A digital brain, complete with memory - ChatGPT take note!

Your ChatGPT Teacher – With Persistent Memory!

October 15, 2023October 15, 2023Leave a comment

The interactivity of AI models like ChatGPT and Bing make them the perfect medium for exchange-based language learning. But for one thing: their lack of persistent memory.

The standard setup, to now, has been for a ‘black box’ style conversation on AI platforms. You initiate a session with your instructions, you chat, and it’s over. You can revisit the conversation in your history, but as far as AI is concerned, it’s lost in the mists of time.

It’s something that throws a mini spanner in the works of using AI for language (or any kind of) learning. Teaching and learning are cumulative; human teachers keep records of what their students have studied, and build on previous progress.

DIY ChatGPT Memory

There seems to be little movement in the direction of AI with memory amongst the big platforms, although OpenAI’s recent announcement of memory storage for developer use might lead to third-party applications that ‘remember’. But in the meantime, users within the AI community, ever adept at finding workarounds and pushing the tech, have begun formulating their interim alternatives.

One clever way around it I recently spotted takes advantage of two elements of ChatGPT Plus: custom instructions and file upload/analysis. In a nutshell, an external text file serves as ChatGPT’s ‘memory’, storing summarised past conversations between student and AI teacher. We let ChatGPT know in the custom instructions that we’ll be uploading a history of our previous conversations at the beginning of a learning session. We also specify that it analyse this file in order to pick up where we left off. At the end of each session, we prompt it to add a round-up of the present conversation to that summary, and give the file back to us for safekeeping.

Custom Instructions

Here’s how I’ve worked the persistent memory trick into my own custom instructions:

If I upload a file ‘memory.txt’, this will be a summary of our previous conversations with you as my language teacher; you will use this to pick up where we left off and continue teaching me. When prompted by me at the end of our session, update the file with a summary of the present conversation and provide me with a link to download it for safekeeping. This summary should include a condensed glossary of any foreign language terms we’ve covered.

Wording it as such makes memory mode optional; ‘teacher remembering’ only kicks in if you upload memory.txt. This way, you can otherwise continue using regular, non-teach ChatGPT without any fuss.

The only thing that remains is to create a blank text file called memory.txt to start it all off. Remember to start a new chat before giving it a whirl too, so your new custom instructions take. As you use the technique in your everyday learning chats, you’ll see memory.txt blossom with summary detail. As an offline record of your learning, it even becomes a useful resource in its own right apart from ChatGPT.

Just make sure you keep it safe – that’s your teacher’s brain you have right there!

My ChatGPT ‘memory’ file in action.

Let us know your experiences if you give this technique a go! And if you’re stuck for lesson ideas, why not check out my book, AI for Language Learners?

A neon globe surrounded by books - the AI future is here.

AI for Language Teachers – the Essential Bookshelf

September 30, 2023October 14, 2023Leave a comment

Clearly, emerging Artificial Intelligence platforms have colossal potential to transform education. Indeed, they are already doing so, proving to innovative disruptors that teachers and students are still grappling to understand. Given the pace of change, where can educators find solid training on practical, classroom-ready AI techniques?

Thankfully, a raft of publications has sprung up with teaching practice at its core. Many of the best titles are from author-educators who have self-published from personal experience. Self-publishing, of course, is a quick, reactive way to get books out there, so it’s unsurprising that there are so many gems that don’t originate with big publishing houses.

It must be said that the majority of current titles are US-centric – again, unsurprising, given that largely US-based AI companies have generally release the leading-edge innovations in the US first. That said, the following picks are all notable for a universal approach, with a generality that should make them useful whatever the setting.

Without further ado, here is the language teacher’s essential AI bookshelf!

The Essential AI Bookshelf

THE AI CLASSROOM

The AI Classroom With five-star reviews almost across the board, the authors of The AI Classroom were quick off the mark; the book has become an early leader for practical teaching ideas utilising artificial intelligence. It contains a broad range of ready-to-use prompts, perhaps the most reliable hallmark of the best AI guides for teachers and learners on the market at the moment. What is particularly insightful is the discussion of school policy as an important consideration – an indispensable consideration, particularly for department heads and administrators.

THE AI INFUSED CLASSROOM

The AI Infused Classroom by Holly Clark is a practical and visionary guide for educators who want to use emerging LLM tools to transform teaching and learning. Clark, a seasoned teacher and edtech expert, is author of The Infused Classroom series, which explores how to amplify student voices with technology. This book builds on those ideas, demonstrating how to leverage AI as a catalyst for innovation, creativity, and deep learning. The book adopts a refreshingly student-centred approach to classroom AI, and is a source of invaluable best practice for teachers of languages and otherwise.

AI FOR LEARNING

Part of the AI for Everything series, AI for Learning is a book that explores how the medium can, and should, positively impact human learning in various contexts. The authors offer a clear and engaging introduction to the concepts, applications, and implications of AI for learning. The book serves as both an explanatory introduction and practical guide, covering topics from core concepts of AI to how it can develop critical thinking and digital citizenship skills, and prepare learners for the future of work and learning. The book also addresses the ethical and social issues that arise from using AI for learning, such as privacy, bias, accountability, and trust.

80 WAYS TO USE CHATGPT IN THE CLASSROOM

You can’t beat a good old ‘X ways to do…’ guidebook, and this volume boasts an impressive 80 of them! 80 Ways to Use ChatGPT in the classroom gets straight down to brass tacks with organised, practical prompt examples. A particular strength of this book is a welcome nod to balance throughout, with ample discussion of the issues as well as the well-fanfared benefits. As one of the earliest of these guides to appear, the focus is ChatGPT. However, as with all of these books, the knowledge is easily transferrable to other platforms.

AI FOR LANGUAGE LEARNERS

As the only title to focus specifically on languages – and the one I penned myself – I could hardly leave out AI for Language Learners! Written to be accessible to individual learners as well as classroom teachers, it’s packed full of practical prompt ideas. These cover language reference, practice activities and resource creation. What’s more, the book includes access to a website with copy-paste prompt for those with the paperback. That is definitely a boon to those those typing fingers! The book was a labour of love over summer 2023, and is the product some very enthusiastic experimentation to support my own polyglot learning. I hope you have as much fun trying the prompts as I did writing them.

Brave New World

As AI comes to land firmly in classrooms over the coming months, we’ll undoubtedly be seeing title after title appear. Are there any favourite titles of yours that we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments!

Listening can be one of the most challenging skills in a foreign language. Image from freeimages.com.

The Listening Monster: Language teacher tips for taking the sting out

February 8, 2020February 9, 20203 Comments

Same objectives, different worlds – the polyglot and school classroom teaching communities strive for identical goals, but it often feels like they are leagues apart. It’s a perfect match waiting to be realised, as both have so much to learn from one another.

That’s why it’s always a hugely positive eye-opener when I attend teacher conferences. I’m no longer a classroom teacher myself, but I’m lucky enough to remain part of that world through my work creating language resources for schools. And as a lone ranger language learner in my free time, there are always lots of tips for tweaking my own study. This year’s #TeachLang conference was no exception, with a focus on that notoriously challenge foreign language skill, listening.

Listening: The dreaded monster

It’s no secret that listening – and actually comprehending – is one of the big, bad, dreaded monsters of language learning, whether in the classroom or for independent learners. Perhaps like me, you’ve given podcasts a go in a language you’re working on, only to feel disillusioned at how little you understand. Or maybe you feel flummoxed by those oh-so-fast responses by native speakers when travelling. Either way, listening can be flippin’ hard.

Teachers know this only too well. It can be a challenge to keep students feeling confident with such an overwhelming, brainpower-intensive task. Thankfully, there were some excellent nuggets of classroom wisdom on offer at the conference.

Martine Pillette in particular summed up the right initial approach to listening with her focus on tuning down the pressure to get everything at once. In short: you can get a lot from authentic listening resources without understanding every single word. A shame nobody told that to my inner critic years ago!

In this kinder-to-yourself method, you focus on mini-tasks at more abstracted levels instead of word-for-word comprehension straight away. For example, start by simply trying to identify the general topic of a segment. Listen out for individual words to note down, rather than grasp whole sentences. In essence, train yourself to catch gist. This kind of focused listening reminds me a lot of Benny Lewis’ active method for consuming podcasts.

Prediction exercises

Dovetailing into that was a lovely segment from Jennifer Wozniak around the use of prediction in listening exercises. Key to the predictive approach is preparation. With some basic knowledge of what the listening text is about, which words do you expect to come up?

Take a podcast on technology in Icelandic, for example. You might figure that the words tölva (computer), farsími (mobile phone) and gagnvirkur (interactive) are probable candidates for inclusion. Before listening, note them down – look them up in a dictionary if needed – and see how many of them come up on your first pass. You can tick them off, bingo-style, as you hear them. How many did you get?

Jennifer Wozniak talking at the Linguascope #TeachLang Teach Languages conference, February 2020

These are just a couple of the fantastic classroom techniques that teachers are sharing to take stress out of listening. They hardly scratch the surface, of course, and it’s well worth a rummage in live stream archive of the Linguascope Facebook page to see what else a bit of back-to-school can do for us.

As for me, I’m just off to play some Icelandic listening bingo. Wish me luck!

What techniques do you use to cope with listening practice in your foreign languages? Let us know in the comments!

Polyglossic

Love Learning Languages

Tag: classroom

Your ChatGPT Teacher – With Persistent Memory!