Tag: Technology

Reimagining assessment practices using AI tools

Posted on May 5, 2023May 5, 2023 by Doug Belshaw

Last week, I replied to someone who was concerned that AI tools such as ChatGPT meant students might not learn to ‘think for themselves’. When I responded that, as a parent and former teacher, I would hope that this means reimagining assessment practices, they asked what I meant. I explained, and they said they hadn’t thought about it like that.

So I thought I’d quickly capture the points I made in that thread so I can easily refer to them again in future.

If we zoom out and think about what we’re doing when we’re trying to help people learn things, then we need to know:

Where learners are currently at in terms of their current knowledge and skills
Where we want them to be at in terms of those knowledge and skills
What they’re interested in learning and how they’re interested in doing so

The third of these is usually sacrificed for the sake of efficiency (think: large classrooms). However, the crux of learning is feedback, and the more personalised the better. I’ve been using ChatGPT with my son for revision purposes, and it can be used as an excellent tutor, giving precise feedback.

So when we’re talking about reimagining assessment practices, we’re really talking about personalising learning in a way that allows individuals to achieve their own goals, as well as those that society wants them to achieve.

Right now, we’re augmenting an existing system using new tools. Hence the worry about exams and essays. But once we go back to what we’re trying to achieve here, we’ll realise that AI and other new technologies allow us to personalise learning and provide tighter feedback loops. Which was the point all along! 😄

Using Snapchat’s ‘My AI’ feature for revision

Posted on April 26, 2023April 26, 2023 by Doug Belshaw

Yesterday, I posted on Mastodon that I’ve been helping my son with his GCSE revision using ChatGPT 4. Today, after initially only being available to paying subscribers, he and his friends woke up to Snapchat’s ‘My AI’ feature being available to all users.

Snapchat’s offering is powered by ChatGPT, so notwithstanding issues raised by The Center for Humane Technology in The AI Dilemma, I wanted to share ways in which this could be a positive move for teenagers.

Here’s examples of how you can prompt ChatGPT (and therefore My AI) to be a useful exam revision tutor:

I know this is all very new, but giving the power of all this, schools need to be teaching some AI literacy. This includes, of course, the dangers of giving away personal data to tech companies, but also prompt crafting. For ideas on the latter, I’d recommend subscribing to Tom Barrett’s new weekly newsletter of the same name.

Update: I’ve been helping him with his Biology revision this evening, and used this prompt. He then took the 10 questions (which I printed out), answered them using pen and paper, as he would in an exam, and I typed the answers in for feedback from ChatGPT.

I want you to ask me questions about AQA GCSE Biology, combined trilogy. Come up with 10 at a time and tell me how many marks each question is worth (between 1 and 6). The questions should be on Ecology and the number of marks should increase in value between the first and last questions. Give me all of the questions, then I will respond to them one by one. You will then tell me what my mark would be, give me feedback on how I can improve (using emoji!), and then ask me for the response to my next question.

The future of collaboration is federated

Posted on April 25, 2023April 25, 2023 by Doug Belshaw

These days, people collaborate and work together from all over the world. As a supporter of open technology, I am interested in approaches that help individuals and teams collaborate better, no matter where they are. Ideally, these approaches use open standards. That’s why I’m interested in a decentralised approach to task management.

Imagine a tech conference being organised by three different organisations, each with their own task management system. This could lead to confusion, missed opportunities, and duplication of effort. But with federated task management, teams can connect to one another through ActivityPub, a decentralised protocol, making it easy to work together on tasks, share updates, and exchange ideas.

Here’s how it could work:

The organising committee sets up a shared project within a system which is compatible with ActivityPub.
The project is divided into sub-projects for various aspects of the conference, such as venue logistics, marketing, speaker coordination, and sponsor outreach.
Each organisation can create and assign tasks to their team members, but also collaborate and share tasks with members from other organisations as needed.
As tasks are completed or updated, the status changes are shared across the federated network, keeping everyone informed in real-time.
The system sends notifications and reminders to assigned team members, ensuring that everyone stays on track and deadlines are met.
Participants can communicate and share resources, such as documents, images, or links, using the built-in collaboration features of the system.

This approach is an improvement because it allows users to control their own data while still letting them collaborate with others. It makes working together much simpler, and it helps people focus on their tasks. This tool can be helpful for many industries, like education and advocacy groups. It shows how decentralised technology can help people work together better, without the limits of traditional systems.

This post is prompted by a conversation I had with Tibor Katelbach from Communecter who has started exploring this area. There’s some prior art from the Bonfire team with the Coordination extension, which was first discussed on their blog in 2021.

Screenshot of Bonfire Coordination extension

When I started moving away from Twitter towards the Fediverse around six years ago, people told me that social networks such as Mastodon would “never take off”. Yet here we are. I hope we end up with the same situation with federated task management.

Image: Visual Thinkery for WAO