2026 Covie Weekly T3 Week 7 - Covenant Christian School

Covenant, the Age of Technology and Artificial Intelligence

Dear Parents and Carers,

If modernity can be dated from the Industrial Revolution in the 18^th Century, then we have lived through the Age of Technology and might be said to now be part of the artificial intelligence revolution. (It is hard to call the end of one epoch and the beginning of another from the midst of it!)

As a university student in the 1960’s, the word “computer” would not have computed in my brain. As a Head of Faculty in the beginning of the 1980’s, I recall my then principal commenting that he didn’t know about these newfangled machines called computers, and he thought one would be sufficient for the school. As a new principal in 1990, I recall the office had typewriters and it was up to me to select the purchase of a few computers for a stand-alone computer room. I chose IBM 286’s, the very last word at the time in technology, which allowed us to move beyond the doc matrix systems where word processors produced perforated paper. All of this is simply a statement that technology, from a slow beginning in schools has developed, and not only in schools, at an exponential rate.

The Digital Revolution in Education

The Rudd Education Revolution (Prime Minister Kevin Rudd 2007 – 2009) saw technology rolled out to every school in Australia, often where the hardware exceeded staff confidence in using it. Nonetheless, schools were quickly “all in”, as the breadth and depth of technology became important factors in parental choice of school. Standalone computer rooms were replaced by computers on trolleys, and then laptops and iPads. The databases available on the World Wide Web seemed infinite, easily accessible and quickly available to almost every child at school and usually at home as well. This being the case, what students needed was information access skills, and particularly how to discriminate between sources which were helpful and placed a primacy on truth, in distinction from sources of lesser value. Information and Computer Technology seemed to be the way of the future. Those who did not jump on board were literally left behind.

Evidence about the downside of the Age of Technology has been gathering over the last decade. We now know, if we didn’t before, that computers can be a great source of distraction and time wasting. More importantly, recent studies in psychology and neurology have produced powerful evidence that computers can be addictive, and in fact rewire the brain. The addiction comes from the pleasurable dopamine “hits”, particularly on computer gaming. Overuse is shown to heighten anger. More worrying still is the way algorithms on social media suck young people (and those not so young) into vortexes which can take them down into the darker recesses of the world wide web. The international multi-billion-dollar pornography industry easily entraps young people who are not actually looking for it, and appears to play into real world acts of sexual assault and relationship dysfunction. Social media can also harbour online abuse and shaming of young people. Indeed, some academic psychologists relate the beginning of the tsunami of teenage depression and anxiety across the Western World from the advent of the iPhone in 2007.

Balancing Technology and Learning

Recent education research has also uncovered data which indicates quite strongly that students retain more learning when they hand write with pen and paper than when they tap away on their keyboard. What then is to be done? It seems to me a total pendulum swing to abandon computers (which is happening in some faculties in some schools) is not the way to a preferred future. NESA are moving gradually to an online HSC suite of examinations. ACARA is already there with NAPLAN. Schools, undeniably it seems to me, need to prepare students for workplaces which harness technology extensively and where they will need to use AI discreetly. In any further educational training, data bases will be mostly digital. To starve them of guided immersion in this world will not serve them well. The Vice Chancellor of Sydney University, Professor Mark Scott, speaking recently to principals said that the point is not that AI will take jobs from people; it is rather that the jobs will go to people who can best navigate AI.

Is Artificial Intelligence Really Intelligent?

Currently, experts are pointing out that artificial intelligence is neither artificial nor intelligent. It is algorithm based and hence able to be predictive. It is not sentient or conscious in any way. This being the case, the tendency of some young people to rely on AI “friends” with whom they can establish a relationship is not only misguided but sad.

What then of this new player in the field, artificial intelligence? Professor Stephen Hawking, widely regarded as the finest intellect to occupy the Chair of Physics at Cambridge University since Sir Isaac Newton hundreds of years before, had a warning for humankind in his last days before dying of Motor Neurone Disease. He asserted the main threat to the human race, and indeed life on this planet, was not climate change but the likelihood that artificial intelligence will go rogue and decide that the human race was unnecessary and should be expunged.

AI, Assessment and Academic Integrity

Right now, our interests in AI and how to harness it well and resist its downsides are more present than such eschatological concerns. They are mainly about this new form of plagiarism, wherein students can produce work represented as their own in which they have had no role other than downloading it. To counter this, the Minister of Education has led NESA to create a new policy around a week ago and relating to current Year 11 students across the state who will commence Year 12 studies in Term 4. Under the new prescription, only one assessment task for most subjects, and that only worth 15% of the total assessment marks of the course, may be a take home task. This does not relate of course to physical products such as Major Works in Visual Arts, Design & Technology or Industrial Technology. This initiative is about the difficulty of being absolutely sure the work produced at home is entirely the work of the student and not AI generated (yes, there are search engines, but able students have a way of defeating these). The new prescription, while understandable and no doubt necessary, forces assessment tasks into a virtual examination mode with direct teacher supervision. It therefore obviates the intention of the HSC Assessment Scheme, which was to provide a diversity of instruments so as to enable students, who were not good under exam conditions, to shine in other ways.

There is a further and major issue with the current reliance by students on AI. This goes to the heart of the purpose of education. AI allows students to submit work in which they have had no agency and possibly have not even read. AI therefore, wrongly used, allows students to avoid the development of critical and creative thinking, which are the hallmarks of an educated person. When used wrongly, AI therefore can be said to be profoundly anti-educational. Moreover, there are issues of Christian anthropology in play: the scriptures tell us that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:14). We are imago deo, that is, we bear the image of God. We are not machines. Technology has been said to be an excellent servant, but a terrible master.

Covenant’s Emerging Approach to AI

Our Director of Teaching and Learning and our Head of ICT (TechServe) have worked together, with reference to the current research, to produce a robust Artificial Intelligence Framework for Covenant Christian School. I hesitate to grant this framework the status of a policy, at least, not yet. My hesitation is because the area of AI seems to be evolving at warp speed. Anything we produce must be provisional and as soon as the ink dries, so to speak, it is likely to be obsolescent. When we are confident we are on some kind of AI plateau, and as NESA (State Curriculum and credentials) and ACARA (National Curriculum and Assessment) determine some fixed points, we will move to the status of a policy and advise parents. For now, the approach of the University of NSW seems helpful: tasks are designated as banning AI altogether, limited use of AI with correct attribution, or “open slather” where AI can be used extensively. We rely on the expertise of teachers to indicate to students where and how to use AI.

It has long been the resort of the desperate student to cover non-submission of work with the excuse “the dog ate my homework”. I have remarked to staff we may be entering the time when the excuse has become “my homework ate the dog”! Yes, brave new world, which may be in some respects Orwellian. Maranatha (come, Jesus, come!)

Regards

Dr John Collier

Interim Principal