🤖 The real cause of AI cheating

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🗳 Poll: Is the attention issue important?

This week’s question: What should Matt do with the ACE Framework?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Short videos (50)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Online course for teachers (36)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ In-person workshop (0)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Virtual training (17)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ An AI literacies book with Holly (10)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Something else ... (1)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Focus your efforts elsewhere (1)

Thanks to so many of you for giving me guidance and suggestions on what I should do — and how I should do it. The results were nothing less than enlightening!

Some of your responses:

• Voted “AI literacies book”: No matter what you choose, the topic itself is one of high importance when using AI--this framework would be a great starting point in training teachers (and students) about AI literacy. — Melanie Winstead (North Carolina)

• Voted “Online course”: I would love anything like this as long as it was a free or limited cost to our teachers. They are being asked to do so much and need a life raft.

• Voted “Short videos”: As the district's digital learning specialist, short videos are a HUGE help for my teachers. This is a resource that I can attach to any AI training for my teachers to have instant access when in need or when they finally have a moment to digest the training!

🗳 This week’s poll

This week’s main post (below) is one I’ve been thinking about for a while. I think it’s important — and a big part of the AI situation in schools that not enough people are talking about.

Here’s what I’d like you to do (if you would) …

Read the main post below and tell me …

• Is this important? Is it an important part of addressing AI in schools?

• Is it unimportant and I’m focusing a little too much on an issue that’s not really pressing?

• (Or I guess there’s a chance that you’d like to reserve judgment until next week when I publish part 2 of this post. In that case, just choose “neutral”.)

• In a comment: In light of the “attention dollars” situation, what should (or shouldn’t) we do to solve it?

Instructions:

1. Please vote on this week’s poll. It just takes a click!

2. Optional: Explain your vote / provide context / add details in a comment afterward.

3. Optional: Include your name in your comment so I can credit you if I use your response.

🗝️ The (hidden) key ingredient in the AI cheating

Ask lots of teachers (especially middle and high school) about AI and cheating and it may elicit several responses …

• The kids are copying and pasting out of ChatGPT to do their work.

• We need a way to block or ban those apps so they won’t do it.

• We need a way to know if kids are actually doing the work themselves.

• I’m going back to paper and pencil if I can’t fix this.

• To fix this, we need better policies to punish AI cheaters.

Now, to be fair … thankfully, I’ve talked to LOTS of teachers, school leaders, and district admin that forward-thinking about AI.

But I’ve also found that the forward-thinking ones I meet at school/district PD and edu conferences don’t always represent the vast majority of the teaching corps.

I can see how some progress on some of these things could be beneficial …

… but if we focus on this, we’re just cutting the top of the dandelion. (And those weeds grow right back up if you don’t kill them at the root.)

To me, I think this all boils down to one thing.

It’s the ingredient we aren’t talking about in our quest to get this “AI in edu” thing right.

The ingredient is ATTENTION.

And I’m not talking about “kids have the attention span of a goldfish” argument.

We need to think about it with a different analogy.

Attention is a currency (like money)

Think of attention like money. Imagine that you have $100 of attention to spend every day.

(Scientifically, there are certain parallels you can draw with our finite working memory … but here, I’m talking about attention … some similarities, but I’m going in somewhat of a different direction.)

FACTOR #1: AMOUNT OF ATTENTION

Some tasks your students do cost less of their attention.

• Deciding which of the cafeteria food options to have at lunch? That easy decision might cost $1 of their day’s attention.

Other tasks take a LOT of attention.

• Creating an outline for a research report about oligarchies? That’s expensive. It might cost you $30 of your day’s attention.

FACTOR #2: DESIRE TO SPEND ATTENTION

If they’re not that interested in an action, students are likely to NOT want to spend their attention on it.

• If a student isn’t that into science, that lecture on neutrinos just might not be worth spending the attention on.

But if it’s a topic they love — or where they see lots of relevance to their lives — they’re likely to spend more attention.

• If a student is a history buff, they’ll gladly spend attention dollars on a discussion about the reasons for the American Revolution.

FACTOR #3: IMPORTANCE OF THE ACTION

Students determine if something’s important in lots of ways. If it holds some sort of importance to them, they’ll spend.

• This term paper on neutrinos still isn’t that important to our example student, but grades are important … and this student values getting a good grade, so they pour significant attention currency into the task.

If the student can’t find importance in a task, they’ll likely try to spend as little attention currency on it as possible.

• A different less-than-enthusiastic science student really doesn’t care much about grades, so they won’t spend ANY attention currency on the paper.

And yes, another way to frame all of this is through the ages-old issue of motivation in learning. For this discussion, I think motivation and attention are different …

• Motivation is about how much you want to do something.

• Attention is about putting your eyes, ears, brain and body movements on a task.

(You can be motivated to do something but not assign any attention to it.)

(You can also assign motivation to something that you don’t want to do.)

(Different things, right?)

What does this “classroom attention economy” have to do with AI?

Everything.

1️⃣ It’s easier than ever to offload work that you don’t want to give your attention dollars to. Among other things, students are outsourcing it to ChatGPT instead of spending “attention dollars” on it.

• Students are just now finding AI and what it’s capable of doing. The more they learn about it — and what it can do for them — the more tasks they can offload so they don’t have to spend their attention there.

2️⃣ With classwork, students and teachers value “attention dollar costs” differently.

• Teachers have their motivations. They are looking at the curriculum. Standards. What students need to thrive in life. What industry and the workforce demands. (Or just what they’ve always done as a teacher.) They think students should spend their attention dollars in a certain way because it benefits the student. (Or, in some sad cases, they’re looking at their own motivations — or those of the Department of Education — over the benefit of the student.)

• Students have their OWN motivations — and often, their motivations don’t match the teacher’s motivations. The high school students I’ve taught? They value whether something is interesting. If it’ll get them points in the gradebook (because they’ve learned to value that). If it’ll help them in their current RIGHT NOW life. If it’s entertaining. If they think they’ll be able to do it (self efficacy).

• When the value of attention dollars conflicts between teacher and student, it’s always up to the STUDENT to decide. (Kind of like the proverbial horse that you lead to water but won’t drink.)

• Some teachers HATE this dynamic — because they can’t seem to make the student want to spend their attention dollars on something they think is important.

• Teachers cajole — and threaten — and reward — and other things — all to get students to spend their attention dollars on classwork.

3️⃣ Students are learning how to save their attention dollars, spending less on EVERYTHING.

• It’s the McDonald’s approach. A McDouble or a McChicken at McDonald’s doesn’t cost very much.

• A McDouble or McChicken is cheap, but they’re terrible for you and an easy ticket to obesity and high blood pressure. You can save your dollars, but it’ll cost you your health.

• Much like buying cheap fast food, students shortcut learning tasks and they don’t develop valuable skills in the same way — all because they don’t want to go to the effort to spend their attention on it.

4️⃣ It should be worthwhile to students to invest their attention dollars in wise ways … but it’s hard to convince kids to do what’s best for their future when all they can see is today.

• AI can write your essay, but if you don’t develop the thinking skills and ability to write, you’ll never know if AI-generated reports in your full-time job are any good.

5️⃣ An even trickier factor in all of this: sometimes, it’s a GOOD thing to outsource your attention to ChatGPT. We do this all the time as adults.

• It’s the reason we snicker and whisper, “Yeah, I just had ChatGPT do that for me … bwahahahaha …”

• It’s also the reason we say, “Those lesson plans I was supposed to submit? I just sent in last week’s lesson plans. I’ll bet they never notice.”

• Even in adults, there’s a disconnect between the value of a task and the attention dollars you have to spend to do it. We make judgment calls every day (whether we talk about it or not). It’s a survival skill in the workplace and our everyday lives.

So … what SHOULD we (and SHOULDN’T we) do in schools about this “attention economy”?

We’ll cover that in part 2 next week!

In the meantime, I’d LOVE it if you went back up to the poll and (if you haven’t already) let me know …

Is this important?

And, in a comment, tell me … what SHOULD and SHOULDN’T we do in schools about this?

🗨️ Ethan Mollick’s prompts library

On his website, More Useful Things, University of Pennsylvania professor Ethan Mollick shares dozens of very detailed, very helpful prompts.

Copy any of these prompts and paste them into your AI large language model of choice (ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, etc.). Adjust the verbiage to suit your needs. Hit return and be blown away.

They include:

• Instructor aides

• Student exercises

• Other prompts (i.e. idea generation, product launches)

Access Ethan Mollick’s prompt library here

📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ Which AI to Use Now: An Updated Opinionated Guide (via Ethan Mollick): Ethan shares updated capabilities for the most capable AI models available — and suggestions for which ones to use when.

2️⃣ 10 ways to manage group work in the classroom (via Ditch That Textbook): This post features Grouper, a new tool that uses AI to sort students into groups for collaborative work. It can sort with any type of criteria.

3️⃣ New teacher AI tool: Padlet TA: Padlet TA is a quick dashboard of simple, free AI teacher tools. Create lesson plans, presentations, images, worksheets, and more by filling in a few simple details.