From the Principal
Good evening and welcome to the second-last Newsletter for this term – one that has flown by at a rate of knots, except when we’re sweating through our 3,249 push-ups in The Push-up Challenge for Term 2. Only eight days of the challenge left to go now and, collectively, our students and staff have logged 105,618 push-ups to date, raising $6,252 to support mental health awareness and education in the process. What a great community effort for a great cause.
Last week, I mentioned that we would continue our discussion on AI with our Director of Innovative Technologies, Mr Anthony England, following the official launch of our new student and staff portal earlier this month. Who better to answer your questions about this new tool than the man himself. Over to you, Mr England…
Q. Why do we need a new portal?
A. It’s no secret that Pymble is committed to leading the way in Digital Intelligence – it is written into our Strategic Direction, after all. We are teaching and learning in the digital age and have a responsibility to build our community’s skills and understanding of how to be intentional, responsible and wise users of current and emerging technologies to enhance the teaching and learning experience for our students. The new platform has been five-plus years in the making and is a complete technical upgrade of all the practical features you would expect for students and staff – such as their timetable, assessments, co-curricular commitments, notices, and storage of academic reports – in addition to some bespoke bells and whistles.
Q. What do you mean by ‘bells and whistles’?
A. This is where AI comes in. At the heart of the new portal is a suite of AI tools or ‘assistants’, including: a meeting transcript summariser; Maisy, to help students learn about sustainable farming; a debating buddy; and an academic report editor. We have more than 20 of these assistants now and each has been designed to help teachers pinpoint student challenges, identify effective learning strategies to overcome these challenges, and ultimately create a more personalised and impactful educational experience for our girls.
Q. Who has access to these AI tools?
A. Initially, the AI tools will be given to staff and select groups of pilot student classes – this is part of our strategy to be intentional and wise in the way we use them. AI can’t, won’t and should never replace great teaching; however, when used correctly, it can amplify learning, streamline administrative tasks, offer insights, and facilitate better student/teacher interaction. We’re excited for our staff to have the opportunity to create new teaching and learning opportunities that didn’t exist before. And we’re excited for students to be supported by AI that is aligned with the intentions of their teachers and not outsourced to big tech companies.
Q. Not outsourced to big tech companies? Please explain.
A. We need the teacher-student relationship to be at the centre of learning. We have built our AI assistants so teachers can see and guide how students engage with them. You simply can’t do this with the public tools. We also can give access to the best quality AI tools, but at a fraction of the cost, and safely too, because all our data is stored within our own protective ‘bubble’ on Microsoft Azure.
Q. So the portal is live. What next?
A. We will continue to assess student and staff engagement and feedback about the effectiveness of our AI tools, and look to introduce future functionalities – potentially, detailed lesson plans and homework assignments for parents to access, too. We know the best results happen when we work in partnership with students, staff and families. To this extent, we will be hosting an online exploration session of our AI tools for families in Term 3 . Stay tuned for more details.
Mr Anthony England
Director of Innovative Technologies
With huge thanks to Mr England and our IT Team in the Hub for leading the way in this space.
Windows into Learning
This week’s snapshot of teaching and learning in both the Junior School and Secondary School share a common denominator – the power of books and reading for pleasure to bring joy, connection and benefit to our lives.
Year 2 Compass Buddies
The Year 2 girls love spending time with their Kindy buddies during Compass lessons. Special friendships which extend into the playground develop, and the Year 2 students take on a leadership and ‘big sister’ role in this space.
This term, the girls have shared their favourite picture book with their buddy, showing courage by independently reading and talking about the ideas in the text. Some of the words in their books were quite tricky but the girls showed persistence and did a wonderful job. ‘Give it a go’ is our motto so the girls did exactly that and the shared reading experience brought joy to all involved. After reading their books, everyone drew a picture of their favourite part of the story and they were so proud of their efforts.
Ms Cindy Anderson
Junior School Co-ordinator (Year 2)
Safeguarding Reading Culture in the Digital Age
Over the last few decades, much has been written about the importance of sustaining young people’s commitment to reading and supported by evidence from researchers worldwide. The new NSW K-10 Syllabus for English (2024) has also recognised the continued need for students to read widely and deeply to improve literacy, challenge thinking, promote enjoyment and prompt personal response.
English and Library staff at Pymble have set combined goals to address the need for deep and sustained reading for students across Years 7 to 10. We are encouraging the girls away from their screens to pursue a deeper focus on the books that can take them into complex literary worlds which will build literacy skills, empathy and perspective. (Kozak and Recchia 2019). We would love for parents to talk at home about the books your daughter is reading and share in the joy that comes with a good book. What will you be reading these holidays?
We also invite Middle School students and carers to sign up for our inaugural Pymble Family Book Club, organised by the Conde Library. Families and friends can come together to read common books and attend a book club event with renowned author, Maryam Master.
Mrs Mandy Reynolds
Head of Learning Area – English
