The challenge of educating a generation addicted to TikTok and with access to Chat GPT

In the midst of a challenging scenario with many open battle fronts, linked to social and economic problems of an Argentina in crisiseducation in our country encountered Artificial Intelligence (AI) in what Argentine specialist Melina Masnatta called “the beginning of the era of the synthetic.”

It is no longer just about thinking about digital tools in the classroom but rather a more basic question about the very meaning of educating: What does it mean to educate a generation addicted to TikTok and with access to ChatGPT?

For the American specialist Richard Venezky, literacy It’s not just about teaching reading and writing. but also a way of understanding the use of reading and writing in everyday life.

Thus, in a present crossed by screens, social networks and chatbots, sometimes the use of a paper book can be interpreted either as an act of resistance of an old regime or a provocation for the youngest.

That is why the question of whether it makes sense to continue educating as it was done in the 20th century is as corrosive as it is paralyzing. Although in a strict sense technology has always been present in the classroom, today digitality prevailed among those who have to teach.

According to the latest results of the Teach your voice campaign promoted by the Enki organization, 93.33% of Latin American teachers indicated that they use some type of technological tool in the teaching process and 97.4% consider that AI impacts teaching practice.

In his new book, Educating in synthetic times, Masnatta talks about the new tower of Babel that was erected in the school in the last 15 years: those who create the technology, those who teach and evaluate with it, those who learn and those who accompany They cannot dialogue because they do not have a common language.

And the times of these developments are so accelerated that they prevent us from being able to stop to reflect: If last year teachers worried about exams answered with ChatGPT, today it is the students who see that their teachers use it to formulate evaluations or even correct assignments.

Thus, the educational system as a whole feels the demand of a society that demands many things from it and that perceives that it is not an area of ​​innovation. However, the transformations offer resistance because they involve different dimensions and realities throughout the country.

Meanwhile, technology specialists and future gurus who ten years ago had predicted the death of the classroom and the need for programming to be taught at all school levels see how generative AI platforms They seem to take care of that task. And today they proclaim another nonsense: that the next teachers will be synthetic.

However, as Masnatta indicates, what differentiates us as humans is creativity, critical capacity, desire and passion. So in this tower of Babel in times of commands and prompts for ChatGPT, the challenge is how to teach and train these traits that make us unique, starting with our ability to ask the best questions.