Instructional Leadership

January 2023

Instructional Planning: Initial Interest in ChatGPT

Educators and school leaders alike have expressed interest and concern over a new piece of AI technology: ChatGPT.

• “I used http://chat.openai.com to help me develop a Gr7/8 mini-unit for word morphology. I was very surprised at the intuition. This unit would have taken me a few days to put together. This took me about an hour. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15q319jy2AauirWe0LRJPh9qfzNiLJuqm Excited to explore more!” —Elementary Teacher in Toronto
• “If your classroom is using ChatGPT, students should know about who built the tool, how it was built, and how it works. Only through ethical scrutiny discourse should a classroom decide whether or not to use this tool and why.” —Special Education Educator in Pennsylvania
• “ChatGPT is no different than Google search was 10 years ago. We have to adapt to the new tech not be afraid. It makes complexity possible!” —School Leader in Missouri 

• “How Disruptive Will ChatGPT Be? It Depends… Everyone in #education is talking about #ChatGPT. Many articles & podcasts focus on ways this tech will disrupt education. Makes me wonder if tech is the real problem.” —Educator in California
  • “We are definitely having lots of discussions. We found a psych paper written by ChatGPT so far, and two that we think it wrote (English) but can’t prove. We’re eventually going to have to learn to work with it because our students will use it…” —Instructional Coach in Wisconsin

• “Okay, #ChatGPT is a game changer AND a problem for #teachers. Agree? Disagree?” —Educator in California
  • ““Disagree… Game changer yes…. only a problem if you stay with dated behaviors in the face of new information. EduDarwinism at its finest. We can’t run from the future. Best thing to do is to adapt and create the best possible opportunities to prepare students to use the tools.” —Teacher in New Hampshire
  • “For me, the benefit of this year & teaching a year-long class is that I have a baseline for student writing. I’m more concerned about future years when I’m just getting to know what they are capable of. I think it’ll be much harder to identify.” —Middle School Teacher in Vermont
  • “I created a slideshow, using questions I asked the Chatbot and the same questions answered by the students as part of my Dystopian Fiction class. Now unfortunately I have to use it to track unciteable plagiarism.” —High School Humanities Teacher in California 

• “Is Chat GPT dangerous?” —Educator in Texas
  • “As a librarian/media specialist, I was asked about this. The first thing I said was ‘are the sources vetted to be truthful, and reliable.’ That is still the part that people forget about.” —Educator in North Carolina
  • “I had a whole new perspective on it when @ClassTechTips showed ways to use it. It’s a creative genius for those who may find themselves running out of ideas for almost anything. As a 6-12 English teacher, though, using these as teaching tools may have to come into play soon.” —Educator in Louisiana 
  • “Helping to be more productive. Like having a TA at your disposal. It’s not perfect, but its saved me hours of work already.” —Teacher in Texas

• “Any educator who is saying ‘ChatGPT won’t affect MY classroom’ better get humble really quickly. As a friend said, “This is like when my AP called me into his office & asked ‘Have you seen this thing called Google?’ It’s going to change the way we think about writing forever.” —School Leader in Pennsylvania 

Since ChatGPT’s initial release on November 30, 2022, the app has continued to generate conversation amongst educators. This is supported by an 215.42% increase of conversation volume between December 2022 and January 2023.