Hosted by Jamie Mayo
Welcome to our last week of the Moveable Feast! This topic was a lot of fun to research and explore. I hope that you’ll find the information enclosed pertinent and useful for your own educational endeavours.
I decided to focus on the most popular current smart assistants (Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant). Although there are no current iterations of these smart assistants that have been made to use specifically in an educational setting, the they can still be used in various educational ways.
Here is a link to the site, or if you would like to view on a mobile device, please scan the QR code below.
I’ve included a “conversation” page on the website, which includes 5 discussion questions, and an area to post any responses you may have. Feel free to post on this page if you’d prefer, as well.
Discussion Questions:
Share ways that you utilize either Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant in or out of education. Have you come to rely on them in any various ways?
Smart assistants can work for both individuals (personal mobile device) and larger groups (a hub). Does one show more educational promise than the other?
In what ways do you think technology like ChatGPT could disrupt current smart assistants as we know them? How may this affect future students and teachers?
Will smart assistants eventually become powerful enough to replace or minimize the need for teachers?
Will “the big three” continue to be the driving forces in smart assistant technology, or will developers like those who created ChatGPT find room in this market?
I look forward to reading everyone’s responses through the week. Please let me know if you have any questions, or would like to see anything added to the site.
-Jamie
Hi Jamie,
I have really enjoyed reading your website. I have recently watched “Megan” movie, where an AI or digital assistant toy/friend is created to help a child overcome the loss of her parents. You might be familiar with the movie. The way things turned out was really disturbing since the child became very addicted to the Digital assistant toy and became really aggressive and unable to stay without it. I am not sure where AI will keep going further.
Digital assistants are very useful in terms of answering questions, providing recommendations, making predictions or even starting a conversation. One useful aspect is that you can use your voice and do other tasks you have instead of holding your phone and leaving what you are doing to check something in the calendar or set an alarm. One issue is that humans worked so hard to make the machine smarter but normal people’s intelligence will start to deteriorate. Simple math problems or remembering some events or contact numbers was a natural instinct before technology. They are getting more fluent in using technology to make it do our work and remember things for us. Brains used to work harder but in our nature, we tend to rely on what makes life easier for us. This is one main reason I don’t encourage allowing myself or my children to use Siri and her siblings.
Hi Jamie, thanks for the wonderful OER! I appreciated your list of Educational uses, as I would not have thought of all these on my own!
Share ways that you utilize either Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant in or out of education. Have you come to rely on them in any various ways? – I have a Google assistant at home (I did not buy it, my sister gave it to me because she didn’t use and thought the kids would like it). We use it for basic things, such as “what’s the weather today” or “play some music” etc. I could easily go without out it. It was a novelty at first for the kids, and they had fun asking it questions like “what does a fox say,” however after the novelty has worn off they forget about it and move onto something else. Before now, I have never really thought about using something in my classroom. I can see students using IVA initially however, it too may become just another tool? Similar to the quote you added from the study by Dizon and Tang (2020). “The study found that many participants initially showed interest in the potential of Alexa as a language learning tool, but did not actively engage with the virtual assistant during data collection.” (Dizon & Tang, 2020)
Well said! Let me add to it that while ChatGPT is excellent, for example, for providing additional linguistic information in the process of foreign language learning, it is this material engagement, i.e. exercises and interaction, that actually puts these new bits of knowledge in our heads. That is why Duolingo is better for language learning in the long run, and that is why the teacher won’t be replaced soon. Well, at least I hope it won’t happen, lol!
Hi Jamie,
Thank you for your focus on smart assistants, this is such a fascinating and highly relevant topic! I have a household full of Google assistants/speakers and I must admit that I become more and more reliant on them daily. I will talk a little more about that below but I until now, I have mainly relied on them for either home or personal use and not so much for my professional or academic purposes.
Share ways that you utilise either Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant in or out of education. Have you come to rely on them in any various ways?
I think like several others may have already mentioned, I use my google assistant for daily tasks such as settings alarms and timers (mostly for either gamified competitions to see who can get dressed the fastest in the mornings, teeth brushing and such, as well as for cooking and alerts for school picks up and other appointments. I do feel like I would have a very hard time keeping up with everything if I didn’t have smart devices to keep me somewhat on track. I have absolutely caught my 7 year old asking Google to give her maths HW solutions and while I am not sure this is great for her maths skills in the long run (I guess I don’t see the difference between this and using a calculator), I am impressed that someone so young has figured out this shortcut and it doesn’t bother me so much as I know that she can’t rely on this in her actual classes. My daughter has also figured out how to ask Google how to help her translate her Japanese HW, which I really should have thought of sooner myself…
Smart assistants can work for both individuals (personal mobile device) and larger groups (a hub). Does one show more educational promise than the other?
I have not experienced using them for anything other than as a personal device and I would love to see how they are utilised in a larger group or hub. I did talk with a colleague about using them in one of our JHS classes but we both ultimately agreed it would end up being too distracting and misused by our large number of students (40+ in a classroom). I will start teaching smaller university classes this week, so I am very curious as to how they could be utilised in a higher level, smaller and more mature level classroom situation.
In what ways do you think technology like ChatGPT could disrupt current smart assistants as we know them? How may this affect future students and teachers?
I am not sure how they will be directly linked or affected by one another, but I do view Chat GPT as an opportunity rather than a threat. I see so many potential applications for ChatGPT in my future classes and I am excited to find more ways to use AI. I do think that if teachers are not able to adapt to using AI technologies, they will suffer the fate of becoming outdated, however, this is not to say that AI can replace teachers… (see below).
Will smart assistants eventually become powerful enough to replace or minimize the need for teachers?
No, I don’t think so. Even with the most sophisticated technology, it is unlikely that AI will be able to fully replace human teachers. There are far too many constantly evolving cultural and linguistical developments occurring daily around the globe for AI to be able to mimic human interaction perfectly, and AI will not be able to completely replicate the emotional nuances that humans use without speaking, such as gestures, eye-contact, and other forms of intuitive communication as well as the emotional connection and bond that is so important between teachers and students. Even as someone who champions and embraces technology in the classroom, I would still not believe that AI could replace human teachers.
Will “the big three” continue to be the driving forces in smart assistant technology, or will developers like those who created ChatGPT find room in this market?
I’m certain there will be more and more AI developed smart assistants that will be available to the public and it is possible that they could start to replace human personal assistants judging from the very impressive hair/restaurant appointments that the google assistant was able to make in the video. I would absolutely love to be able to ask my VA to make my appointments in Japanese for me!
Thank you very much for sharing your experience and thoughts on the smart assistants, Louisa; it was very illuminating! Regards, Anna
Dear Jamie,
I truly appreciate your individual effort on educating us on the topic of smart assistants.
For me, everything in your project has been new since I have never used Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant myself. Not that I have anything against them; I did not have an opportunity, I guess.
But when I tried ChatGPT in another of our weekly projects, I immediately fell in love. I imagine Siri to be like an AI bot with a voice.
My young adult international students in Canada never utilized those smart assistants in the classroom either, probably because they already had some postgraduate technical education which makes them faster and cleverer than those tools.
I agree with my peers highlighting the positive and negative sides of this technology. I am interested in trying it, but I don’t think I will get used to it as there is no need for it.
Again, thank you very much for presenting this exciting material!
Anna
Hi Jamie, I made a post on disque regarding your question “Will smart assistants eventually become powerful enough to replace or minimize the need for teachers?”, but it still hasn’t displayed in the comment section? Just wondering if it was accepted by you as I remember it saying waiting for mod. Let me know!
Thanks, Vithu
Thanks for pointing this out! It’s my first time using Disqus (wanted to try a new discussion option that integrates into google sites), and I didn’t realize that I have to okay each post. I’ve done so now, so the comment should be posted. 🙂
One of the benefits I see with smart assistants in education is that it’s a tool that can help create equity among students who may have disabilities, and as the capabilities of this technology expand and become more conversational, these students will only continue to benefit.
For students with motor, linguistic, or cognitive impairments, voice technology provides them the means to complete their tasks in manners that are most supportive to their needs. For one student, it may be more efficient to write out their presentation notes, but this experience can be very challenging to another student who would prefer to use voice to text/text to speech tools to prepare and practice their presentation. In the end, both students are able to give excellent presentations, but how they got there was unique to their needs. For students who have experience sensory overload, using voice controls to navigate their digital devices can allow them to complete tasks more efficiently. For students who struggle to process large chunks of instructions or have frequent questions as they work on a task, smart assistants can be incredible helpful in keeping students on task and answering basic questions throughout the working period.
Smart assistants and voice assistants give students who otherwise might struggle with tasks a means to be more independent in their learning. We need to look at these as enablement tools. This technology afford us to meet our students where they are, and create a more personalized learning experience for each of them, so they can focus more on the end learning outcome, rather than following one designated way of getting there.
Another example of IVA….
https://youtu.be/dutekN9uuRw
Emotional damage is truly great, lol! Thanks for the link, love!
Thank you for the informative OER, Jaime. This is an interesting topic for me as I rarely use these assistants. I think I see their educational benefits now, but I do not think they can or will replace teachers, not even by a small chance, because they are very limited in what they can do compared to teachers. I think they are great at what they do which is provide assistance and increase accessibility for those who need it. I am concerned about how the younger generations use them and, like the previous reply mentioned, how over-reliant they are on them. I am sure I will not be a happy educator or parent if the first thing my student or child does is ask IVAs when trying to do an assignment or solve a problem. I believe it would be very rewarding and beneficial to figure out and normalize ways that limit the risks of using IVAs that threaten the cognitive and intellectual development and stimulation of everyone, especially the young.
I must be honest when I say that I may be just as bad as the younger generation that readily uses this technology. I use my google assistant multiple times through the day (to set reminders, to turn off the tv/lights from a separate room, to set timers while I cook, to listen to music, to ask it to play various animal sounds that my four year old is curious, of etc.). I can only speak to my current school (I teach grade 4/8), but I haven’t actually found that students are using smart assistants all that heavily. Much like when students copy and paste from a google search, it is usually quite clear when they haven’t really put in much time or effort to research. I would hope that if students are taught safe and proper use of this technology, that much like I currently use mine, students can use them without threatening cognitive and intellectual development. I touch on the following thought in a response below, but I think that media literacy is becoming ever more important in classrooms, and imperative when sharing various assistive technologies with students. I wonder if an educational version will eventually be created, and if it will address the issues of concern?
I tried to leave a comment on the disqus, but don’t like having to sign up for more stuff.
Anyway, here is my comment:
I personally HATE when the Google Assistant comes up on my phone. I do not use the voice activated virtual assistants as I find them invasive and don’t really like having them around, period. If I could take the Google Assistant off my phone, I would in a heartbeat. Can I ask it to commit suicide by erasing itself?
Students have used Siri in my classroom, but I discourage this, as it means that students are not learning any research skills on their own, and are missing out on important skills. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I have had students come to me with questions about how to find information, because when they type the question into Google, or ask Siri, it doesn’t come up with a direct answer. My response has always been “Yes. That is the struggle. How are you going to resolve it?” and so many students just get this look on their faces, as though I’ve asked them to do something truly heinous, when all I’m actually asking them to do is think. The idea that they would need to parse and tease information from a variety of sources, and interpolate, and infer, and actually think about the project somehow offends them when I don’t give them a straight up answer.
I think that these virtual assistants and the ubiquitous, directionless use of technology has stopped people from being able to think through things first, to reason, and to think critically to come up with an answer based on information from somewhere other than Wikipedia.
Unfortunately, I see this slide into even less thinking with the advent and use of ChatGPT, and can see the immense harm that is coming because of people becoming far too reliant on technology. What will they do in a power outage? Or if a natural disaster cuts them off from the internet and “smart” assistants? What about the people who got severely lost, or died because Google Maps told them to go a certain way? I think that the harms that can happen from these may actually outweigh the benefits, particularly when it comes to cutting off thinking in children. Instant gratification is not how life works, and this slide is teaching children that everything is at their beck and call, and not to rely on themselves. If the bar exam or LSAT can be passed more effectively by ChatGPT than a human, what’s next? A neurosurgeon who passed their exams using ChatGPT? No thank you!
I really don’t think that these things will ever replace teachers, because the one thing that teachers can do that none of these things can do, is work when the power goes out. Teachers also have the ability to guide students toward more critical thinking, by making them question that validity of the responses, as algorithms are programmed by people and people are fallible. One of the math teachers at my school loves to take PhotoMath and show students how PhotoMath got questions wrong.
None of these assistive technologies exist without the programmers who use algorithms to “teach” the machine how to learn. What they leave out can be almost as important as what they put in.
I trust the pilots of small planes far more than those of large planes, because to small aircraft pilots, I am a person, not a seat number. Same goes for the programmers, if I don’t know them, I am just another source of data for the algorithm, and I have no control over that whatsoever.
I’m so glad you got this topic, Jamie, because I don’t think I could have been kind, or constructive with my criticism of them, as you have been. Well done! (I don’t think I will change my mind on it though :))
Thanks for the response, it’s clear that this is something you are quite passionate about, and I totally hear where you’re coming from. Also, sorry about the disqus sign-in, I should have made it a bit clearer that you can sign in as a guest – I’ve now done so.
As frustrating as this may be for some, I think that it’s important to address popular technologies in the classroom whether we personally agree with them or not, as they are going to be a part of most, if not all current/future students’ lives, for better or for worse.
In terms of using smart assistants for research, I think that research is something that students have long struggled with (especially at the elementary and secondary level), even before common search engines, when the primary sources were books in a library. Of course, with the introduction of the “ask and response” nature of smart assistants, students may feel like it’s an easy solution when struggling to effectively research something, but as you’ve mentioned, they’ll often come up short with this technique alone.
I think that the bigger issue lies in students lack of understanding of how to properly conduct research (likely because it is quite a challenging/time consuming concept to grasp and complete effectively) I think that teaching students to research and find information is extremely valuable, and the use of a smart assistant to help with research is just one small piece of that much bigger puzzle. This also speaks to the importance of media literacy, and teaching students how to find reliable information on the internet, and also how to wade through the unreliable information as well.
You’ve shared lots of great food for thought! It’s always good to consider the negatives alongside the positives of various technologies (especially for me, as a serial optimist!).
Thank you for your response, Jamie.
The research problem is one that I have long struggled with. My own lack of media literacy was the main impetus for taking this program. I came out of a career in field geology, where we used pencil and paper almost exclusively, as being in the middle of nowhere doesn’t always give us internet or sometimes even power.
One of the biggest problem that I see is that students use their phones as distractions rather than educational tools, and I do not know how to breach that divide.
Below is an example of exactly what we’re talking about, and worried about:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9yq3zlJzdls