Using Bing Chat AI for an English Writing Class: a Lesson Idea

I was ‘testing’ Bing Chat AI yesterday, trying to see if it could produce a five paragraph murder mystery story in a compelling manner. I’ve got this inspiration after a discussion with a colleague of how ‘scary’ AI could be, of how it could write a story creatively, worthy of publication as a novel. Somehow it got me thinking of what differenciates human from machine. If creativity is the factor that separates us from machines, well, Chat AI is one of the things that may scare us as it can get very creative. In fact, many artists and writers already fear that it may eliminate their jobs, as it can produce art works/writing to the level of quality of experienced artists and writers.

Anyhow, as a teacher, I personally believe that AI is inevitable, and our students are of the digital generation. Instead of making AI as an enemy, I think we need to equip students with the abilities to employ AI to develop their learning skills. Something of a metacognitive approach to learning. It is due to the situation in which our students are located; they are a generation that has AI in almost every aspect of their daily life. Thus, they need to able to use it for their learning benefits.

And thus, back to my little experiment with Bing Chat AI. I specifically use this platform, as it provides not only the product of a prompt, but also references that it used to generate the product. In that way, I can always crosscheck the original source of the product, to see if the product is valid or true or reliable. I had an experience of asking a question to Bing Chat AI and it gave me a false information, but luckily it had a reference to the source and I quickly discovered why it provided me with the false answer. This feature is missing in ChatGPT and without criticality, one can assume that whatever ChatGPT provides, that is the truth (which is dangerous).

Tips dan Trik Menghadapi Ujian S3

Seminggu yang lalu, tepatnya tanggal 9 Juli 2021 pukul 16:00 WIB, saya mempertahankan tesis S3 saya di the University of Manchester. Selama 1,5 jam saya menjawab 15 pertanyaan dari satu penguji eksternal (dari salah satu universitas di Inggris, di luar universitas saya) dan satu penguji internal, dengan ditemani oleh dua pembimbing saya (yang cuma menonton saja karena tidak boleh membantu saya menjawab sama sekali).

Kali ini saya mau berbagi proses saya mempersiapkan diri dan menjalani ujian S3, eh, siapa tahu di kalangan pembaca blog saya ada yang butuh, ya kan?

Proses ujian adalah proses yang penting dalam struktur program S3 di Manchester Institute of Education karena kelulusan dari program tidak hanya ditentukan oleh kualitas tesis tertulis tetapi juga apakah si kandidat doktor bisa mempertahankan apa yang ia tulis di tesis. Sehingga, meskipun telah berproses selama 3-4,5 tahun meneliti dan menulis, bisa saja si kandidat dinyatakan tidak lulus karena jawaban dalam ujian (atau istilah kami ‘viva’) tidak memuaskan para penguji. Tiap universitas tentu beda kebijakan soal viva, karena ada misalnya seorang teman yang viva-nya semacam perayaan saja setelah selesai proses menulis selama beberapa tahun (sungguh membuat saya iri!).

Day 18: Plans/dreams/goals I Have

[Day 18th of 30 day writing challenge]

I like today’s prompt question, because this is pretty simple to answer.

Day 15: What’s Your Favorite Day of the Week, and Why?

[Day 15^th of 30 day writing challenge]

For a long time, I don’t really differentiate weekdays from weekends. I think this is the curse of being a teacher: we use every available time in our life to work on an aspect of our job, be it planning for a semester, preparing for the next day class, grading students’ works, etc.

Day 8: What Makes You Feel Fulfilled and Satisfied?

[Day 8th – 30 Day Writing Challenge]

Just a friendly warning, to mark the second week of this writing challenge month, I’m going to use English. Fyuh, it’s the 8th day already! The questions of that I picked for the writing challenge month have been tough, because they require a lot of reflections. However, I feel that my answers have been too boring. I mean, I kept repeating the same info over and over. I hope you don’t mind.

The question for today is no different, it makes me ponder of the actions that I took in the past and which of them that made me especially fulfilled and satisfied. In the past 46 years, of course there were a number of actions like that, but picking a few of them is not an easy feat.