With all the AI crisis, and people hating technology, Mr. Andrews, a history teacher in Iselin Middle School, has a saying of, “Technology is the devil” or something like“Chromebooks are the devil.” This raised a question, is technology really the devil? And who can better answer the question than Mr. Andrews himself.
“I think that the Chromebooks are basically just a distraction, it is like having a not so good phone in front of all kids and expect them to stay focused,” Mr. Andrews said.
AI is as bad as it is to deduce the creativity in students, it also makes them lazy. One of the techniques that Mr. Andrews used to help students organize their thoughts and help them improve their ability to express themselves is by giving essays and as AI began its uprising, students started to use AI in these seemingly tough assignments.
“AI just lifts them up and doesn’t teach them how to walk because it carries them,” Mr. Andrews said.
Staying on the AI topic, it is interesting what he said when he catches someone using AI. First he would of course tell them to not do it again and make them do the assignment again or on paper this time, but he also mentioned how he would self-reflect on what he did wrong with the assignment.
“If I give them a 1000 word, take home essay, that’s on me,” said Mr. Andrews.
More than AI, a computer could itself be a cheating tool. To Mr. Andrews he describes how he used to think technology was a good thing and even was one of the first teachers in this school to use technology and now he thinks seriously otherwise.
At first, he was encouraging students to use technology to learn but as all inventions start to become famous, someone finds a way to misuse it. From then Mr. Andrews slowly stopped giving assignments on the computers, and started to be on Go Guardian, now banned even Google, and also uses a 2-tab limit. In the future he describes how he wants to stop using technology over all.
Now that we have covered some of the negatives of AI, there is a lot of good to it too. From Mr. Andrew’s perspective, he likes the way that students and teachers can text one another and Email since it makes communicating way more efficient.
Moreover, students can learn from technology and teachers can use it for organizing and assigning worksheets. Additionally, the students can stop their worries about handwriting or lack of art skill since a computer can help them be good at it.
