computers at the time so the books were handwritten and hand illustrated, stapled together, much like the books I made myself, as a kid. They were little gems of wonder, capturing a moment in a child’s life, though I often felt sorry for the kids whose messy handwriting often ruined the look of their books and prevented other from being able to read them.
This problem was solved at the turn of the millennium with
the arrival of computers into our classroom. Now, we could print pages and
staple them together, and the kid with the messy handwriting could now compete
on a level playing field.
The internet came next, and with it, came Print-On-Demand
publishers. No longer did we have to staple pages together. Now, for a small
cost, we could publish books that looked like the real thing! It has, perhaps,
been the greatest and most positive change in our little book writing project
over the past 25 years.
So, computers and the internet have, in my opinion,
revolutionised our classroom book-writing project.
As I was editing this year’s crop of books, I came across a
book that clearly wasn’t the work of a child. Now, in the past, children would
have asked parents to help or they might have robbed a few lines from the
internet, but at least some of the work would have been their own. The book I refer
to, however, was so well written and without mistakes, that I became
suspicious. When I put the text into an AI checker, the results were that the
book was almost 100% written by AI.
Of course, I will not share this discovery with the student
who handed in the book, but I wonder if AI is a step too far in technology?
Will it be a barrier to learning and will it make our students lazy and dumb?
The book I refer to above was a non-fiction book, so by
employing AI to do the work, the student has missed out on the writing,
researching and summarising skills I was hoping they would learn by writing
their own book.
And yes, I realise how tempting the AI tool is. In fact, I’ve
had to force myself to resist the temptation to use it for report writing and the
creation of comprehension activities in the classroom.
What did the child, above, learn from writing their book?
Very little, in my opinion, other than how to cheat and be lazy.
What do you think? Is AI a step too far in our digital
evolution?
