A cautious approach to using AI in education

Key points:

The November 2022 release of ChatGTP by OpenAI was an inflection point for AI technology. It was quickly followed by several competing AI systems: Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing search engine, Google’s Bard, and Meta’s Llama 2. And like so many technologies before it, companies are now in a rush to find ways to monetize and adopt AI, applying the technology to customer service, law enforcement, transportation–and education.

Guidance for using AI in education…Read More

5 things to know about ChatGPT in education

ChatGPT has commanded the world’s attention in recent weeks, and it has educators and policymakers discussing its implications for education, academic honesty, accessibility, and more.

OpenAI’s chatbot can compose poems, can write an essay about global warming as a Taylor Swift song, and can call up HTML code instantly–the possibilities are nearly endless.

ChatGPT is not the only AI-powered chatbot available to students and educators (0ther options include Google’s Bard and the latest version of Microsoft’s Bing), but it certainly seems to be the most discussed.…Read More

Finding copyright-friendly photos for the Google Images generation

Searching and citing usable images is easy once students learn the basics

images-ccssTeaching students to respect the intellectual property of others is important in this digital “cut and paste” world we live in. One great project to share with students that can better help them understand how and when they may use images created by others is the Creative Commons project.

Creative Commons is designed to span the gap between full copyright and the public domain. The Creative Commons project provides content creators the opportunity to state ahead of time how their images may (or may not) be used.

When an image creator posts an image online and applies a Creative Commons license to it, there are four conditions/restrictions they can apply to the image:…Read More

Microsoft’s Bing gets a social lift from Facebook

Facebook and Microsoft announced a partnership on Wednesday that will give the results on Microsoft’s Bing search engine a social twist–and could help both companies compete against a common adversary, Google, reports the New York Times. The new feature allows people who use Facebook to see Bing search results that incorporate information from their friends, like restaurant recommendations. When a user searches for something like a movie, place or product on Bing, information about how many of their friends “liked” that item on Facebook and related links they have shared will appear alongside the results. The Facebook data will help determine how prominently these will appear, said Yusuf Mehdi, a senior vice president for online business at Microsoft…

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Bing and Google in a race for search features

While Google is dominant in search, it has been watching Microsoft’s Bing and in some cases mimicking some of Bing’s innovations, reports the New York Times. Bing still handles a small slice of web searches in the United States—12.7 percent in June, compared with Google’s 62.6 percent, as measured by web analytics firm comScore. But Bing’s share has been growing, as has Yahoo’s, while Google’s has been shrinking. And while no one argues that Google’s dominance is in immediate jeopardy, Google is watching Microsoft closely and has adopted some of Bing’s innovations—like its travel search engine, its ability to tie more tools to social networking sites, and its image search—or buying start-ups to help it do so in the future. Google has even taken on some of Bing’s distinctive look, like giving people the option of a Bing-like colorful background, and the placement of navigation tools on the left-hand side of the page. The result is a renaissance in search, resulting in more sophisticated tools for web users who want richer answers to complex questions than the standard litany of blue links. The competition is a remarkable and surprising twist: Microsoft, knocked around for so long as a bumbling laggard, has given the innovative upstart Google a kick in the pants. And as the search engines introduce feature after competing feature, some analysts say they have set off an arms race, with the companies poised to spend whatever it takes to win the second phase of web search…

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