In a blog post for Write 6x6 in February of 2024, I wrote, “As the future of AI in education breathes down my neck, I find myself wondering, do I want to be a Bradbury, digging in my heels in respect for my deeply-held principles about teaching, learning, and the craft of writing, knowing that my protest will do nothing to change what’s to come? Do I want to give in and say there's nothing I can do to stop what's coming, so let me grade this robot’s essay? Or might there be a space in between?”
Another Write 6x6 is upon us, and I see that my relationship to AI has clarified itself in the last two years. Yes, AI has changed education, and I have had no choice but to change with it. I worry less about AI heralding the end of original thought these days. (Note, I worry less, not none.) My colleagues and I teach students intellectual ethical strategies for using AI as a learning partner. My classes lean more heavily on questioning and dialoguing and journaling on paper where once I was handing out chromebooks and using online polling tools. At home, my husband and I chop veggies and stir pots as we prepare dinner all the while marveling at all the ways we used Claude.ai that day. Jeff uses Claude as a coding partner in his work, and I use Claude as a revision partner. (In fact, I used to joke that we were in a throuple with Claude until I realized this isn’t a joke for some people.)
I appreciate that I can take a real woofer of a writing piece, full of [place holders], unfinished paragraphs, and clunky sentences–something I would never allow a colleague to read–and get nonjudgemental advice from Claude. I don’t ask the tool to write for me, rather I ask questions like, “My sentences are clunky in paragraph 3. What advice do you have for me?” or “What are some ideas you can offer me for bringing this piece to a close,” or “Give me a list of places where my thinking is unclear as well as a list of punctuation and grammar errors.” I find it priceless to get advice at this messy stage of the writing process before I’ve belabored the piece and exhausted myself. Asking for advice rather than asking for revision also allows me to maintain my own voice, for better or worse.
Back in November, I began working with Claude as a writing and thinking partner to craft this year’s Write 6x6 challenge. I pay for Claude which allows me access to a few more features such as creating project spaces. (Paying for Claude also makes the “throuple” joke even more awful.) After I created the Write 6x6 Challenge project, I provided Claude with instructions explaining Write 6x6 and my goals for our work together. Next, I uploaded files listing the prompts from years past. I also created a very long document listing recent topics discussed on the podcast Teaching in Higher Ed and titles of workshops offered at this fall’s POD Conference. From this document, I asked Claude to do something he does very well, but that would take me much, much longer: synthesize. Claude identified trending topics of discourse in higher education today, and from that list, I crafted a collection of possible prompts. Claude helped me to refine the list, to create “dares” to accompany this year’s “truth” prompts, and helped me track down resources to accompany each week’s challenge. I continued to chat with Claude about the prompt list, the challenges, and the resources until just a few weeks ago. (A human colleague would have kindly asked me to shut up about it already long ago.)
I declare that I am pleased with this year’s prompts! I feel that the topics are timely and that the Truth or Dare challenge has a little something for everyone. I hope that you, too, will enjoy what Write 6x6 has in store for you this year!
If you hate the prompts, let’s just blame Claude.
Five stars.
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