Friday Mindset #85

Happy Friday, folks.

Some exciting stuff for you this week and no time to waste so let's jump straight in...

Something to try...

It's been a while since we've put together a video for you! Here's education researcher Douglas Barton discussing revision timetables; why some students make them and stick to them, and why others make fictional ones they can't possibly follow.

We've clipped it, dropped a couple of transition slides in, and got it down to 2 minutes for you. A useful resource, we hope!

Something we're reading...

Listening to, rather than reading - but this is an important talk, we think. It's Cal Newport (Professor, Georgetown, Washington) discussing ChatGPT. He explains exactly how the AI works. Neither Steve, Martin or Tony are computer scientists, so Newport's explanation of how large language models work was fascinating and, in a weird way, reassuring. He provides a calm assessment of what Chat GPT does and how it operates, and he's a teacher, so he delivers patiently and in a logical, understandable way, with examples.

We listen to Newport's podcast, so always access his stuff in audio. The episode is here. You need to scroll through to 10:10 to get the intro, and listen for thirty-five minutes or so of quality teaching. Perfect for your commute home!

Alternatively, you might want to watch the session; it looks like about 9:00 is where you need to pick it up on the video:

What does ChatGPT mean for education? Our early, unrefined thoughts will be pretty much what you're thinking too... if our assessments require students to regurgitate information - summarise, outline or explain ideas and concepts; essentially reproduce texts that already exist - we're going to get ChatGPT stuff handed in. (We've been seeing this in our discussions with university tutors recently.)

Upshot is, we'll need to set better, more interesting tasks, but one thing that's certainly emerging: AI will provide plenty of opportunities for retrieval practice. A good very short article to go alongside Newport's ChatGPT exploration might be this from Seth Godin:

Godin makes a very good point about 'more information' and 'more learning' being entirely unconnected. He shares a great hypothetical question to contemplate. And most importantly, he introduces ChatPDF, which generates tests and quizzes. Used well, it could be a retrieval-practice winner. You can experiment with it here:

Our latest offer...

Heads up! We're going to be running a free Zoom webinar on implementation on June 14th. We'll cover some of the steps we took when implementing VESPA, and explore what other schools/colleges have done. There'll be a powerpoint and accompanying 'checklist' handout, giving you a term-by-term running order for a number of activities that help you get a programme (any programme) up and running. So in summary:

Implementing VESPA - a checklist approach

Wednesday June 14th, 3:45-4:45 on Zoom

Just email at [email protected], and we'll send you through the meeting details!

And that's it for this week, folks. Get out into the weekend! All the best to you and yours,

Martin, Steve and Tony