The Blog
Thoughts on technology, education and what happens when they collide.
Reading the dictionary and other lies
8 Dec 24 ~How to train great readers in a world of cheap words. Don’t tell them, but I’ve been lying to my Year 11s. What started as a joke is now well on its way to becoming an essential part of our daily routine. Every morning they push me further into it, and every day I desperately try to bluff my way out of it. In fact, it’s getting to the point where I’m starting to believe it myself. The lie? That I’ve read and me… read more ⇝
Filters, for the children
30 Oct 24 ~ This Hacker News comment started turning a cog in my brain: are we going about LLMs all wrong, by plonking them straight in the hands of the end user? I’m of the mind that AI, in its current state, really isn’t a tool meant for an end user to interact with. It feels like it’s the most useful when it’s transparent and you – as an end user – don’t know that t… read more ⇝
The AI I use every day
29 Sep 24 ~The simplest question is always the best It’s been nearly two years since I started fiddling with LLMs. In many ways, they’re the perfect technology to tinker with: zero up-front cost, straight-forward documentation, with plaintext input and output. As with most overhyped start-ups, my tinkering has largely been in the form of writing fancy wrappers around an API. I’ve tested out a few - some sill… read more ⇝
Turning radio into podcasts
28 Sep 24 ~An exercise in pettiness, podcasts and programming. A boy needs his bongs I love the BBC. But I do not love BBC Sounds. It is clunky, it lacks automatic downloads, and it has an unbearable habit of advertising the podcast you are listening to during said podcast, with a bonus reminder that you can listen to the podcast on the app you are currently using. As more and more BBC programmes vanish from open podca… read more ⇝
AI for Me, but not for Thee
30 Jun 24 ~When it comes to using LLMs, educators need to lead by example. The temptation to ‘just get ChatGPT to do it’ is as strong for teachers as it is for students. So should we be surprised when pupils reach for the AI to finish their homework, when we do the same with our paperwork? The end of term is always a rush, with exams to mark, units to finish, reports to write. That last bulletpoint on the to-do list is often the m… read more ⇝
I ♥ Markdown
1 Mar 24 ~Let the writing do the talking No matter how often you do it, starting the process of writing is agonising. It is slow and full of false starts. Not because we don’t know what to write, but because we could write anything. The blank page is infinite, without footholds or signposts. So we start doodling in the margins. Death to .docx🔗 Children are most susceptible to this trap. Students w… read more ⇝
AI will eat your English Department
22 May 23 ~And Humanities will be for pudding. TL;DR: The Times has been good enough to publish my letter on this topic - so just read that if you want. Otherwise: given the infinite space afforded by a personal blog, I thought it worth elaborating my thinking here. Given all the problems faced by British head teachers - the yawning gulf between pay and inflation, opaque inspection frameworks, crater… read more ⇝
The case for banning Google
13 May 23 ~You’re Bard, sunshine. We can’t control the tides, but we can at least stop our students playing on the sandbars It seems incredible to say now, but I once received lessons in How To Google. And yesterday, Google rang the death-knell for that way of traditional searching. Friday was Google’s annual I/O conference. Between the perennial updates to mobiles and tablets was arguably … read more ⇝
Trial by Error
4 May 23 ~Learning the hard way, failing the right way A trial by ordeal This website is a place about learning and a place for learning: as the playground page testifies, this is as much a learning experience for me as it is a resource for anyone else. Based on my previous musings, I’ve tried to put the principle into practice. Allow me to introduce my latest experiment in GPT and JS: What Am I Doing Wrong? S… read more ⇝
Coding on The Titanic
26 Apr 23 ~If the robots can do it better, why bother learning at all? Less “rearranging the deckchairs” and more “putting on your white tie, sitting down in the flooded dining room and wondering if there’ll be scallops to start.” You can’t move for the doom-laden coding headlines at the moment: The layoffs are here for those who chose to ‘learn to code’ Meta layoffs show how coding jobs are no longer safe Will A.I. Steal All… read more ⇝
Hello World
18 Apr 23 ~You have to start somewhere. As it says on the tin: I’m a teacher. It’s an incredible career, and one I’m proud to be part of. But a niggling feeling started to at the back of my mind a few months ago. Teachers don’t do much learning. That’s perhaps unfair - hardly anyone, really, does much learning past the age of 25. I don’t mean in the self-knowledge, incremental gains kind of way; … read more ⇝