Category: Digital
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Review: Simple Tools by Martin Jorgensen
When I first received a copy of Martin Jorgensen’s Simple Tools I expected a book filled with suggestions for apps and digital tools to use in class. In fact, there are only a few recommendations for tools scattered throughout the text. What I found instead was a much more purposeful and systematic method for selecting…
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Interview with Mike Sharples: Story Machines
Feature image by DALL E & Leon Furze I had the pleasure of speaking with Mike Sharples, coauthor of Story Machines, which is available now from Routledge. You can also check out Mike’s AI story writer at https://story-machines.net/ if you want to try your hand at writing (or co writing) an AI story yourself. Transcript…
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Review: Story Machines by Mike Sharples and Rafael Pérez y Pérez
Mike Sharples and Rafael Pérez y Pérez’s Story Machines: How Computers Have Become Creative Writers presents an entertaining account of Artificial Intelligence, and of both human and machine creativity. Having heard Mike Sharples talk on a podcast about his ideas regarding the future of Artificial Intelligence, I expected the book to be looking forward into…
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Robot revision: Year 12s versus the machines
I’ve been posting a lot recently about AI in education, particularly the potential impact of AI writers in the English classroom. I’m being optimistic too: I don’t think that AI writers are heralding the end of days for human authors. Nor do I think we’re ushering in an age of dubious ethics and constant cheating…
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Replacing myself with robots: Why I’m leaving the classroom
There are a few reasons why I’ve decided to leave the classroom. I’m lucky – I’m not burned out or disenfranchised with education. In fact, I’ve never felt more enthusiastic about education as a whole, despite the complications of a first semester fraught with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. But the lockdowns, remote learning,…
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An AI wrote this essay (and then I had to mark it)
I’ve written several posts now on the potential impact of AI in education, especially in the English classroom. These have explored AI co-authored essays, the ethics and critical literacy of robot writers, and most recently an exploration of how we might use AI for creative writing. But I have not used an AI writer to…
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Remote in the Regions: what we’ve learned
It’s been less than 12 months since regional Victorian schools were last in lockdown. Although it might seem like a hazy memory, there was still a great deal of uncertainty around the return to face to face during the T2/3 holidays this time last year. By the 5th of August, all Vic schools returned to…
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The Authorbot Diaries: Creative writing from the mind of a machine
This is the third post in a series (of two posts… so clearly I got carried away) on AI writers and their possible use in the English classroom, and education as a whole. For the previous posts, see here: Do Androids Dream of Electric Essays? AI in the English Classroom I, Writerbot: Critical Literacy in…
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I, Writerbot: Critical Literacy in an Age of Machine Authors
This is the second post on the topic of AI writers. For the first post, on the nature and purpose of essay writing when AI can write almost as well as our students, click here 👇 Critical Literacy and Digital Texts Critical literacy is an essential skill, both in the English classroom and beyond. It…
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Essays? AI in the English Classroom
Rise of the Machines The term artificial intelligence was coined as early as 1956, at a conference in Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. After a brief flurry of activity, government interest – and funding – dropped off dramatically until the 1980s, and it wasn’t until the 1990s that IBM’s Deep Blue caught the public eye when…