On June 15, 2023 AlphaPlus hosted our ninth Community Gabfest.
The theme was “ChatGPT – delightful or scary?”
This topic came from our discussion at Gabfest 8. We wanted a place to talk about what we are finding delightful about ChatGPT and “some of these things that scare the living daylights out of us. I mean, if we can’t have each other to talk about this, then we are alone in our fear and that’s not a good place to be.”
We used a Jamboard to guide our conversation: Wayfinders Gabfest 9 Jamboard.
We started with a little background on ChatGPT in particular and Artificial Intelligence in general. We shared our experiences and these resources:
What is ChatGPT? from AlphaPlus: a resource a a resource for teachers/instructors with explanations and ideas for how to use ChatGPT for learning and program administration in an adult literacy setting.
My Digital Companion: Making Sense of ChatGPT from Contact North: a resource for students/learners to help them use this tool safely, ethically and creatively for learning.
ChatGPT: Leveraging AI to Support Personalized Teaching and Learning in the June 2023 Adult Literacy Education Journal by Sarah Cacicio and Rachel Riggs: a resource for teachers/instructors with ideas for how to use ChatGPT for learning in an adult literacy setting.
Leveraging ChatGPT Instead of Banning from Contact North: a resource for teachers/instructors with ideas for how to use ChatGPT for learning in a college setting.
EdTechTeacher Chat GPT Tips by Tom Daccord: a resource for teachers/instructors with ideas for how to use ChatGPT for learning in a K-12 setting. You can find links to the tip sheets in our resource (they are not easy to find on the EdTechTeacher website).
People were asking about text-to-speech options and Guylaine shared this resource: Speech recognition and text to speech tools for various devices
We talked about where we are on the delightful to scary continuum.
We were pretty much dotted across the continuum.
We did not all stay in a fixed place.
As one person said at the closing of the Gabfest, “I felt like I was watching a ping pong game. I was going from one side to the other.” Many of us are in a place where we read one thing and we feel quite positive and then read another that fills us with apprehension.
Here are some of the things people have tried so far:
We asked three questions:
Somebody posed the question about what happens if we stop using certain skills ourselves and turn them over to AI.
“What do people think about the things that technology can do for you as opposed to you doing it for yourself? Is that of value? Is that an asset? Is that threatening?”
What skills and abilities will we lose if we do not do our own problem-solving when we are writing?
As one participant reported from a breakout room discussion:
“You can you can use AI to write a great cover letter or a great essay but what happens when the rubber meets the road and you actually have to do something on your own. At that point, we’d call them pseudo skills to be able to solve something or write something — you just don’t have those fundamental tools. It’s the ultimate fake it till you make it. Are we are we encouraging people to to take the easy road? One of the things that came out of our discussion in our group was that we have to teach learners that this is a tool like computer is a tool, or hammer is a tool, or a screwdriver is a tool. It’s a tool, and you have to learn how to use it properly because if you use a hammer the wrong way, you end up with a very sore thumb.”
We talked about some of the ways that technology supports literacy learners who are working with emerging literacy skills and how tools such as Grammerly help literacy learners, student writers and anyone struggling to write clear sentences.
We had a conversation about how text-to-speech options support emergent writers and Guylaine shared this resource: Speech recognition and text to speech tools for various devices
We talked about the value of essay writing. In programs where learners are moving on to further education, a lot of time is spent on learning how to write essays. We talked about how this skill is something we only use in school and that many people will not need these skills once they have completed their school-based education. What other things do we learn by writing essays and are these things useful to us in our beyond school settings? We didn’t get to all the answers but the question of what we gain and what we lose when we adopt new technologies is always an interesting one.
We talked about the ways that AI will impact the work of preparing literacy learners for a world where AI exists. Some of our questions are:
We talked about how new technologies can amplify inequities. We saw some of the ways this had profound impacts on people during the pandemic. We touched on the idea of an AI bill of rights and how applications of AI beyond educational ones — such as facial recognition — can increase barriers along with gains in efficiency and convenience.
“There are always fears around new tech… It’s a good thing, it motivates us to find ethical and equitable solutions 🙂
Or maybe it’s the end of the world… Hard to say!”
Thank you Gabfesters for your energy, generosity, wisdom and friendship. With your help, we won’t fall off the learning curve.
Presenters from two programs share how they are using Microsoft OneNote to organize and manage learner files. Sara King from Northern College and Christa Porter from Gateway Centre for Learning demonstrate ways OneNote helps them keep all their learner forms and files in one place making it easy to access, replicate and share with others.
Sara and Christa shared some resources with us:
ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool driven by artificial intelligence (AI) technology that allows you to have human-like conversations and much more with a chatbot. The language model can answer questions, and help you with tasks such as composing emails, essays, and code.
ChatGPT takes online writing tools such as QuillBot to the next level—or the next few levels—by leveraging the knowledge stored on the internet to respond to queries and requests.
ChatGPT is designed to simulate human-like responses to text-based communication.
It is built on an architecture that mimics the human brain called the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) model. The GPT architecture allows ChatGPT to generate natural language text that is highly coherent and contextually appropriate.
ChatGPT uses a large database of written text, such as books, articles, and websites, that it has been pre-trained on. When a user inputs a message or question, ChatGPT uses this pre-trained knowledge to generate a response that it believes best answers the question or provides a relevant response to the message.
My Digital Companion: Making Sense of ChatGPT from Contact North: a resource for students/learners to help them use this tool safely, ethically and creatively for learning.
Leveraging ChatGPT Instead of Banning from Contact North: a resource for teachers/instructors with ideas for how to use ChatGPT for learning in a college setting.
Contact North has a series of recorded webinars on the use of AI in education.
ChatGPT: Leveraging AI to Support Personalized Teaching and Learning in the June 2023 Adult Literacy Education Journal by Sarah Cacicio and Rachel Riggs: a a resource for teachers/instructors with ideas for how to use ChatGPT for learning in an adult literacy setting.
10 Practical Ways Faculty and Instructors Can Use AI from Contact North
AI for Learning and Work from EdTechCenter at World Education: You can find the recordings of the four Generative AI EdTech Bytes that cover the applications and implications of generative AI for education (YouTube Playlist) plus a series of blog posts about the use of ChatGPT and AI in education.
EdTechTeacher Chat GPT Tips by Tom Daccord: a resource for teachers/instructors with ideas for how to use ChatGPT for learning in a K-12 setting.
These Women Tried to Warn Us About AI by Lorena O’Neil at Rolling Stone Magazine (August 2023)
“Researchers — including many women of color — have been saying for years that these systems interact differently with people of color and that the societal effects could be disastrous: that they’re a fun-house-style distorted mirror magnifying biases and stripping out the context from which their information comes; that they’re tested on those without the choice to opt out; and will wipe out the jobs of some marginalized communities.”
Despite popularity, six in 10 Canadian students consider generative AI tools cheating from KPMG (August 2023)
“Students primarily use generative AI for idea generation (70 per cent), research (55 per cent) and writing essays or reports (39 per cent). Fourteen per cent say they use these tools for tests or exams. Almost 70 per cent admit they always or sometimes claim AI-generated content as their own original work. And, they aren’t consistently validating the accuracy of their AI-generated content, with only 37 per cent saying they always do a fact-check.”
One in five Canadians using generative artificial intelligence tools from KPMG (June 2023)
“A survey of 5,140 Canadians found 1,052 (20 per cent) have used generative AI to help them do their jobs or schooling. The most common uses include research, generating ideas, writing essays and creating presentations. Respondents say the use of the technology has enhanced productivity and quality, created revenue and increased grades but, in the process, they are engaging in behaviour that could create risks for their employers.”
More than one third of Canadian businesses experimenting with ChatGPT from KPMG (April 2023)
“A majority of Canadian businesses are aware of the risks of having poor quality data, with more than half (54 per cent) admitting they are very concerned their organization might be making decisions based on poorly designed AI algorithms, and yet only 44 per cent regularly retaining independent third-party experts to vet or assess their AI algorithms for errors and bias.”
Automation Nation? AI Adoption in Canadian Businesses from The Dais at the Toronto Metropolitan University (September 2023)
“In all businesses with five or more employees, as of the end of 2021, only 3.7 percent of firms say they had adopted artificial intelligence in any way.”
Canada’s AI imperative – From predictions to prosperity from Deloitte (November 2018)
“Truthfully, there are still many unknowns about general AI’s potential and humanity’s ability to grasp it. But regardless of whether we ever reach the point of general AI, there’s still a clear imperative for a country and its businesses to invest in AI technologies, and to shape the economic and social conditions required to foster their uptake.”
A HyperDoc is a digital document—such as a Google Doc—where all components of a learning cycle have been pulled together into one central hub. Within a single document, students are provided with hyperlinks to all of the resources they need to complete that learning cycle.
The Basic HyperDoc Lesson Plan Template from HyperDocs Templates for Getting Started nicely illustrates how a lesson cycle can be incorporated into a hyperdoc.
To help practitioners who are exploring the use of HyperDocs to enhance learner agency, AlphaPlus has a created a website dedicated to the creation and use of HyperDocs in adult literacy where you will find tips and examples.
On May 11, 2023 AlphaPlus hosted our eighth Community Gabfest.
The conversation starter was “What is your favourite blended learning resource? And why?”
We received a suggestion that the Gabfest may be a good place to share ideas for good resources, strategies and tools for blended learning— the kitchen-tested stuff that practitioners find useful and effective in a variety of settings.
We used a Jamboard to guide our conversation: Wayfinders Gabfest 8 Jamboard.
We started by brainstorming what we are looking for in resource recommendations – what elements are important to us.
We asked three questions:
And here is the list we came up with:
Citizen Literacy app (useful for learning disabilities/difficulties, uses a phonetic approach, can use the app on an Android or you can access the lessons on the website)
Teach Online from Contact North
Linkedin Learning and Gale Learning
Virtual reality (e.g. Body swaps – Soft Skills simulations): through Contact North centres, literacy programs can use these tools at no cost
Maps apps (various ways to use them)
Music streaming apps (Lyrics for reading, pronunciation and poetic writing)
Podcasts (transcripts for vocabulary development, digital skills, reading skills)
Fair chance learning (Achievia – Microsoft apps training)
Informable app from the News Literacy Project
CBC Gem Video – You are Soaking in It
The video is no longer available on Gem. I cannot find it online anywhere so far. Here is the documentary webpage and press kit.
More recommended resource lists:
Thank you Gabfesters for your energy, generosity, wisdom and friendship. With your help, we won’t fall off the learning curve.
We hear about the challenge of embedding digital skills in literacy learning when working with learners who have beginner literacy skills or digital skills that do not meet the requirements of an educational setting.
Visit our Computer Basics Google site to see a collection of resources you can use to to support learners who are trying to “catch up” on digital skills.
You will find a collection of places that support learners with beginner literacy skills who want to learn more about using digital devices and leveraging connectivity for learning.
There are Lessons and Tutorials that you can use as a curriculum, build into your own curriculum or supplement a curriculum you are using as well as Lessons and Tutorials created by Ontario Literacy and Basic Skills programs.
Under the Standards tab we have collected resources to help literacy learners reflect upon and assess their computer skills.
Lots of people know about and use GCFGlobal (GCFLearnFree – edu.gcfglobal.org) resources as a place to send learners and to learn about techy stuff themselves.
Here are some other sites for getting started reviewed on this site:
You can read more about these places to learn at the AlphaPlus Computer Basics site under the Lessons and Tutorials tab.
You will find activities from these sites organized by topic at the AlphaPlus Digital Technology Readiness site Table of Contents where you will find some basics (parts of a computer, the mouse and the keyboard, etc.) under Getting Started. The rest of the topics are to help learners get ready for using digital technology for learning.
Activities from these sites are also accessible through the Digital Skills Library where they have been indexed and are searchable.
On April 13, 2023 AlphaPlus hosted our seventh Community Gabfest.
The conversation starter was Digital Inclusion / Digital Justice: what does it mean to literacy programs?
This gabfest follows upon the discussion at Calgary Learns. Susan Lefebvre from Metro Toronto Movement for Literacy (MTML) got in touch to talk about how we can bring this conversation to Ontario.
We explored
We used a Jamboard to guide our conversation: Wayfinders Gabfest 7 Jamboard.
We started by brainstorming some of the ways that digital technology benefits us and/or the learners we work with. I think this is the fullest Jamboard frame I have ever seen.
We looked at Bill’s story (see below) and talked about diversity of ways we see people using technology skills and literacy skills to navigate the world. We also talked about the assumptions that are made about who uses digital technologies (why and how they use them) and how that ties in with assumptions about who has literacy skills and skills deficit approaches to education.
We talked about what digital inclusion means. We concluded that essentially it comes down to issues of affordability and that as long as the provision of internet access remains a private sector, for profit venture, affordability will continue to be an issue–especially in an era where we seem to moving to more privatization of public services.
When we tried to answer the question about the role of literacy programs in addressing the issue of digital inclusion, as one person said, there was a “startling pause.” It was felt that it though would be quite natural and for people who work in literacy programs to be part of developing inclusion strategies because of their deep knowledge of the impacts and realities of lack of access, program workers are stretched pretty much to the limit. To add on the work of trying to solve a problem that is really one of government regulation and investment, as essential as it is, is just not feasible.
We rounded out the afternoon by grappling with the notion of digital justice. We reflected on Jane’s story (see below) and how access to your data and artifacts is a human right. We talked about how when we work with learners in online spaces, we are often in private spaces. The reason we get to use them for free is because our data and our attention is a valued commodity that gets traded on a market that is largely opaque to most users. People acknowledged that this is the sea we swim in — our ability to change the sea is quite limited but, in this case, there was a lot of energy in the discussion about the role of literacy programs in the digital justice domain. There is a lot we cannot change but we can use our literacy skills, our educator skills and our finely honed critical thinking skills to make the opaque transparent for ourselves and for the learners who are swimming alongside us.
We though that perhaps we could start with language. The jargon of digital spaces and the inconsistent ways language is used in different places and by different people is disruptive to connectivity. For example, are two-factor authentication, two-step verification and multi-factor verification all the same thing or does each term mean something different? Literacy people are language people. People saw ways that they could demystify the language as part of media literacy activities and lessons.
Audrey Gardner recommended a video to us on CBC Gem called “You’re Soaking in It” as a way to make this more understandable to ourselves.
We wrapped up by talking about how to bring this information to literacy learners and how to be transparent about the digital learning environments we are taking learners to. We thought one place to start might be the Media Literacy section of the Educator Network Blended Learning Toolbox.
Tracey and Guylaine were sparking with ideas about other ways AlphaPlus can support the field in this endeavour. More on that soon.
Thank you Gabfesters for your energy, generosity, wisdom and friendship. With your help, we won’t fall off the learning curve.
“A digital justice approach to literacy education asks not if people can access the Internet and digital technologies but rather how different groups experience online worlds.” — S. Smythe and D. Pelan (2019) Digital literacy and digital justice
Here is the link to the video of the discussion panel.
These are the articles we were invited to read before the panel:
And these links were shared at the event:
Digital Justice Case Studies
from S. Smythe and D. Pelan (2019) Digital literacy and digital justice
Neil Selwyn (2010; 2014) asks,
“Who benefits in what ways from Internet connectivity?
How does the Internet amplify rather than disrupt existing social patterns and relations?”
(p. 96).
Welfare offices often do not provide help with the application process, nor access to the technology, and so applicants are referred to libraries and community agencies such as tech cafés for help. This requires people to share intimate details about their lives with people they may not know well, an often demoralizing and humiliating experience, and ironically one that people are warned to avoid in the interest of data privacy. The multi-step welfare application process also requires an active email address (and therefore a password and password recovery protocol) and a current digital photo uploaded with the application (requiring a camera, skills to save and upload the photos and so on). The consequence is that people often fail in their welfare applications the first time, moving into deeper precarity.
Google has redesigned its verification protocols to prevent the use of stolen devices and hacking. This is no doubt a positive development for many, but carried catastrophic consequences for Jane, a precariously housed woman who relies on public access computing and who must keep her most precious information on the cloud. Jane lives in a women’s shelter and relies heavily on her Gmail account to communicate with friends, family and work. She uses her cloud storage to keep important photos and documents safe and accessible but does not have her own device, instead relying upon one of the many public computers available in the community. Changes to Gmail’s security features led to flags of suspicious activity because she logs in to multiple computers each day. One afternoon her login attempt at a community centre was flagged as possible “hacking”, with a warning message that because she was logging in from an unknown device she would need to verify that she owned the account before she could access it. Ownership could be verified by a secure access code texted to the phone number she provided when she set up the account or, by verifying the month/year the account was created, then answering the security questions she set up at the time. Jane no longer has access to the cell number listed as the phone was recently stolen, a sadly common occurrence for citizens who stay in shelters. The account was created such a long time ago that Jane could no longer remember the exact month. Indeed, who among us could remember that? After several attempts Jane’s account was locked ‘until she could provide proof’ of ownership. But there were no other options for proving ownership and in those few moments, Jane lost access to her vital documents, contacts, phone numbers, and main method of communication with no way to retrieve them. Such experiences of disconnection are deeply disruptive and traumatizing for those with histories of personal loss and abandonment.
Bill often attends the tech cafés to learn more about how to use his laptop. He is confident and fluent in his online activities and an active participant in social media. One day, Bill brought in a paper-based form for housing and asked if we could help him find it online but unfortunately, the housing provider would only accept hard copies of the application (a rarity indeed)! This caused Bill enormous anxiety. After a brief discussion it became clear that English was Bill’s second language, he did not see himself as a good speller, and he felt that he did not have legible writing. He stated that this made him feel stupid even though he wasn’t. He preferred to do the form online as the computer would correct his spelling and sentence structure. As digital literacy educators and researchers, situations such as this lead us to question the boundaries between print and digital literacies, and linear views of skills that place people in categories of ‘who is ready’ for digital literacy and who is not. For Bill, digital technologies allowed him to overcome the barriers of print literacy, even if the design of the system still posed difficulties.
As part of the Educator Network Blended Learning program, literacy practitioners share the resources that are most helpful in creating lessons and activities that engage learners and enhance and expand learning.
This is the collection from the Winter 2022 group.
These are the blended learning resources, activities and tools that practitioners have tested and are recommending. On some pages you will see their reviews or tips.
We start with an explanation of some of the terms we used and a link to a website about curating resources.
We have included an index. Some topics have several pages. If you open the PDF in a browser, you can use the back button to return to the index.
Use the link in the sidebar to open and download the collection.
On March 9, 2023 AlphaPlus hosted our sixth Community Gabfest.
The conversation starter was Lori Armstrong’s video The Personal Web.
Lori is a knowledgeable and inventive literacy instructor who currently works at the Thunder Bay Literacy Group and will soon be moving to the Lakehead Adult Education Centre (part of the public school board in Thunder Bay).
In the summer of 2022, Lori participated in the AlphaPlus Wayfinders Maker Space and created a video about the Personal Learning Web – a map of how Lori works with learners to identify the ways connection, relationships and power impact the whys and hows of learning for each of us differently and specifically.
We used a Jamboard to guide our conversation: Wayfinders Gabfest 6 Jamboard.
It was a lively and engaging discussion as usual.
We started by talking about the elements that create good learning. We then watched the first part of the video — the overview of the Personal Web — and moved to breakout rooms to discuss how the web resonated with us and our practice. One group made connections to the issue of digital justice.
We watched the second part of the video and stayed together to talk about how teachers dance with chaos and navigate the web of webs. We all found that the pace and flow of Lori’s video — her calm and encouraging tone — put us into an open-minded and meditative space.
Lori finished the session by walking us through some of the ways she has been expanding the personal web concept.
Lori shared a couple of examples of how she’s been extending her Personal Web reflections lately. She showed us how she
The PDF linked below shows some concept mapping for the following:
Thank you Lori for sparking this good conversation and for your generosity in sharing your research and insights with us.
Thank you all Gabfesters for your wisdom, experience, knowledge and, most of all, your fine collegiality.
We agree with this participant: “Brilliant!! Incredible learning, thank you so very much! Always a pleasure.”
On February 9, 2023 AlphaPlus hosted another in our series of Community Gabfests.
We started by asking people about where they like to learn best.
The conversation starter was: If there were no barriers to running a program, what program would you want to run?
We talked about
We moved into break out rooms to discuss the three questions.
Here is what the groups shared on the Jamboard.
We wrapped up by thanking each other for their contributions and generosity.