Ed/Tech must-reads 010725

The relationship between faculty members’ perceptions of technology leadership and their technology integration into higher education—Evidence from China from British Educational Research Journal

From time to time, I wonder whether what I read in the education and technology space leans too heavily on perspectives in the Anglosphere. One possible reason is an assumption that works from Australasia, North America and Western Europe are more likely to reflect the HE cultures that I find myself in and therefore this material is the most directly relevant and useful on a day to day basis. But that’s a big assumption. This article from Zhang, Chen, and Xu, researchers in the Wenzhou Medical University and Huazong University of Science and Technology (both in China) reminds me that people are people. They survey 418 academics across 8 institutions in a region about the ways that their confidence in their institutional leaders shaped their engagement with using educational technologies. Unsurprisingly, those who had greater confidence that the initiatives drive by leaders were empowering and good practice were more engaged. The ways that confidence is inspired are divided into issues of equity, vision, empowerment, system design and learner connectedness. This is an important reminder that educators need to believe that there is a solid plan in place before they commit to change.

Anthropic wins key US ruling on AI training in authors' copyright lawsuit from Reuters

One of the burning unresolved moral quandaries about the use of GenAI is the morality (and legality) of training LLMs on copyrighted material. This recent US court decision lands (kind of) on the side of the GenAI vendors, determining that use of these books to train AI was fair use. (The fact that they pirated the books to do so was more problematic but tied to a different area of the law). I wouldn’t take this as a definitive finding though, as the authors were, respectfully, small-fry. I think it will be worth paying close attention to an upcoming case where some old media giants will be making a similar case about the unsanctioned use of their tv shows and movies. (The precise details escape me as to who but I am confident that they have more and scarier lawyers)

PISA 2029 Introduces AI and Media Literacy What Schools Need to Know from Sarah Findlater

As a global testing behemoth, it makes some sense that PISA (managed by the OECD) will take some time to role out significant changes to their systems and processes in order to understand what school children internationally understand about digital and AI tools. This post outlines key changes being implemented and it does seem comprehensive. That said, it is hard to conceive where we might even be in four years time.

From Chalkboards to Chatbots: The Evolution of Teaching with AI - Webinar 2pm Thursday 10th July AEST from eWorks

Something rather sooner that might be of interest is this upcoming webinar from the always interesting people at eWorks. It features Jeanette Swain, Andrew Mair and Lindsay Rattray (Bendigo Kangan Institute) and Damien Bell from GOTAFE and looks to offer some practical insights into the use of GenAI in competency based education.