Yesterday I was delighted to be running a staff meeting at Tarrington Lutheran School where two teachers did some initial analysis of an image I had provided and then plugged their key words into Magic School and Chat GPT to generate a coherent summary of the image. The teachers then took the summary and had one of the AI tools turn it into a poem that captured the spirit of the summary. The process was an excellent example of how Generative AI can be used safely and ethically to produce a second draft of some first draft thinking done by the real people in the room.
While the initial kneejerk reaction in education was to ban the use of Generative AI in schools much like that time long ago when people were looking to ban calculators, we have quickly and necessarily moved on to a different conversation. We know that what we need to discuss is not whether we allow staff and students to use Generative AI tools but how we might develop appropriate guidelines and guardrails to ensure beneficial, ethical and privacy protected use within our schools.
Leon Furze is immersed in the developing world of Generative AI and its implications for education within our Australian context. He writes regularly and extensively on the topic. Here is one of his latest blog posts where he provides a summary of the articles that he has produced during Term 1 this year. https://leonfurze.com/2024/04/03/term-1-highlights-genai-in-education/
Our aim is to provide an opportunity for leaders to come together in Semester two to focus on what being proactive in this space looks like for our schools context. Stay tuned for more details.
