Hacking education productivity with AI

As ever, using AI to increase productivity in all walks of life is at the forefront of my thinking. Here’s another real-world example of how tools like ChatGPT can supercharge your working day…

An Unexpected Outburst: Navigating Tech Hurdles in Education

Yesterday, my lovely wife, a hugely experienced English teacher at a secondary school, swore at her laptop.

This is not my wife.

This is uncharacteristic.

She rarely swears at me, and I've done far more to deserve it over the years.

I left my desk in the box room and walked downstairs feeling somewhat angsty: I'm comfortable working out tech issues under usual circumstances, but when it's education-related, gosh, that's a whole new level of pain.

"What's up, hun?" I asked, fearing the next hour would be lost in a fruitless attempt at figuring out some system designed by techies that have barely engaged with an educator during its development.

"It's the f*cking AQA website."

See, I said she'd gone full-on potty-mouthed.

"I've managed to log in after twenty minutes of resetting things," she continued, "but now I can't get into the extranet - it won't let me through!"

This could go one of two ways, I figured.

Soph's exceptionally gifted, but technology isn't her strongest point. "Maybe this is something simple, " said voice number 1 in my head.

"Ah, yeah, but..." the ever-doubtful voice number 2 chipped in.

"This could wipe out your afternoon," he continued helpfully, "So don't get too involved, mate."

It wasn't simple: we'd need someone with admin rights to approve her registration. It was half-term. The odds of someone in her school being available to process this - quite rightly - were close to zero.

Frustrated by our lack of access to AQA's extranet, Soph turned her head from the laptop and said, "It's the only place I can access past papers."

Turning to AI: The Power of ChatGPT4 in Education

We've been talking a lot about AI in the last fortnight. Casting aside her typically luddite position on tech, she'd bought a copy of Dan Fitzpatrick's frankly brilliant book The AI Classroom.

"If we can't get previous papers directly, can't we ask ChatGPT to create some mocks?"

Look, if we'd have been having that conversation six months ago, Soph would've rolled her eyes at me. But this time around, those same eyes lit up. And that says everything to me.

So we fired up ChatGPT4, and tapped in the simple prompt:

'Create a GCSE AQA Mock Paper for English Language Paper 2'

As ever, the response was drafted in front of our eyes, scarily good, but not without fault.

It got two questions slightly wrong, mixing them up with what would be expected for Paper 1. Question 2 was the language question, which we used as question 3. Soph quickly created a new question 2 (synchronise) and swapped that for the bot's original suggestion.

Creating Mock Exam Papers with AI

And there it was, after a couple of 'back and forths', we had a completely unique (but accurate) set of mock questions, complete with original 'source materials': comparing the rise of AI to the early days of the industrial revolution. How apt.

After a few more clicks, we had a 'perfect' level eight response as a reference: in fact, we were able to generate benchmark responses for whatever level we needed.

Enhancing Productivity

So there you have it. My tech-phobic wife had spent at least half an hour trying to get access to the AQA extranet, to zero avail.

But, in less time, she'd achieved something through ChatGPT that far exceeded her requirement.

This is how AI will transform productivity; in education. And any sector you might be working in.

Want to know more? Let’s chat - get in touch.