My review of this for Teach Secondary magazine has just come out. Here is the published version, followed by the copy I submitted, which is slightly longer because it has a little more detail.
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Conference: Next steps for AI in Education in England
Last year I attended and reported on a similarly-named conference. The Westminster Forum is running another one this year.
Read MoreHow I reduced my marking time from 4 hours a week to 15 minutes
Reading each student’s work each week, at a rate of ten minutes each, took nearly two and a half hours. Thinking of suitable comments, adding them in to the appropriate place in Google Classroom, and updating my spreadsheet markbook took another hour and a half.
Something had to be done.
Read MoreShould the Computing curriculum be ditched?
This is a serious question. What is the point of teaching kids computer programming, when AI can do all the hard work?
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An AI experiment to summarise student feedback
An AI summary of feedback received on a course.
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A big question mark, by Terry Freedman
The DfE's foray into AI for education: the good news and the (potentilly) bad news
We don’t have very long to wait before the educational AI projects funded by the Department for Education are unveiled, if all goes to plan. But I have some concerns.
Read MoreWhen AI can write as well as this, I'll worry! Plus a prize competition.
To paraphrase what Arthur C Clarke said about teachers, any writer that can be replaced by a computer probably should be.
Read MoreDystopian visions: Computers don't argue (Updated with reference to AI)
The writer does an excellent job of both reflecting the annoyance of dealing with a computer program that has no flexibility as well as no intelligence, and highlighting the need for programs to invite human input when the consequences of not doing so can be catastrophic.
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Click the pic to see the original report's website.
Shape of the Future: How education system leaders can respond to the provocations of AI
I used Google’s Notebook LM to summarise this report. I have done this to bring the report and its main points to your attention, and to put Notebook LM through its paces.
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Created in Bing Image Creator
The human touch
I’ve been experimenting a lot with using AI, especially for summarising long documents. But the summaries lacked the human touch.
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Come back! Drawing by Terry Freedman
The KCL Report on the future of Computing Education
The Computing curriculum report from Kings College makes some great recommendations for fixing the failures of the current curriculum.
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The future of AI in Education: notes on a Westminster Education Forum Conference
A few months ago I attended a Westminster Education Forum about the use of AI in Education. I spent quite some time going through the transcript and making notes, but then I thought: why not use AI to do the work?
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Using AI to mark students' work: postscript
I didn’t think AI's answer was good enough. I didn’t ask how ethical the proposals were. I asked it to mark an Economics essay.
Read MoreUsing AI to mark students' work
The Department for Education in England is running a study on how AI might be used for marking work. I thought I’d test AI’s ability to mark a student’s economics essay.
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Picture created in Ideogram.ai
Suggestions for using AI in education
I’ve been experimenting a lot with using AI. Not for creative writing I should add: I think AI has a long way to go before it will tempt me to eschew the likes of David Foster Wallace, Nabakov or Orwell. But for helping one think and, I’m sure, for admin, I think it’s a game-changer.
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AI for bloggers?
In my recent blogging course, I abandoned my carefully-prepared lesson, or part pf it, threw caution to the winds, and suggested to the class that we experiment with using AI for writing blog posts. Here’s a partial blog post it came up with, which you will agree is utter rubbish…
Read MoreI prefer a malignant super computer to a benificent one
Imagine being in the situation where your kitchen won't allow you to rustle up an egg in case you burn yourself.
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Review: The Language of Deception: Weaponizing Next Generation AI, by Justin Hutchens
AI might not be ‘intelligent’ in the strictest sense – but it can certainly appear to be, which is almost as worrying.
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This is what Ideogrm.ai came up with in response to the prompt “Person using AI”.
Do kids still need to learn how to code?
A week or so ago we were chatting to a neighbour. She said she thinks her daughter, who looked about six years old, should learn how to code, as that’s the future. Didn’t I agree? I’m afraid I said that didn’t.
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How useful is AI for generating words?
As it happens, I first addressed this question in 2012, and the first part of this essay, down to the part about robots, is taken from the notes I made then. My opinion hasn’t changed, in spite of the enormous strides in AI in the last twelve years.
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