Weekly Reflection #4 Gen AI

What are some major limitations of AI?

I believe that there are a lot of limitations to AI. The biggest limitation is the unreliablility of the information provided. We all know that AI has a tendency to make things up. There are many situations where generating something only to spend time revising it for errors that you youself would not have made if you had simply done the work seems like it is not worth using. Another limitation is the fear that people who are just learning about a topic may use AI to do the work for them. This will stunt their growth and negatively affect their development whle they are in a essential learning time.

Possible uses for Gen AI in the highschool music classroom

There are two main ways that I can see AI potentially helping in the music classroom. The first is a tool called sightreading factory. This tool uses ai to generate music that meets a criteria set by the user to generate a single part or full band arrangement of a catchy/exciting melody that can be used to practice students ability to play music that they have never seen before. Here is an example score generated:

This activity could be done live in class and students can read off of a large screen at the front of the class or the teacher could prep many activities beforehand and print them so each student can read more effectively off of their own music stand. This tool saves the teacher an exorbitant amount of time if they attempt to make their own exercises.

The other way is to potentially use it to get the basic structure of a lesson plan for an individual lesson or have students generate practice plans at home for themselves to have a teacher with them in a way. For this class, I asked perplexity different questions about the clarinet. When I asked it to “tell me how to play clarinet at a professional level” and “make me a 60 minute lesson plan for a total beginner” I was shocked at the quality of instruction provided by both of those prompts.

Since clarinet is my main instrument I could have also given these tips to a student, but it is impossible to be an expert on every instrument and if the quality of instuction for the others matches the level for the clarinet, it could be a good tool for supporting exceptional students who play an instrument that the teacher is not an expert on.