Lab Notebook 4: To reflect is to know oneself deeply

Ten Years Later and I still Can’t Find My Thousand Page Dissertation

Looking back at the last three months of lessons I realized most of my comprehension came from our assignments and lab notebooks. Our first lab notebook made me realize that I wasn’t alone in my computer clutter. It inspired me to reassess my workflow and look for areas that need improvement. While it was sort of a relief to know that others struggle with file saving like I do, it also opened my eyes to the fact that more than just a few people are digitally incompetent when it comes to digital archival management, and among them were high school students. 

Are you finding this hard to believe? I did too until I came across this reddit post from 7 months ago that appears to substantiate the issue of technology incompetence in the classroom. 

We live in an age where you can find a digital archived version of almost anything. Important bank statements, health records, a rare piece of fiction, pay stubs and tax forms. We can say goodbye to efficiency and hello to normalizing obscured desktop backgrounds cluttered by files and apps.

Speaking of Efficency 

I am familiar with the convenience and efficiency of the Ctrl + F search function built into most browsers. It was my clever thinking that came up with the idea to convert audio and video files into digital transcripts. For written assignments that required summarizing specific sections of text files so ridiculously long it was laughable, I would open my file and begin searching dor keywords. I was feeling fairly confident in its effectiveness to save me time to a point until eventually it became the opposite. So you can imagine my impressed response to something like Voyant, the online textual data anyalisys platform that provided such thorough search results I quickly grew to enjoy using it for more than school work.

Not only did it break down so neatly parts of the book, but its ability to create visuals showing the frequency of words in a text greatly impressed me. 

We Could All Use a Little Help from Our Professors

I expect that my experience in this class (and college in general) varies siginfcantly from that of the typical traditional student experience. This term was a particularly difficult one for me. While much of what I was going through was personal and difficult to process, I knew it was my responsibility to reach out and explain my situation. If there was ever a point in your life you struggled with so much so you wish even you didn’t know about it, let alone a professor or advisor, etc. However, despite my insecurities I made it a point to reach my GE in whatever capacity I could. I have always believed in developing a connection with an instructor early on in the term and becoming well acquainted wth one another so when trouble surfaces, I am comfortable enough to reach out as needed. 

I’m an AI, He’s an AI, She’s an AI, everybody is an AI

The most captivating topic of discussion in our class was the issue of AI in our lab assignment. Although we didn’t have a formal lesson on chat GPT, it became evident that it had leveled the educational playing field, which was both fascinating and alarming as nearly half the class admitted to using chat GPT for the assignment, sparking a significant conversation about AI.

AI is a relatively new phenomenon whose popularity spread like wildfire upon its introduction into society, catching educators off guard with risks that challenged educators and even in some instances poses a threat to education as an institution. It has left little room to prepare for potential issues that may arise, and have. This article in neaTODAY weighs the risks and benefits of AI in the classroom.

During a presentation by Rye Davies, AI was compared to cyborgs, with the notion that even a cell phone or any assistive device could be seen as making someone a cyborg. However, Rye argued that AI cannot be considered a cyborg because it strips away our ability to think and speak for ourselves. While individuals with prosthetic limbs have control over their own minds, students who rely so heavily on AI as a means of cutting corners run the risk of decreaisng their ability to form their own ideas, thoughts and opinionsThey can become heavily reliant on AI’s performance, ultimately leaving a student unable to function without it as a crutch.