Blog Journal #8

     After working on the Web Design assignment, I feel more confident in my Weebly skills. One of the most interesting things I learned was how to embed items. Embedding is different than just putting a link on your for someone to see and navigate to; it actually enhances the design and functionality of your website to embed instead. One thing I had to pay attention to was contrast, especially with the header images. At the top of each page on my website, I had a title with a background image. These images and fonts had to be adjusted so that the titles could be clearly seen. I liked how many options I had to display things on my website and integrate external information into my pages. In my future career as an educator, the skills learned here can help me build a comprehensive, accessible class website. My website can be found here. 

    I use ChatGPT pretty regularly in my routine as a college student. Sometimes I use it for silly things, like writing stories using my friends as characters. Other times, I use it for more academic purposes. I have found that ChatGPT is very effective when used to create outlines for papers I am writing. Another useful purpose for ChatGPT is summarizing or outlining articles. I use this sometimes when I don't understand an article but need to incorporate it into an analysis or a paper. Lastly, I use other AI tools like image generators and other things on occasion for specific projects as they come. 

    Using ChatGPT with specific prompts had both challenges and successes. I learned that I needed to be more specific with certain prompts to get the results I wanted. I liked how I could modify what I had already received by saying things such as "Make it more concise than that" or "Add in this activity to the lesson". I think my perception of AI has been maintained, but it is interesting to see it used in specifically educational settings. I have not needed to use it for reasons such as creating lesson plans, but now I see how it can be a very valuable tool in that field. I think using comparisons is a good way to explain the risks or challenges regarding AI chatbots to my students. For example, I can compare it to previous advancements in technology such as Google that was monumental for the time but now is so useful in many ways. I think I can remind them of the risks just as I would the risks of any technology, and I can encourage them to not become reliant on it by incorporating critical thinking and connection making into their assignment prompts (something they have to do on their own).

    I think AI can definitely enhance productivity. I have previously used this analogy to explain such an opinion: say you are responsible for watching a baby for the day, but the baby gets very upset if you set her down, so you have to hold her. This makes everything more challenging. Cooking, cleaning, doing work, exercising, everything. Now imagine if someone comes over and offers to hold the baby. Now you are free to do things with both hands. The person holding the baby doesn't mean that you aren't going to be the one exercising, cleaning, cooking, etc., but you are able to do those things more efficiently when someone is holding the baby. AI essentially does the job of holding the baby. It helps you so that the things you do are more efficient. I will use AI to improve my productivity. In my teaching job, I can use it to help me brainstorm activities, generate random orders of students for presentations and such, give students random project topics, create bullet points for powerpoints based on content I provide, and more.