Tag: education
-
The AI Iceberg: Understanding ChatGPT
Analogies are useful for understanding complex ideas, and there are plenty of complexities for educators trying to wrap their heads around ChatGPT. In this post, I’ll try to explain some of the features of the chatbot and the model it’s built on top of. I’m deliberately avoiding any kind of analogy that represents the AI…
-
The AI Assessment Scale: From no AI to full AI
AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have kicked the hornet’s nest in education. From articles declaring the “end of everything” (writing, the English classroom, the entire education system…) to claims that AI will revolutionise education, we’ve seen the full spectrum of hype. What we’re yet to see much of, however, are practical solutions for dealing with…
-
Artificial Intelligence and Film Studies: Midjourney versus CAMELS
CAMELS? As an English teacher, I’ve done a lot of analytical film studies over the years. The biggest problem is always students’ grasp of technical language: film analysis tends to drift off into character and plot description, even more so than for written texts. So, when I teach film, I lean more into my Media…
-
Crafting Texts: Ideas
This is the second post in a series which goes deeper into the new VCE English and EAL Crafting Texts outcome. Each post includes some discussion of the Area of Study along with practical lesson ideas. Even if you’re not a VCE English teacher, you’ll find this post useful if you use mentor or model…
-
Teaching Writing in the Age of AI: Reinventing English
This is the fifth and final post in the series Teaching Writing in the Age of AI. Check out the other posts in the series: In this series, I’ve explored how teaching writing might change as the adoption of Artificial Intelligence accelerates. Late 2022 was a watershed moment in AI, with ChatGPT pushing generative AI…
-
Teaching Writing in the Age of AI: Asking Questions
This is the third post in a series exploring how teaching writing will change in the face of Artificial Intelligence large language models. The first two posts explored the kinds of writing that can and can’t be done with AI, and academic integrity. In my book Practical Reading Strategies, I covered six reading strategies that…
-
Reading and Exploring Texts: Key Knowledge and Skills Deep Dive
This is a collection of the posts I wrote earlier in the year which explored all of the Key Knowledge and Skills for the new VCE English Unit 1 Area of Study 1: Reading and Exploring Texts. Bookmark this page and refer back to it as you work you way through this new area of…
-
Using ChatGPT for Conferencing and Feedback
I’ve used conferencing for years as my main form of feedback and assessment. I stopped collecting piles of books, stopped writing margin notes that no-one ever read, and stopped correcting work like a human spell-checker. Aside from the hours of time saved by not “correcting” work, I also built stronger relationships with students as a…
-
Teaching Writing in the Age of AI
With Victoria the latest state to ban ChatGPT, teachers everywhere are grappling with the implications of the large language model and the impact it will have on the classroom. We know that banning and blocking technology is – at best – a temporary solution. Students will find ways around the blocks, and teachers will be…
-
Practical Writing Strategies: Sneak Peak
This is an extract from the introduction to Practical Writing Strategies. PWS is written by myself and Benjamin White, and will be published by Amba Press later this year. Introduction What is writing? When Leon wrote Practical Reading Strategies, he started with a seemingly simple question: what is reading? The question came from a Community…