August ICT Bulletin
August ICT Bulletin
This month's spotlight is the usage of Artificial Intelligence, it's upside's and downside's in the classroom. If you an iPad classroom, there are iPad articles linked below!
Spotlight EdTech - AI in Education Spaces
Artificial Intelligence like ChatGPT and CoPilot, are making large impacts in the educational spaces all across Australia. Teachers are learning to integrate the software into their classrooms and learning enviroments, in hand with students learning to use AI ethically.
What is Ethical AI?
If AI continues to be a prominent factor in the educational and professional industries, it's important as a cohort that we are able to determine what is ethical AI usage and what is not. Ethical AI encompasses the privacy, usage, and impacts the AI poses on a global and local scale.
Pros !
Let's start with the pros, Artificial Intelligence over the past 5 years has taken leaps in machine learning and technology advancements. The idea of AI began in the 50s when Alan Turing came up with the question of "Can machines think?".
- GPT-5 and large scale models have shifted technology and society on a global scale.
- Widespread adoption of AI, 78% of Australian secondary schools now use AI tools in classrooms.
- There are now tons of support for virtual learning and hybrid learning with AI powered grading, analytics and personalisation. - Institutes like AIML in Adelaide are pushing for more AI and Machine Learning research, for educational tools across Australia.
News .com touches on how the Australian Government is aiming to add into schools AI to help minimise teacher administration tasks.
"Government-backed AI program promises to cut teacher admin by 25 per cent"Queensland's Corella AI is in trial across 15 state schools, aiming to free teachers from tasks like email triage and lesson prep so they can focus on teaching—and it’s gearing up for a full rollout by 2026.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/governmentbacked-ai-program-promises-to-cut-teacher-admin-by-25-per-cent/news-story/0f7b8c05ec4b93496213a05c452c1c34?Cons :(
The cons of artificial intelligence currently is the privacy and data concerns, especially in Australia.
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Privacy & data risks: AI systems often handle personal identifiers and sensitive data, raising risks of misuse or exposure.
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Regulatory mismatches: Many existing Australian standards, like ISOs and general privacy laws, weren’t built with AI in mind, leaving gaps.
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Leaks & injections: Large-scale AI platforms are vulnerable to data breaches, model data injections, and leakage incidents.
"Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner warns AI could reinforce racism and sexism without proper regulation"AI systems trained on biased datasets can produce discriminatory outcomes unless there’s transparency, human oversight, and use of locally representative data. Commissioner Lorraine Finlay called for urgent regulation that enforces bias testing and mandates human review in AI deployment.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/13/ai-artificial-intelligence-racism-sexism-australia-human-rights-commissioner?However, on a positive note of the way that AI is moving towards:
-The
OAIC (Office of the Australian Information Commissioner) has rolled out two major guidelines: one for using commercially available AI tools, another for developers training generative models. These clarify how the
Privacy Act 1988 applies and emphasize privacy-by-design, transparency, consent, and privacy impact assessments.
-Separately, the
Productivity Commission is exploring whether big tech should get copyright exemptions to mine data for AI training—a move fraught with debates around fair use, creator compensation, and economic benefits.
iPad's - Support Articles