- Ditch That Textbook
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- ❌ 5 alternatives to AI detectors
🙅 AI detectors are wildly inaccurate
When ChatGPT was released, pretty quickly there was a clamor in the educational world for AI detectors.
“We have TurnItIn for plagiarism. There has to be something like that for AI, right?”
When there’s that much demand, the market will supply a solution.
The problem is that the solution, AI detectors, aren’t accurate at all. Even if they tell you that they are.
Adam Sparks called out a big education company about its misleading messaging about its AI detector. In his post today, you can also find his five suggestions to move past AI detectors.
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Inside:
🤖 Keep up with AI
👀 DTT Digest: Padlet, flipbook, webinar, Brisk
💡 The Big Idea: 5 alternatives to AI detectors
🗄 Template: The Book Creator Back to School Book
😄 Smile of the day: Just … can’t … escape …
👋 How we can help
Keep up with AI
How do you keep up with the insane pace of AI? Join The Rundown — the world’s largest AI newsletter that keeps you up-to-date with everything happening in AI, and why it actually matters in just a 5-minute read per day.
👀 DTT Digest
4 teaching resources worth checking out today
🏖️An exciting Jamboard alternative — Padlet has built a Jamboard alternative called Padlet Sandbox, which is now in beta. You can get early access by going to sandbox.new. Note: You’ll need to login to Padlet first.
🍎Welcome to class flipbook— Keep your “Welcome to Class” resources handy and ready to give to our students and their families with these editable templates.
🚌Back to School Edtech Tools Webinar — Join Jake Miller, Holly Clark, Kim Zajac, Stephanie Jacobs and Jennifer Womble on 8/14 at 4 PM ET as they highlight 8 edtech tools for the upcoming school year.
ICYMI ⏰ The Busy Teacher's Guide to Saving Time with Brisk Teaching ebook —Learn how to use Brisk to make the most of your precious planning and teaching time.
💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡
❌ 5 alternatives to AI detectors
Adam Sparks had seen enough. It was time for confrontation.
A big education company was lying — by omission — about the effectiveness of its AI detector in a published whitepaper.
Adam called it all out — in detail — in a lengthy Twitter/X thread. Then, the interviews started rolling in.
Eventually, Adam was face-to-face (via Zoom anyway) with the company’s VP of AI.
The issue at hand? AI detectors are wildly inaccurate. And, as Adam writes, they’re an ineffective “easy solution” too many are chasing to maintain the status quo.
There are steps we can take, though.
One step: Set clear classroom policies for academic integrity that allow for some AI use.
Another: Center more personal reflection and/or defense in writing practice.
In this new guest post, Adam spills the tea on the ineffectiveness of AI detectors — and provides a path forward with five steps we can take in schools.
🗄️ TEMPLATE 🗄️
The Book Creator Back to School Book
Looking for some fun activities to help set the tone for the first days of school — and help students get to know each other?
The Book Creator Back to School Book is packed with templates students can get to work on right away.
If your students have Book Creator: Just assign them the Back to School Book through Book Creator — or give them a link to the book so they can remix.
If your students don’t have Book Creator: You can always do versions of these activities in a different app — or even on paper.
😄 Smile of the day
Welcome to the back to school meetings …
👋 How we can help
There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:
Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.
Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.
Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!
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