With each new innovation in technology, educators have to adapt how they teach to the new tools that students have available. Enter AI.

Think back to your high school days. Do you remember your math teacher taking away your calculator and making you do calculations by hand because “You won’t be carrying around a calculator wherever you go!”? Now, we have devices in our pockets that not only contain calculators but full libraries, encyclopedias, and more. Using new technology as a tool, students can spend more time on critical thinking questions and less time doing tedious memorization and calculation by hand.  

The latest technology to monumentally shift education is Artificial Intelligence. OpenAI recently released a new version of their artificial intelligence software called ChatGPT. This new model has the ability to write complete essays (here’s an example that it wrote in about 20 seconds) and answer both multiple choice and open ended questions with a high degree of accuracy. The initial response hailed the End of High School English and proclaimed The College Essay Is Dead. Within weeks, the tone of this conversation shifted to how to use ChatGPT to make education fairer. Just like the calculator, teachers are beginning to recognize that AI can be used to enhance education.

How can you use ChatGPT as an education tool in your personal finance classroom?

Each of the following links has prompts given to ChatGPT and the AI’s response.

• Have your students debate ChatGPT about personal finance topics
• Create a rubric for an assignment
• Have ChatGPT write a script in the style of your students' favorite TV show
• Create a lesson plan or unit plan
• Generate questions based on an article
• Summarize a dense and lengthy article and lower its reading level
• Summarize a Youtube video by copying its transcript and asking ChatGPT what it's about
• Have ChatGPT write an essay at a middle school writing level and have students fact check it with sources and “punch it up” to a high school level
• Use ChatGPT as a tutor

What are ChatGPT’s limitations?

• ChatGPT is not “online” so you can’t provide it with links or ask it to do anything on the internet
• ChatGPT is currently in a free beta phase and may move to a “Freemium” model that gives you a limited number of prompts for free.
• ChatGPT’s knowledge base only extends through 2021.  It does not have knowledge of any new information beyond the end of 2021.
• Sometimes ChatGPT will be confidently wrong.

Other AI Tools

The limits of what AI can do in your personal finance class are only limited by your imagination. Beyond ChatGPT, there are hundreds of additional AI tools that can:

• Detect if content was written by AI
• Generate images
• Turn text into videos with AI voices
• Create original music
• Paraphrase text
• Learn anything with a personal tutor
• Generate spreadsheet formulas based on text instructions

Give ChatGPT a try and let us know how you are using it with your students!

About the Author

Dave Martin

Dave joins NGPF with 15 years of teaching experience in math and computer science. After joining the New York City Teaching Fellows program and earning a Master's degree in Education from Pace University, his teaching career has taken him to New York, New Jersey and a summer in the north of Ghana. Dave firmly believes that financial literacy is vital to creating well-rounded students that are prepared for a complex and highly competitive world. During what free time two young daughters will allow, Dave enjoys video games, Dungeons & Dragons, cooking, gardening, and taking naps.

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