More Ideas for ChatGPT and the Art Room (Ep. 359)

Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for our teachers. This show is produced by The Art of Education University, and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz.

Welcome to part two of our ChatGPT podcast. Amanda and I did an episode last week just explaining what is ChatGPT or what are chatbots? How teachers are feeling about chatbots and AI coming into their classroom? How we felt about it personally? And just where we see it going in the future when it comes to the classroom. Last week’s episode elicited a lot of response, a lot of comments, a lot of conversations taking place about just everything that is happening on the horizon, what we see coming with AI in our classroom.

Also, one listener along with the comments and conversations, Tyler from Ohio had a correction for me. He let me know that ChatGPT is not actually the most powerful chatbot around, which was something that I had said last week. Apparently Bing AI is more powerful. And Tyler sent me the receipts on that.

So this is my correction and apologies for that mistake. However, I’m sticking with ChatGPT for now because it’s familiar to me and I’m having a lot of fun with it. I think just based on those conversations that I’ve had with teachers and comments that I’ve seen from people, I think a lot of teachers are having fun with it too. I had quite a few people sharing with me ideas that they’re trying, things that they’re doing with chatbots in their classroom.

So Amanda and I wanted to do a second episode to share some of those ideas that we’ve heard and also share some of the explorations that we’ve done ourselves. So you’ll hear a little bit from Amanda and me, and you’ll also hear a lot from podcast listeners prompts that they’ve come up with, just ideas on how they’re using it in their classroom. Hopefully this conversation as a whole can give you a little bit better view as to what you can do with the chatbot in your classroom. So let me bring on Amanda so we can start sharing some ideas.

Amanda Heyn, welcome back to the show for the second straight week. How are you?

I am still great and I am still excited about ChatGPT. How are you?

Same. Same on both counts. Thank you for making the time to come back on the show. We just received a ton of feedback from last week’s episode and thought we needed to record a second one. So I know people really wanted to talk about everything related to AI, ChatGPT, how it’s going to change or at least affect the world of education. So let me ask you this, why do you think this topic fascinates people so much?

Right. Well, I think there are a few reasons. First of all, we recorded last week and we ended the recording of our other episode. And then we just kept talking for what, 20 minutes.

Right.

And finally we were like, this probably points to the fact that we need to make another episode because we were like, “What about this?” Oh my gosh, what about that? Now that we’ve sort of understood what we can do with it, now we have ideas about how it could actually be used in the classroom or in our personal lives or whatever. So I think one reason people are so fascinated with it, and it’s such a discussion point right now, is it’s just so powerful. It can generate an answer to anything. You can ask it to do so many different things and people are figuring out how to use it in new ways all the time.

I feel like every time I hear about it in social media or in my course or wherever I’m talking about it’s just people are ideating and iterating on what they think it can do because they’re playing around with it and seeing its capabilities. And in fact, just yesterday I saw that the project management platform that we use here at AEU was getting an update and what’s going to be included in the new release? AI integration.

I was like, “Whoa, this is the first time that it’s actually going to impact something that I’m using on a regular basis.” And it said it will summarize lengthy text for you. It will give you brainstorming ideas all right within this platform. And so I thought that was really interesting.

Interesting, yeah.

Yeah. So I think if you’re someone who’s still warming up to the idea of this technology, that is fair. Totally fair. Take your time. And I would encourage you to learn more about it because I really think it’s sort of going to be everywhere in the next one to three years for sure. And like you said last episode, AI isn’t going to replace you, but someone who knows how to use AI is going to replace you. I think that’s becoming more and more apparent.

And then I think the last reason that art teachers are starting to get on board is because you can be so creative with it. You talked last episode about how you gave it one drawing prompt and then you went down a rabbit hole for 45 minutes trying prompt after prompt, after prompt because the iterations are really endless and there’s so much room to play.

It is. It’s like a giant sandbox. There’s so much to do in there. And I don’t know, so many cool ideas that keep coming and then that triggers inspiration for something else. And you’re like, “What about this?” As a creative person, I feel like it just resonated with me ’cause like you said there’s so many different directions it should go. But yeah, let’s talk about prompts.

So last week I shared a couple of mine and you shared how I had some fun with that. I know you had a couple specific ideas of how you would use it in a classroom. So do you mind sharing those?

No, not at all. I think this is really interesting because often on this show we bring in experts with tried and true ideas. Right?

Right.

Who they have done it in their classroom. And so we can talk to them about it, but we’re sort of at a weird precipice with this where people haven’t really used it in the classroom yet, or they’re still experimenting. So please take these ideas with a grain of salt. I think they would be cool. I think that they hopefully will spark some ideas for you or maybe make you think of some tangents you can go on. But I was thinking about if I was in the classroom, there are so many things that I would want to try with this technology.

But before I get into that, I also do want to mention that you do have to have an account to use ChatGPT. So a lot of these ideas are teacher generated at this point because we don’t really know. Maybe we’ll get to a point where students have those accounts. I don’t know.

I’m interested if districts are going to allow kids to do that or if they might put up the firewall and block it. That’s something I haven’t thought about.

Right. There’s a lot to figure out. Maybe you’re already blocked at your school, I don’t know. High school students I think could handle it under direction and with parent permission. So whatever. That’s my caveat. So my first idea is to give ChatGPT a weird prompt and then ask it for five ideas. And then you could project those prompts through your projector, on to the board and then have students choose one to draw.

So I gave ChatGPT for an example, please give me five drawing prompts for an interaction between a rainbow, a piece of pizza and a disco ball. And my favorite thing it came back with was a disco ball hanging above a pizza restaurant, casting rainbow reflections on the walls and floor as people enjoy their pizza and dance. So I thought that was interesting.

Sounds like a good time. I don’t know if I’m want to draw that many people in a pizza restaurant.

Yeah, that’s true.

But I feel like it would be a lot of fun.

Yeah, I think it could provide some really interesting prompts. And then another example I gave it was, this one was a bit more open-ended just ’cause I wanted to see what it would do. I said, “Generate a drawing prompt that high school students might find funny and references a trend on social media.” ‘Cause I was like, how opposite on what’s actually happening in the world and it came back with draw a group of animals taking a selfie with a duck face pose, which again, that’s engaging. Another-

When was the last time we saw duck face? When was the last time that was part of the conversation.

I mean true, but I feel it does still happen. Maybe that’s because I’m a millennial and it’s still happening because my group is behind the time. I don’t know.

It’s just ingrained.

It’s just ingrained, yeah.

Can I just tell you, I just did a Google search for duck face and those questions pop up on Google. And the number one question is duck face still a thing? And the answer is, “Duck face is no more.” It is no more and that article was from 2015.

All right. So it didn’t nail that one. Okay. Another idea I had would be similarly to use it for bell ringer work. So you could have it generate a lot of different ideas depending on what you were studying, but the idea is you’d have the prompts again on the projector when kids come in. So you could ask it for three contour line prompts or three short answer art history prompts or three wacky drawing ideas. This one, I think wacky is a good word to use I’ve discovered. It’s kind of like stranger interesting. So I asked wacky and it said draw a giant sloth wearing a party hat, holding a slice of cake and surrounded by a group of tiny dancing hedgehogs. It’s like that is wacky.

I really like that one.

Me too. So if you’re trying out ChatGPT maybe use the word wacky. And then the third one, I thought maybe you would be able to use it to inject some randomness for student engagement or entertainment. So leaving things up to chance to make class more exciting. You could ask ChatGPT for some ideas about what kind of music you should play during work time or what kind of critique you should run for the last minutes. And then students could vote from the choices because, again, we know ChatGPT gives at minimum 500 words. It’s very long-winded.

So I was trying to play around with it to give me one single prompt and it was having trouble with that. So I think a couple of them have kids vote, but it could be an interesting way to get students involved in things. But have you heard about that?

Yeah. So I was just going to say that was super interesting because I received one email. I mean, I received a lot of emails this past week, but one of them in particular, it was from Joanne in Minnesota and she asked ChatGPT to pick some music for her that she could play in her classroom while her students were working. And then she said she just went down a rabbit hole because one of the suggestions was it wanted LoFi music where it is perfect to work online and she is like, “What is LoFi? And so it gave her an explanation. But then also gave her a YouTube channel, a Spotify channel, some specific artists to look up.

Interesting.

And also general search terms that you could put into Google to help you find more about it. And so she ends up looking all these artists and finding all of these different things, which helped her connect with some kids in her classroom that really love these LoFi beats. And then also it just gave her a new type of music that she was enjoying. So I thought that was pretty cool.

I love that. That is really cool.

Yeah. That was a good suggestion. Okay. We had another idea that you and I had come up with. I don’t know. I’m sure lots of other people have come up with it too. But we asked ChatGPT to describe an artwork for a student with a visual impairment. I had asked it about Guernica because I was looking at Picasso for some other research that I was doing. And it did a great job of describing everything that was going on with Guernica and also gave it some historical context about why the painting was created along with that description of what’s going on visually. I thought that was super interesting and I thought I did a really good job. So I would like to put it to the test and try it again.

Excellent.

So I have it up, Amanda. What painting would you like me to have it described for us?

Okay. I feel like I want something very complex and meaningful. Can we do the Two Fridas?

Two Fridas.

I don’t know exactly. Is it called the Two Fridas?

I think it is. Well, I’ll just put it in and-

Okay. Let’s see what happens.

… see what it comes up with. Okay. So please describe Frida Kahlo’s painting Two Fridas for someone with a visual impairment. Okay. It is syncing and it is writing. Okay. Are you ready?

I’m ready.

The painting depicts two self-portraits of Frida Kahlo both of which are seated side by side on a wooden bench. The Two Fridas are holding hands and are dressed in colorful traditional Mexican clothing.

Okay. So we have the right painting. Great.

Yeah.

Great.

So far so good. The Frida on the left is wearing a white European-style dress with a lace color and cuffs. Her heart is exposed with blood dripping down from the exposed heart. The other Frida on the right is wearing a traditional Mexican dress with a colorful blouse and long skirt. She’s holding a small portrait of the artist, Diego Rivera in her lap. The background of the painting is a stormy sky with dark clouds and a landscape of a partially visible city scape. The colors of the painting are bold and vivid with a strong use of red, blue, and gold. Pretty good description so far.

I’m impressed.

Yeah. This is good. The painting is small measuring approximately five feet by five feet. It’s up right there. I’m not sure how to describe-

Minuscule.

… five feet by five feet.

25 square feet small.

I would not describe that as small, but that’s okay. It is painted with oil on canvas. Breaststrokes are visible and textured, giving the painting a sense of depth and movement. Okay. And it’s got a summary for us. Overall, Frida Kahlo’s Two Fridas painting is a striking self-portrait that depicts the artist two sides in cultural heritage. Painting is characterized by its vibrant colors, use of symbolism and emotional intensity.

I love it.

Not bad.

Not bad. And this goes back to Guernica because you were telling me about that and it really did capture the mood of being in the room with that painting, which is really interesting. And I think obviously great for students with visual impairments, but also great for anybody if you can’t… We’re not all going to go to the lube or any other great museum. So I thought that was really interesting that it was really able to capture a feeling in addition to a physical description of it. I thought that [inaudible 00:15:40].

And even if we were to go to a museum, like you said, we can’t necessarily put how we’re feeling about things into words all the time. And so that’s a good starting point to do that. So I really like that. Okay. Actually, I have a few more listener ideas, I want to share that. It brings me to one from Todd. Todd is in Illinois and he said-

He said…

Thanks for writing Todd. I feel like we’re running a bad radio show. Hey Todd, thanks for writing. But anyway, he said he uses ChatGPT, he’s been using it to enter students’ writing samples and then the chatbot will give them feedback and says it can really strengthen student’s argument that they’re making about a painting or about an artist. He said it’ll check their spelling. It’ll help improve their grammar. Things like verb tenses and just other simple mistakes that kids make sometimes. ChatGPT can catch a lot of those.

And he said taking that feedback helps kids kind of improve the clarity of their writing. The chatbot summarizes their argument and says, “Here’s what I’m seeing or here’s what I’m reading.”

That’s cool.

Which really helps kids see if they’re on the right track and then gives them suggestions on how the writing could be improved. So I think that’s a really cool way to use that.

Yeah. Well, I mean this works an idea for me. I’ve been using Grammarly for a long time and maybe some of you. I mean, I would call that light AI in a way. It’s not necessarily summarizing in things for you, but I have definitely become a better writer. There are things that I think about when I’m writing without Grammarly that it has taught me just by using the program. So that’s really interesting. I love that he is using it in that way.

Yeah, I think so too. I would agree. Grammarly has made me a sharper writer, I think. Now, this chatbot can help me summarize arguments in a better way. That might be worth checking out. So all right. thanks.

Well, I have sort of an opposite idea, seeing who can make the worst thing with ChatGPT.

Well, we did run into that last week too.

We did run it, right, our rap about the renaissance, our terrible haiku. And so I thought maybe for high school students, again, account stuff figured out aside, I thought it would be cool for them to compete who could make ChatGPT write the worst or cringing rap about something. So I was thinking art, art history, art movements. And I think it could be really interesting because while the kids would be prompting it, they would have to reprompt and reprompt and they’re going to be reading it. And for the most part, the information is correct. So while it is a bad rap, they may actually be absorbing some things.

Okay. I like it.

So I tried to make it write the cringiest rap about painting a self-portrait and here was how… This was the last verse.

Are you going to rap this for us or are you just going to-

Definitely not.

… read it as a poem? Okay.

I’m going to read it as a poem. Thank you for the clarification. It says, “Yeah, that’s right. I painted myself portrait. I made it look so good. You can’t even hate. I’m a painting superstar going to shine so bright. My self-portrait is the bomb. Going to take flight.” But you see it a bunch of high schoolers rolling on the floor about that.

Oh, they’d be dying at this.

Oh, it’s so bad, but it’s so funny. Honestly, the rap about the renaissance from the last episode was… It was a bad rap to be sure, but it also had very accurate information in it. So it could be a cool learning pool.

Let’s talk about that. How do you think we can use this besides bad raps to just reinforce knowledge whether that’s about art history or color theory or just whatever may be.

Yeah. So another idea I had related to this was to have it generate something and then ask the kids to critique it. So if you ask ChatGPT to tell you, explain, the pop art movement or explain Fauvism or whatever it is and then have kids go through and really scrutinize it. What did it get? What did it get wrong? How would you improve the answer? Pretend you’re ChatGPT and you’re writing an answer for this. I think there’s some really interesting things that can be done there in terms of checking it. And that’s also helping kids realize that they do have to check it. They cannot take it at face value because sometimes as we just saw, it calls something five feet by five feet small. And that’s just sort of an inconsequential thing. But what else is it getting wrong? Right?

Yeah.

So that was one thing I was thinking about.

Yeah, I think that’s cool because that leads to a lot bigger discussions about how AI is obviously not infallible. And like you said, you need to think critically about what it’s giving you, and you need to know that you can’t just take it as is because it’s not always going to be right. That’s a bigger lesson to learn. I think that’s a good way to do that. Okay. One more art history idea that I kind of like. This came from Anna in Arizona and she just called it-

Thanks for writing, Anna

It’s called Identify the Artist was the name she gave it. And she basically just quick two sentencing. She likes to have ChatGPT write letters as various historical figures like write me a letter from Vincent Van Gogh when he was in the south of France in whatever year. And then she will remove any of the identifying information when he signs it Vincent or whatever. And then she asks students to identify who, quote, unquote, “wrote” each of the letters. And so just using the information that’s in there, they have to see who the artist is that that wrote that letter.

That’s so fun. I want to play that game right now. We’re not going to, but that’s really fun.

Yeah. It’s a super cool idea. So I think that’s a good one. Oh, I’m wondering if you can update it to modern day like if you had contemporary artists sending emails. [inaudible 00:22:11]

Oh my gosh.

Again, just lots more ideas. See, this is what happened when we start talking about GPT, just go down all sorts of random rabbit holes. And some of them are very fruitful and some of them waste your time, but for me at least [inaudible 00:22:26]

You don’t know until you explore.

Okay. And then one last idea that I wanted to share, we’re not going to do another 45-minute episode, so this will be the last one I share. This is from in Chiney in New York. Thanks.

Thanks for writing Chiney.

She sent me just a list of discussion prompts that she was impressed with. She just asked ChatGPT to come up with discussion prompts about pop art for her high school students to discuss. I think that was a prompt that she gave. And it gave her 10 because like you said, it’s always overkill when it comes to-

Of course it did.

… ChatGPT. But just very basic stuff from what do you think pop art is? How would you define it with your own words? And then some bigger things like how did pop art challenge traditional notions of art? Why do you think it was controversial at the time? And then it goes to even higher level thinking with how does pop art relate to the concept of consumerism? Does it celebrate or critique consumer culture? And then how might the pop art movement have been different if it had emerged in a different time or place? These are some really good questions. So anyway Chiney was very impressed with those and I’m really impressed with them. Those are discussion prompts that I would use in my classroom.

Absolutely.

I really like those. Cool. Amanda, like I said, I want to wrap this up before we get going too long. Is there anything else you want to share? Any closing thoughts or have you given us all you have already?

I mean, I think I would close it just the way I closed the last one. Hopefully you’re intrigued. I got a message from someone on Instagram who was like, “I was really scared about this, but I listened to the episode and now I’m excited to try it out. And that made me-”

Love it.

“… feel really happy.” And that’s kind of what we’re asking I think is we’re bringing this to you because we think it’s something that is going to impact your life and we think that art teachers absolutely need to know about it. And I think that playing around with it is going to make you feel more comfortable. You may play around with it and decide you still hate it. For example, nothing is going to make me like those dog robots I talked about in the first episode, but I respect them and the technology used to create them.

So I think, yeah, just like I said, I think playing around with it is definitely worthwhile. Give it 30 minutes, see what’s up. I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more of it. So the better you are informed, the better you will be equipped to deal with that.

Yeah, absolutely. I think just if you like it and you’re ahead of the curve and you can be a leader or just a sounding board with some knowledge for people in your school that can be an incredibly helpful. And if you try it and decide you hate it, like you said, you at least have a reason. You can say, “I don’t like it because of reasons X, Y, and Z.” Not just like, “Oh, it’s scarier, I don’t want to use that.” I think that is a better place to be coming from. So yeah, like you said, we definitely encourage people to try it out and just see what they think. It’s probably going to serve you well.

All right. Well, Amanda, thank you so much. I appreciate the discussion. Appreciate you coming back for episode number two and hopefully everyone will enjoy this one as well.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

All right. That will do it for part two of this conversation from Amanda and me. I hope you enjoyed it. Like I said at the beginning, I just wanted to share some ideas from a lot of our listeners and from us as well. I hope that something we did here, something that we talked about today, maybe piqued your interest. Like Amanda said, ChatGPT and AI are likely going to have an increasing role in education in the near future.

We’re not saying that you need to embrace that necessarily, but I think we would both say that it’s a good idea to at least familiarize yourself with the tools and with how those tools can be used. And so I hope you can do that soon. Even though we probably don’t have any more ChatGPT podcast episodes coming anytime soon, I’d still love to hear about cool ideas that you’re trying, fun prompts that you’ve found, or just new ways to utilize this in your classroom. So please reach out if you have something to share.

Art Ed Radio was produced by The Art of Education University with audio engineering from Michael Crocker. Thank you as always for listening and we will talk to you again next week.