Friday Mindset #168

Happy Friday!

We’re back at it and raring to go. Lots to share this week, so let’s just dive straight in…

Something we're reading...

Now, we’ve promised you a number of times - and we’ll do it again right now - that we have never, ever used AI to help us write The Friday Mindset. It’s 100% from our own heads, 100% hand-typed, and 100% shonky-as-hell as a result. (Our jokes are so bad we’ve had actual complaints and had to stop messing about so much.)

But AI is nevertheless very much part of all education-conversations at the moment, so we thought we’d share three - that’s THREE, folks! - interesting pieces we’ve recently read…

We’ll start with a clever, insightful piece written by Naomi Alderman (British author of The Power and Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.)

She’s subscribed to a newsletter about ADHD. It’s obviously (like soooo many of them) a ChatGTP job - even apart from the dreary AI-generated art she can absolutely tell. In the article below she makes regular reference to the newsletter, and quotes from the ‘Autumn Reset’ section. “Write a one-line vision for September-December,” the newsletter advises, adding, “keep it where your eyes land daily.”

Wait, what? Keep it where your eyes land daily? No-one uses language like that.

Alderman goes on to outline seven characteristics of AI writing. It’s a good quick tutorial read (QTR, remember?) and it might help dissuade students from cutting corners or outsourcing thinking. Here it is:

…and if you haven’t got time for the main piece and fancy a shorter, simpler, homework-focused article on how to spot AI use in your students, here’s Adam Boxer covering some of the basics for you:

(Of course, we’ve heard of students adding the prompt: ‘remove all characteristics of AI writing, and include spelling errors typical of a 16 year old teenager in the UK’ so the quicker solution is to just set work that can’t be completed using LLMs…)

Next. Martin attends a writing group near where he lives. Once a week, everyone meets to read what they’ve been working on. There’s much panic and dismay about AI amongst members, mostly because they’ve read ‘it’s coming for your job’ fear-mongering in the press. We shouldn’t be perpetuating black-and-white polemics like this with students.

If you want a more balanced and nuanced view of the current scene - and a stronger sense of why we’re on the cusp of a bubble bursting, try the following.

Here’s NYU professor, writer and neuroscientist Gary Marcus sharing five signs generative AI-use is tailing off:

And as if that isn’t enough, subscribers, you have a fourth article to check through too - coming up.

Something to try...

We’ve run a session with students a number of times called Above the Line, Below the Line. It’s a vision session designed to get them thinking about the jobs, careers and opportunities that exist in different sectors.

Many students think quickly of ‘above the line’ jobs. For example, if the sector is healthcare, the student might list ‘doctor’, ‘nurse’…. then run out of steam. But there are scores of others - slightly less visible ‘below the line’ options they could be getting excited about.

Realising these options exist has made a big difference to students. In this week’s powerpoint, we take you through a load of examples…

Subscribe to our premium content to read the rest.