Welcome to the March issue of the magazine and I know that wherever you are teaching you are using your role to pass on important knowledge and skills to your classes. I had a reminder of the role teachers play recently on a holiday in the southwestern region of Australia where we visited the Torgadirrup National Park located on the Southern Ocean. High above the raging sea there was a place called ‘The Gap’ where two cliffs face each other. The local people, the Mirnang, are the traditional custodians of the area and as a people they can be traced back 50,000 years. Over time, their values and ideals have been passed down through stories and legends and for this particular place the story is that two brothers had a disagreement about a young woman. After a lot of squabbling, they were asked to face each other across The Gap, one armed with a boomerang and one with a spear. They threw at the same time, and both were hit and fell into the water. In time one became the shark (the boomerang is the fin) and one became the stingray. The ocean had taken both their lives. Today the story is used as a warning about the power of the sea but over time it will have been used as an example of other beliefs and ideals including jealousy, love and the strength of nature. Your teaching texts might not be quite as dramatic but, essentially, stories, texts, dialogues and songs are the media we still use for teaching.

Moving forward 50,000 years brings us up to now and the topic of artificial intelligence (AI). When I arrived in a hotel last week, guests were offered the chance to order fresh milk which was brought to the room by a robot – the same robot was in the lobby cleaning the floor and also carrying dishes in the restaurant. The staff did not seem threatened by the robot – he was not taking work from them but, for now, helping them. As you read this issue, the overall feeling about AI seems to be that it is a good thing – within limits.

Having asked for contributions on the theme of AI for this issue, I was struck by one article which I actually felt had been written using AI. My first thought that this was totally appropriate, but I then wondered how the copyright would work and how the writer would respond to feedback. After a few checks, I was assured the article was the work of the writer, but it did leave me thinking what the publishing industry might be planning to use AI for. As you will see in the articles, AI can be used to create images exactly as you want them so if you want a photo of, say, a camel behind a tree, it is not difficult. If you want five new sentences using the past continuous tense, again, it is not too tricky. The ownership area is more complicated. In the above examples, who has created the content? Who should be credited with the work? How should we cite references from AI-sourced materials in an essay? How can we ever be sure our students aren’t simply using the technology to create their answers?

So, much as we may enjoy using it, do so with care. For the sake of the world, AI is a wonderful thing – it can be used in medical situations to find connections between cases which a human eye would never find, it can be used in legal circumstances to trawl through thousands of case files – and all sorts of transportation will soon be artificially controlled. Used well, we can remove some of the dullest jobs and, possibly, share tasks around in such a way that we all continue to work but, hopefully, a little less over our lifetimes. It always amazes me that despite all the gains in technology over the last hundred years, we are all still expected to work five days a week for forty or so years!

As you will have realised, I am currently in the southern hemisphere, back in New Zealand for a couple of months. Thanks to the amazing tech we take for granted these days, the magazines continue to be put together, edited, designed and printed by a team of people who meet on Teams maybe once per issue and then communicate entirely by email, WhatsApp and Dropbox. Just like the Mirnang, we are telling stories to pass on to our colleagues and peers sharing beliefs, observations and ideas. Long may it continue. I hope you gain a lot from this issue’s collection. Teach well!

Robert McLarty

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