"During the last few weeks, you've been locating resources that help you answer your research need. You probably found some sources that supported the findings of your other sources, or that contradicted your other sources, or that simply filled different gaps in your knowledge. Discuss how your sources relate to one another and/or fill gaps in your knowledge? Be specific; discuss specific details of specific sources."
The above is a prompt for my journal entry this week, and I chose it because I resonated with it more than most might. While searching for sources to support my thesis question of how the impact of AI compares to that of the search engine on education, I found plenty of sources that tout AI as a great divider unlike anything education has ever experienced. And, if you keep in mind that AI came along far after the search engine, these sources support the idea that the search engine's impact isn't comparable.
More on the topic of sources that support the idea of AI being a radical revolution to the education field (which is a majority of my AI-oriented sources), one thing I have taken note of and will hopefully expand upon in my written paper is the difference in reception on the behalf of educators. Educators famously disliked the idea of the internet impacting students learning, while in today's climate many are jumping at the idea of adapting AI for use in their classroom. Take professor Justin Lewis at Olympic College for example: he shared thoughts on AI and suggested that trying to avoid it is a futile attempt, and it is inevitably going to be a tool that needs to be taught and understood.
Due to my narrower thesis question I developed as my project went on; I have found that it is easier to connect my sources in a coherent, straight-forward way. To understand what I mean by this, let's look at an example: in a paper written by Sarah A. Banks, she talks about the reception of the calculator in middle school and high school. Originally, when I had picked out this source, I was unsure of how I would use this source, or why, or when. But now that my thesis is "how does the effect of AI on education compare to that of the search engine," it is much easier for me to understand how I might use this source in a way that contrasts to AI. However, as it turns out, I can't use this source anyway because of the change in thesis!
Banks, Sarah. “A Historical Analysis of Attitudes Toward the Use of Calculators in Junior High and High School Math Classrooms in the United States Since 1975.” Master of Education Research Theses, June 2011, https://doi.org/10.15385/tmed.2011.1.
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