Using Chat GPT & Open AI in Education
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been making waves in various industries, including education. AI can provide new opportunities for innovation and transformation in the way we learn, teach, and support students with special educational needs.
One AI technology that is making an impact in education is ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI. ChatGPT is a language model that can generate human-like responses to a range of questions and tasks, making it a powerful tool for automating tasks, providing personalised support, and streamlining communication.
For SENCOs, the use of ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionise their work by saving time and effort, freeing them up to focus on more complex tasks. ChatGPT can automate repetitive tasks, such as answering frequently asked questions, which can help SENCOs work more efficiently and effectively. Moreover, ChatGPT can provide personalised support for students with special educational needs, delivering specific information and resources to meet their individual needs and interests 24/7. This can help to improve the overall learning experience for students with special needs and provide them with the support they require.
ChatGPT can also support SENCOs’ staff by reducing their workload, providing instant support, and encouraging professional development. For example, ChatGPT can be used to generate reports, create resources, and answer staff questions, freeing up time for more important tasks. Additionally, ChatGPT can provide access to current best practices in special educational needs and suggest training opportunities, encouraging staff professional development.
For students, the use of ChatGPT can enhance their learning experience, providing 24/7 support, personalized learning resources, and interactive learning tools. ChatGPT can generate individualized learning plans, quizzes, and other resources tailored to each student’s specific needs, interests, and abilities. Furthermore, ChatGPT can encourage student engagement and motivation through gamification and interactive learning tools, such as creating games and quizzes, and providing instant feedback on progress.
While the benefits of ChatGPT in education are undeniable, there are also some concerns to be aware of, such as the potential for lack of creativity or becoming dependent on AI and plagiarism. However, with proper oversight and usage, ChatGPT can be a powerful tool that can help SENCOs and their staff to be more effective and provide students with a better learning experience.
In conclusion, ChatGPT and other AI systems have the potential to revolutionize the role of the SENCO, supporting them in new ways and enhancing the overall learning experience for their students. By automating repetitive tasks, providing personalized support, and streamlining communication, ChatGPT can help SENCOs to focus on their core responsibilities and make a positive impact on the students they serve.
As you start your research, it’s important to keep in mind that just like the gym, there are multiple options when it comes to software, each with its own unique features and capabilities. It’s essential to understand the specific needs of your students and how software can support them. From assessment and tracking progress to communication and collaboration, a wide variety of software options can help you in your role as a SENCO. It’s also important to keep in mind that some software may not integrate well with your current systems or may not have all the features you need. It’s important to take the time to test out different options and see how they integrate with your current setup and whether or not they have the features you need to support your students effectively.
The bit AI-bigail added…or did she?
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I’m a massive fan of technology anyway, and I’m an early adopter of most technology, OpenAI being no exception. I love being able to ask it a question and alleviate that terrifying blank-page syndrome. I know that there is some concern it takes away the creativity – but as I’ve had to mediate most responses and check they are accurate or include personal anecdotes, I don’t think that this is a massive concern. I showed ChatGPT and Tome (creates presentations) to my current teaching assistant apprenticeship cohort recently, and they were blown away. Imagine being able to take the text created by a teacher and
- instantly rewrite in a stye appropriate for a student with a much lower reading age (“Rewrite this in a way a 6-year-old would understand”)
- pick out the keywords and their definitions which they can quickly copy and paste into a word document and print off (“Find the keywords and define in a table. Key Word | Definition”)
- or translate something (“Rewrite this in French for a 9-year-old to understand”)
I believe this is the future of adaptive teaching! It’s practically instantaneous and for those lessons where the TA and teacher haven’t managed to collaborate and adapt things in preparation, it just removes some of the barriers.
Add into this mix teachers can use ChatGPT to
- generate cloze-passages (“Using the text above generate a cloze-fill passage”)
- create multiple choice questions (“Based on the above text, generate 5 multiple-choice questions.”
- Create lots of SLOP questions (“Create 10 questions, create 10 true/false questions, generate more…)
But what about the students? Well, some of you may recall before Christmas I was in a school with a group of Y4 students refusing to put pen on paper and write letters to Santa. We used ChatGPT to show us what the framework of a letter might look like and then asked it to generate a letter to Professor Brian Cox instead. (I posted an extract of the letter on Twitter, and he replied! Those students were more than happy to do some more writing after that.
ChatGPT can undertake some of the functions of programs like Grammarly but can also make suggestions on how to improve a piece of work.
It’s only as good as what you put in though. It is not able to ‘do the work for you’. And if you are worried about detecting AI output, then there are detectors. (Personally, I like http://gltr.io/dist/index.html the greener it is, the more likely it is to be AI. Or you can use https://openai-openai-detector.hf.space/ . Both are based on the older GPT-2 model but are reasonably accurate.)
Be aware, though – the language programming model is up to 2019. Ask ChatGPT to write about the queen’s death and it will tell you she is still alive!
I can’t wait to see what happens next with AI. I’ve already been experimenting with DALL-E, which creates images (as someone who struggles to draw stickmen, I’m very happy) and TOME, which generates presentations and picture books (yes, you read that right…I can tell it to create a presentation about dyslexia for a group of new to teaching UK teachers and it will start to generate the content and images for you…you can then add more prompts to have additional slides.) There are add-ins for your browser that generate email responses automatically and help with searches.
I don’t think we can ignore AI…like the pocket-calculator it is here to stay, so we need to find ways to embrace it… at the moment, I can only see the hundred-thousand ways it can help to reduce some of my workload as a SENCO.
Want to know more and perhaps see it in action?
I’m delivering a NEXUS-Education session on 8th March, although with enough demand I’m sure Gavin (not AI) could be persuaded to put on a network session too!
Abigail Hawkins FCCT
Director of SENDCO Solutions
Abigail Hawkins was a SENCO for over 25 years and has worked with pupils with all types of needs. Abigail has worked with Ed-Tech companies on developing their software and also been chair of governors for a multi-academy trust. Abigail now runs SENsible SENCO and SENDCO Solutions, with the aim of working with SENCOs and inclusion leaders across the UK to improve their support for SEND pupils. See our school services for more information.