Esperance Senior High School has introduced innovative ways to embrace artificial intelligence (AI) for learning alongside an increasing number of schools across the country.
A report by Camion Education released in June shows 78.2 per cent — nearly four in five — Australian secondary schools are now using AI.
Meanwhile 20.6 per cent planned to introduce or increase its use within the next year.
Esperance Senior High School (ESHS) principal Janet Silburn Barker said ESHS teachers were adapting education processes, like assessments, to embrace the technology.
She said it was in the hands of teachers to educate students to use it effectively.
“If you’re asking kids to take home an assessment, AI will probably have a good go at doing it,” Ms Silburn Barker said.
“One way we use it is to get AI to write the assignment and then bring it back and now let’s use critical thinking skills to appraise what AI has written and then how can we make it our own.
“Our students will go to university and we all know that checkers like Turnitin are obsolete and AI checkers can’t keep up with AI so we need to teach our kids how to be really critical users of it.”
She said AI was a “brilliant tool” that could not be ignored in today’s technology-driven climate.
“It’s like a library book really, that’s all it is,” she said.
“You could go to the library and copy out the whole book if your teacher didn’t know or didn’t pick the language but it’s not going to help your learning – it’s not going to help you think better.
“You have to embrace it – it’s phenomenal.”
WA’s Department of Education prohibited AI in schools at the beginning of 2023 but the ban was lifted three months later once the government devised AI guidelines.
Ms Silburn Barker said one policy considered the use of AI by teachers.
“It’s so easy to make a mistake as a teacher with AI so if you asked AI to write reports for all your students, you could put the detail in, put the kids in and it would print out fantastic reports – we’ve used it for that,” she said.
“But if you put your student’s name there, there’s an issue because you’ve added their name to the (online) sphere out there so that’s a trap for people who are not yet familiar with the mechanics of it.
“The department was looking at the very best ways to put policy in place around it so we would use it safely.”
According to ChatGPT, AI soared in popularity in 2023 but it first started developing in the mid-20th century.
