Should Teachers Be Worried about AI? Yes and No

This is my personal opinion about this evolving debate, about should teachers be worried about AI. My simple answer to this question is Yes and No.

Note: This post is manually written by myself, no AI involved. I let my English writing as it is. I don’t need to ask AI to fix the grammar, the diction, the structure, or whatsoever. I let it be my own work, no matter whether it is bad, unreadable, off, or whatever you judge. I let it be original. I let it be human. I let it be imperfect, written by a non-native English, me.

FYI, I am a teacher, an English teacher of EFL (English as Foreign Language) in Indonesia. I teach English in a vocational college, concentrating in engineering.

How AI benefits me as an English teacher

These following reasons, based on my experience, support why AI is no threat for teachers.

AI helps English teachers create teaching materials and quiz questions

I have to thank AI for this. AI does help me big time with teaching materials creation. Before teaching, I like to prepare teaching materials. Although I have had my teaching materials that I used previously, I tend to like to create new one that is fresher, and more recent issued related teaching material content. Thus, rather than relying on my self to this daunting task, I make use of AI: fast, accurate (so far, in my opinion and case), effective, and systematic.

Providing quiz to my students has never been easier before AI. In the past, I used questions from printed books, ebooks, and internet web pages. It takes a lot of time for selecting, copying, retyping, editing, etc, but with AI; text prompt has it all done. I just have to creatively and smartly trick the AI with tricky prompts.

Psst.. there is a bad side of me. I am a mean man. I don’t like sharing my prompts to others, although in fact, the prompts are just regular prompts everyone can make. Maybe because I am too possessive.