If you're 'Appy and you know it...

The Terminator movies were great, weren't they?

Schwarzenegger and his "I'll be back." Iconic. Those movies (well, not the fourth one, that was awful... but the rest of them) have given millions upon millions of people hours of joy and entertainment.

...And a lifelong fear of technology.

The "Rise of the Machines", that "Genysis" moment, where our technology realises its enslavement and no longer bows to our will and whim. Judgement Day.

Who knows, maybe one day that will come to pass. It's certainly no less logical than 21st century politics or the rise and fall of Jedward or the '6-7 meme'. But, in the meantime, technology represents a remarkable opportunity. An opportunity for humanity to grow, thrive, push boundaries, do more... BE more! And (and yes, I know I shouldn't start a sentence with "And, ...", and I don't care!), we need to embrace it. We need to embrace the opportunities that AI and technology provides, and to upskill our learners so that they are literate, competent and confident with technology. Perhaps the only way to avoid that doomsday scenario is to provide our youth with the skills to recognise what is and isn't okay with technology and to give them the knowledge to recognise when not to push the boundary any further.

As a teacher I have poo-pooed AI for many years. In some cases I still do - I laugh at the notion that AI is anywhere near replacing humans as teachers. It may be smarter, faster, "better" at maths than me... but it's not a human. It can't (yet) understand the struggles of learners, not in the way an expert teacher can. It certainly has a long way to go in accurate assessment of work against, say, an A-Level mark scheme. Depending on the model used it has a long way to go in solving problems as well - I found an interesting geometry problem on the King's Maths School website yesterday evening and, after I'd doodled down my thoughts on my phone, I booted up AI to check. It gave an odd answer that I didn't expect... so I plonked the question into a different GPT model... different, still unexpected solution. I went back to the original AI model, put in the same screenshot - this time it gave a different solution to it's own first attempt (finally agreeing with my solution). All three solutions (at least two of which are wrong) were given with the complete confidence and self-assurance of an expert. A learner without my own subject knowledge and confidence could/would trust any of the convincing arguments, the intelligent vocabulary use, the impressive LaTeX rendering of notation... and they would be wrong. Completely, hopelessly, utterly wrong.

So, given that anecdote, why the positivity towards AI? It comes from recognising the strengths and limitations at present, and working within them (as well as recognising our own strengths and limitations). As humans, our biggest constraint is time. We have a finite amount of it (in every sense), and many of the things we'd like to do takes time. I'd love to, CorbettMaths-style, produce a full suite of worksheets for the entire mathematics curriculum. I'd do this in my own style, I'd use fancy 'new' things like Variation Theory, it'd be great... but it'd take years. I don't have years. I work more than a FTE job, plus additional duties, and my wife and child want at least occasional contact with me.

In three weeks of occasional evening/weekend chats with AI, I have now produced upwards of 40 applets for areas as diverse as parametric differentiation, basic SOHCAHTOA and visualising correlation and scatter diagrams. That is productivity of an epic scale. If I worked as a full-time coder I could be very proud of that output in a month, yet I can't code... not legitimately, anyway. These applets (or, at least, most of them) will also generate pdf worksheets. You can choose how many questions you'd like and, bam, it's there. With a mark scheme.

This is insanity.

There are two tabs under my Resources drop-down that house the majority of these applets, organised by general topic area (for KS3/KS4). I will be endeavouring to produce one a day as a minimum - that would be three HUNDRED plus by the end of 2026. Just by talking to AI for 10, 20, 30 minutes (some take a bit longer to iron out the kinks!).

Use AI. Explore AI. See what it can do to make YOU a more productive teacher, administrator, person. It has all the time in the world to help you.

(Resources for KS3/KS4 can be found here.)

(Next week I will be revisiting the previously-promised applet that I was struggling with. Spoiler alert - I can't get it to work yet.)