ChatGPT: How can schools use it to make a better world?

ChatGPT is one of the best known Artificial Intelligance (A.I.) products. At the time of writing, it is free and has gained lots of attention. This article covers a few basics, plus practical examples of using A.I. to make schools even more inclusive for SEND pupils.

What is ChatGPT?

It’s a website that allows you to ask questions (known as prompts) and get responses. The computers behind power the website read a masses of text and learned to write – often as well as humans.

For example, you can:

• Ask it to plan a reading workshop.
• Ask it write a poem about the seaside town, Whitby.
• Ask it to explain autism.

How is ChatGPT different to Google?

When you type your query into Google, you get a list of all the existing websites that Google thinks might answer your query. Google finds things that have already been written… On the other hand, Chat GPT uses everything that it has ever read to answer your query itself.

What ChatGPT and Google have in common is that both will be used in classrooms on a daily basis and both will be taught to primary and seconary school pupils.

How do I get onto it?

Google ‘Chat GPT,’ then click through to set up an account. Accounts are easily to set up if you have a Outlook or Gmail account. Alternatively, click here.

If you don’t want to set up an account, you can access ChatGPT without doing so.

Using ChatGPT in primary schools

Let’s say that I want to generate vocab for some SEND pupils to use when writing. Prompts can be written as questions, but they don’t have to be – You can simply tell it to do something. Here’s an example of me asking ChatGPT to create a word bank for the LEGO origins story. It’s an example taken from our ChatGPT guide for primary and special schools.

Using ChatGPT in secondary schools

Here are some examples from our free ChatGPT guide for secondary schools.

Download the free ChatGPT school guides

These free guides have lots more examples of A.I. use for schools.

1. ChatGPT guide for primary and special schools

2. ChatGPT guide for secondary schools

Alternatives to ChatGPT: The new Space Race

There are various companies that are all competing to become the best. Four of the best known are:

• Co-pilot from Microsoft.
• Gemini from Google.
• Llama from Meta (the owners of Facebook).
• DeepSeek from High-Flyer, a Chinese hedge fund.

You may hear comments about one being better than another but, for the typical user, they all do the same thing. It is possible that one will become dominant (just like Facebook became dominant over MySpace, Bebo, Friends Reunited etc), but right now no one knows who will win this technological race.

For users of Microsoft computers, one advantage of Co-pilot is that it’s often built into your web browser and so you can access it in one click.

Five Ways to detect when a pupil has used ChatGPT / A.I.

1. Verbosity

A.I. is normally more verbose than a typical pupil. Therefore, if the work is highly detailed, this may make you curious…

2. Change in writing style

Is a pupil’s writing style or performance is markedly different? Can you think of a reason for this change (such as a pupil’s carer works in steel and the work is about how steel is manufactured). If so, this may make you curious…

3. Asterisks to make titles

Humans rarely identify a title using asterisks. However, some A.I. tools can’t write in bold or italics, so to show subheadings, they use asterisks, for example: ** The Hydrological Cycle ** or **How is steel made?**. Furthermore, sometimes a quirk of copying and pasting from A.I. adds asterisks to your titles.

4. Square brackets

It’s rare for humans to use square brackets, unless they are academics.

If you see text with square brackets used unusually [1], this can be an indicator of A.I. [2]. In the previous sentence, the use of [1] or [2] are out of place.

5. US spellings

The default for some A.I. tools is US English, for example:

• I apologize for my behavior in your lesson and that is why I am writing this letter…
• One thing I did well was my organization of my paragraphs.

In UK English, several of the above words should contain the letter s instead of z.

Online tools for detecting text written by A.I.

There is an explosion of websites that claim to detect A.I. Whilst they show promise, you need to research the quality of these before relying on them. That’s because there are examples where human-authored text has been flagged as A.I. generated. If you are going to use these tools, drop your text into several detectors to check if you get consistent results. You can find them by Googling AI writing detector.

Detecting ChatGPT: A warning

1. No single indicator is conclusive but, for now, the above list are some of the least flawed indicators we have. The list shouldn’t replace your professional judgement.
2. Pupils can side-step the above red-flags by prompting the A.I. tool to “Use less than 80 words, start a new line for sub-titles, never use asterisks or square brackets, and write in UK English.” Or they might simply run a spell check in UK English!
3. New waves of A.I. tools will guess that you are in the UK and so give English spellings anyway.
4. If you suspect A.I., one tactic is to ask the pupil to talk you through their work and use questioning to find out if they understand what’s written.

It’s unlikely that we’ll ban A.I. use in homework altogether (in the same way we don’t ban pupils from reading Wikipedia or BBC websites). The problem comes if pupils paste large sections from A.I., or Wikipedia or BBC and present it as their own. Why? Because the pupil hasn’t done the work themselves.

A.I. Questions for school governors and trustees

Wondering how governors support and challenge the roll out of A.I. in our schools? If so, help is here. We’ve curated 20 questions that can help governors perform their role effectively.

Open your A.I. questions for school governors and trustees.

So what next?

A.I. is here to stay. In years to come, you will become highly skilled at using it to build more inclusive schools. However, your first steps are:

• Do: Follow any guidance on use of A.I. in your workplace.
• Do: Experiment thoughtfully with A.I.
• Do: try to spot A.I. and ask pupils about it if you suspect they have used it inappropriately.
• Do not: Use A.I. in any way that feeds it data of real pupils or staff.
• Do: Download the ChatGPT guide for primary schools and ChatGPT guide for secondary schools to help A.I. fuel inclusion in your lessons.

More great reads

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Supply Teachers: How to Help Yours to be Even Better

Everything you need to know about School Suspensions

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