Shanna Martin 0:19
Thanks for listening to the Tech Tools for Teachers Podcast, where each week we talk about a free piece of technology that you can use in your classroom. I’m your host, ShanNa Martin. I’m a middle school teacher Technology and Instructional Coach for my district.
Fuzz Martin 0:32
And I’m her producer and husband, Fuzz Martin and I am not artificially intelligent.
Shanna Martin 0:41
Clever, we are clever in 2023.
Fuzz Martin 0:45
I tried to have a one of the topics one of these tools that we’re using today, right, the pun, yeah, for the opening show. But it didn’t really land. Did you hear about the chat bot with a great sense of humor. It’s always telling puns and jokes. It’s a real giggle bot was the first one. And then the second one, I said write it write up another pun about AI doing your homework and it said, why was the AI always able to finish its homework on time? It had a machine learning algorithm.
Shanna Martin 1:20
Okay, so it’s 2023? Yes, the future are in the new year here to the future. We are we are so in the future with today’s podcast and today’s chat. So we’re in Episode 137. Hooray, hooray, January. I will point out here in Wisconsin that it does not feel like January today. No, it feels like it’s like November,
Fuzz Martin 1:47
November, maybe like at the last week of March or the first week of April, maybe? Yeah, yeah.
Shanna Martin 1:54
We had a blizzard last week. And now the grass is green. And it’s warm outside, warm as in 39 degrees outside warm. But hey, if you know, there’s sunshine, we are talking about the overarching topic, I guess of open AI this week, and two specific sites within Open AI. So our first site that we’re going to chat about is Chat GPT. And then the second one we’re gonna talk about is daily too. But we’re gonna start with the first one. Because I keep hearing more and more about it from educators or I see it I’ve been reading on Twitter and different social media accounts. And some educators are extremely worried about these open AI sites. And I have others that are like, Oh my gosh, this is so cool. Wash rinse, you can have your students do. So I think we’re gonna talk a little bit about actually how it would be a great tool to use in your classroom. And then also just some things to be aware of, because
Fuzz Martin 2:58
because it’s out there, it’s out, you’re gonna know about it or
Shanna Martin 3:01
using it, they are like, it’s not like, like they already know about it. So yes, it’s kind of just informing those that don’t know about it. And if you are embracing it cool, these are some cool ways you can use in your classroom are great. The first one. So it’s open ai.com. Um, the first one we’re talking about is Chat GPT. And it’s basically like it writes dialog for you. If you go into the site, you can just try it out, sign up with Google, you might as well make yourself an account because it’s free. Yeah. And you probably want to know what’s going on as a teacher and an education. We’re always learning new things and learning what our students are using Chat GPT, which I have to say very slowly. Because I don’t want to I want to say you want to say GDP GDP all the time since it util studies. Anyway. So that makes sense. Basically, you type in what you want. And then the magic of AI
Fuzz Martin 4:01
writes it for you. That is the gist of it. Yes. You you give it a request. Like here, I’ll say right upon about teachers. And it says, Why was the math teacher always calm? Because it had lots of square roots. Not super funny, but it’s a machine trying out right combinations of words.
Shanna Martin 4:20
So let’s talk about successes of this. Yeah, so I literally threw in. write a memoir about a girl in her dog. Yep. Now, any of you teachers teach and lose the know that we have a memoir unit? Yep. And it will write you a beautiful memoir. 40 good memoir about a girl and her dog. I will read just the first few lines. So I literally typed in write a short memoir about a girl and her dog. This starts as a young girl I always dreamed of having a dog of my own. My parents were hesitant at first but eventually they caved and went to the local animal shelter to find the perfect company. anion that’s when I met him, a scruffy little terrier mix with brown eyes and a wagging tail. I knew he was the one as soon as I saw him. Now, we probably can pick out that our students didn’t necessarily write that, because it’s pretty clean and straightforward and no, you know, issues. And if they’re gonna copy and paste something straight out of here and put it into Google Docs, you’re gonna see if you check their history that they’ve just cut and pasted the whole thing. However, if you go to search a plagiarism checker, it’s not going to, it’s not going to come up easily, because this has created it’s not going to be straight out on the internet, right? So it’s something to be aware of that it’s a great way to get kids like brainstorming and thinking about their writing. But also kids are gonna find ways to use this and not necessarily do their own writing.
Fuzz Martin 5:53
Yes, exactly. I mean, it’s, there are so many things that you can use this for. And it writes so well. And you can’t check against the plagiarism checker, because it’s, this is new content that it’s creating. Yeah. Now, it kind of feels like a calculator used to feel to a math department. And now meth,
Shanna Martin 6:13
There’s a time and place when you’re supposed to use them exact. So if you want this is like a story starter, or like a way, if you know your kids are using it, like, alright, let’s embrace the tool and move forward with it. Yeah, if you think your kids are cheating, right? It’s hard to check. But you can if you’re having if they’re going into a Google Doc, you can see if something has been pasted. You can check the history to see if a whole document has been pasted into a Google document. So you can check it that way. But it can be used as a tool, I think of some of our kids who are really struggling writers that this could be a way like, Okay, this is a starting point. Okay, let’s break this down. This was your idea. But then you could break it down in pieces, like what sounds fake here? What could you add here and use the tool to support their writing? So I do think, though, that just being aware of chat is out there that could definitely use as a writing tool and to help our kids think and processing and write fun things. I know, do you use it for an example, you’re like, Hey, you guys need to see this, right, the opening to a Hallmark holiday movie. And it was like a picture of a stay in a small town. And it wrote a beautiful piece of writing.
Fuzz Martin 7:31
It did. And it was it was structured appropriately. And it even had like end credits, it was very well done. But I have used it for things that aren’t even just experimenting. For instance, with one of the nonprofits that I serve, I needed to write some product descriptions for some apparel that was going online. And instead of me trying to reinvent the wheel, I just went to Chat GPT and I said, Write a short product overview about this Adidas mug, this Adidas polo with the Wisconsin 911 memorial on it. Yeah. And it wrote it out. It actually even had some of the features of that product. Correct. So I didn’t even need to change much of anything. But I could see, you know, outside of the plagiarism part, I could see a teacher in a class using this to start a writing prompt, right? I could see
Shanna Martin 8:25
or even I know that memoirs are really hard to teach. And if you need examples, you could pull like, here’s some Here are several examples. You don’t have to even show the kids a website, you could just you as a teacher could use this as some writing examples. So you would have a few instead of racking your brain and I know several language arts teachers I work with like they write all their own examples. So they break down essays and show students. And this would just save time for that where then you have some examples to share with your kids for them to analyze. Maybe here you take the general skeleton and add to it and build on it and things like that. So there are ways to use it. That would be very helpful and timesaving. But it’s also something to be aware of that students are probably going to try and cheat with
Fuzz Martin 9:07
and Chat GPT isn’t the only one out there. So ChatGPT, I would say I’ve used a number of them. And I would say it’s the best way now and it’s free. Yeah, right now, I don’t know if it’ll always be free, but it’s currently free. I’ve used one called jasper.ai, which is it used to be called Jarvis. And then they got sued by Marvel. Yeah, but the but Jasper is another tool, but it’s expensive. It’s like $100 a month to use this tool. But it can you know, write a blog post for you, but it’s not as good as check GPT and you can’t just sit give it a prompt.
Shanna Martin 9:42
Like one sentence. Yeah,
Fuzz Martin 9:45
there’s another one called writer rytr.me. Again, it’s not Chat GPT quality but it’s another kind of form of that. But as we move forward, this is 2023 and this like feels like a new horizon. A It’s gonna be the way here coming soon where this is going to be all out there. So I don’t know if, if it would make sense for a school to block this website, it might it might likely
Shanna Martin 10:10
be yes. So put it into whatever form of blocking you have
Fuzz Martin 10:14
secure layer, but the kids are pretty scrappy, and they’ll find a way around,
Shanna Martin 10:18
they will, but it slows them down at least. So it’s just something to be aware of, I’ve seen more and more chat talking about it. And over here. While there are some ways you could definitely build it into your classroom, but also, it’s going to we want our kids learning to write we want them learning how to do things on their own, if they’re gonna use this as a tool to be able to analyze and like work through things awesome. But if this is going to be just a way for them to like, get around doing something, then be learning from it. So
Fuzz Martin 10:43
the other things to look out for is everything’s going to be about the same length. If people are doing it this way. There’s some there’s some ways that you’ll be able to tell, you know, again, if the if the student doesn’t normally write at that level,
Shanna Martin 10:55
just like any other kind of plagiarism things when you’re polling, so you can see like, do they know that vocabulary, right? Do they actually have all that punctuation and spelling done correctly? Because even in a Google Doc, when it tells you it’s spelled wrong, we all know kids that do not actually click the button
Fuzz Martin 11:09
otherwise. So another way to do it, make everybody right on paper?
Shanna Martin 11:13
Well, so there is so that’s chat. GTT. Yep.
Fuzz Martin 11:20
But chat dot openai.com is how you get to that. And you’ll have to log in. And it’ll ask you for a phone number. That’s another piece of this too. When it logs you out, you have to log in and use a two step verification in order to get in there requires a phone number. So if you see students pulling out their phones,
Shanna Martin 11:41
right, don’t allow phones, it’s one thing but we can’t control what they’re doing at home. Exactly, exactly. But there’s another one, so open ai.com. And then this is open AI and it’s slash and Dall, d a ll dash E dash e two, it’s called Dall-E 2. Okay. And this was fun to play around with. Yes, so it’s another open AI source. And what it does is it creates realistic images from our descriptions. And it’s so much fun to play around with. Now, this one is free, you do get limited like credits if you download stuff, but if you’re just having kids, again, writing prompts or art creation or pulling up cool ideas for different just creative images in class. So if you want them for like a two minute, right, if you want to use these images for a story starter, if you wanted to be a journal entry, if you wanted to be like traveling and place in this world, or if you want to base like a science fiction story on something or whatever it may be, if you’re doing social studies, and you want to like like create run into strange things on a map, you’re making your something. So Dall-E to basically you type in a description of an image. So it can be really random like a purple monster.
Fuzz Martin 13:04
I typed in a cartoon of a young adventurer girl with her large surly dad standing in front of a unicorn. And I got four.
Shanna Martin 13:13
So we’ll put these on the website. So that way you can see them. We’ll put them on smartinwi.com. They’ll stick in the blog so you guys can see what we pull up. I’m searching a purple monster holding up pineapple. And what’s so fun is that you can type in a description of Addie thing and it’s appropriate because there are restrictions on the site like they don’t let you search just anything. So it is helpful. There are some like people can search weird crazy things. But here is my it my purple monster holding a pineapple. A lot of them look like a purple pineapple. Holding another pineapple. Yes. Here’s perfect. Yeah. So we’ll put these on the site because they’re fun to look at. And I want you to be able to see what we’re searching, which is super fun and amazing. And so there’s all kinds of cool just quick ways to search images and a fun, like, Okay, you give me a place and if you say like Hawaii assume so team ready what I can be searching and you tell me a thing. So Hawaii, let’s say table? Yeah. Okay. And I’m a place a thing and a color will say color. Pink ink. All right. It is searching and then they have cute little like mentioned they leave you little tips like mentioned pixel art if that’s what you want. And here we have a Hawaii table in pink. Oh Ha,
Fuzz Martin 14:50
aloha and we’re gonna looks 3d. Right. Wow,
Shanna Martin 14:53
that cool. That is very cool. So it’s crazy what you can just do these searches for random things to get kids Writing or thinking or brainstorming or creating and any possibility that you want to. I have
Fuzz Martin 15:08
a cocker spaniel eating a bowl of Captain Crunch. And it’s really cute. And it looks like a Cocker Spaniel, eating a bowl of Captain Crunch. So we’ll put those all up on the website for you to check out. And I have to say this about open AI two, they have another program that I was actually experimenting before I knew this was our topic today. So we use otter AI. Oh, what do you have?
Shanna Martin 15:31
I have a polar bear eating a hamburger.
Fuzz Martin 15:34
Oh my gosh, it looks like a real polar bear eating I really enjoy that hamburger.
Shanna Martin 15:43
I talked about Otter AI.
Fuzz Martin 15:45
Yes. So we use Otter AI for the transcriptions on this site. But open AI has a program called Whisper which is a transcription service or a transcription bot, essentially where you upload an mp3 file or a WAV file and it will transcribe it for you. However, in order to run that you need to be able to run Python on your computer, which most Macs can mine is currently locked down. So I have to have our IT guy opened that up for me to do. But when doing that it will transcribe everything free for you through through Whisper which is another open AI program. So all this stuff that they’re doing is just,
Shanna Martin 16:25
it’s really cool, high end well done. And free and free. We appreciate it just being aware of it as a teacher because there’s some great ways it can be used and definitely helpful in the classroom. And then ways that you might just want to be aware of how your students are using it and if it’s appropriate, and I now have a polar bear eating celery.
Fuzz Martin 16:44
That’s a healthy polar bear. I like the third hamburger one that you have.
Shanna Martin 16:48
That’s the picture I will put on Spartan wi.com. Yes. Yep. So Anywho. All right, so there’s some open AI for the new year in 2023. So bring everybody up to speed on what’s happening. And all the cool ways you can use it all the things to be aware of. And check out the blog spot on sparring wi.com. So you guys can see those images. And if you create some of your cool daily images around, I would love to see him on Twitter too. And that’s all of the things. So that’s our first episode of 2023 which is episode 137 for nice. Thanks for tuning in. This has been the Tech Tools for Teachers podcast. If you ever have any questions you can find me on Twitter @smartinwi. And if you want to get more information on the links the technology discussed in this episode, you can visit smart nwa.com If you’d like to support the show, please consider buying me a coffee or to visit buy me a coffee.com/smartinwi or visit smartinwi.com and click on that cute little purple coffee cup. Your donations help keep the show going new episodes each week. Thanks for listening though educate and innovate
Fuzz Martin 17:53
the ideas and opinions expressed on this podcast and the smart in WI website. Are those the author’s Shanna Martin and not of her employer. Prior to using any of the technologies discussed on this podcast? Please consult with your employer regulations. This podcast offers no guarantee that these tools will work for you as described, but we hope they do
