPEAKER_02: This is something I started leading into
21:45
SPEAKER_02: I don't know in 2006 when i took nebraska writing project which is a part of the national
21:49
SPEAKER_02: writing project and it was a writing workshop approach and they trained us to say
21:54
SPEAKER_02: i'm a writer and they drained us to that the best teaching
21:59
SPEAKER_02: the best teachers of writing are writers themselves and
22:04
SPEAKER_02: That's a very human-centered approach.
22:06
SPEAKER_02: It's a different classroom when I'm telling a story about a thing that happened
22:10
SPEAKER_02: to me in my real life.
22:10
SPEAKER_02: That feels alive.
22:13
SPEAKER_02: And to be a part of that,
22:14
SPEAKER_02: there's a secret sauce to that that I can't quite put my finger on that happens in
22:20
SPEAKER_02: a community-rich writing classroom where
22:23
SPEAKER_02: The teacher creates enough safety and enough modeling and enough think aloud
22:28
SPEAKER_02: that some adolescent,
22:30
SPEAKER_02: in my experience,
22:31
SPEAKER_02: goes, oh, I'm going to write something real, maybe something a little vulnerable.
22:34
SPEAKER_02: And then it like changes the energy in the room and they're like,
22:37
SPEAKER_02: oh, we're going to write real stuff in here.
22:40
SPEAKER_02: And so I think even when we're going to have conversations about AI,
22:45
SPEAKER_02: if we can center all of our writing practice on who's in the room,
22:49
SPEAKER_02: who are these real people
22:51
SPEAKER_02: what are their stories and that can inform me writing a narrative
22:56
SPEAKER_02: of course obviously but that can also inform a research paper or
23:00
SPEAKER_02: a research question like
23:01
SPEAKER_02: in my college class this last semester we did old school APA big papers
23:07
SPEAKER_02: but they grew out of pictures that we drew of life maps and students got to try
23:12
SPEAKER_02: and think about an issue that they actually cared about because
23:14
SPEAKER_02: of their actual real life and then one of my students in her reflection at
23:18
SPEAKER_02: the end this is n of one
23:21
SPEAKER_02: but i kind of asked them not kind of i had them again and again write author's notes
23:25
SPEAKER_02: of how much did you use ai
23:27
SPEAKER_02: where did you use it why did you use it did you choose not to use it
23:29
SPEAKER_02: and why did you choose that and in her exit note she put for this i didn't use ai
23:36
SPEAKER_02: because it's mine and something about that felt important to me as a writing teacher
23:40
SPEAKER_02: of like if i'm telling the story about my grandma
23:44
SPEAKER_02: that might give me more ownership of it and that I might use AI to edit it
23:50
SPEAKER_02: to revise it to make clean it up because I care so much
23:53
SPEAKER_02: about telling my grandma's story but I just feel like that if the human is at
23:58
SPEAKER_02: the center not just in the loop but that the human is part
24:02
SPEAKER_02: of what's guiding my teaching that being a teacher is so hard and exhausting and
24:07
SPEAKER_02: for me the battery that recharges in me
24:11
SPEAKER_02: is all about relationships like i came to the podcast today
24:14
SPEAKER_02: because guy guy is my guy like and i wanted to see what sweet shirt
24:18
SPEAKER_02: and what cowboy hat he brought today because and that's yes i wanted to talk
24:23
SPEAKER_02: about ai because that's our third thing that we're both into but
24:27
SPEAKER_02: the relationships are what make education really cool and i think we miss that
24:34
SPEAKER_02: when we try to make it all so like teacher proof um
24:38
SPEAKER_02: and so I think putting the humans at the center of any lesson that we're going
24:43
SPEAKER_02: to do is going to make it more alive and more juicy and AI doesn't take away from
24:47
SPEAKER_02: that it maybe actually makes us all notice it a bit more and it's really
24:54
SPEAKER_00: about centering what is the main point of what I'm doing right now
24:58
SPEAKER_00: that I don't necessarily want AI like if I want to tell a story about my grandma
25:04
SPEAKER_00: I don't.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: But if I want to finish,
25:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
25:09
SPEAKER_00: writing a quiz for my students,
25:11
SPEAKER_00: that may go the way of AI,
25:14
SPEAKER_00: do this for me,
25:15
SPEAKER_00: I'll fix it and then later because it's not so central to what I'm trying to do.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: It's not so unique.
25:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
25:22
SPEAKER_02: But just to complicate that a little bit too like after one
25:25
SPEAKER_02: of my kids baseball games we were out at this Mexican restaurant with
25:28
SPEAKER_02: the kids grandpa and he was with a proud excited face telling me
25:32
SPEAKER_02: about how AI wrote this song for his wife and he was just like
25:38
SPEAKER_02: jazzed up like how cool this was because he couldn't write songs and then I'm
25:42
SPEAKER_02: like okay that's interesting cuz the English teacher in me is a little bit
25:44
SPEAKER_02: like but then also this guy's pretty pumped to have been able to express
25:50
SPEAKER_02: this yeah and so it's messy
25:54
SPEAKER_00: all right so thank you for sitting with us for a short
25:58
SPEAKER_00: while we'll probably do this again in the near future because we're far
26:02
SPEAKER_00: from done being just thinking and i think writing is one of those places and if
26:08
SPEAKER_00: the first place we realized what ai can do was in computer science i think the place
26:13
SPEAKER_00: where we're grappling with it the most is in writing because it does writing
26:20
SPEAKER_00: as the main way of communicating and so it's the natural next place but that is also
26:25
SPEAKER_02: the most problematic place probably to be in yeah what a lovely place to have chosen
26:30
SPEAKER_02: as my profession but anyway it's really nice to meet Azadeh and it's good
26:37
SPEAKER_02: to see you guy this has been fun thank you good to see you too
26:41
SPEAKER_00: and we'll see you next time on Azadeh and Guy on AI