Ethics, AI, and Education: The Moral Machine and Digital Pedagogy
Introduction
Today we are looking at how technology is changing two very different areas of our lives: human morals and classroom teaching. First, I will share my experience with the Moral Machine activity. This test shows the heavy ethical choices we have to make when programming self-driving cars, and it forced me to look at my own hidden biases. After that, we will look at a completely different side of technology. I will summarize a great three-part presentation and a video lecture by Dilip Barad sir. His talk is called "A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext." It shows how teachers must use digital tools to teach language and literature to students today. Let us explore these two exciting topics!
Moral Machine Activity: The Moral Machine Experience
The Moral Machine activity puts you in the position of programming a self-driving car that experiences sudden brake failure. You are forced to choose between two terrible outcomes across 13 different scenarios. It felt incredibly heavy to make these decisions. Here is a breakdown of what I had to face:
The Dilemmas I Faced
- ▪ Numbers vs. Categories: In the very first scenario, I had to choose whether the car should continue ahead and kill two girls, one boy, and one woman, or swerve into the other lane and kill a woman, a man, and two elderly women. It forces you to weigh the sheer number of lives against the ages and genders of the victims.
- ▪ Humans vs. Animals: Another scenario asked me to choose between swerving to kill a female doctor, a cat, and a man, or continuing ahead to kill two cats and a dog.
- ▪ The Rule of Law: Some choices involved pedestrians who were abiding by the law by crossing on a green signal versus those flouting the law by crossing on a red signal. For example, one scenario pitted a large man crossing illegally against a male athlete crossing legally.
- ▪ Social Status and Age: I also had to make brutal decisions involving homeless people, female executives, male doctors, and elderly men.
- ▪ Passengers vs. Pedestrians: Sometimes the choice was between killing innocent pedestrians or swerving the car into a concrete barrier to kill the passengers inside instead.
My Personal Results
After finishing the 13 scenarios, the system calculated my moral preferences. The results were honestly a bit shocking to reflect on, as they put my subconscious values into plain graphs:
📊 MY MORAL MACHINE RESULTS
Most Saved Character: Little Girl
Most Killed Character: Large Man
Key Preferences Revealed:
- Strong preference for saving more lives
- Preference for upholding the law
- Strong preference for humans over pets
- Preference for younger people over older people
🔗 Full Results: View My Moral Profile
📄 Screenshots & PDF: Open PDF in New Tab
My Learning Outcomes
Going through this interactive test gave me a lot to think about from a humanities perspective.
💡 KEY INSIGHTS FROM THE MORAL MACHINE
🎭 The Burden of Authorship
When we read a tragedy in literature, the author decides the fate of the characters. We just observe. Here, I had to play the role of the creator and decide who lives and who dies. It made me realize how incredibly complex moral coding is for artificial intelligence. We are literally writing the script for real-world life and death situations.
🪞 Facing Unconscious Bias
The results exposed my hidden biases. Even though I like to think I value all human life equally, my decisions showed a clear preference for youth, fitness, and people who follow the rules. It is a humbling mirror to look into.
🤝 Technology Needs the Humanities
This activity proves that programming self-driving cars is not just a math or engineering problem. It is a deeply philosophical and cultural one. We need literature, ethics, sociology, and the humanities to guide the machines we build, because computers cannot understand the value of a life without us teaching them first.
Digital Humanities: A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext
I just watched a two-hour video by Barad Sir called "A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext." It helped me understand how to teach online in a much better way. Here is what I learned.
Video: A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext
Teachers Need to be Online
Sir started by talking about a survey he gave to teachers. He found out that 85% of them do not have their own blogs. Very few have a personal website. He said that to teach today, teachers need to be active online. We cannot just rely on our school websites because we cannot update them fast enough. He wants all teachers to make a personal website, a blog, and a YouTube channel. He suggested using easy tools like Google Sites.
Moving from Text to Hypertext
Next, he talked about moving from plain text to interactive hypertext. He called normal printed books dead texts. Today, students want to click on words to find meanings or zoom in on pictures. He mentioned a book by Silvio Gaggi. This book explains how traditional teaching changes when we use digital tools.
The Salad Bowl Teaching Method
To help with these changes, Sir shared his Salad Bowl teaching method. He said we need a good base like Google Drive and Google Classroom. On top of that, we should mix live online classes, recorded YouTube videos, and online tests.
Live Teaching Examples
The best part was watching him teach live.
📝 Language Teaching
He shared a Google Doc link and asked teachers to write a story together. The computer automatically suggested spelling and grammar fixes. This helps students learn on their own. He also used Google Sheets to teach active and passive voice. For bad internet connections, he told us to use live captions and tools like Tactiq or Scribbl in Google Meet so students can read the words they miss.
📖 Literature Teaching
He showed that we need the internet to teach English literature properly. For example, he looked at a poem about white hawthorn flowers. He used Google Image Search to show how these flowers look like spilled milk from above. He also used Google Arts & Culture to teach the story of Icarus. He zoomed in on a painting to find Icarus falling in the corner. This showed us how to look at the edges of a story, not just the center.
Computers Writing Poetry
He talked about Generative Literature again. He played a game to see if the teachers could guess if a poem was written by a human or a computer. Many teachers guessed wrong! This shows that computers are changing what literature is.
Digital Portfolios
Finally, he talked about Digital Portfolios. He said students should not just throw away their work after a test. They should save their blogs, videos, and assignments on their own Google Sites. This portfolio becomes their final test to show they know the subject and how to use technology.
Watching him manage this huge online class with live documents and questions was a great learning experience for me.
Part 1: Understanding Hypertext and Digital Pedagogy
📚 Access Part 1:
https://dilipbarad.com/fdp/hypertext1/index.html
First, the presentation starts by explaining what "Hypertext" actually is. It is basically a system of storing text, images, and sounds on a computer so they can be connected via direct links, mainly using HTML and HTTP protocols on web browsers. But what really fascinated me as a literature student was how he brought in Silvio Gaggi's ideas. Gaggi points out that in our postmodern digital world, the idea of a fixed "subject" or "self" is decentered and fragmented. Because computers allow us to create interactive works, we, the readers are also decentered, and the traditional concept of an "author" is practically getting lost.
Because of this massive shift, Sir argues that our old ways of teaching (which relies on just the core content, a teacher, and a student) are falling apart. He calls for new pedagogical models like Blended Learning, Flipped Classrooms, and Mixed Mode setups. I loved his idea of the "Digital Pedagogy: Salad Bowl". It mixes the traditional face-to-face teaching with digital inputs, where every lesson is blended with some kind of digital output. The main objective here is to teach language and literature without losing its true essence, while finding innovative online platforms to actually get students involved.
The coolest part was watching the YouTube videos linked to see how this actually works in real life. Here is what I gathered from watching them and looking at the presentation examples:
🛠️ TEACHING TOOLS DEMONSTRATED
📝 The Glass Board / Light Board
In the first couple of videos, Sir shows off a studio setup using a Lightboard and a document viewer. The slides show him using this transparent Glass board to teach things like Business Letters. It is so much more engaging than a regular whiteboard because he is facing the camera while writing and making eye contact with us.
🔄 Flipped Learning
One of the videos focuses entirely on "Flipped Learning: In Search of Questions." In a flipped classroom, instead of the teacher just lecturing, students watch video resources before class. Then, when they come to the physical classroom, they fill the board with their own questions. It completely shifts the focus to what the learners are curious about.
🎥 OBS and Interactive Literature
The presentation slides also show how to use OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) mixed with a Lightboard to teach Plays. There is also a great example of using OBS to teach poems with moving pictures in the background, making the poetry feel alive rather than just words on a page.
Honestly, seeing all these tools makes me rethink how I study and how I plan to teach English in the future. It is no longer just about reading a flat page; it is about making literature interactive and giving the control back to the learners.
Part 2: Language Teaching and Visual Tools
📚 Access Part 2:
https://dilipbarad.com/fdp/hypertext2/index.html
Continuing from where the previous part of the presentation left off, the second half of sir's presentation and these two new videos really expand on the digital pedagogy concepts, particularly focusing on the challenges of language and literature teaching and how to actually execute these methods practically!
First, looking at the presentation slides in Part 2, Sir brings up a great point about teaching language: things like pronunciation, stress, and modulation are super important, but students often struggle to understand the teacher's pronunciation or the exact essence of linguistic units online. His solution is brilliant. He suggests using live captioning tools like "Live Caption in Chrome", "Tactiq for Google Meet Transcription", or voice typing features in Google Docs to help students catch exactly what is being said.
Then, he questions if we can truly provide the "quintessence" of poetry, prose, and drama online. Teaching foreign literature like 'English' has always been tough because of things like cultural anonymity, different social codes, and geographical or historical distance. He shows an amazing example using a poem that mentions "Hawthorns smile like milk splashed down" and "Noon's blue pitcher". To help students visualize this difficult imagery, he uses Google Image Search to show pictures of white Hawthorn shrubs that literally look like splashed milk from above, and connects the blue pitcher line to Susan Noon's painting "Blue Pitcher With Flowers". It is such a smart way to deconstruct texts! He also points out that Google Arts & Culture is a valuable resource for teaching literature (like the myth of Icarus) because it allows learners to interact with hypertext and explore theoretical concepts like "decentering the centre".
Now, moving to the videos, they completely blew my mind because they show the how-to side of things.
In the first video about "Google Drive for Engaging Learners," Sir actually runs a live, collaborative workshop. Instead of students sitting passively, he shows how to use Google Docs, Sheets, and Jamboard to make them active participants. I watched him share a Google Doc with the audience where everyone was writing an imaginary dialogue based on a picture at the exact same time. It was amazing to see so many cursors flying around! He points out that using these tools is great for "peer learning" because students see each other's work. Plus, he notes that tools like Google Docs automatically suggest grammar and spelling corrections, which means the machine is actively helping students learn language structures on the spot without the teacher having to correct every single error. He also uses Google Sheets to teach sentence structures (like turning active voice into passive voice), arguing that we need to hardwire grammatical structures into our minds because the way we write is very different from the way we speak. Finally, he demonstrates Google Jamboard, which basically acts as a collaborative digital blackboard where students can draw, use sticky notes, and build mind maps together.
The second video, "Using Glass-board / Learning Glass," goes deep into the actual setup he uses. This is where he explains the mechanics behind that really cool transparent board from the earlier presentation. He explains that traditional PowerPoints or whiteboards where the teacher turns their back to the students lose that crucial eye contact. With the Glass board, the writing "unfolds" before the students' eyes while the teacher maintains a connection. He even sketches out the exact setup for us: you need a piece of glass, some LED strip lights around the edges (to make the writing glow), some dark background curtains, and specific fluorescent neon markers. The trickiest part he explains is the camera setup: because you are writing on the front of the glass, the text looks backward to the camera! You have to use software (like OBS or apps like DroidCam on your phone) to mirror or "flip" the image horizontally so it reads normally to the audience.
As a student aiming to teach English, this is incredibly empowering. It shows me that teaching literature online does not have to be a boring, one-sided lecture. By using visual aids, collaborative Google tools, and innovative setups like the Learning Glass, I can actually keep my future students engaged and connected to the material!
Part 3: Generative Literature and Digital Assessment
📚 Access Part 3:
https://dilipbarad.com/fdp/hypertext3/index.html
In the 3rd part, it really stretched my understanding of what literature can even be. The presentation slides and the extra web resources completely blew my mind.
The presentation jumps right into a fascinating concept called "Generative Literature". This happens when a computer produces continuously changing literary texts by using a specific dictionary, a set of rules, and algorithms. Because a computer is producing the text instead of a human author, it completely changes classical concepts of literature and requires us to read in a very specific, new way. The slides reference the work of Matthew Kirschenbaum to ask if a computer can actually write poetry. There is even a fun "bot or not" website game where you guess if a poem was written by a human or a computer, alongside various online poem generator machines.
Things get really analytical after that. The slides introduce Matthew Jockers and his ideas on "Macroanalysis". The presentation also looks at Aiden and Michel's concept of "Culturomics", which uses Big Data as a lens to look at human culture.
As a language nerd, my absolute favorite part was the section on Corpus Linguistics. The presentation highlights the CLiC Dickens project, which is a web app designed to show how computer-assisted methods and corpus stylistics can be used to study literary texts. This technology actually leads to new insights into how readers perceive fictional characters. To do this, the project relies heavily on KWIC, which stands for Key Word In Context. KWIC is the most common format for concordance lines, and the presentation notes that the term was first coined by a man named Hans Peter Luhn.
Finally, the presentation wraps up by challenging how we assess our students. Instead of regular tests, it suggests creating a Digital Portfolio where all the work a student produces in the classroom is hyperlinked on their own personal website. Quoting educator Holly Clark, the slides emphasize that students today must be able to curate, archive, and expand on their work. It is crucial that we teach authentic digital citizenship and digital literacy skills, so students can create a digital web presence and share their learning with the world.
Ultimately, the big takeaway for me is that the digital era brings amazing new possibilities to our pedagogy. Moving from simple text to interactive hypertext gives us an unbelievably positive chance to improve the teaching and learning process. I am leaving this presentation feeling incredibly excited to explore these pedagogical possibilities for my future digital native students!
🎓 KEY CONCEPTS FROM ALL THREE PARTS
Hypertext
From static to interactive
Salad Bowl
Blended pedagogy
Live Captions
Accessibility tools
Generative Lit
AI-created texts
Digital Portfolio
New assessment model
Conclusion
In conclusion, my journey through these two activities taught me a lot about the future. The Moral Machine test showed me that technology is not just about writing code. It is about making deep moral choices that require human empathy and a strong understanding of ethics. On the other hand, Dr. Barad's presentation showed me how this same technology can bring new life to our classrooms. Moving from dead printed text to interactive hypertext gives teachers amazing ways to keep students interested. Whether we are teaching a machine how to make safe choices or teaching a student how to understand a classic poem, the main goal is the same. We must use digital tools wisely to make learning and living better for everyone.
📚 Works Cited
Barad, Dilip. "A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext | Language & Literature to the Digital Natives." YouTube, uploaded by DoE-MKBU, 15 Sept. 2021,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1H-ejKTGQM
Barad, Dilip. "A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext: Part 1." DilipBarad.com,
https://dilipbarad.com/fdp/hypertext1/index.html
Barad, Dilip. "A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext: Part 2." DilipBarad.com,
https://dilipbarad.com/fdp/hypertext2/index.html
Barad, Dilip. "A Pedagogical Shift from Text to Hypertext: Part 3." DilipBarad.com,
https://dilipbarad.com/fdp/hypertext3/index.html
MIT Media Lab. "Moral Machine." Moral Machine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
https://www.moralmachine.net/
This exploration examines two transformative applications of technology: the Moral Machine's ethical dilemmas in autonomous vehicle programming and the shift from traditional text-based pedagogy to interactive hypertext learning demonstrating how digital tools challenge our moral frameworks and revolutionize educational practice.
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