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Episode 2 Ai & Cheating
24 Plays8 months ago
In this episode, Rob Almy welcomes Christian educators into a candid, faith-informed conversation about AI and academic integrity. Robb surveys headline AI news (including advances in personalized video), spotlights a Christian university’s campus-wide, biblically informed AI initiative, and then digs into the big question on many teachers’ minds: How do we keep students from using AI to cheat?
He frames the issue theologically, highlights integrity and learning costs, and offers practical, classroom-tested strategies. Rob also demos Google’s Gemini in Classroom, shares two trusted educator resources, offers a “prompt of the week” to help you draft your own AI philosophy, and closes with a prayer for wisdom and discernment.
Resources Mentioned•
• Classroom Guidance for AI Student Use https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tTzF6nOI6Q7VVPxpXdGtGVBw5zlq5D-1SNN62VjkxFI/edit?usp=sharing
• OpenAI – Sora (video generation) – https://openai.com/sora
• Cedarville University – AI initiative overview – https://www.cedarville.edu/
• Ditch That Textbook (Matt Miller) – https://ditchthattextbook.com/
• Control Alt Achieve (Eric Curts) – Classroom Guidance for Student AI Use – https://www.controlaltachieve.com/
• Google Classroom (Gemini tools for educators) – https://edu.google.com/for-educators/gemini-for-education/
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose of Ethical AI Use in Christian Education
00:00:00
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Are you a Christian educator and you hear the words AI and you automatically think about your students cheating? Are you a Christian educator and you have a great desire to teach your students how to use AI ethically and responsibly without cheating?
00:00:15
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If that's you, you've come to the right place. Welcome to the Christian Educators Guide to AI. Today we are exploring AI and
00:00:39
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Welcome to the Christian Educators AI Guide podcast, where we cover Christian education from a biblical, practical framework using wisdom and discernment.
Impact of AI on Education and Ethical Concerns
00:00:52
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Today, we are covering the important topic of ai and cheating. My name is Rob Almey, and I am your host.
00:01:05
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of the podcast. We are going to be covering news and AI, whether that's news from a 30,000-foot view of AI, and we're also going to cover some news that's very specific to news when it comes to christian education and so to get us started off we are going to talk about the news that everyone has been talking about in the ai world and that is the release of sora 2 by open ai sora 2 is a video generation model that allows synchronized audio and likeness integration into video users can upload identity verified recordings and they can even generate so-called cameos of themselves
00:01:44
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or of others that they can then use in video. This move by OpenAI and the release of Sora 2 marks um a move in video generation that gets us closer and closer to personalized video content.
00:02:01
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We might ask, well, in light of all this news, what does this matter to Christian educators? Well, this news of the release of Sora 2, this video integration model that really personalizes video, raises questions about authenticity.
00:02:16
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It raises questions about identity. It raises questions about image and whose image we are created in. On the negative side, when AI is able to generate videos that look and sound so much like a real person, it presses in on questions of authenticity.
00:02:37
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What is truth? What's real? What's fake? How do we tell the difference? Christian educators will need to help students and those and their learning communities to discern the difference between what is real and what is fake, between falsehoods and truth.
00:02:57
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On the positive side of all this, Sora 2 introduces to us an opportunity to become very creative.
00:03:08
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As people that are made in the image of God, the imago dei, like God, we are called to be creative. Sora 2 can help us to live that out. The onset of SOAR 2 and the release of SOAR 2, that video generation model, also allows us and students to use a model that will help them to create video that they never ever would have been able to create in the past by themselves.
00:03:38
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And so it kind of democratizes video creation so that it can be used in a way that is
Implementing Ethical AI Strategies in Educational Institutions
00:03:46
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redemptive. And that's really the challenge for us as Christian educators, whether talking about solar to or AI in general is how do we use these tools redemptively for the cause of the kingdom?
00:03:56
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How do we equip our students to use them, not in ways that are unethical, but in ways that are redemptive? Drilling down into some education news and AI, we want to talk about Cedarville University.
00:04:12
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Cedarville University has taken on equipping all of their students to use AI in a way that is biblically informed.
00:04:24
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a way where they can use AI to improve time efficiency and thereby carve out space for discipleship and spiritual growth. And so they have rolled out a campus-wide AI an initiative.
00:04:39
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This message from Cedarville emphasizes that Christians can choose to embrace ai and not just think that it's the work of the devil to stick their head in the sand and to ignore it.
00:04:50
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And so this is a great example of an educational institution that's grabbing AI by the horns and seeking to use AI in a way that further enhances the witness of Christ by their students.
00:05:05
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Now, when a Christian university publicly commits to a faith-informed AI strategy, it gives K-12 knowledge Christian educators a precedent to follow.
00:05:18
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It shows that adopting AI is not a secular concession. It's not giving in, but instead it's a kingdom-minded choice, one that can be stopped done thoughtfully with intention and one that can be theologically sound.
00:05:38
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Students in Christian higher ed who are taught to think biblically when it comes to are going to be that much prepared when they go out into the workforce as they become leaders, whether be in education, in the church, they become leaders in technology, in the business world.
Challenges and Ethical Considerations of AI Cheating
00:05:54
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They are that much more equipped with a biblical basis for how to use AI in a way that is ethical. But. that formation can actually begin much earlier.
00:06:06
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We don't have to wait till our students are in college. We can start in K through 12 education in equipping our students to use AI a biblically sound way that is authentic, that uses wisdom and discernment.
00:06:25
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This leads us to the next segment of our show, to our big question about AI. and
00:06:35
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When I talk to Christian educators, the big question on their mind when it comes to AI is how do I keep my kids, my students, from using AI to cheat?
00:06:46
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What are we to do as Christian educators about the potential that our students can use AI to cheat? Well, as we think about this whole question about AI and cheating,
00:06:59
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We need to put on our biblical lens. We need to put on our biblical glasses. We need to go all the way back to the very beginning of the Bible. And as we go back to the beginning of the Bible, we can go back to Genesis chapter 3, where we have the story of sin entering into the world.
00:07:14
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through Adam and Eve and what we know as original sin that has been passed on to every human being that has been born since Adam and Eve, to what we call the fall, when that sin entered the world.
00:07:27
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Because sin entered the world, we as human beings often look for shortcuts. We often look for the easiest way out. Because sin has entered the world, because we are broken human beings, we as human beings are often lazy.
00:07:43
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And so it's no big surprise then that and but if we are all infected with this sin nature, that our students might use AI to cheat, to take the easy way out, or because they are being lazy to try to use this and to utilize this to be more efficient.
00:08:07
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Add on to this the modern pressures that our students face, all kinds of homework to do, AP classes to take, athletics, all of these things pressing in on our students.
00:08:18
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It's no big surprise that they would then try to use the ai easy button to get their schoolwork done. The temptation then for our students is to pass off their work as their own when it's actually AIs work.
00:08:38
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It becomes increasingly appealing for our students to do that because of their sin nature, because they are pressed for time, because it's the easy way, because maybe they are being lazy. There's a whole host of reasons that our students might pass off AI work as their own AI, of why they might cheat.
00:09:01
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two critical issues, as I see it, when it comes to AI and cheating in our students. One, of course, especially in the Christian school context, is this is an integrity problem.
00:09:15
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Why are our students cheating? That is tantamount to lying. It's taking somebody else's work, in this case, the machine's work, the AI's work, and it's passing it off as your own.
00:09:27
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This is inappropriate, especially for those who have been redeemed by the one who is the way and the truth and the life. John 14, 6, right?
00:09:41
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Now, not only is this lying and and therefore it's an ethical or integrity problem, but it's also a learning problem. When our students cheat by using AI, when they copy and paste from AI directly into an assignment, what they are doing is basically short-circuiting the thinking process.
00:10:05
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short-circuiting that work that needs to be put in to generate an idea, to put words on paper, to go back and to redefine and to refine one's work, to reflect.
00:10:19
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Whether this is happening in writing essays or it's writing a ah reflection or doing a math problem, when students cheat With AI, they are short circuiting the thinking process, and so it becomes a learning problem.
00:10:36
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Let me share with you four practical strategies.
00:10:42
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For how we as Christian educators might address the potential for our students to cheat with ai The first strategy that we might use is to teach responsible use.
00:10:54
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Here we integrate biblical principles into teaching moments. As Christian the educators, we are often called to integrate the Bible into our lessons. So, too, when the situation arises, when it's appropriate, we can integrate teaching about AI and the responsible use, the ethical use of AI, the biblical use of AI into our lessons.
00:11:21
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We can explain the why behind the what of our assignments. We can explain how if they take the shortcut, if they use the easy button of AI and just copy and paste into an assignment, that that short circuits the whole learning process, the why behind the what of what we're asking them to do.
00:11:44
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So we need to take every opportunity that we can to teach responsible use. The second thing we might do is to make our expectations clear, to include ai expectations in every syllabus. You know, moving forward, for Christian educators, every syllabus we put out, and I recognize that there's some elementary school teachers that might be listening into this podcast, you might not use a syllabus.
00:12:09
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But for middle and high school teachers, if you use a syllabus, you need to put in your syllabus what your expectations are when it comes to AI. You need to make it clear upfront, early and often when it comes to your assignments, what your expectation is as the educator.
00:12:30
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Now, as an educator, your school might have policies about the use of AI that you need to have your students live under. But in a lot of schools, they leave it up to the individual educator.
00:12:42
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So for you as the educator, you need to decide and make clear to your students what the expectation is, is the expectation that they use no A.I. whatsoever. That's fine.
00:12:52
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That's good. Make it clear. Is the expectation is is the expectation that they can use A.I. to come up with ideas to ideate. is the expectation that you want them to write a first draft, but then they can put it into AI and get feedback and suggestions, whatever it is and wherever it is when it comes to what you want students to be allowed to do with AI.
Creative Solutions and Resources for Ethical AI Use
00:13:20
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The important principle here is to make your expectations clear. A third practical strategy when it comes and to helping our students not use AI to cheat is to model ethical use on our own parts.
00:13:35
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Maybe that looks like disclosing when we use AI to create a lesson, to create an image. That's a great opportunity, a great teaching moment to explain your your process about how maybe you used AI, a large language model, let's say, you know, a chat bot.
00:13:54
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ChatGPT to come up with a lesson plan and maybe how you used your wisdom and your discernment, how you had to get the human in the loop when it came to using AI that you just didn't copy and paste.
00:14:11
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That's a great way to teach your students how to begin to properly use AI. A fourth strategy when it comes to helping our students not to cheat when it comes to AI and using AI to cheat is to rethink assignments.
00:14:31
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So instead of sending your students home with the assignment to write a five page paper, maybe You use time in class instead to write that paper so that you can monitor their usage or non-usage in this case of AI. If you say there's no AI and you watch them work on it in class or a few years back, there used to be a lot of talk about flipped classrooms.
00:15:00
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flipped classrooms where they would watch a video of the lecture, if you will, but the classroom time was the time that you spent exploring and putting the lectures to use.
00:15:12
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Maybe it's time to revisit flipped classrooms. Maybe you need to engage in some thinking reflections. So they might write a paper outside of class, but then they come in and they do an assignment where they do some reflection on what they wrote.
00:15:29
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You might ask them questions like, why did you use such and such an example to support your thesis? Why did you take this point of view? You might also have them do that on video where they record it without you know looking down and reading it off of a paper.
00:15:50
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And so using these ways and other ways to think about how you can be creative to prevent maybe some AI cheating will go a long way.
00:16:04
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And then I would challenge you, especially you English teachers that are that are listening, are essays the only way to gauge our students? and what they have learned or other other alternatives. I'm not saying do away with essays altogether, but are essays the only way to go ahead and to gauge our students' learning?
00:16:29
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And so here's some creative assignment ideas that go along with all this. i already spoke about the video reflection. Students create videos explaining their thinking about what they have done and their papers without reading it, but always looking at the camera.
00:16:43
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how How about reverse of the curse? where you type in to the AI and you generate a fake paper using AI. You print it out and you give it to your students to evaluate.
00:16:55
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And they tell you what's wrong with the AI generated version where they tell you where it might fall short. can also use alternative formats, of course. You know, use art or group work or digital career, not just essays to evaluate student learning. And I've already talked about the flipped crash classroom as another creative assignment idea.
00:17:19
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want to share with you two resources that have been especially helpful to me as I have thought about AI and cheating. And let me just say that when it comes to AI and cheating, there's no way that we can cover everything in a podcast.
Google Gemini: Enhancing Creativity in Lesson Planning
00:17:33
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in a 30 to 45 minute podcast. So this is one of those things where we're going to have to continually be learning. But I want to share with couple of helpful resources, some fellows that have shaped my thinking when it comes around AI and cheating.
00:17:48
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The first one is Matt Miller. Matt Miller has written quite a bit about AI and cheating. He is the author of a book called Ditch That Textbook. He has an excellent blog and an email newsletter where he covers educational technology in general and does have some really great stuff about AI specifically.
00:18:06
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And then there's Eric Curtis of Control Alt Achieve. He offers some very in-depth resources, very well-known resources for us as educators about AI and education and academic integrity.
00:18:21
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I'll include links to all both of them in the show notes for
00:18:29
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In this segment of the show, I share with you a useful tool that you can use tomorrow in your classroom or a resource that could be of use to you as you seek to educate your students.
00:18:44
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Today, our feature tool for this podcast is going to be Google Gemini in Classroom. A lot of schools are Google schools and so they have Google Classroom as their learning management system.
00:18:59
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And so using the Gemini portion of Classroom is a good way to get started in AI. So I'm going to demonstrate to you, for those of you that are just listening and not watching this on video, I'm going to go to Google Classroom.
00:19:15
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And as I go over to Google Classroom, over on the left side, in the left sidebar, is a Gemini button. If I click that Gemini button... I open up Google AI tools for educators, and there in the tools are a number of different tools. Now, if you are a regular user and you're already an advanced user, and you might use something like Magic School AI or a School AI or some other type of AI program to help you.
00:19:48
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with your work, this might seem familiar. But if you look here, there's all kinds of different things that you can do. You can use the AI, you can use Gemini to outline a lesson plan, generate a quiz, re-level text, create a rubric, build a choice board, write a story,
00:20:04
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craft a compelling hook, craft a class syllabus. If I click on show me more here, I can draft a class newsletter, brainstorm a field trip plan, so forth and so on. And so these are helps that are intended, that are designed to save us time, to help us be more creative. Let's take just a quick look at a couple of them here. We know that as we start lessons,
00:20:28
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one way that we should start lessons is with a compelling hook for our students. And so I'm going to click on this one that says craft a compelling hook. And when I do so, what shows up on the screen is to ask me for my target grade.
00:20:42
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And so as a former high school Bible teacher, I am going to like this example about a class that I might have taught. So I'm going to say that I am teaching 10th through 12th graders. So I put 10 through 12 in the target grade there, and it says describe your lesson and class. And I'm going to say this is an epistles class. So I taught a class um on the epistles, on the letters.
00:21:07
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This is an epistles class, and I am introducing students to the look Those that ah are watching on video, you see I spelled a couple of words wrong.
00:21:21
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That's okay because the LOM is smart enough, the large language model in this case, Gemini is smart enough to know what I'm talking about. So you don't have to be so particular and go back, but I know the teacher and some of you will want to go ahead and do that.
00:21:34
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Now, before I go ahead and hit generate, I just want to show you that you can upload a um document from your drive. So let's say you had your whole lesson in a Word document.
00:21:44
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You could upload the Word document and you don't really have to give it much description. It will know from your Word document and read your Word document and give you a compelling hook. You can also get a little bit more specific with it and and ask that the hook engage students by sparking their curiosity, by creating a personal connection, problem solving, ah so forth and so on. I'm just going to hit generate here and let's see what we get.
00:22:07
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So it's generating, it's thinking here for a moment about crafting a compelling hook. Okay, and so it has given me some different ideas here. Looks like on the screen that there are...
00:22:20
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about six different ideas. Now I can export these to docs. I can copy and paste them into a doc. So one of them, for example, is the mysterious letter. It says, begin by holding up a sealed formal looking envelope and tell the students you've just received a mysterious letter from an unknown source.
00:22:38
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Ask them to hypothesize about what might be inside. Explain that this letter is much like one the apostle Paul sent to believers in Rome, full of important messages and big ideas.
00:22:49
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This hook gets students thinking about the personal and significant nature of the epistles before introducing them to the Book of Romans. And then there's six others that i could choose from.
00:23:00
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See how much time that saved and how much more creative that can help me to be as a teacher? Just a very simple tool. Let's go back to the tools, okay?
00:23:11
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and to Gemini and this time we're going to to draft a class newsletter. So let's say you need some help drafting a class newsletter that is the beginning of the year. When I click on that one, what it opens up on the screen is Gemini itself. And Gemini is going to go through and ask me a series of questions that will then help me to craft my class newsletter.
00:23:34
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So we're not going to through it all for the sake of of time and brevity. Let just read this to you. It says here on the screen, hi, I'm here to help you get started writing your class newsletter. First, I'll ask you some questions to be sure we tailor the newsletter to your class, school and style.
00:23:50
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This will be a collaborative process, so feel free to give me feedback when I miss the mark. To start, can you tell me a little bit about what you want to communicate in your newsletter? So then you would answer it, and then you could go back and continue to answer the questions that were given.
00:24:09
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by Gemini and you could create your newsletter. So I hope that tool is helpful for to for for you. It's right in Google Classroom there over in the left sidebar called Gemini.
00:24:21
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Go ahead and and pick it and it comes up with a number of different options for you to utilize to save time to be creative. And so if your school is a Google school, you likely have it right there in Google Classroom.
00:24:36
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One of the things that's so important for us as Christian educators is not only to keep abreast of the resources and the tools that are out there to use, but also to continue to refine our abilities at prompting.
00:24:51
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Prompting is something that we use with the large language models with the chat bots, whether that be ChatGPT or Gemini or GroK or Perplexity or any of the other models that
Developing an AI Philosophy and Conclusion
00:25:04
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are out there. The prompts are what we tell the chatbot what we want them to do.
00:25:11
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And so each episode I'm going to be sharing with you a prompt of the week. The prompt of the week for this episode is how we can begin to develop as Christian educators our own AI philosophy.
00:25:23
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So I'm going to include this prompt in the show notes for you so that you can go ahead and copy and paste it into your favorite large language model into your favorite chat bot. But here's the prompt for this week.
00:25:35
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You are an 11th grade teacher at a Christian school. Let me stop there. You might not be an 11th grade teacher. Maybe you're a third grade teacher. Maybe you're an eighth grade teacher. Obviously, you know, tailor the prompt where you are. So you're an 11th grade teacher at a Christian school. Interview me one question at a time with no more than 10 questions using questions that help me as a Christian school teacher def define my philosophy of A.I. and education.
00:26:00
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When I'm done answering the questions, please provide me with a summary I can copy and paste into a Google Doc that will serve as the start to developing my philosophy of ai and Christian education.
00:26:13
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Please ask me any clarifying questions that will help me produce the best response to my prompt. So there you have it, your prompt of the week, develop your AI philosophy.
00:26:28
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We sure have covered a lot in this episode, from ai news to talking about ai and shooting, to tools, to resources, to prompts.
00:26:40
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As we begin to wrap up on this episode, I would ask you to join me in a word of prayer as we begin to wrap up this episode. Let us pray. Father God, we thank you for your call upon us to teach, not to teach just knowledge,
00:26:58
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but also wisdom and character. We know that a world full of shortcuts and easy buttons that you remind us and you remind our students that your way is always the way of truth.
00:27:10
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Help us as educators to model honesty. To our students. To guide our students toward integrity that reflects the heart of your son, Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life.
00:27:25
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Give us discernment as we navigate new technologies. Teach us to see AI not as a threat, but as a tool that can be redeemed for good so that we might spark creativity, so that we might better serve others, so that we most importantly might bring you honor and glory.
00:27:46
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Lord, when we are tempted to choose the easy path, remind us that growth comes through perseverance, that faithfulness matters more than convenience, and that our ultimate goal is to form disciples who love truth because they love you.
00:28:04
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We ask all this in the name of the Master Teacher, your Son, our Savior, Jesus the Christ, in whose precious name we pray.
00:28:17
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Thank you so much for joining us for this episode on AI and cheating on the Christian Educators Guide to AI. If you found this episode helpful for for you, I would invite you to like and subscribe and to share, rate and review my podcast and this episode. It a really would mean the world to me.
00:28:38
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Earlier on in the podcast, I mentioned the resource Control Alt Achieve by Eric Curtis. Eric has designed... a really neat resource called the Classroom Guidance for Student AI Use. It's a template that you can use in your syllabi with your classes. I'm to include a link to that in the show notes as a thank you for going ahead and watching our episode today.
00:29:03
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hope that you will make use of it. And now i want to invite you to go to redeem a i Redeem AI for the furtherance of the education of your students.
00:29:16
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Go and redeem AI for the furtherance of the but gospel. May go in peace.