Category Archives: student blogs

student blogs

Introduction (Week 1 Blog)

Hi! My name is Jacob Piatkowski, and I am an English Writing major at Kean University. I am graduating with my bachelor’s degree in December of 2026.

I have been writing for as long as I can remember. I typically write fictional or alternative works such as screenplays and song lyrics. I also enjoy writing personal reviews about music, film and televison series.

Aside from my writing, I have a lot of interest in music – I am self-taught on piano, I love to sing, and I have perfect pitch, which is the catalyst of a butterfly effect that ultimately resulted in my own website, on which I discuss the plethora of song mashups I’ve created.

I love going on walks, listening to music, spending time alone or with friends/family, depending on my mood. I enjoy food despite my many allergies, and I would consider myself to be mostly timid until I find myself in an environment where I’m having fun. That’s when my energetic side emerges.

The idea of this course really interests me because I do care a lot about the human essence of writing and how artifical intelligence should not and cannot replace the human imagination. I am interested in what this course will provide for me as far as new insight towards writing. Overall, I’m looking forward to what this course has to offer!

student blogs

About Me

👋 Hello,

My name is Michael Kirschner. I am a graduate student here at Kean University. I completed my B.A. in English Education last year at Kean, and I currently teach middle school English/Language Arts at a middle/high school in Middlesex County.

There are some things that you all need to know about me. I can, at times, be hot headed. If you’ve ever watched the show “Vice Principals,” I’m like a Lee Russell type of person. Although, I must say I am a LOT nicer than he is.

I went into the field of teaching because I struggled a lot during high school. I won’t dwell on my history too much, but long story short, I had an I.E.P. and I had to work twice as hard as everyone else (because there wasn’t A.I.) Now that I’m an educator, I am very interested in exploring this course. Just today, I was annotating The Giver, and in doing so, I noticed that the questions I had artificial intelligence create, were just terrible. They weren’t in chronological order, and there were some questions that had nothing to do with the related chapter. I will say that artificial intelligence is a TOOL to be used, and not a SYSTEM to replace something.

Aside from all of that, I’m in this program because I hope that one day I will be able to return to Kean for my M.A. in Educational Administration, and then back again for my Ed.D in Educational Administration. I hope to shine the light on the issues surrounding teacher evaluation instruments. I also hope to maybe become an adjunct professor in the English department at Kean.

From listening to the podcast, something made me wonder about teacher evaluations. Now that we have artificial intelligence, I wonder how often administrators put their observation notes into an AI bot, and have it score the teacher based on the provided evaluation instrument. Honestly, this all concerns me. For generations, the Receiver is instructed by the Elders to shield the community from pain, color, and anything tied to imagination. As Dr. Zamora emphasized, we cannot afford to lose our creativity and imagination. Jonas comes to understand that a society built on complete automation and control is not truly humane, which ultimately drives him to escape the community. The question then becomes: will we willingly transform our own society into a dystopia where artificial intelligence automates everything, or will we choose to use it thoughtfully—as a tool, and nothing more?