AI Log is where I write about how technology is changing education, so AI Log teaches is where I write about my practices teaching how technology is changing education. The writing and teaching are connected such that I do not think I could do one without the other.1
To the extent that I have a philosophy of teaching, it is grounded in what the women teachers at the Chicago Laboratory School taught John Dewey in the 1890s and that he wrote about in highly regarded books about schooling in a democratic society.
This is a series of essays about using an LLM tool in my history class in the fall term of 2024.
What is an LLM doing in my classroom?
Part 2: Experiments*
Part 3: Learning*
Part 4: Next*
*Coming soon to AI Log.
Reading and writing are fundamental to what I do in the classroom. So is the idea that learning is an active process that involves students making knowledge. People who like acronyms call this SAIL (structured active in-class learning).
I don’t consider myself an adherrent of any particular theory of education or of teaching writing. My approach to the classroom was shaped by a two-year stint teaching in the Rutgers Writing Program during the early 2000s, which, at the time, was led by Kurt Spellmeyer and Richard E. Miller. During that period, I read a lot of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Richard Poirer, attended classes in the history and English departments at Rutgers University, taught lecture courses and senior seminars in American Studies, and devoured every issue of Raritan Quarterly.
If it helps you understand where I am coming from, I will happily accept the label pragmatist, in both the philosophical and ordinary meanings of that term, even though we may not agree on what it means.