ChatGPT in the World Language Classroom
Technology has changed education, forever.
ChatGPT, AI, and technology as a whole have been one of the most talked about topics in education recently. We truthfully are in a technology revolution. Technology now is NOT the same technology as it was just a few months ago at the beginning of 2023. In a matter of a few months, ChatGPT has completely revolutionized tech forever.
I recently attended a workshop completely dedicated to ChatGPT and how teachers can use it in their classrooms. Before this, I was already accustomed to ChatGPT and had played around with it. But to my surprise, many teachers had no idea what it was! If you are not sure what it is, to sum it up in one sentence, you can basically ask or tell this AI to do anything and it will! (ie: I can say: Create a 45-minute lesson plan about a Spanish food unit for 7th graders - and it will produce a very convincing lesson!) When introducing it, many teachers became frustrated easily with the idea of students using it to do their work for them. The most interesting part about ChatGPT though, is that it will not produce the same answers twice. (For example: If two people ask “What is Comprehensible Input in the World Language Classroom?” you will get two different answers).
This, of course, leads to a big debate in all schools. How can we ensure that students are not using ChatGPT to do their work for them? I have some thoughts on this but wanted to share a positive spin on a topic that has been frustrating educators.
How can teachers use ChatGPT effectively to help them in their classrooms?
#3: Brainstorm
I have asked ChatGPT to come up with activity ideas for reinforcing target structures and how to get students moving in the classroom. I didn’t LOVE every suggestion, but a few of them were very interesting to me! For a no prep low prep day, I used its suggestion of a Vocab Relay Race in my class and it was really fun, engaging, and new!
#2: Create Activities
For comprehension activities, I often do true/false, one doesn’t belong, two truths and a lie, put events in order, and so on! If you copy and paste a text or a story you are reading in your class into ChatGPT and tell it to “Create 10 t/f questions about this story” it will! (And you can get the answer key too!) Of course, I can and have done this on my own. But, it can take time, especially with everything else I have to do during the day. With the 5-10 minutes I save by doing this, I can focus my time and energy on something else. (As a note, please double-check the ChatGPT work before copying and pasting it, it is not perfect and can sometimes make errors, but I have experienced it being far more successful than not!)
#1: Emails
Need to contact a parent about a child who has been disruptive in class? Ask ChatGPT to “Write a friendly email to a parent about a student who has been using their phone excessively in class.” Of course, you would adjust and edit as needed, but the template is beautiful. It can often put into words what we have difficulty saying. And the plus part? It can complete any request in about 15 seconds! I have spent upwards of 20 minutes trying to write the right words to a parent before and STILL not loving how it came out. With ChatGPT, I can express what I want to say more quickly than ever before.
Not everything is all sunshine and rainbows. For many, the future of technology and AI in schools is unknown. Several online platforms now include ChatGPT within their applications, for example, Formative. Instead of fighting against it, why don’t we embrace it for what it is, and find ways for it to be beneficial to us as teachers?
