Gemini Advanced: Is IT GPT 4 Comparable and Can it Be Your AI Partner for Teaching and Learning

Introduction: The way we approach education is constantly shifting – it has to! Our focus on closing the digital divide, embracing personalized learning, and leveraging technological advances for good must continue evolving. Lucky for us, we have a remarkable new tool for our toolkit: Gemini Advanced, Google’s powerful AI model. Designed specifically for educators like us, Gemini Advanced is trying to be more competitive than just another chatbot. But, everyone’s question is: How does it compare to ChatGPT 4? It’s been a year since this GenAI tool has been on top, does it have a rival? Let’s explore and see if Gemini Ultra  tool is worth the $20 a month to help educators!

Gemini Advanced: Empowering Educators

• Addressing Digital Divides: Does Gemini Advanced compete with ChatGPT 4 & Claude 2 to analyze student work to pinpoint misconceptions and suggest resources to get everyone actively engaged. After brief experimentation, the answer is yes, it is roughly on par with ChatGPT 4, but has it’s own quirks and “personality”. The tendency for ChatGPT 4 to still be verbose is a little annoying at moments, but Google seems conversationally more balanced in length and style, maybe even more concise.
• Supporting Instructional Design: Need those lesson-planning wheels turning?  Get activity ideas aligned with standards, assessment suggestions, and even help adapting materials to match our ‘Portrait of an Educator’ model. Generally, it seems to be giving very similar instructional design ideas that seems to be roughly in line with ChatGPT 4 and more robust than Claude 2, since Claude 2 still is not an equivalent GenAI model.
• Real-Time Knowledge Hub: We may not have every answer at our fingertips (and that’s okay!). Gemini Advanced is an instant go-to resource for clarifying curriculum or diving deeper into those tough concepts. The interface seems a little more “Googley” and people will like it if they are familiar with Google Bard, but the instant “Internet” data, even though it is not directly connected to Internet search like we are used to still feels familiar, and even more connected then the ChatGPT 4 experience. Both can use the internet per se, but it seems more native in Gemini Ultra.

Differentiating from Other AI Models

• Beyond Text: Words have power, but sometimes a picture, diagram, or even some code unlocks learning for different students. Gemini Advanced allows for this, breaking traditional communication barriers and creating truly inclusive learning spaces. Currently this feature I have not tested yet. It seems when I try to test it, Gemini Advanced seems to forget what it can do, and needs to be reminded. The inherent multimodal design is what has been promised, but ChatGPT 4’s ability to read images and text still seems to win in my limited day one experience over these features of Gemini Advanced.
• Image Creation: Now here is where DALLE-3 seems to be superior. My last blog post briefly compared DALLE-3 to Imagen 2. I will reiterate that the visuals, as nice as it is to be able to be created during the iterative prompting process, is very useful, but does not compare inequality to DALLE-3 at this time. It does have moments of accurate spelling, which is nice, but it seems to be pretty hit or miss like DALLE-3 without a few follow-up specialized prompting.
• Focus on Understanding: Generally, Gemini Advanced can promote critical thinking, identifying connections, and helping students form their own, informed understanding the same way that ChatGPT 4 can. I look forward to doing more side-by-side testing, but generally if you absolutely love Google, than you can probably settle on spending your hard-earned $20 on this GenAI model instead of ChatGPT 4.

The Future: Collaboration and Impact

Gemini Advanced can be a helpful teaching assistant. It is also connected to all of your Google applications, so it is an extra bonus. As it grows and you learn more about it and it learns more about your interactions as a reference, I think it can be considered a great help and a useful relatively equivalent assistant AI like ChatGPT4. For the first time, it seems like there could be an equal. However, rumors of ChatGPT 4.5 and/or 5 or coming, so the race continues.