Teachers of Humanities regularly require their students to undertake research and inquiry projects and to analyse primary and secondary sources. Our team of teachers has increasingly been discussing the difficulties our students face recognising facts, bias and perspective and having confidence in their ability to discern the truth. We have been working hard to improve their skills and to grow their ability to analyse data, but in a world where the place of Artificial Intelligence is only going to grow, we need to arm our students with weapons of their own to combat the avalanche of fake news which comes their way across a myriad of social media sites.

AI and its potential implications, good and bad for our students, can no longer be ignored, Students need to be empowered to become discerning consumers of information in the digital age. We need to think about ways we can help them to sift through the volume of fake news and to develop their critical thinking and media literacy skills. Additionally, we need to think about how we can teach them to harness AI sites such as ChatGPT and Gemini (Google’s version) to help them research more effectively and to teach them how to structure their work and meet key tasks within assessments. We need to ensure responsible use and critical evaluation of AI generated sites, which are trained and improved for accuracy, the more humans use them, they are not problems in and of themselves, but they can be if humans don’t become their masters. Therefore, we need to encourage healthy skepticism in our students and stress the importance of them having open discussions with their teachers about how to navigate the information landscape.

In line with our College vision and mission, we need to emphasise that media literacy will help with supporting a lifelong love of learning in all facets of their lives.

One of the more recent tools I have been using to do this, has been developed by ABC Education. They have created an interactive source checker, which presents students with a range of fictional news articles to develop their skills around analysing, interpreting, and evaluating texts. It also helps students to develop skills around identifying the ways certain texts are structured and organised.

Students could also use Fact-Checking Websites: such as Snopes, FactCheck.org and PolitiFact and Reverse Image Search: which teaches them how to use tools like Google Reverse Image Search to verify the authenticity of images.

Year 12 Business Management Excursion

Our Yakult tour commenced with us entering the factory and seeing the different stages of the creation of Yakult. We started by the tour guide explaining the different raw materials that are inputs for this product such as machinery and ingredients, whilst watching the process occur. As we moved on to each area watching how Yakult is created, packaged and checked, we learnt fun facts such as how many good bacteria are contained in their product. This is where we learnt that there are at least 6.5 billion good, highly acid-resistant bacteria in each individual bottle which is exclusive to Yakult and not found in any other product.

We learnt about the different quality control measures put in place throughout the transformation process. Here we discussed materials management and CSR considerations such as retraining staff when technology was introduced instead of redundancy and removing the use of plastic straws in 2020. The tour guide also explained the different uses of technology, which create a more efficient and effective production process. Going to the factory allowed us to see connections between the theory we have learnt in class such as waste management, CSR, elements of the operations system and technology strategies and see it in contemporary business.

Overall, this experience allowed us to take our knowledge of business to another level. We were able to apply our knowledge to a contemporary business, while seeing a process take place which expanded our knowledge.

Mia Espinoza
Year 12