For my final project, I plan to write a microfiction story that explores the role of AI in education, specifically imagining a near future where schools begin replacing teachers with AI systems to cut costs. This idea is influenced by recent budget cuts in nearby school districts and ongoing conversations about teacher burnout and the value of educators.

In my story, I want to depict a classroom where students rely on AI to answer questions, assist with writing, and guide their learning. While this may initially seem efficient, I plan to explore the consequences, particularly how overreliance on AI might limit students’ critical thinking and independence. I am also interested in the idea of whether AI systems themselves could show signs of “burnout” through glitches or repetitive responses, raising questions about the limits of replacing human teachers.

As I develop this piece, I will use AI as a brainstorming partner to generate ideas and explore different directions, while being intentional about maintaining my own voice and creativity. In my reflection, I plan to examine how AI influenced my writing process, including where it was helpful and where I had to resist or adapt its suggestions. Overall, I want this project to explore both the possibilities and limitations of AI in education and in writing itself.

For the final project, I was immediately drawn to the third one because it´s more my speed. I’m tempted to just do the one that feels “safe” but I also feel conflicted because pushing myself out of my comfort zone and writing the microfiction could be fun too! I don´t think I will end up choosing the second option because I’m leaning towards the other two and I feel like I might get a little bit more out of those personally.I am really interested to see what everyone else comes up with for that one though!. I don’t have any solid ideas right now but I think it could be interesting to see where my story ends up when collaborating with AI to write it. Would it suggest anything useful? Will it critique my ideas or simply be my #1 fan until the very end?

We have all been very vocal about our feelings towards ACT in Burnouts and the way that collaboration looks like, so I wonder if that same distaste will transfer over to creative work or if everyone will actually enjoy the product of their collaboration. 

my reaction to the fact that we have to use AI for this assignment

In taking some time the think things over, I felt option 1 would be the best thing to do for the final project. Throughout this semester I have made it known that I absolutely hate AI and I my best to avoid it at all costs. I have never actually used AI to write, or help me in my personal writing processes. In all honesty, I’d rather continue that, but for the sake of the assignment (and my grade)I’ll make this concession. In looking over the other two options, i felt that they weren’t as interesting to me as option 1 was. While I don’t believe that working with an AI will be a formative experience that will make me embrace the new TECH BRO world order, I do think that finally working with an AI to write might lead to some interesting insights nonetheless.

In terms of early ideas, I can’t say I have to many. A part of me feels like I want to write out the story and then use the AI to edit and revise, rather than leaning on it in the pre-writing phase. I don’t know why, but that feels like a bridge i do not want to cross at all. I wonder how its all going to turn out when its all said and done.

Blog # 12

At last, we’ve come to the conclusion. When we first started this class, and the professor rolled out the pathfinder assignments, I was somewhat nervous. Not mainly because of the assignments that needed to be done but I was unclear of how to approach this presentation from start to finish; not to mention that I generally dislike conducting presentations. Especially those that are less interesting to me. However, watching you guys week after week covering your materials like the pros that you are, brought me one step closer to preparing my own presentation. This is not solely pertaining to time, but also in terms of reducing my anxiety and making me a little more at ease. Even though I don’t enjoy presenting, I understand that as students, and individuals in general, it is important to recognize that there are things we are asked to do that are completely out of our comfort zones. Whether it is in our professional field, education, or even in our personal lives. Did I mention that presentation is not one of my favorite things to do? Ok. Cool. So any congratulation to me also goes out to each and everyone of you. Job well done!

As for the final project, after going through a process of elimination, I’ve decided to complete the first assignment; the micro fiction story that will paint a picture of the impact of AI teaching, learning, and education in the near future. When the Professor introduced the assignment the last time, we were in class together, I wasn’t sure which option I would choose. After giving it some thought, I immediately eliminated the second one which is about creating a narrative game with AI. Since I’m not a gamer, I don’t think it’s ideal to choose this particular project as I would need to put in additional work to learn the steps involved in creating the game, all without knowing how successful I would be. Once that preliminary process was completed, my choice became much clearer leading me to choose the first one. Even though I’ve not written a micro fiction story before, I have more confidence in this particular one. 

Out of all the options listed for the final, I feel most drawn to the microfiction piece 4 a number of reasons. Firstly, I already find myself imagining how Ai will completely transform the world of education quite often. It’s super natural as an emerging educator. So, I feel like it would be a fun n fruitful experience to encaspculate these feelings in 1 piece. I also rly love sci-fi. I forgot which sci-fi author said this, but I remember her being a super cool lady- the science fiction genre, out of every genre, allows us to highlight humanity’s problems in the most real, frank ways. It doesn’t have boundaries other genres, like realistic fiction, does. We can just spotlight the vibes- no rules, it is all up to you to form the world, community, whatever that will best amplify the problem you’re writing about.

I think science is such an interesting field. It rly can be viewed in 2 ways: humanity pushing itself to its limits in a super awesome, helpful, revoluntary way…. or in the worst way.

I don’t have any super solid ideas quite yet. I am thinking, though, of having some kinda foil between a super human, almost animalistic raw human experience, and the cold, sterile nature of ai. As for my Ai partnership, I may ask Chat to even write, like, the Ai parts in the story. Like- I write the human experience- they do the Ai part. Or…. maybe even vice versa. That could be a fun angle.

Regardless, I am so excited. Wooo

Song of the Day: Focus Playlist – When the Stakes Are High

For the final project assignment, I want to go with the first option in crafting a microfiction. I have written a microfiction before for a flash fiction contest that happened in Kean not too long ago. It was not easy since I wrote way more than the word limit, so I had to chop a lot of my work, but it worked out in the end since I managed to win third place.

For this class’s microfiction, I want to write about humanity and it’s changing creativity (pre-ai and during ai) from the perspective of a vampire. My thinking; how would a creature that was once human look at humanity over the decades, and talk about the concept of what is humanity when the speaker (vampire) is essentially losing their own humanity?

I still feel hesitant to include ai in my writing. I think I will first write the whole thing then use a copy of the completed work for ai to scan it and see if they believe there is anything that can be improved/changed/fixed. I can then compare my original work versus the copy that was used with ai. I will also have to record down specific changes or events that took place with the ai, so I can include it into my reflection portion.