Year: 2022
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Socrates Against The Machine: Can Looking Back Help Us to Think About the Future of Education?

Socrates Against The Machine: Can Looking Back Help Us to Think About the Future of Education? In the past two weeks, AI writing has gone mainstream. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, an app sitting on top of its latest large language model, was released for “public testing”, and it seems to have captured the imagination of a large chunk…
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Prompt Whispering: Getting better results from ChatGPT

This article was originally posted over on LinkedIn. If you haven’t heard about ChatGPT in the past week, then your LinkedIn feed looks dramatically different to mine. Probably due to the nature of the people I follow, and the algorithms lurking under the hood, the latest experiment from OpenAI has almost entirely filled my feed, Chrome suggestions,…
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Can an AI critique human writing?

My previous post on OpenAI’s latest offering – ChatGPT – demonstrated how far the technology has come in essay writing. ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI. It is capable of generating human-like text based on a given prompt or input. ChatGPT uses a technique called “transformer” architecture to process the input text…
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A New Level of AI Essay

I’ve written a number of posts this year about Artificial Intelligence and education. Next week, I’ll start my PhD exploring AI and writing, and it’s fair to say I’ve been down the rabbit hole. The rate of change is very rapid, and it seems like every week a new app is released which builds on…
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Reading and Exploring: How to write the OC1 Personal Response

I just got back from the VATE conference after two days with some of the best English teachers and presenters in the state. We also heard directly from the VCAA and a handful of the examination panel about the new Study Design. It’s clear that the new SD is looming large for English teachers and…
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Choosing Mentor Texts

Before the new VCE English and EAL Study Design was launched for consultation I had already written a few posts about using texts as models, from students’ own writing through to literary classics. When the SD came out, it was great to see that idea translated into the ‘mentor texts’ for Crafting and Creating Texts.…
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Planning for Reading and Exploring Texts: The Personal Response

Now that we’re well and truly clear of the Year 12 exams, most schools in Victoria have turned their attention towards the new Study Design and preparing students for 2023. Whether your school has a head start or step up program or not, chances are you’ll be planning your approach to the new Personal Response…
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What is a ‘Critical Friend’?

As I’m moving towards further study and consulting next year, the most popular service I’ve been asked about has been the ‘critical friend’ role mentioned on my website. It’s an exciting and interesting role because it allows me to work with very diverse schools and requires an ongoing relationship with schools rather than just a…
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Aligning 7-10 with the new VCE English and EAL Study Design

Before beginning this article, I need to point out that I absolutely do not recommend turning the 7-10 curriculum into a “mini VCE”, or a funnel that only points students towards the senior certificate. There are many varied pathways students can take through secondary school, and the VCE is only one of them. When I…
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VCE English and EAL: Assessing the new Crafting and Creating Texts outcomes

In all of the Professional Learnings I’ve been running recently related to the new Study Design, the assessment question has cropped up more than any other. We don’t have a sample examination yet; and we won’t get one until well into next year. But the VCAA have provided us with Unit 3 and 4 Performance…