[audio logo]

OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Marjorie Olavides: Hello, everyone. My name is Marjorie Olavides, and I'm a project specialist for the Outreach and Technical Assistance Network, also known as OTAN, and I'd like to welcome you all to this month's OTAN Tech Talk. Our speaker today is Susan Gaer, OTAN subject matter expert, and her topic today is Generative AI for Students and Teachers. Let's get started. Go ahead, Susan.

Susan Gaer: OK. Hi, everyone. As I said, my name is Susan Gaer, and I am a certified innovator, a certified educator for Google. I work for the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, Afghanistan, teaching women, and I'm a subject matter expert for OTAN. So I'm going to turn my video off now so you guys can focus on this presentation.

So I have a little video I'm going to play you, and it is created by AI completely, and the words will be on the screen, so hopefully you'll be able to hear it.

[video playback]

[electronic pop music] The future's here

Can't you see?

Artificial intelligence

It's time to be free

No, we can't stop this tidal wave

So let's embrace it

Ride the AI wave

Unleash the future

Let's join the party

Oh, oh, oh

Learners harnessing power

Ethical and fair we'll be

Together we'll create a world

So bright with AI by our side

Unstoppable might, yeah

The future's here

Can't you see?

[end playback]

So that was created by Suno AI, and if you just go ahead and scan the QR code, then you will be able to see the app that I used to create that. I took the description, which is coming up next, and I put that into Suno AI to get that song. It was very easy to do.

So today's agenda is Artificial Intelligence, AI, is here. We can't stop its arrival, so let's join the party. This OTT will address learning for multilingual learners using AI. The session concludes with points about the ethical and responsible use of AI tools.

So when you're using AI with your students, you have to think of the continuum of where you want to be, where you are, and where you want to be with your students. So this continuum is about AI use, and at the far left, you'll see there's no integration. No integration means you're not doing anything with AI at all.

Then if we move this-- go through the continuum, the first point is AI is only discussed in the classroom. So at least you're acknowledging that AI is available. You're talking to the students about it, but you're not using it with your classroom.

Then the next level would be the instructor demonstrates AI use and results. That means you may create lessons with it, you may use it with your students, you may tell them you're using it. You may do some differentiated reading, but they're not doing anything. It's all you.

The next one is the instructor provides AI results. Students can improve and modify their work. And this is where you're actually-- still, the students aren't using AI like you're putting their work into AI and you're telling them, here's how you can improve your work, and they can improve based on that.

So the next level up is you allow your students to use AI, but only in your classroom. And then the next level. As you can see, we're getting towards what I call the green, which is the go level, students use I out of class, but only for some aspects of assigned work. So this is where you tell the students you're welcome to use AI for this reason or that reason, but you don't want them using it on their own.

And then we have students use AI for any all aspects of assigned work, but must declare when and where it's used. You're allowing your students to do AI, and you just want them to cite when they're using it. This is kind of where I am right now. I'm trying to move all the way to full integration, but I still want my students to cite so that I would say that I stand right there, right now.

And the last level, full integration is students use AI for any all aspects of assigned work, declaration not required. And we'll talk about that in the ethics part of this talk. All right.

So the first thing I want to show you is that although we have ChatGPT, which a lot of people are using, it's good on the computer, it's better on the phone. So I made a little video. This is my computer and this is my phone ChatGPT, and I want to show you what it can do with translation. Hi, ChatGPT.

Ai Voice: Hello again. How can I assist you today?

Susan Gaer: Can you please translate to Spanish?

Ai Voice: Sure, I can translate to Spanish. Please go ahead and tell me what you'd like to translate.

Susan Gaer: San Joaquin River is located in the Ansel Adams wilderness in the South Central Sierra Nevada.

Ai Voice: [speaking spanish]

Susan Gaer: Please translate this to Korean.

Ai Voice: [speaking korean]

Susan Gaer: Please translate to Cantonese Chinese.

Ai Voice: [speaking cantonese]

Susan Gaer: Please translate to Mandarin Chinese.

Ai Voice: [speaking mandarin]

Susan Gaer: Thank you very much.

Ai Voice: You're welcome. If you have any more questions or need assistance with anything else, feel free to ask.

Susan Gaer: I'd like you to make a picture for me.

Ai Voice: Of course.

Susan Gaer: So that is how we can use students can use ChatGPT with their phone to translate. I do know that Chinese has some problems with it, but I believe the Korean and Spanish was quite well done, and also used the verbal accents were pretty true to form.

So also this will differentiate reading for the students. Now again, the focus on this workshop is-- on this presentation is how students can use ChatGPT with your guidance. So students can actually differentiate reading for themselves. So let me take a look. Here's one of the little things about reading. Hi, ChatGPT.

Ai Voice: Hello again. How can I assist you today?

Susan Gaer: Can you read me a short story about Malala Yousafzai?

Ai Voice: I'd be happy to share a brief story about Malala Yousafzai. Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani education activist known for her courageous advocacy for girls' education in Pakistan and around the world.

Susan Gaer: Could you translate this story to Spanish?

Ai Voice: [speaking spanish]

Susan Gaer: Can you translate this to Mandarin Chinese? Can you translate this to Chinese?

Ai Voice: [speaking mandarin]

Susan Gaer: Is this Mandarin or Cantonese?

Ai Voice: The translation I provided is in Mandarin Chinese. If you would like a translation in Cantonese, Chinese or have any other questions or requests, please feel free to let me know.

Susan Gaer: Please translate it to Cantonese Chinese.

Ai Voice: [speaking cantonese]

Susan Gaer: Please provide a summary of the Malala story in English.

Ai Voice: Here's a summary of the Malala Yousafzai story in English. Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani education activist known for her courageous advocacy for girls' education. She--

Susan Gaer: Can you please slow down your speech?

Ai Voice: Of course, I'll speak more slowly. How can I assist you today?

Susan Gaer: I'd like you to tell me the story of Malala.

Ai Voice: Certainly here's a slower-paced version of the story of Malala Yousafzai. Malala Yousafzai--

Susan Gaer: So there was a lot that I did in that, like I had translate the story for me, I had lower the reading level. All of that can be done, and one of the things that I really love about it, everything you do on your phone goes directly to your ChatGPT on the computer. So you can actually see everything that you're doing. Let me see. It's down here somewhere.

Everything that you do comes here into ChatGPT, but don't quite have exactly that one there. But you will have it all here. So the students can actually read it as well as doing the activity with it. So that's using the phone.

So the app is here. You have to be really careful with your students when you download the app because there are thousands of them on the Apple Store and the Google Play. What's really important is that you see here where it says open AI. That is the one you want. You want no other app.

So when you go to the Apple Store, the Google Play Store and you have your students do it, critical to make sure that they have the OpenAI version, not the commercial versions.

So when you get it on your phone, in order for you to talk to it, you have to hit the microphone key right there at the bottom right, and then when you're done, I just stop talking and it automatically will do what I ask, but you can also hit the X button there.

So as or may not know, this is-- AI is actually a large language learning model, and it's gathered information from all over the world that's on the internet. And as much as I love beginning intermediate and advanced levels of ESL if you're an ESL teacher, that is not a global universal. The global universal levels of language are the Common European Framework of reference for languages. These are used all over the world.

So if you want to get really good information and leveled information for your ESL speakers, I suggest using the Common European Framework because there's more material out there. And so it's pretty easy, if you think about this, A1 is like beginning one, A2 is like low beginning, high beginning, low intermediate, high, intermediate, advanced, low advanced, high advanced.

The problem is there is no literacy. So if you want literacy level, that's not going to be shown here in the European framework. And I'm not sure that ChatGPT actually understands what a literacy student is like, so you may not get material for that level.

So I'll move on. There is a QR code here if you're interested in getting more information about the Common European Framework of reference for languages.

The other one is the NRS descriptors that were commonly used here, but this is again just used in the United States, and so there's not that much data for ChatGPT to gather materials for, but if you're interested in learning more about the NRS descriptors, there's a QR code for you on the page.

So one of the things that's really good about ChatGPT is that you can actually talk to it and have a conversation, and your students will have a conversation tutor. So this is a prompt that Brent Warner, who is an ESL teacher in Irvine, created. He's a really great with prompts, so if you ever follow him, you can get lots of great prompt ideas from materials.

So this is a prompt for students to actually have a conversation partner, take a picture of it because you can use this prompt real easily, and it will do exactly what you want.

So it says, "In a moment I'm going to open up the voice conversation. When I do, I want you to understand that your role is primarily as an ESL teacher whose goal is to help me improve my English. Please assume that you have a strong background in language acquisition, and your sense of pedagogical approaches is outstanding. Do not overwhelm me with too much information all at once, but stay supportive. Reply with, let's talk if you understand."

So I have this one here. Right here. OK, so I have this teacher support. So I did that, and this is going to be hard to see. Let's see if I can zoom it in so you can see it better. Just give me a yes in the chat if this is easier to see.

So I started out here, and so I said reply with let's talk if you understand, and then ChatGPT responded with, let's talk. And then I said, I'm a barista. That's great, and she gives-- ChatGPT gives me a description of what a barista needs to do.

And so then I start my conversation and I said, good morning. What would you like to drink today? And how about a cappuccino? So we're having a conversation. We did this about coffee, and then I switched the roles. So that ChatGPT became the barista and I became the customer, and then I did also-- I did something else.

So, yeah, you can have any context. You could be selling a car, buying a car. You could do anything you want to do. Your students can have their own conversation partner. So this prompt will work for that as long as they say what they want to do. So I'll move on.

This is another place to go. There are lots of activities here. This is developed by librarians, so it's very, very useful information, and it has a lot of things for students to do as well. It has language learning prompts for students. So I suggest strongly that you go to this prompt library for educators to help you write your prompts because when you get information from ChatGPT, you need to be able to write a good prompt.

So what I really love as a writing teacher, so I'm teaching composition at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. My students are all mostly female, and I don't see them, of course, because I can't be in Kabul. So I teach only remotely. And teaching writing in a very-- only remotely is very challenging, especially with the level of the students that we have.

But now with ChatGPT, the students no longer have to worry about that empty piece of paper. I can remember my teachers asking me to write and my blank paper just overwhelmed me.

So whatever the students want to discuss now-- I was doing a unit on plastics, so I just said, I need to write a paper on plastic, and I'm at the CEFR B1 level. What are some good topics? And tons of topics showed up. All kinds of ideas, ideas within ideas. So I could pick any one of these things to write about.

I think this is a great use for those of you who are teaching composition to be able to use ChatGPT to get ideas for writing, and your students to get ideas for writing.

Now let's look at image generation. This is Copilot, it would create images. This is an image that I created here. I asked for a diverse group of students working on a project.

Let's go over here to Copilot, and you can ask it anything you want for a picture. Let's say, give me a picture of a husky singing in the rain, on the moon at night. Let's see what we get. And here will come a picture. It may take a second or two, but you'll get four different pictures.

And the pictures are only as much as you give it in the prompt. So the more detail you give to the prompt, the better the picture will show up. And if you don't like the picture that came, you can ask it to tweak the picture, and it will tweak it.

So your students can now get pictures that they can use, and they only-- have them describe the picture in English. What a great language activity is that to have the students practice doing prompting in the moon? Now the dog is not in the moon like I asked, but it's got beautiful moon pictures. I like this one with the umbrella.

So yeah, this is Copilot. It does do a nice job. It used to be called Bing Image Creator, but now it's called Copilot. So the link for that is right there if you're interested in getting that.

The next one is Padlet-I can't draw. This is also a nice AI, easy to use generator. So here I have if you want to go and try it out, just scan that QR code, and then over here, you can actually just click on your-- I'll show you how to do it, and then you I'll go back to the QR code in case you're interested in trying it out.

So you click here, and then you click on these three dots, and you go to, I can't draw. Where is it? Drawer, it's not-- yeah, I can't draw. And here is what you put in whatever you're interested in. I picture, well, we don't need to say a picture. It's going to be a picture.

A person who is dancing in a cafe. I'm into dancing today because it's sunny, in sunshine. The person should be tall. Then and of color. Let's see what happens. The more detail you get it, you give it, the better it will be.

Now there we go. Four pictures of someone dancing in a cafe of color. So you can actually get these pictures and choose them, and this is all free on Padlet. As long as you have a Padlet account, your students can do this, and then you just pick it and put it in there, and your students can write whatever they want to write. Dancing for the sun. There we go. So if you're interested, you can go ahead and scan that QR code, and you can add try out, I can't draw with Padlet.

So let's talk about ethics. I don't know if you heard about the Gemini thing. So Gemini is what used to be Google Bard, and now it's called Gemini. It came out like-- it changed in late February. It went from Bard to Gemini. The moment it did that, it got into big trouble because they were making images of people that were inaccurate.

They were trying to be so inclusive that when you ask for somebody from the Civil War, you might have gotten somebody of Chinese origin, which we in the US civil war, probably not. So they got in trouble for that. So now they don't create any images of people. If you ask Gemini to create an image of a dog or a place, they will do that, but if you ask them to create an image of a person, they will say, sorry, we can't do it.

And I asked it because I wanted to know what Gemini said about its mistakes because all AI is inherently faulty, and if you're-- and this is a thing that you really need to teach this to your students, it's faulty, it has hallucinations, it's inaccurate. And I asked Gemini-- they're called gaffes in AI language-- when you're inaccurate, and this is what it said.

All they talked about was their historical inaccuracy. When prompted for images of historical figures, Gemini attempted to be diverse, but ended up depicting them inaccurately. For instance, users saw images of founding fathers with Asian or African-American features, which is ahistorical.

But that is exactly what happened over here on February 23. It's like they're only saying that this is the kind of inaccuracies they have. They also talked about overzealous filtering and attempt to avoid stereotypes. Again, this is all about images.

Gemini filtered out images of people altogether in certain contexts. This resulted in nonsensical outputs like images of empty classrooms when a teacher was requested.

Again, I didn't ask it for its image issues, I asked it for its issues, and it only gave me its image issues. Now I did the same thing with ChatGPT, and it gave me a whole bunch of different things that they do wrong, and I felt like this to me was a little bit more honest than Gemini. I don't know. I mean, you can decide.

So these are the different things that they said that happened. Well, this is all Gemini. This is Gemini errors. OK. Sorry. So, yeah, these are more errors about Gemini. So woke or wrong, again, this is image talking about images.

Beyond political correctness. How Gemini's tuning went awry. This title suggests a more nuanced look at the issues going beyond accusations of political bias. Again, this is all about its images. So these are just more things that told me, and it most likely talked about images. Every single one. Four is also people disappear, five is unmasking the biases behind. So they're actually saying the only problem they have is images.

Now ChatGPT, on the other hand, this is where I was going with this, gave me typical information that would get wrong-- we would get wrong. For example, providing incorrect medical advice.

You should definitely-- this is what it said. You should definitely try mixing bleach with ammonia to clean your kitchen. It's super effective. That's wrong. Making culturally insensitive remarks. oh, you're from Australia? Do you ride kangaroos to work? I can't believe you would say that, but apparently it did.

Number three, spreading this information. Did you know that the Earth is flat? It's all a conspiracy by the government to hide the truth. This is something that ChatGPT actually outputted. Number four, inappropriate language. That's so lame, bro. You should totally ditch your girlfriend and hang out with cooler people.

But what I really appreciated about ChatGPT is its honesty, and it didn't focus on just its image generation, whereas Gemini is just saying the only problem they have is image generation. I'm sorry. They have the same problems with their text that ChatGPT has. It's inaccurate.

So this is actually a great activity I would do with my students just because I believe that they need to learn about the ethical issues of ChatGPT as much as we do.

Marjorie Olavides: Thank you, Susan, and also thank all of you for coming to this Open Tech Talk. If you have an edtech tool or some tips that you'd like to share with the adult education field, go ahead and email your idea to support it, otan.us.

And we also encourage you to subscribe to the YouTube channel where you can view archived tech talks as well as view other OTAN videos. You can contact OTAN for additional services, including professional development at your site. Just visit the OTAN site at otan.us, or contact us by phone or email. And thank you again for watching today's OTAN Tech Talk.