Students' Right to Write & Understand AI (Blog Post 3)
How did we get here? In today's world of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Generative AI galore, we are immersed in the wonder of "writing" that can be produced with the entering of a short prompt. When ChatGPT came onto the market in November 2022, I was about to begin my final semester of my bachelor's degree in Secondary English Education. As I entered my full time student teaching the following spring, students I had gotten to know first semester who had rarely turned in writing assignments began to turn in full length essays, always well-written but with an uncanny tendency to deviate from the expectations of the assignment that were explained and scaffolded in class. Outside of the classroom, I saw many posts online about people experimenting with talking to AI chatbots; at the time, I imagined those chatbots like the robot pictured above: a cute, helpful friend who had a knack for writing. In the early days of seeing AI seep into the English classroom we began discus...