💻 The Great Digital Divide

Hey human,

Just a quick one to say thank you to the now over 3,000 subscribers to this newsletter. It really does mean a lot that you value the output. Now, onto the real news…

📚 AI+education news

• On the perils of ChatGPT planning lessons, David Didau has some thoughts. This mirrors my own thoughts that if you feel the need to go to ChatGPT first of all, then perhaps this is a useful proxy that the task could be one to stop completely.

• One the AI digital divide, The Alan Turing Institute report that those in private education outweigh the number in state schools using AI. 52% of children attending private schools report using generative AI, as opposed to 18% of children in state schools.

🌍 Wider AI updates

• A lot has been written about a paper that claims the use of AI causes ‘cognitive debt’. The truth, as ever, is more complex than that. Though I am the first to admit that this paper very much aligned with my biases around the impact of student learning with AI.

• Which AI should you use? Ethan Mollick has some ideas.

• British doctors are in some hot water after using unapproved AI software to transcribe patient conversation.

🎯 Prompt

A blast from the past. Report writing season is upon us and if teachers are not using AI to support them, then they are probably using report statement banks. This prompt gets the GenAI of your choice to create a range of general comments that can be used for reports. The power of this prompt is that it produces 9 comments across a mixture achievement and progress measurements. They are purposefully subject agnostic, but you can of course feel free to provide details of your subject for them to be subject specific if you like. There is no limit to the amount of additional detail you can add, and if you like the tone of a particular comment from the matrix, you can ask the GenAI for more that match to that space on the matrix. The prompt uses delineators to help guide the LLM.

You need to write some statements that could be used for school reports for children who go to school in England. Every year, schools must report back on the following, achievements and general progress The reports need to be in a professional and well written tone as the audience for them are the parents. The language should be positive. For example, instead of <example> Jonny constantly messes around in lessons </example> it should be <example> Jonny has worked hard on his focus, but can still find it difficult to participate in lessons.</example>.

Create a matrix using what needs to be reported. There needs to be three categories for each aspect that needs reporting - below achievement, median achievement, above achievement. This needs to be repeated for the other two. Create statements that could be used for all possible combinations. For example, someone who has median acheivement but above progress. Leave space for proper nouns.

Till next week.

Mr A 🦾