Friday, September 20, 2024

Another great teaching and learning tool. NotebookLM's automated podcasts will blow your mind

NotebookLM shows how AI can be used right now in learning. The automatic podcasts will blow your mind.

I uploaded a large book on learning theorists, at 300,000 words, saved as a 700+ page PDF. It covers 2500 years, with 300 learning theorists and has taken years to write. Her's the list of Learning theorists and topics covered:


Chat

It gives a pretty good summary, briefing and timeline, century by century, across 2500 years. 

Then, I started to ask it questions, using the chjat function, engaging in dialogue with my own work. It is superb. If every teacher, department, course had its curated content in this context, this would be a boon for students. If you want to know some specifics about a particular learning theorists or more geneal view of a group, it does a credible job.

Learners can ask general questions, then, when engaging in a class or assignment, specific questions, getting carefully considered answers. I asked it some general questions about historical trends, why so few women in learning and so on. Pretty good…

What is impressive are the provenance numbers that link to the source text in hte document for most components in the answer.

Podcast

But the big hit comes at the end. I asked it to do an ‘Audio overview’ of all 300 learning theorists in 700 pages. This was way beyond my expectations. A dialogue podcast, at around 11.5 minutes, was amazingly realistic, with a male and female commentator bounding off each other. The language was informal and sounded like real dialogue. I have since asked people to listen – they ALL thought these were real people.

It covered the material well, pulling out relevant theorists and making insightful observations as they took us through 2500 years of learning theory. 

For novice learners who want a friendly introduction, those with poor literacy skills, English as a second language, but also dyslexic learners, this is a wondrous feature. I can see this being a great introduction to any topic, subject, course or assignment. 



Take notes

You can also create and manage notes. You select the box in the upper-right corner of one or more notes, and NotebookLM displays text-buttons with actions to take on the notes. These include:

Summarise the selected notes.
Suggest related ideas.
Create a study guide.
Create an outline.
Combine the selected notes into a single note.

PS

If you want REAL podcasts and deep dives into this content, there are 36 1 hour podcasts in the 'Great Minds on Learning' series here…
https://greatmindsonlearning.libsyn.com/


Thursday, September 19, 2024

GenAI students learn more than twice as much in less time, with more engagement motivation enjoyment & growth mindset

Evidence really mounting on GenAI tutors performing as well as or better than other teaching methods. In this Harvard study AI Tutoring outperformed even active learning (Kestin et al. 2024).

Recent breakthroughs in generative AI (GAI) are set to transform education as we know it. But we're still figuring out the best ways to use this new technology and how effective it really is. This study is particularly interesting, as it compares University students learning with an AI-powered tutor to those in a traditional active learning class. They made sure the AI tutor used the same teaching methods as the regular lectures. And guess what? 

Results 


Compared to those in the regular class, students using the AI tutor learned:

  • more than twice as much 
  • in less time 

If this continues, these findings show that AI tutoring could massively boost learning, making a strong case for adopting it widely in education.

The authors note that passive lectures are the least effective, being passive, going at the wrong pace for many learners, with no feedback and little engagement. Even active learning is never one-on-one and therefore suffers from the same problems as passive lectures. 

Motivation


Improved levels were found on other qualitative measures:

  • Engagement
  • Motivation
  • Enjoyment
  • Growth mindset

This matters, especially ‘motivation’, where I have seen significant impact in many contexts. This, I some ways is more important the younger the learner. 

Conclusion

Little, other than the flawed Bloom 2 Sigma paper, is being seen in presentations on efficacy. I have been presenting this and other papers, to show that we are quickly gathering evidence of GenAIs effectiveness in learning. The hypothesis, that GenAI is a powerful learning tool seems obvious when one looks at the astonishing use by so many in so many contexts, school, University and workplace. Academic publishing lags long behind reality. This is a welcome addition to the evidence.

Paper 
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-4243877/v1


Monday, September 16, 2024

ChatGPT o1 brilliant 'worked example' teaching & learning tool


We have in ChatGPT o1 a brilliant teaching tool, because it shows its thinking. 
Yes I know, It is not 'thinking' as we do". But it is mightily impressive, even on oblique problems. Showing your 'working' is useful. You can do this for any question - past papers, teacher written and do so on. 

I tried it first on a few, very different logic, language and lateral thinking problems. It got them ALL right but what was more impressive was the exposure of its thinking. It not only got the right answers for all, it explained in detail its process of coming to the answer. This 'explaining' lies at the heart of good teaching and learning. 

Worked examples

The fact that it does 'explain' its thinking means it is a perfect 'worked example'. Effective worked examples are associated with early stages of knowledge and skill development. They unpack a problem and allow learners to see the solution in detail. 

By providing an expert's problem solution for a learner to study. Any bottlenecks in the steps can be unlocked. You can further query bits you don't fully understand. It worked well for all of of the short problems and a full GCSE school exam question from a past paper in English Literature, on Jekyll & Hyde, where it did a brilliant job at answering the question. More than this, it unpacked its thinking, game me a superb mnemonic and produced Flashcards for practice.

We have also gone on to turn this into a question-generated spaced practice tool.

Starter problems

Note that some are pure logic, some linguistic, some quite oblique.

  • Logical Reasoning Problems
  • Mathematical Puzzles
  • Word Riddles and Linguistic Puzzles
  • Lateral Thinking Problems

Q I have cities, but no houses. I have mountains, but no trees. I have water, but no fish. What am I?

Q What English word has three consecutive double letters?

Q A woman shoots her husband, then holds him underwater for five minutes. Next, she hangs him. Right after, they enjoy a lovely dinner. Explain.

Q I come from a mine and get surrounded by wood always. Everyone uses me. What am I?:

Q A girl has as many brothers as sisters, but each brother has only half as many brothers as sisters. How many brothers and sisters are there in the family?

Q What disappears as soon as you say its name?

Q How can the number four be half of five?

Q I have keys, but no locks and space, and no rooms. You can enter, but you can’t go outside. What am I?

Q  have keys, but no locks:

Q What gets wet while drying?

Q What gets wet while drying?

Q A is the brother of B. B is the brother of C. C is the father of D. So how is D related to A

Q What are the next three letters in this combination? OTTFFSS

Q This belongs to you, but everyone else uses it.

How is seven different from the rest of the numbers between one and ten?

ChatGPT 01 got all of these rights, each one took only a few seconds. But waht was impressive was the unpacking of its 'thinking'. That's where the learning takes place.

Let me give one example:

A is the brother of B. B is the brother of C. C is the father of D. So how is D related to A?

Thought for 13 seconds

Answer:

D is A's niece or nephew.


Explanation:

Let's break down the relationships step by step to understand how D is related to A.

  1. A is the brother of B:

    • This means A and B are siblings, and A is male.
  2. B is the brother of C:

    • B and C are siblings, and B is male.
    • Since B is the common sibling between A and C, all three (A, B, and C) are siblings.
    • Given that A and B are brothers, and B and C are siblings with B being male, it's reasonable to infer that C is also male (since B is referred to as brother to both A and C).
  3. C is the father of D:

    • C is male and is the parent of D.
    • This means D is the child of C.
  4. Determining the relationship between A and D:

    • A and C are brothers.
    • C is the father of D.
    • Therefore, A is the uncle of D.
    • Consequently, D is the niece or nephew of A.

Conclusion:

  • D is related to A as a niece or nephew.
  • A is D's uncle.

Summary:

  • A, B, and C are brothers.
  • C is the father of D.
  • Therefore, D is A's niece or nephew.

Riddle Solved!


I then took a standard question from a past exam paper in English Literature.


GCSE ENGLISH LITERATURE EXAM QUESTION


Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde      

Read the following extract from Chapter 1 (Story of the Door) of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and then answer the question that follows.  In this extract, Mr Enfield tells Mr Utterson about his encounter with Mr Hyde.    

“Well, it was this way,” returned Mr. Enfield:
“I was coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a black winter morning, and my way lay through a part of town where there was literally nothing to be seen but lamps.  Street after street, and all the folks asleep – street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession and all as empty as a church – till at last I got into that state of mind when a man listens and listens and begins to long for the sight of a policeman.  All at once I saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten, who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street.  Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground.  It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see.  It wasn’t like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut.  I gave a viewholloa, took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group about the screaming child.  He was perfectly cool, and made no resistance, but gave me one look so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like running.  The people who had turned out were the girl’s own family; and pretty soon, the doctor, for whom she had been sent, put in his appearance.  Well, the child was not much the worse, more frightened, according to the Sawbones; and there you might have supposed would be an end to it.  But there was one curious circumstance.  I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first sight.  So had the child’s family, which was only natural.  But the doctor’s case was what struck me.  He was the usual cut-and-dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong Edinburgh accent, and about as emotional as a bagpipe.  Well, sir, he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that Sawbones turn sick and white with the desire to kill him.  I knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing being out of the question, we did the next best.  We told the man we could and would make such a scandal out of this as should make his name stink from one end of London to the other.  If he had any friends or any credit, we undertook that he should lose them.  And all the time, as we were pitching it in red-hot, we were keeping the women off him as best we could, for they were as wild as harpies.  I never saw a circle of such hateful faces; and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of black, sneering coolness – frightened, too, I could see that – but carrying it off, sir, really like Satan.”    15 0 7 Starting with this extract, explore how far Stevenson presents Mr Hyde as a threatening and dangerous character.

Write about:
• how Stevenson presents Mr Hyde in this extract
• how far Stevenson presents Mr Hyde as threatening and dangerous in the novel as a whole.

D - Dark Atmosphere

A - Atrocious Actions

R - Reactions of Others

K - Known Yet Unidentifiable Deformity

S - Symbolism of Evil

I - Impact on Dr. Jekyll

D - Dehumanization Through Animal Imagery

E - Evocative Language and Imagery

You said:

Flashcard Set: Understanding Mr. Hyde's Threatening and Dangerous Nature

Tips for Using These Flashcards