Gemini's Assent and A Modest Proposal

Matt Miller highlights three key issues from Gemini's Google Classroom rollout in his July 9 newsletter:

1. ...you might notice something they have that Google does not. (I’ve looked and looked and can’t seem to find it.)

Monitoring.

A place where teachers can monitor the conversations that students are having with AI chatbots in real time...

2. With Google, students either have perpetual access to Gemini — or they don’t. (Again, as far as I can tell based on the release.) As of now, Gemini is either on or it’s off for students. (Admin default is off for K-12, on for higher education.)...

3. Sure, they say they have a youth onboarding experience to teach students about AI. I'll be interested to see how in-depth it ends up being. But the link in their news release just goes to a quick 2-minute video right now.

I would hope that prior to August/September, Google adjusts monitoring to ensure that teachers have quick and easy access (or notifications) to problematic chats from their students and the ability to differentiate on specific assignments, tools, or time. From a marketing perspective, I'd expect the first before the second.

With regards to the third, it's weird because Google offers something similar in their "Interland" site/game: Play Interland - Be Internet Awesome which is described as where: "Kids can play their way to being Internet Awesome with Interland, an online adventure that puts the key lessons of digital safety into hands-on practice with four challenging games."

AI Generated

So expand Interland to add additional information/games/interactives exploring what AI is and is not and how to cite and incorporate it ethically - easy to draw from documents already issued (see the APA's advisory, MLA's citation guide, et al.) - and incorporate it as a launch "test" that students must pass prior to being given access to Gemini in Google Classroom.

If AI is designed to relieve some of the burden off of teachers, start with this pre-assessment, engagement, and post-assessment and let's ensure that our students start their AI off on the right foot.