THERE has been a lot of buzz about how AI chatbots can detect cheating, but a primary school teacher believes it could help detect other red flags.
Stephen Lockyer, an educator from London who teaches eight- to nine-year-olds, has experimented with ChatGPT, a chatbot from the artificial intelligence company OpenAI.
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So far, Lockyer has explored the chatbot’s capabilities when creating lesson plans for his students.
He told The U.S. Sun in an exclusive interview that using ChatGPT to make lesson plans “saved me an awful lot of time.”
Lockyer said he could “create a resource really quickly” using the tech, rather than wasting time looking for resources or writing it out himself.”
While it’s a “transformative” tool to use when creating teaching material, Lockyer also believes it could potentially further help with students’ educational needs by spotting red flags.
“The way I see it going in a couple of years’ time is that I will have the ability to paste in children’s work, and it will flag up automatically that they are starting to use more expansive vocabulary or they’re struggling to use colors,” Lockyer said.
“And it will give you that sort of interrogation or information.”
Lockyer said this would be another great time-saver for teachers.
This flagging software “is much more valuable as a teacher than me sitting there and reading through tons and tons of work,” he said.
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“I’d much rather look at a final piece of work, usually looking at the recommendations that AI will come up with.
“And go okay, to proceed forward only to support the child in [the material it’s flagged].”
Efficiency isn’t the only good thing that will come out of this development. Lockyer thinks it will also help him pick out things that he wouldn’t be able to typically see.
“I’d really liked the technology to be able to be informing me of things that I am not going to be able to be aware of,” he said.
AI DANGER TO TEACHERS
While AI tech can help out in the classroom, Lockyer isn’t worried about it running him out of a job, because he argues that teachers have three unique skills that chatbots lack.
“I don’t feel that teachers are in any danger because I can stand in front of a class of 30 students and read the room, read the atmosphere, identify where there are pockets of confusion or overconfidence and the computer can’t do that yet,” he said.
“Some teachers were worried that it’s going to do them out of a job.
“But it really isn’t because it’s only as good as the input and the teacher who puts those inputs in.”
A primary school teacher of 20 years, Lockyer said his experience “will allow me to ask better questions because I know maybe more what I’m looking for.”
You also have to be “really, really clear with your prompt” that you give the chatbot, according to Lockyer.
He explained: “You have to be very specific about the noun, the verb, and the object, so it doesn’t get confused about what you want it to do.
“It will struggle if you don’t have the right terminology.”
