Have you played with Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Maybe, you’ve even found a way to use the growing range of AI tools to streamline your home-life or improve your productivity at work?

Whether you’ve used ChatGPT or not, the world of AI is unavoidable. In fact, most of us have been using it – or influenced by it – without even knowing it.

Last Thursday, Daniel Zilm, Project Officer for Prescott Schools SA, provided our teaching staff with an update on the realities and possibilities of AI in education. Like any new tool or technology, the growth of AI has been met with a mix of concern and excitement – academics, parents, educators and even students themselves share conflicting feelings about the potential for great positive and great negative impacts of these tools.

The reality is, we cannot avoid AI. And we cannot expect our children, particularly as they move through the middle and upper years of primary school into high school, to avoid it either. The only option we really have is to demonstrate, model, instruct and correct them in positive and safe ways to engage with AI.

Last week was a great opportunity for our teachers to continue their own professional development, and as a result, continue delivering the great education that you’ve come to expect here at PPN.

While the technology may be new and emerging, the critical thinking skills needed to engage with AI well are not necessarily unique – they come down to the fundamental questions of what is true, what is trustworthy and what is worthwhile.

These are the same questions that Adam and Eve faced in the garden of Eden.

They are the same questions the Israelites faced as they left Egypt, subsequently wandered in the desert and set up their new lives amongst worldviews far different than their own.

They are the same questions the Jews and Romans at the time of Jesus had to ask.

And they are the same questions we ourselves must ask.

In matters of faith, life, and technology the ability to question and understand what is really true, what information is trustworthy, and what ideas are worthwhile are vital. These core questions are the building blocks of a successful life. And they are,  by design, at the core of our school’s mission statement:

To provide a balanced educational program in a caring, Christian environment by preparing the mind for truth, the hands for service and the heart for heaven.

Whether AI features in your life or the lives of your children this week or not, it is my prayer that we remain focused on those things which are true, trustworthy and worthwhile.

Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.

Philippians 4:8, The Message