The plan was to talk about what we can and should do in CS classes with respect to chatGPT type technologies but after seeing so much discussion on how to and not to use chatGPT I thought I'd insert this additional post on classroom use. We already talked about the good. I love the idea of making an essay with errors for proof reading and it can be a great search resource, albeit one that needs to be error checked and I'm sure many other productive teaching and teaching support applications will turn up.

So, since we discussed cheating and chatGPT and decided that there shouldn't be a ban, how can it or similar tools be used productively? General use The first go to seems to be as an alternative search engine. It hasn't been uncommon seeing people say they use chatGPT instead of searching StackOverflow. This makes sense. ChatGPT gives answers and the natural language interface can make it easier to form some questions or ask for results in a particular format.

Just got back from a few much needed days away so it's time to get to those chatGPT posts. Last time, I wrote on cheating in general. That seems to be one of the hot points for chatGPT, in fact, the NYC DOE just last week decided to ban chatGPT outright, presumably for that reason. We'll talk about the student side, both negative and postitive today and the teacher side next time.

I said in my last post that I wanted to write about chatGPT. The way I see it, chatGPT is affecting teachers in four areas. First, students using it to cheat, second the possibility of students using it as a constructive tool. Third, teachers using it as a resource for lesson planning or similar, and fourth, down the road, another tool to replace teachers. Before I dive into any of those, I thought I'd spend a post talking about cheating in general.

I never do much on New Years Eve. I can't remember the last time I stayed up until Midnight. It's just not really a big deal with me. Yesterday, thanks to Natan rushing tickets, I did close out the year seeing the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Fedora which was very enjoyable. Woke up late today - around 5:00, went for my first run of the year and did the puzzle over coffee.

Since entering end of term grades I've finally had a few days of legit down time. It's been a long time. In the past few years, I went right from Fall finals int dealing with whatever issues arose around planning the next teacher ed cohort. Not so this year. The three classes I'm teaching are the same as last year so while I'll be doing a lot of tweaking, planning, and updating once we get started, there's not much to do now.

Some time ago I wrote about some of the things our students remember (link - sorry for the bad formatting). Lessons, concepts, stories, or even small jokes I remember telling but had no idea that they left a lasting impression on any students. Fast forward to yesterday. I spent some time yesterday at a friend, a former student's company for their holiday get together. My friend was telling a story about how I helped get him started - I won't get into details but while I do remember the overall impression of including and encouraging him, I don't remember the detailed specifics.

I noticed a tweet the other day talking about gamification of education. It got me thinking. Gamification isn't specifically the hot trend right now, at least not as "the one true way" to teach but every few years it surges as this great new idea to fix education. When it surges, it's always the hot new thing but it never really is. Gamification has been around at least since I was in grade school and it was never a magic bullet.

Day 3 ended up being a quick one. That is, as long as your language supports set operations. You can do it without set operations but it's easier if you've got them. Part 1 Input is a file of text where each line is an input. You have to read each line, split it in half and then find the common letter between the left and right halves and then apply their scoring rules on that letter.

It's Advent of Code season again. Every day a new two part programming challenge and once again I'm taking part. At least until grading and other end of term obligations end up eating my lunch. I wasn't planning on writing anything up but the first two days looked like nice problems for CS1 or even CS0 students and since my friend Steve was writing up his take, I thought I'd at least comment on the first two.