Historically, new technologies and innovations slowly make their way into classrooms via procurement processes or pilot programs. Generative AI has simply arrived in the education space, seemingly unannounced, skipping the traditional adoption process. Newly tenured, MIT professor Justin Reich joins the podcast to talk about this trend and what it means for teachers, students, and the system as a whole.
Justin is an associate professor of digital media in the department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT and the director of the Teaching Systems Lab. He is the author of Iterate: The Secret to Innovation in Schools and Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education, and he is the host of the TeachLab Podcast. He earned his doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and is a past Fellow at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society.
Highlights from the conversation include: an opening segment reacting to the wave of student protests on college campuses across the United States and Canada; how generative AI skipped the adoption phase and arrived in classrooms with little to no preparation; a technical overview on what generative AI is and how it works; why AI is sometimes just a label to make things seem more "magical than they are;" how experts and novices can have very different experiences with Chat GPT; where the technology as a co-pilot may or may not fit within various industries; the importance of implementing guardrails as AI becomes more prevalent in the education space; why students should be central to conversations about how to navigate the changing technology landscape; and a lighting round offering a science fiction summer reading list (see recommendations below).
Science Fiction Reads:
Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Anything written by N.K. Jemisin
Questions? Thoughts? Feedback?
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