AI Tip of the Week:
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is observed each year on the third Monday in January. The date was chosen to fall always on a Monday, and to align with Dr. King’s birthday, January 15. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of 39.
Today’s prompt: What should we know about MLK?
1/20/2025
We both love to go to new and interesting places, and talk to the people we meet there. Getting on planes helps us hear the best stories!
We’ve met some amazing AI Power Users we’ve met recently. This week: AI Power Users in Education!
Dr. Americus Reed II
A dear friend of ours is Americus Reed (aka “The Hip Hop Prof”). Americus is professor of brand equity and identity loyalty at Wharton, serial entrepreneur, fitness enthusiast, pro drummer, and “girl dad.” In Philly last week, Americus caught us up on two of the many ways he’s been using AI in his work recently.
Research help
Americus needs to crank out massive amounts of words as a professor. A typical week sees him writing academic papers, feedback for his students, opinion pieces for the media, and hundreds of emails. He’s started to use Chat GPT as a thought partner. Two weeks ago, Americus went to write a book chapter that would typically take him about seven months to write. He’d been collaborating on the chapter with four other professors around the world, by Slack and email – hundreds of pages if he’d printed them out. Rather than go through this immense set of words by hand, Americus uploaded them to ChatGPT and had the tool summarize them, then suggest an outline for his chapter. Continuing to work with AI down to the paragraph level (being careful to validate each and every citation), Americus was able to finish his chapter in a week – which astounded him, he told us.
Feedback on student work
Rather than being a “pure writing machine,” Americus is also a highly sought-after instructor. He’s an expert storyteller, and his classes have long waiting lists at the undergraduate, MBA, and executive level. To ensure his students have mastered the concepts he’s teaching, Americus incorporates research projects and writing assignments into the homework for his classes. But since his classes have often have 50+ students, and each assignment can range from 3 to 50+ pages, responding individually to each assignment can be grueling for Americus and his teaching assistants (TAs).
Enter ChatGPT. This past year, he created a custom GPT (called “Ask Americus”), uploading his research, syllabuses, publications, and interview transcripts going back to 2000, when he first started teaching at Wharton. Using “Ask Americus,” he and his TAs could respond to every assignment with 2-3 pages of tailored feedback, cross-referencing the students’ work (both the assignment in question as well as all previous assignments), and citing specific examples from Americus’ own writing. Americus had his TAs review this first draft, and then Americus edited each piece of feedback before releasing it to the students. “Never before,” he said, “have I been able to give such precise feedback at such scale. In the past, the best I could do were a few comments in red pen!”
Sabrina Moore (McCreary)
A few weeks ago, Jeremiah visited Mt. Airy, North Carolina for the first time in 30+ years. Sabrina Moore (McCreary), his elementary school best friend, is now a 6th grade teacher at Mt. Airy Middle School. She invited Jeremiah to some of her classes.
Language help (for students)
Since Jeremiah speaks Spanish fluently, Sabrina asked him to come help out two of her students – recent immigrants from Michoacán, Mexico – who were just starting to learn English. Sabrina wanted her students to be able to participate more fully in her classes, since her support staff is quite limited.
Sabrina had given her class handouts (in English) on Roman Emperors – with all their feats and misdeeds. The two Mexican students (Jose and Sebastian) took out their tablets and snapped a picture of each handout. The AI-powered software instantly identified areas with text, then offered several options. Jose & Sebastian selected “translate,” and then read these handouts inline as if they had been written in Spanish. And the translation was good!
Rather than spending the time translating English to Spanish, Jose, Sebastian, and Jeremiah were able to discuss each emperor, and think through what words might best have described their rule. The tech was impressive – from logging in to their tablets to taking a picture and translation, the students were reading the handout in SECONDS.
There are so many scenarios in the EDU space for AI–both for educators and for learners. If you are in the EDU space, we’d love to hear what you are using AI for.
Here are other use cases that might interest you!
Thank you and have a wonderful week!
💗 Dona and Jeremiah
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