Blog #4

In week 8 we looked into learning the usability of artificial intelligence and how they can be useful to us as tools. This topic in particular interests me due to my background in computer science and interest in machine learning as well as artificial intelligence in general. It was great looking into the different uses and types of artificial intelligence because it allowed me to explore areas that I haven’t used before. My personal experience with artificial intelligence is developing as I really wanted to take the class CSC 421 (Introduction to Artificial Intelligence) but it wasn’t offered this semester. I have had time to explore using artificial intelligence myself with using apps such as Quillbot and ChatGPT to help create and respond to emails. I also tried using stable diffusion to generate images for me but I found that it was quite similar to a google search so I didn’t find it as useful as something like ChatGPT. ChatGPT is superior because it is basically like a better google search but sometimes has incorrect answers due to the internet having wrong answers or biased answers in general. This topic was especially nice to me because I am planning to participate in UVIC AI Club’s BattleSnake Competition on Saturday March 11 and have already started making my Battle Snake with python AI libraries such as pytorch.

I think that artificial intelligence is a very dangerous tool when it comes to educational institutions because educational institutions want you to write your own work and not have an artificial intelligence tool do the work for you. This is especially problematic in research because ChatGPT has the power to generate whole papers. Also artificial intelligence uses web scraping which is basically like getting information on the web from like any source and thus it isn’t correctly cited. That aside, these tools can still be very useful and should still be used as a effective learning tool. I often use ChatGPT to answer questions I have to help me study for upcoming midterms and questions that aren’t easily as answered. Even while doing this, it is still important to do your own fact checking because ChatGPT can also be incorrect.

In the future, I believe that I will continue to use AI tools such as ChatGPT but now there are a lot of competitors in the field and OpenAi (Owners of ChatGPT) are planning to make ChatGPT a subscription so there might be better free alternatives. I will continue to use AI tools to help me answer questions as if I was making a google search but won’t use them to directly answer questions that have to be done by myself because as easy as it is to generate the artificial text, the same engine can detect if text is likely to be also made by an artificial source. I think the tools in 2-3 years will continue to evolve very fast as machine learning and artificial intelligence has proven to be extremely useful and there is a lot of competition to be the go to search engine. This is seen with Microsoft and Bing working to improve on their own search engine.

In week 9 we moved on from artificial intelligence and focused on storytelling with videos. First we looked at Rich McCue’s example of storytelling about backing up your laptop. He did a really good job with interacting with the viewer and using audio as well as visuals to captivate the viewers senses. He did a good job with using visuals, having himself in the videos to add the teaching presence, keeping the videos short and concise to retain information and allowing people to rewatch the videos to give us the flexible access. He is an expert himself but I think he could have also got a secondary source to make him more credible and tell more of a story even though his topic was definitely hard for storytelling.

When it comes to meaningful learning experiences that started with a story the one that comes in mind the most in Pinocchio where it effectively made the story interesting as well as teaching a very impactful skill about the consequences of lying. I recognized a lot of the principles but the ones that weren’t used as much was allowing the learning to be active why learning as well as keeping it short because to sell the story it is pretty long and you have to follow a huge journey so it can be a two ended sword but in this case it worked well.

The story board that I decided to create for a short video story with a learning purpose is my trip to Strathcona’s King’s Peak and what to do when your car breaks down. Here is a part of my storyboard that I made for when I make a video about the trip and what we learned from our experience.

In the 7 storytelling techniques used by the most inspiring ted presenters I found all the presenters had their strengths and weaknesses but overall their presentations were amazing. The ones that stood out to me the most was Richard Turere as his story was so passionate and it is unbelievable that a 12-year-old boy could tell his story so well. It was very captivating and interesting learning as Richard was able to clearly show the problems he faced and how he took on these challenges by creating a system of lights to protect his family’s livestock from lion attacks. It shows that under pressure he was able to think outside the box and come up with a brilliant solution which is super inspirational. Richard used the techniques immerse your audience in a story, tell a personal story, create suspense, bring characters to life and ending with a positive takeaway especially well.

When I personally present I try to use as many techniques as I can but I think my strongest techniques are telling a personal story as I know the details super well as well as immersing the audience because it is crucial to keep everyone interested when presenting before anything else. I really want to focus on working on the showing and not telling as that is an extremely hard skill I have been working on for a while. I have had practice giving presentations and overcoming my social anxiety in the past by attending Toast Masters International where I have previously already looked at these skills. The other skill I really want to improve on is building up to the S.T.A.R moment. I think it is crucial to have an effective climax in your story to really deliver the punch of having a good story.

References:

Wu, G. (2022, December 22). 5 Big Problems With OpenAI’s ChatGPT. MakeUseOf.

O’Brien, M. (2023, February 1). Google has the next move as Microsoft embraces OpenAI buzz. Britannica.

Marr, B. (2020, August 3). 3 important ways Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Your Business and turbocharge success. Forbes. Retrieved March 12, 2023, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2020/08/03/3-important-ways-artificial-intelligence-will-transform-your-business-and-turbocharge-success/?sh=73fee247620f

McCue, Rich, 3-2-1 Backup Rule, University of Victoria Library, Digital Scholarship Commons, from EDCI 337

7 storytelling techniques used by the most inspiring TED presenters. (2022, September 27). Visme Blog. https://visme.co/blog/7-storytelling-techniques-used-by-the-most-inspiring-ted-presenters/