Thread by @Mr_McGarrah

The future of education in the world of #ChatGPT will look more like a movie set with each student becoming a director, rather than them being passive spectators at the opening premiere of a movie. Let me explain in the next 17 tweets. #AI #FutureOfEducation

1. In a traditional classroom, students are talked to and told what to do. It is a game of compliance with points given for how closely each student gets to the predefined outcome. It is uninspiring. After all, they can find the answers in 5 seconds.

2. Most of schooling is built around instilling knowledge that already exists in the world. It is true that everyone needs some baseline knowledge as a framework, but we spend too much time teaching knowledge-based learning outcomes because they are testable.

3. Students know the game. They quickly forget the knowledge after the test because it meant nothing to them. They didn’t learn because we hyper-fixate on test scores and a lot of the meaningful learning activities have been removed from the classroom to teach to the test.

4. Real learning is hard. It is not always pretty. There will be failings along the way. Emphasis on grades and scores is bad. It discourages students from trying to learn because they know failing an assignment or test will impact their grade. There is no growth without failure.

5. So #ChatGPT will result in students needing to become directors instead of spectators. Just as a director breaths life into a movie script, students will do the same. The emphasis on obtaining knowledge will have to give way to creative expression of using that knowledge.

6. A director chooses which script to bring to life. He decides who the actors will be, chooses set locations, and a myriad of other decisions. He may request changes to the script. He selects the music. It’s why the director’s name is more prominent than the screenwriter’s.

7. It takes an entire team of people under the direction of the director to bring a script to life. He did not do everything himself. He took the source material and gave it value by leveraging the strengths of the people he choose and decisions he made.

8. Likewise, a student will need to learn how to breathe life into output from AI sources. It still requires human intuition and creativity to guide the process to fruition. It will take some knowledge. But knowledge is readily accessible and does not need to be memorized.

9. Artificial intelligence can become a very powerful tool in the hands of someone who can leverage it effectively. Students need to be taught how to use it. AI should not be banned for fears of cheating. Why do we call obtaining knowledge cheating anyways?

10. Teachers borrow lessons and materials from other teachers. Textbook authors curate the knowledge discovered by others into a book. It’s not called cheating in those cases, but only within the confines of the walls of a school.

11. The educational model has to change. The emphasis on knowledge acquisition has to shift to an emphasis on creation. It’s no longer good enough to memorize facts. Students have to be able to take those facts (the movie script) and breath life into them.

12. They have to take the knowledge and build upon it. Do something with it. That can’t be easily tested though. Just as some movies become blockbusters and some flop, some explorations and applications of learning will not succeed. Does it mean nothing was gained in the process?

13. Most successful people readily admit they learn more from their failures than their successes. Why? Because they test the limits of their knowledge and abilities and grow from the process. Students will learn and grow from similar opportunities.

14. AI should be celebrated as a way to break from the mold of endless test prep and instead we should show students how to use AI to explore the world more fully and then allow students to test the limits and boundaries of their understanding without fear of a failing grade.

15. Students can find answers to their questions in 5 seconds. Before cellphones and the internet, memorizing facts was important. It isn’t as important now. It’s more important to learn how to use those facts and knowledge in a meaningful way. AI makes it even less relevant.

16. We need creators in the world of AI, not spectators. We need critical thinkers and not parrots. We need to restructure what it means to go to school and what we do within those walls. #ChatGPT is just the canary in the coal mine of AI. Schools HAVE to change.

17. Does this mean students don’t need to know facts or memorize some things? Of course not. But in a future where AI will do a lot of work for us, it will take skillful directors to breath life into the things it does well. Let’s create more directors and fewer spectators. /end