From The Curriculum Office
Use of AI sites to complete Homework/Assessments
As technology continues to advance, we are starting to see students beginning to turn to AI websites to help them complete assessments. While these websites may seem like a quick and easy solution, they come with several risks that students and parents need to be aware of. First and foremost, using AI websites to complete assessments can be considered academic dishonesty, which can result in severe consequences starting with failing the assignment.
Furthermore, using AI websites can also undermine the entire purpose of assessments, which is to evaluate a student's understanding of a particular topic. If a student relies on an AI website to complete an assessment, they are not truly demonstrating their own understanding of the material and may not be adequately prepared for future assessments or real-world applications of the knowledge they are supposed to be acquiring eg formal exams. Students need to prioritise their education and take pride in their own abilities, rather than looking for shortcuts that may ultimately harm their academic progress and integrity.
In the interest of full disclosure, the two paragraphs above were generated using an AI platform to demonstrate the capacity of these platforms. We will be having further discussions regarding the use of AI as staff next term and will be talking further with students and parents/carers about this issue as well. For now, we ask parents/carers to chat with students about this and suggest ways to support students to not turn to these sites such as being organised and starting tasks early, using platforms such as Google Docs where the revision history of the work completed can be checked/monitored as well as working with class teachers to get feedback in regards to task requirements and feedback on progress.
Years 11 and 12 Reports
Half Yearly Reports for Years 11 and 12 will be distributed via Compass at the beginning of next term. This is an opportune time for students and families to use these reports to evaluate current progress and make the adjustments necessary to support continued academic progress. This is of particular value to Year 12 students leading into HSC Trial Exams at the beginning of Term 3.
Year 11 2023 Subject Selection Process
The process of meeting with Year 10 regarding choosing subjects for Year 11 2023 will begin early next term. Students and their parents/carers are again encouraged to spend time over the holidays thinking, discussing and researching potential pathways beyond Year 10 eg: University, TAFE, apprenticeships, etc, and start investigating the requirements needed to assist in achieving those outcomes. To get started students may consider looking at online career aptitude sites/quizzes to get an idea of careers that they may be interested in/suited to. Examples can be found on websites such as:
TAFE and University websites also have information on the courses they offer and potential careers that are linked to those courses.
Whilst we are not expecting students to 100% lock in their future career aspirations at this point in time, exploring and having an idea of the possible options you are considering does make the process of subject selection a lot easier in most cases.