SANTO DOMINGO- Teachers from the Foreign Languages block of the Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC) held the seminar “Artificial intelligence: impact on language teaching”, in which they showed the impact of new technological tools on teaching methods, and the possible consequences of these.
The teacher Sabine Mary, coordinator of the block of Foreign Languages and of the Degree in Languages mention English of the INTEC explained that, after the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools such as GPT-chat, a world of possibilities opens up for the training and teaching process. “We need to teach students how to use the tools, but also mention the impact that the tools have,” he said in his comment.
In turn, he mentioned that, among the challenges they pose, is the evaluation of the student and the competence of the teachers. However, he urged teachers and students to use this tool ethically and productively. “It is better to get on the train, take advantage of the trip and gain knowledge from experience than not to get on and be unaware of what is going to happen,” he said.
In the same way, the teacher Baldo Dalporto, graduate in Nuclear Physics Engineering invited to the seminar, shared concepts such as machine learning, deep learning and the impact of AI in daily life, where he mentioned personal assistants, social networks, online purchases, fraud detection, healthcare and smart vehicles. “The system wants to match what we human beings do,” he mentioned.
Among existing AI tools, teachers mentioned Dall E Image, a futuristic classroom that is also a portal to other dimensions through digital art; Narakeet, an application that generates audio from text and GEN-2, the new tool to create videos from text. “The use will determine the impact of these tools”, pointed out the teacher Mary.
The event began with the words of Dalul Ordehidean of the Area of Social Sciences and Humanities, who mentioned important aspects of current teaching and pointed out the importance of learning other languages, as a result of cultural interactions.
“Through AI, teachers and students, with technologies, have fundamental tools to increase their knowledge and learning,” said Ordehi.
Among the invited speakers was also Thomai Alexiou, Associate Professor of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics of the School of English at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), invited as a speaker and teacher trainer in Greece, Europe, Australia, Asia, Russia and the UAE (United Arab Emirates). This expert presented the EAN program introducing the teaching of the English language in preschool classrooms.
The seminar ended with workshops on motivation in language classes, with the topics “Formative Assessment” by Edwin Gil, “Preschool Language Teaching and Learning” by Thomai Alexiou and “Active Methodology” by Maruveny Vidal and Jean Emmanuel Mahotiere. The courses “AI and language learning” by Sabine Mary and Baldo Dalporto and “How to motivate your students to learn English?” by Gustavo Martez and Dany Parra were also taught.
