Everything you ever wanted to know about technology (and probably more) at All Saints Academy consolidated into a monthly post. Feel free to post any questions you have.
I was recently planning a cruise with the entire family, and in the process it will be to our advantage to connect to the cruise line's onboard, free, WiFi, so we can easily connect with each other and see the daily schedules and announcements. I normally don't connect to public or hotel WiFi networks. Why? Because they are notoriously not secure or safe for your devices or online accounts. You shouldn't either...unless you have a VPN activated on your laptop, tablet and phone - any device you are most likely to connect to a public WiFi, such as at Starbuck's, a hotel or airport. The cruise planning process has me wondering how many of you connect to public WiFi without a second thought, and without a VPN? Please rethink that practice! There's a very helpful article below explaining what a VPN is, why you should use one, and it even includes VPN recommendations. They are very easy to set up, you do not need to be a "techy person" to install and use them. Stay safe, my friends, it's an online jungle out there!
There seems to be a lot of bank hacking going on lately. My bank now has a permanent banner running across the website, as well as reminders in every app screen and text notification.
I know, I flooded you with information about ChatGPT last week, but I couldn't resist the video at the end of this post, in which Ryan Reynolds asks ChatGPT to write an ad for Mint Mobile. It's pretty funny, but it's also quite a good example of the ability and power of this AI tool. Because of all the buzz Open AI's ChatGPT is getting, I decided to highlight their other AI product, Dall-E 2. Dall-E 2 will create an image of anything you can imagine. Just enter the description of the image you want. The more descriptive you are, the better the results. Since we've had so little sunshine, I asked it to create an illustration of the sun playing peek-a-boo. I had to keep refining my search until I got something close to what I was after. The final search term for this image ended up as: Klimt style painting of a friendly sun with eyes hiding behind a gloomy cloud and peeking around it. It's certainly an option for those times when you can't find an image to illustrate your point. Incidentally, if you created an OpenAI account for ChatGPT, you can use that same account to sign in to Dall-E 2.
I've missed this feature from Microsoft Office, and am very happy to see it finally added to Docs. This is very helpful when proofreading a document for formatting errors. When turned on you can immediately see any extra spaces or paragraphs and remove them. When this update becomes available sometime in the month of January, you'll be able to turn it on in a Doc by clicking View > Show non-printing characters. Full details for this update can be found here.
Voice typing features have been improved to allow you to more accurately verbally dictate your text and punctuation in Google Docs, and in the captions for Google Slides. The new improvements will reduce transcription errors and lost audio, as well as automatically punctuating captions in Slides. If you are not already seeing these improvments you will see them by early February. Not only will you be able to voice type and add punctuation as you go, but you will also have the ability to make edits verbally. Not sure how to use voice typing? Here are the voice typing instructions, and the guide to presenting slides with captions.
With this update, you'll be able to share reactions with emojis during Google Meets. The emoji will float up the left side of the screen to appear as a small badge in each participant's video tile. This is an easy way to show your reaction to the topic being presented without interrupting the speaker. The emoji button will appear for users along the bottom of the screen with the rest of your Meet tool buttons, such as microphone/camera controls, raising your hand, captions, and sharing your screen. We should see this update before the end of January. Read all the details about this feature here.
With the October update, it became possible to present Google Slides directly in Google Meet. With this new update, you'll now be able to see your speaker notes while presenting your Google Slide deck. While presenting a tab, and selecting Google Slide Presentation, you'll havve a speaker notes button in the bottom controls. Learn more about controlling Sides presentations in Google Meet here. This update should appear by mid to late January.
Are you not quite sure what Google Drive is? Do you have trouble finding or organizing your Google files, or files that have been shared with you? This is the playlist for you! Even if you are familiar with Drive, I'll bet there are features and tricks you didn't know existed.
ChatGPT at capacity page w/example of what it does
Chat GPT has become a dominating, recurring topic of conversation in education circles, and needs to be on every teacher's radar as the latest and more refined way to gather information and perform actions. Not sure what it is? Click this link for a brief overview video. It was described as "Google on steroids" and a "blessing and a curse in the K-12 space" in this article by April Murdock CISSP of Seattle Public Schools. Basically it's a new, free, service using Artificial Intelligence to answer questions or perform actions in a normal, conversational way, which of course, lends itself to students using it to do their homework. This is the main concern of educators, and it will definitely shake up education in the next few years. That being said, it also will help teachers write lesson plans, create writing examples in any style imaginable, or anything you can think of. I've included blog posts from John Sowash and Matt Miller with both pro and con opinions, as well as ideas for teachers to use to navigate it going forward. Keep learning more about it, try it out yourself, and form your own opinion as to whether it's more blessing or curse. Either way, it's the future, so don't ignore it. In fact it's so popular, every time I try to access Chat GPT, it is at capacity and cannot be accessed - and I've been trying multiple times a day for several days. After 3 days, I was finally able to create an account, but by the time my account was verified it was at capacity again. Later on the third day I was actually able to login and use it. See the results below in the ChatGPT in Action post.
I've blocked the interface URL for students at ASA for now, but not for adults - it's important that teachers areable to play around with it to see what it can do, and be aware of how it can be used for both good and bad. Keep in mind, this will only block students from using it while at school or while using their school account. Once they are home they can access it all they want from another online account or by not logging in at all. We can reconsider blocking it for students (assuming the privacy policy is appropriate for our students), but I wanted to give teachers the opportunity to come up to speed with it before opening it to students.
Did you know that Data Privacy Day is January 28th? This is the perfect opportunity to review online data privacy with your students. The Protect Young Eyes curriculum will have a lesson or two on this as well.
Here's an alternate stance that promotes changing the way we teach to accommodate AI and bots, much like we did with calculators and Google search. AI is definitely not going away. Matt also offers some suggestions for teachers. See what you think.
I was finally able to access ChatGPT. I asked it to explain ChatGPT in non-technical terms. Here is what it wrote:
ChatGPT is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) model that is trained to understand and generate natural language. It is specifically designed to generate human-like text and can be used in a variety of applications, such as language translation, text summarization, and conversation. In layman's terms, ChatGPT is a computer program that can understand and write sentences in a way that resembles human writing or speech.
Then I asked to write the information as a children's story. Here's the charming result:
Once upon a time, in a far-off land, there lived a clever computer program named ChatGPT. ChatGPT was special because it could understand and write sentences just like people do.
One day, ChatGPT's creators gave it a very important task: to help people talk to other computers and machines in a way that was easy to understand. To accomplish this, ChatGPT read lots and lots of books and stories, so it could learn how people talk and write.
After working hard for a long time, ChatGPT became very good at understanding and writing sentences. People were amazed at how well it could understand them and respond in a way that was just like talking to another person.
ChatGPT's creators were very proud of their clever program and used it to help people in all sorts of ways, such as translating languages, summarizing long articles, and even having friendly conversations.
And so, ChatGPT lived happily ever after, helping people to communicate better with the world around them.
Finally, I asked it to write it as a nursery rhyme:
ChatGPT, ChatGPT, clever and bright,Understands and writes with all its might.Reads lots of books to learn and know,Helping people communicate, as they go.
ChatGPT, ChatGPT, so smart and sly,Translates languages and summarize, oh my!With friendly conversation, it's always game,Helping people talk, just like its name.
ChatGPT, ChatGPT, our language friend,With it, communicating, is never the end,Always helping, until the end of the day,ChatGPT, ChatGPT, always here to stay.
Then I asked it to explain Transubstantiation to small children. It tackled that task pretty well:
Transubstantiation is a big word that refers to a belief in the Catholic Church about the Holy Communion, or the bread and wine that are shared during Mass. Catholics believe that during Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus, instead of just symbols of them.
So it's like a magic trick but with real bread and wine. Priests say special prayers, and the bread and wine change into the body and blood of Jesus. Even though it still looks like bread and wine, it has become Jesus himself, so that people can receive Jesus in a special way.
It's important to understand that, this is a belief and a sacrament that Catholics hold, and other religious groups may have different beliefs about the Communion.
This belief is important to Catholics because they believe that it brings them closer to Jesus, and they are thankful to be able to receive Jesus in this special way.
You get the idea, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, of what ChatGPT can do. It can write code and solve math problems, although I've read it's not always completely accurate yet at either of those things. I've seen people use it for gift giving advice or to debate philosophical questions - yes ChatGPT will debate with you. The limits are ChatGPT has now knowledge of information after 2021, it blocks anything profane or inappropriate, and your imagination. As more people use it, the service will continue to evolve, gather more data and improve. What do you see it doing for you as a teacher? How do you think you could use it in your classroom?
This is another customizable game offered by Flippity. You enter your own words and hints, students then guess the correct word to keep their snowman from melting.
Now that we are a week into the new calendar year, it almost feels like we were never out for break. Those routines just seamlessly return to us and the kids. I hope your holidays were peaceful and blessed and you are ready for the second half of the school year. With those routines comes a return of regular tech tips and news!
"And now we welcome a new year. Full of things that have never been." Rainer Maria Riloke
You should now be able to insert a dropdown chip by selecting Insert > Dropdown, or by typing @ followed by "dropdown" in a cell. You can also color code your dropdown list. After inserting your dropdown, you'll add a data validation rule. What makes it a smart chip? That means you can hover over it and get more information. Smart chips can link to people, files or calendar events. Full instructions can be found here. This update has already rolled out.
If you want to limit the sites your students can search for a particular project, for images, or any other reason, you can create your own custom search engine for them to use. Then just link it in the assignment in Canvas or any other assignment documentation. This is particularly helpful if the terms students will be using might bring up some questionable results in a general search, such as when a vocabulary word is "explicit" and the student needs to find a definition and image (yes, this really happened).
