Weekly Newsletter Practical AI Strategies Hi everyone, First of all, thanks to everyone who responded to last week’s newsletter with their thoughts on “AI;DR” and the trust between readers and writers. I had so many responses that I’m planning a follow up article. It’s definitely a complex topic that a lot of you are interested in! LLMs are Digital Skeleton Keys For years now I’ve been exploring the capabilities of large language models like GPT and Claude. Over time, we’ve seen a shift away...
10 days ago • 1 min read
Weekly Newsletter Practical AI Strategies AI; Didn't Read... Hi everyone, Every Saturday morning, I open up my MacBook after breakfast and write out these emails. If I planned ahead, I could probably write them on Thursday or Friday, but the week always seems to get away on me... Based on the newsletters and emails I'm subscribed to, an increasing number of people are using GenAI to write their weekly emails. I suppose it saves a little time, and maybe makes the planning and scheduling a...
17 days ago • 2 min read
Weekly Newsletter Practical AI Strategies What are AI hallucinations? Hi everyone, Since the release of ChatGPT, people have been caught out with large language models' tendency to make stuff up. The industry settled on the word "hallucination" to describe this phenomenon, and I'm sure you've all heard of it, and experienced it yourselves. If you're a teacher, you've probably had students hand in hallucinated work. If you use AI yourself, you've probably noticed a few wild claims or incorrect...
24 days ago • 1 min read
Weekly Newsletter Practical AI Strategies Exams are not the answer (part two) Hi everyone, There's a narrative in the media and amongst a lot of people I speak with: AI makes coursework easy to fake, exams are hard to fake, so schools should do more exams. It sounds like common sense, and it's wrong on two counts. First, it's bad pedagogy, which teachers already know, and second, it directly contradicts the assessment authorities that certify every Year 12 student in this country, which fewer...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Weekly Newsletter Practical AI Strategies Exams are not the answer Hi everyone, I admit I got a bit angry this week. The media coverage of AI in education has been hostile for a while now, and if you teach in Australia you've no doubt seen an increase in articles blaming schools and universities for "not doing enough" in the face of so-called AI cheating. But I boiled over when I saw an article in The Age - a prominent Australian mainstream paper - criticising a Melbourne school for students...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Weekly Newsletter Practical AI Strategies If you know, you know: practice to principles Hi everyone, For the past few months I've been working on a series of posts called "if you know, you know", or IYKYK. The basic idea is that you can use GenAI in all kinds of weird and interesting ways, but only if you know what's already possible. That creates huge problems, because by design AI just looks a bit like a search engine. Because of this, most people's mental models of GenAI are "a thing...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Weekly Newsletter Practical AI Strategies AI and the Techlash Hi everyone, I'm sure you've noticed an uptick in articles recently which are not only anti-tech, but specifically anti-AI. For the past few years, I've been writing about the (many) ethical concerns of the AI industry: environmental concerns, bias, privacy, and more. But in recent months, there's been a new surge of mainstream media journalism about the technology. A lot of it has been positioned around the "cognitive offload"...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Weekly Newsletter Practical AI Strategies Beyond Scales: In theory and in practice Hi everyone, This week I’ve been reflecting on the journey of the AI Assessment Scale since its first version back in 2023 (or 650 years ago in AI years). Many readers of this email will be familiar with the scale (if you’re not, aiassessmentscale.com has all the papers), and I’ve had the pleasure of talking through the AIAS with hundreds of educators in the past few years. But we also know that scales and...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Weekly Newsletter Practical AI Strategies Hi everyone, This week I’ve been at schools in Melbourne and Regional Victoria talking about the near future of GenAI, and the ever present “AI assessment” conversation. One thing was clear across all sessions. Whether teachers love AI, hate it, or are totally indifferent, everybody understands the importance of helping students negotiate this new online territory. The Internet isn’t what it was when we were growing up! Many of us are old enough to...
2 months ago • 1 min read