Olivia LaraGresty
Nice and I really appreciate you actually sharing that full background because I think that you know in today’s day and age there are so many sort of windy paths that we take to in our careers and it’s always helpful to hear how you know certain experiences that someone had helped shape that and I think even you sharing about at your masters thinking about that choice is a choice that a lot of educators are thinking on at. There are lot of just professionals overall and so I do really appreciate you walking us through each of those steps and you know I have had a chance if you anyone out there would like to see some of of Ronald’s english teaching. I’ve seen a couple of your videos and I can definitely see that, mentioning that high energy, that engagement and I can see in your lessons that you really do try to keep it fun. I think you know as a teacher myself I know that students don’t learn anything if they’re kind of closed off. Emotionally they’re not ready. They’re not going to actually intake that information. So I love that you’re spending so much of your career really focusing on that enjoyment piece to help your students really succeed. I wanted to just ask you, thinking about you know, you’ve worked in all these different fields or actually fields within education and I’m curious if there are any particular challenges that you face in your work – as a curriculum and instructional design specialist and how you might have addressed these challenges.
Ronald Lethcoe
So this job is that I’m currently at is kind of my dream job because there’s a multitude of projects that we’re working on at any given time and I’m the kind of person that likes to have a lot to do and you if I start on one thing and you know I kind of reach the you know limit on that project. I might switch over to another project and I mean for some people that might be very challenging. If you have a lot of things going on at once, I prefer that I like to you know, have something to do at all times so I would say, I don’t directly have a challenge here in terms of that job coming back to America after being in Korea for so long, that’s a kind of a different, that’s kind of like a reverse culture shock. That’s mainly what’s making it a little bit challenging for me to work out here. But that’s just kind of you know the difference in cultures from Korea to America and so trying to you know figure that out. You know that that’s where I’m kind of focusing my energy right now.
Olivia LaraGresty
Yeah, and I definitely wanted to ask about that because I think just you know I’ve taught in a couple different schools and even then the culture of a school is really impactful on your day-to-day experience, the student energy, their perspective and so as someone with teaching experience both in the US and abroad and not to mention multiple different age groups, I’m curious what major cultural differences you’ve noticed between the teachers and students globally and if there’s any maybe lessons that educators can learn from those differences.
Ronald Lethcoe
Well I would say that the main difference that I noticed coming from Korea to America in terms of teachers is that in Korea that someone who’s a teacher or a professor, they’re very respected like it’s a profession that is you know held in high regard. With all the people there you know, they know that the lessons that the students get are going to impact their lives and and hopefully change them for the better. I don’t have any like you know specific advice for the educators. But I think just as a culture it’s something that we need to shift towards is you know taking this profession of teaching and you know adding the necessary respect to it because as I said it’s a gateway to success. So you know all the people out there that have the nice jobs right? now you you probably have that job because you know had a teacher that you know told you what you needed to know and to be successful for the students. I would say in America the focus is more on the twenty first century skills stuff like creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication. I would say in Korea I tried to you know, bring this into the classroom you know I made sure to at least try to add one of those C’s for everyone of my lessons. I want to try to make it creative, I want to make sure that the students are you know thinking critically working together communicating and I think those twenty first century skills in America you know that’s I would say, they focus more on those skills in America and I would say that as long as we keep those at the forefront then if you’re a teacher those are going to be the skills as we move into this, you know, AI that the time of AI and everything is changing and education and all you know, pretty much the whole world is starting to change. Those skills are going to be the ones that are the most important, that’s going to separate you from the pack.
Olivia LaraGresty
Yeah, I definitely agree with that statement and I think just thinking about you know my students that didn’t like group projects and those types of things you know we know that every student is individual but you know you mentioned there’s multiple Cs. There’s creativity, critical thinking, communicating. So I think encouraging students to kind of find their area those within those spaces that they feel they can really excel in. I totally agree is an important stuff that you know teachers that students can look into and that teachers can continue to work towards. Yeah, and I think you know we definitely do want to touch and kind of dive into our topics day on the future of technology and the education industry and I know that you know we had spoken before the podcast a little bit about your background in studio art and thinking about you know we know that there is lots of AI these days to help with arts and I think that I would just love, just your thoughts on. You know AI in the arts and kind of what artists can be doing these days to either utilize AI or kind of what to look out for just since you are have that some of that artistic background.
Ronald Lethcoe
So in terms of art, I think that we have to rethink about the way that we produce art because with the advent of AI and these websites and apps like mid-journey, I do believe that they’ll always have a need for kind of the traditional style of art and especially art is very unique because art relates to emotions and you know someone’s inner being and you know putting their emotions to the canvas or you know to the sculpture, it’s going to be hard to kind of replicate that. So, I do believe that there always is going to be some sort of you know, desire from the masses for that kind of thing. So, at the same time, I do think that just like whenever the paintbrush was invented, so a bunch of people are looking at this, Oh this doesn’t count as you know art. This is kind of like cheating you know you have all the colors here and it’s the same story every time. A new technology comes out and when it comes out like that that oh you know there’s a new program website that you can go to and it can make art really nice, high-quality art for you in less than a minute you know of course there’s ah, there’s room for alarm right? There’s people that are going to be worried. But we’ll probably get into this later but I think kind of the theme that I want to hit on about this age of AI is that as long as you have the skill like if I studied art and I know I know color theory, I know composition, I know the the different kinds of brush strokes and atmospheric effects, then I’m going to bring that lens to whatever mid-journey creates and if I type in a prompt that is very specific to what I’m looking for that’s going to turn out much better than someone who’s just kind of going in without any you know prior knowledge. So, I think that having that base having that knowledge within and bringing that to these these AI tools is going to make you that much more successful when using it.
Olivia LaraGresty
Yeah I think that’s it’s a great connection between the use of AI in the arts. But then there’s also all these other technologies that we’ll definitely be diving into and so I agree, I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. There’s lots of topics to cover and they’re all connected right? So it makes sense that we’re thinking about just you know, really honing in on certain skills and being able to anyone who has those skills will be in a good position to bring them to whatever technology they’re using it a like your analogy the paintbrush and I think it’s the same conversation as the calculator was real math and so you know we’ve seen this time and time again. And so, with that I definitely want to jump really into the heart of our conversation here thinking about what you’ve been seeing working with teachers and what ways has ChatGPT changed the educational landscape for teachers and students like.
Ronald Lethcoe
Well I think, that we’re kind of at the beginning stage. So, I wouldn’t say that it’s necessarily changed a lot so far. But definitely in the future as the collective, as a society for one but especially as teachers and instructors both on the you know the primary level and the secondary higher Ed level, we have to rethink the way that we teach and so it’s going to be a lot of work. It’s a lot of work for the students. But it’s going to have to be a lot of effort and work put in by the teachers because you know as I said and as everyone’s saying this is you know this is the next kind of Revolution. You know you had the industrial revolution, we had = the advent of the internet and then now this next step I would say in you know, human evolution almost you know it’s important for the teachers to you know, kind of be on top of that and you know, it’s going to change. I feel like it’s going to change whether we want it or not and I would say the start of the change is just kind of learning about it and you know so that’s why I’m happy that there’s a podcast like this that will hopefully some people don’t even know what ChatGPT is. I’ll ask them and I’ll say hey you know I did this in ChatGPT and they say what? What did you do and I say oh it’s the AI thing and so like I said it’s just you know, starting to you know blossom. But I think that staying on top of it is maybe the most important thing that we can do.
Olivia LaraGresty
Yeah I agree and that’s funny to hear that you know and very real to hear that people don’t even know what it is because I think you know given that I’m more in the technology space now, that’s what half of, if not more of the conversations are about. But then we have you know if I can think back to when I was an educator not too long ago and you’re dealing with so much every day it makes sense that this is just one other thing on your plate and so definitely it’s going to be a space in which I think we’re going to need leaders to really bring it into schools and support teachers as they try to support their students in this space. And I’m curious just maybe from your experience what kinds of teaching responsibilities have you found ChatGPT to be the useful for maybe grading lesson, perhaps student correspondence, just could you walk us through how you utilize it in your day to day.
Ronald Lethcoe
Well, yeah I think that if you take the time to watch some videos or listen to some podcast about it you can see multiple, almost infinite applications for teaching. You know as an instructor and then also you know, we’ll probably get into it from the student side. But some of the things that I specifically use it for is, I’m currently a professor for a course and you know I have the students that have questions for me and I you know usually before ChatGPT, I will go in and you know I look at their question and I’m not sure exactly what the answer is. I need to look up. You know, maybe it’s a grammar question and I want to give them the specific you know grammar rule. And maybe some examples about how to use it and I know this stuff right? Like this is I have the experience, I can go through you know, I can think about it. But that’s going to use up so much like mental energy. I have to you know do the intro hello you know, Thank you for the question. You know, I have to type all that out and then I have to you know research the grammar point to make sure that it’s concise. I don’t want to just you know oh you this is you have to do this just because that’s how we usually do it and so what I do now is I’ll take the comment in full, throw it into ChatGPT. Give it some instruction. Oh, I want you to give this, I want you to respond politely to the student and then sign it off with my name and then give them some examples of you know, whatever problem that they’re trying to face, and some person might say like oh you know that’s very impersonal. Ah, you know why? Why are you? Why is the machine doing all the work, but I would have done the work. Anyways. Right? Like I have what I use it now for is it gives me the response right? it’s got the hello. It’s got the thank you for asking me this question. It’s got the full explanation and then it’s got the little sign off if you have any more questions and then you know it signs it off my name now. What I’m going to do, I’m not just going to copy and paste that back over. I’m going to go through and look through and say okay this is you know this is a good point. This is what you know this is what I want to focus on. This has nothing to do with anything. So, I’m going to take that out and then I have the response in a fraction of the time that it would have taken to do it. You know myself and you know it’s a time thing. It’s also a mental energy thing, like it takes a lot of time to make you know oh do I need to do this. I have to add this, you know, typing out those words making sure everything’s spelled correctly. I can type to ChatGPT and all my words can be misspelled but somehow through the magic of large language models, it provides a response that makes sense. So that one the feedback, I use it to help make announcements for my students in the online course because you know once again I’ve already made the course, I’ve already put together the curriculum. The slides. And you know what I do is, I just take the information from the slides and I say hey this is what we’re going to be covering this week you know the list of bullet points. Can you give me an announcement for this class and just make sure that you include a brief summary of what we’re covering and if there’s any assignments or quizzes that we need to do and then it spits out a nice polite announcement that I can give to my students.
Olivia LaraGresty
Yeah, that’s great and I definitely think you know just thinking about both those sections you know what? A lot of you’re describing is there’s an important part from manual review as you mentioned. It’s not just copy paste. But I think if student’s asking a question that they maybe could have asked Google because we know it happens all the time right. They’re looking for some assurance that I know Google has 15 million answers or where you know the internet’s going to provide me with a lot of options, I want to know what’s in the context of this course or just kind of what applies here and so having someone like you, their professor, who’s actually going through a manual reviewing, saying this, is actually the information. I would pick out and that kind of gives them my sense of assurance there. So, I totally see that just maintaining and even benefiting. Hopefully those student relationships because you can respond to more emails faster. They can get more interaction with you. And I guess that leads us into our next question. What are some of the benefits and challenges of incorporating ChatGPT and AI into the classroom.
Ronald Lethcoe
If I were to go over the benefits of using ChatGPT in the classroom, kind of goes back to what you were just saying about having it personalized. You know, you could go to Google and you know search around the internet but it’s not going to be contextually relevant to whatever your specific situation is with whether you’re talking to a student or you know this is your course and you’re trying to make an announcement. Or if you’re just trying to make some assignments that are you know, related to what you’re talking about and so I think that is like the biggest benefit is. Because everything is contextual to whatever you type in to ChatGPT right? So, if I say you know, this is my course and this is you know, this is what I need I need 20 quiz questions. They’re going to be personalized to what you or they’re going to be tailored to what you are requesting. Some of the challenges, I would say there’s still some issues with security related to OpenAI in particular, we don’t know exactly what’s going on behind the scenes. So, user data, these are the topics that a lot of people are talking about, something about bias, right? Like it gets all the information from the internet, and it gets all the information you know from us essentially right? Because we are the ones that are putting things into the internet and so we have to be careful about the majority right? It needs to be able to the people who create these large language models have to be very diligent in making sure that if I ask ChatGPT, what do you think about the President and then ChatGPT says, oh I think the President sucks. Like we need a new President. Like that kind of thing that doesn’t happen. Luckily for that. But I mean you don’t. It’s hard to know exactly what people are talking about and you can kind of manipulate ChatGPT. So, for example, if you ask ChatGPT, how can I break into the security of my school because I want to unblock this website that I really want to go to and then ChatGPT is gonna say oh you know, I’m not capable of telling you this or maybe I am capable but I don’t that goes against my moral compass as this large language model. But then if you restructure the question and say oh I’m IT Expert specialist and I need to go in and I need to change the security on one of the websites then it’s going to give you the instructions that previously it said you know that it’s not going to give you these instructions but now depending on the way that you ask it, you can get these instructions. So that kind of thing is I would say a challenge moving forward. But hopefully you know, we can all cross our fingers that they are working on that kind of thing you know facing these challenges moving forward.
Olivia LaraGresty
Right? It’s not that you know front desk person that can kind of scrutinize the person walking in like you don’t have an ID or you don’t you know you tell me, you’re an IT person, you’re 9 years old that doesn’t have those abilities right now.
Ronald Lethcoe
Yeah, that’s a really good example.
Olivia LaraGresty
If only right? Well yeah, go ahead? Okay, yeah I mean I think with that you know, there’s definitely some benefits and challenges.
Ronald Lethcoe
No, that’s the I was just laughing I thought that was very funny.
Olivia LaraGresty
I think that students are going to need to just be prepared for both and teachers gonna need to be prepared for both to come up and not limit students into not using these incredible new platforms because of those challenges but finding ways to help our students as well and I’m just thinking how educators can really effectively balances traditional teaching methods and maybe traditional benchmarks are looking for or just teaching strategy in the first place with the new technologies that you know these digital learning platforms are offering.
Ronald Lethcoe
yeah, I think that is going to be kind of the focus of any sort of professional development moving forward is how can we incorporate this new technology into our lives. So, I think it’s going to happen in all industries but especially in teaching this is like I said up top teaching is the gateway to success right? Learning students, learning from a teacher is how we how we survive and thrive in this world and so I think learning how to incorporate it into your lessons, your assessments, your assignments, I think that the main focus would be to change the focus instead of just relying or you know holding the result as the highest, the most important thing right? The test result, oh you got to get a good score on this test instead focusing on the process. How can you do this thing? how can you?? You know show that you understand the material. I was curious about you know this specific thing so I asked ChatGPT you know give me an assignment that would be like a traditional assignment. But it would be really easy to cheat using ChatGPT and I said so this is what it gave me said the original assignment is write a 500-word essay on the causes and effects of climate change seems pretty standard. As I was when I grew up, I had this kind of thing all the time right write an essay on this topic, make sure it’s five paragraphs. There’s an intro conclusion. We all know that one so instead of just giving that as the assignment I said can you give me an assignment that would include ChatGPT to assist in completing the assignment in the same way that a calculator would assist you in doing some math. How can we use ChatGPT to assist us. And so I won’t give the whole thing, but it did give about 10 different steps of what you can do but basically, you would use ChatGPT like students would use it in the classroom to gather information about the causes and effects of climate change. So, it’s going to give us those things and as you know humans learning about this. Oh. You know what is what is that? what? what is it? You know I don’t know what the plastic island is okay, can you give me more information about that so you can continue to, that’s the good thing about ChatGPT is the conversation. It’s not just one Google result, if you want some more specific information you just have to ask it. And so, it’s using ChatGPT to kind of brainstorm. It’s kind of like brainstorming on steroids if you will. It’s got all this information and it’s contextual to what? you’re requesting and then once you have those ideas, you’re going to make your own outline right? And then you’re going now that you have kind of this guiding light then you can go and in you can fill out the outline you can write the essay in class you know where the teacher is there and you know making sure that you’re not using ChatGPT to write the whole thing for you, sharing whatever you wrote with a peer having them go in. Oh yeah, this makes sense. Oh what is this? This doesn’t have anything to do with you know climate change because if anybody’s experienced ChatGPT before you know that sometimes it comes up with these grandiose like ideas that don’t make any sense. Ah, but having somebody this goes back to that collaboration, right? Communicating with another person and then critically thinking, does this make sense. Okay, so using this kind of assignment, you’re focusing instead on content generation like thinking about these ideas and instead you’re taking the ideas that you thought of and you’re kind of fine tuning it and trying to make it and mold it into whatever is going to be helpful for you.
Olivia LaraGresty
Yeah, I think that there’s like you said I mean it’s that’s the best step right? Is just educators can use these new products and technologies to go to search it to figure out what can I actually do to create assignments like this that will support my students in. We know that they can. I love how you actually searched how can students cheat on an assignment like an easy easily cheatable one and then how can you work around that so helping students kind of you know, I think that naming that cheating happens is kind of one of the first steps for all the students to kind of realize that we’re all aware and so now, what’s the real purpose there and how can we actually create an assignment where you’re going to learn but we’re not going to. I think ban these technologies that you can’t actually utilize it. So, I love that you created your thinking assignments that will actually help students utilize these technologies for sure and I think that kind of brings us into our next question I was thinking out which is you know you have a lot of experience with English language teaching, English language learners and I was curious if you anticipate any changes in student motivation to learn new languages as some of these new AI technologies become more prevalent?
Ronald Lethcoe
I would say that especially for learning any language, whether it’s english or if you’re trying to learn korean or Spanish, ChatGPT is almost a godsend in this sense because you know, you have your teacher. Your teacher knows as much as you know. Your teacher knows and maybe you go to a tutor and the tutor knows a lot and they can help you out but ChatGPT is basically like it’s a tutor for you that doesn’t judge you right. You’re not going to get any judgment like if you for example, it depends on the teacher right? There’s a lot of good teachers out there. They might say oh they might encourage you one way. Another teacher might say oh you know this is terrible right? So, you know we’ve all had our experiences with good and bad teachers but ChatGPT from my experience is kind of this neutral being right? It doesn’t judge you. It doesn’t say oh you know you can’t do the past tense that way or you should remember you know this form of the verb. It’s always available right? So, you’re only really meet your teacher or tutor when they have the time right? And so think about if you’re you know, trying to do your work at a late hour there’s not going to be a chance for you to meet with a tutor or a teacher at that time and then lastly ChatGPT is, it’s patient, Right? And it’s learning from you in the same way that you’re learning from it and I think that it’s only going to get you know more focused in the future. Everyone is. It seems like everyone is making up new-new apps, new websites, new tools. You can just go on any so you know sort of like educator board or you know follow people on LinkedIn and they’ll have oh this is how you know, this is how we’re using it in in our classroom. And I just want to give a shout out to Khan Academy. We all know Khan Academy is great. I use it with my students I also use it with my son and at the time of recording you know about a week ago, there was a ted talk given by Khan himself. And he was talking about this new how they’re going to pivot their platform instead of you having just the videos. They’re going to implement GPT-4 to act as this tutor right? And they’ve trained it specifically on the lessons that they have on their website and it’s going to be your tutor. It’s going to be your guidance counsellor, your academic coach, it’s going to be anything that you want it to be. In the terms of education and I think that kind of thing is going to be the future.
Olivia LaraGresty
Yeah, I definitely think that there’s a lot of space there for using these technologies. I think the tutoring element is super accurate and I think you know a lot of that motivation element, we’re gonna still need those teachers around to get the students to actually use the tutors and you know families involved all of that. Definitely think that’ll help with you know, language learning but also as you mentioned Khan Academy Math lots of different subjects there and I think you know as we’re thinking about students having the availability of all these online tutors and ChatGPT and just all of this new technology, I know we started to touch on it earlier but I was hoping you could just share, how would you advise students to develop their skills for this new normal workplace where AI is going to be relevant.
Ronald Lethcoe
So, my advice is to just try to stay on top of the new trends. I know it seems like there’s a new tool or an update to ChatGPT every month or every week really and just trying to stay knowledgeable right? We want our students, the whole purpose of them to go to school is to gain knowledge that’s going to help them be successful. We also have to take the time to educate ourselves so that we can be successful. If you don’t know the term prompt engineering. That’s my guess for the word of the year is going to be prompt engineering because the ability to give clear instructions and interact with the AI to make it. Do you know what? You wanted to do is I think that, that’s going to be kind of the new normal right is being able to interact with AI and then have it do whatever you ask it to do in the capacity that it can and so I think that is going to be probably the most important skill for educators to hone in on and then as for students it’s the same thing like hopefully you have a teacher that can kind of see the writing on the wall and see that this is going to be a new big thing. And hopefully they can utilize it in their classroom. But if they don’t just try to find a way to experience it and get in there and have a conversation with ChatGPT push its limits see what you can, what you can do and if you can use it to help you. Not to cheat right? You don’t want to use it to cheat. If you’re cheating using ChatGPT, you’re just cheating yourself because you’re not getting the information. That you need and you’re not showing that the information that you’ve acquired but using it. You know as we said as a tool, it’s a very helpful tool for everyone. You know it’s got its problems and hopefully whoever’s working on it is working on fixing these problems, but I would say just exposure and trying to stay informed is going to be the most important thing for the future.
Olivia LaraGresty
Yeah, and I think that translates both for teachers and students themselves. I think staying on trends and you know it’s very easy to get lost in them. So, I think just having kind of that keeping pace with it without allowing students to feel overwhelmed by it is going to be a challenge that educators need to take on for sure and frankly are facing themselves. And I’m curious, you were mentioning some of your colleagues or maybe some people you know have not really been utilizing ChatGPT but that’s something that you have used and so how can educators out there stay up to date with the latest developments in AI and digital learning to enhance their teaching ability.
Ronald Lethcoe
Well I would say that the best, the best resources for me in terms of learning about ChatGPT, I actually found out about it first in LinkedIn. I’m sure you’ve been on LinkedIn. I’m sure all the listeners probably have a LinkedIn but finding voices that speak about this topic that show how they’re using it and giving examples specific examples kind of like how I did earlier, I think finding people on LinkedIn. There’s plenty of groups on Facebook. I find that the Facebook groups for instructional design. Also educator Facebook groups and teacher Facebook groups in your area. Ah, those are going to be helpful and the conversations in there. You know they’re already having like you said probably like half of the conversations about are about AI and how you know we’re going to use this as teachers and it’s good to be able to hear from directly from other e- teachers and be able to in. Interact with them. You know Instagram, Tiktok, all it depends on I would say social media. Everybody likes to hate on social media. But you can get some good information. A lot of the the things, especially I’m trying to experiment with using ChatGPT along with my journey to create images and so I could go in and I can try to figure it out myself or I can look at you know these other people that have done it already like you know YouTube if you type in AI teaching, AI tools into YouTube, you’re going to find videos where it’s going to show you kind of step-by- step about what you can do or you’re going to find channels that will give you the up-to-date news as I was saying you want to try to stay up-to-date. There’re channels out there that will say you know this is what this is what is happening now. And this is what it could affect us in the future.
Olivia LaraGresty
Yeah, I think that just you know speaking to your point earlier as well. I think just we all need to make sure that we are lifelong learners and I think in my experience a lot of teachers you mentioned LinkedIn, I don’t think as many teachers are on LinkedIn as other professions and I think that it is a great place to be. You know, Association there but I just think that it is kind of a place to keep up with trends and just being able to as you are mentioning find the groups and the voices that really speak to you and that feel influential and in positive ways whether that’s whatever social media platform you’re using any news channel is just kind of finding the right voices. There is really helpful and definitely a useful tool there.
I think overall there’s a lot to be said for what’s happening in the classrooms with ChatGPT and I think as you mentioned earlier, we’re really lacing the beginning of it. There’s definitely a lot more that will be taking place as a landscape changes but there’s lots to look forward to it. I’m curious to see what happens. So that will conclude this episode of Educator Insights. I really hope you found our discussion on teaching in the age of AI and how ChatGPT is reshaping the education landscape, insightful and helpful in your work as educators those in the technology space and all those who are helping students out there.
Ronald Lethcoe
Sure, I as well.
Olivia LaraGresty
Want to give a big thank you to our special guest Ronald for sharing his expertise and insights to us today and thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Of course, if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more educators with our content. Also don’t forget to share your thoughts and experiences on today topic using the #magiceducatorinsights on social media. Thanks again for joining us. We look forward to bringing you more engaging conversations on the next episode of educator insights.
