ALL public school students from years 5 to 12 will soon have access to the NSW Department of Education’s purpose-built, state-of-the-art generative AI app following a successful trial in 50 schools.
NSWEduChat will be rolled out to all schools from the start of Term 4.
As the sophistication and use of generative artificial intelligence rapidly grows, access to the curriculum-aligned NSWEduChat will enable students to build AI literacy and skills in a safe environment where content is filtered and their data is secure.
The expansion will also help to bridge the digital divide by ensuring all students have equal access to this free education tool in the classroom.
Principals from trial schools strongly support its expansion, having found NSWEduChat to be a valuable tool for fostering independent learning, critical thinking, and student engagement.
Students in the trial said it helped them understand their work better, develop their writing skills and helped break down complex tasks.
Crucially, NSWEduChat does not reveal full answers to students. Instead of providing direct answers like some other AI applications, it encourages critical thinking by asking guided questions and inviting students to reason on the outcome of their questions.
Top five uses of NSWEduChat by students in the trial were general feedback on writing; brainstorming support for tasks; virtual assistant, including supporting planning to complete assessment tasks, prepare for exams; consolidating learning and prompting NSWEduChat with content from lesson and asking it to generate a quiz; and planning and structuring written responses.
A separate NSWEduChat platform for teachers was rolled out to all schools earlier this year, with surveys showing it streamlines their workload and saves time in producing classroom resources to meet different ability levels.
In addition to this tool, the department is launching Lesson Library, a new online platform providing streamlined access to quality curriculum resources written by teachers, for teachers, to help them deliver lessons aligned to the new knowledge-rich New South Wales syllabuses and explicit teaching.
Acting Minister for Education and Early Learning Courtney Houssos said the development of the curriculum-aligned tool shows how the public education system can deliver world-leading innovation to classrooms across New South Wales.
“Generative AI is rapidly becoming part of everyday life, and through NSWEduChat we are helping our students to safely and responsibly build the digital literacy that will set them up for success in the jobs of the future,” Ms Houssos said.
“By making our free and effective AI tool available to all year five to 12 students, we are levelling the playing field when it comes to AI education in the classroom and ensuring that our educators, staff and students are at the forefront of emerging technologies.”
