Weekly AI News Update (3 - 9 April 2026) - Hong Kong Metropolitan University

Weekly AI News Update (3 - 9 April 2026)

A Turnitin executive argues that the debate over whether schools should use AI is now obsolete, as two-thirds of Australian teachers already use the technology. The focus must shift to transparency and genuine AI literacy, which means teaching students to use AI as a thinking aid without replacing cognitive effort. He advocates for visible declarations of AI use, process-focused assessment, and tools that provide insight into how students develop their work, rather than simply detecting whether AI was used. 🔗 The Educator
The BBC has published a guide for parents on using AI safely in home education, noting that half of UK children now use AI tools. It recommends using large language models to generate personalised study plans and quizzes while maintaining active supervision, verifying outputs against reliable sources, and ensuring AI supplements rather than replaces a child’s own thinking and creativity. 🔗 BBC
A secondary school in North Yorkshire is trialling AI to mark mock exams in humanities subjects, finding that it provides detailed, rapid feedback and depersonalises grading. While the technology initially increased teacher workload as staff marked alongside the system, the headteacher reported being impressed with its accuracy, noting it costs 45p per extended answer. Experts confirm that final responsibility for marking remains with teachers, and transparency about AI use is essential. 🔗 BBC
UT Southwestern Medical School is using AI to assess medical students’ clinical skills, replacing over 91% of human grading on post-encounter notes and delivering feedback within days instead of weeks. The system uses multimodal AI (text, audio, video) to evaluate competencies against standardised rubrics, with educators reporting that detailed, rapid feedback marks a significant advance over traditional assessment methods. 🔗 UT Southwestern
Anthropic has appointed Sofia Wilson, a former teacher and Stanford PhD candidate, to lead its K-12 education expansion in the US. She will work on the company’s Beneficial Deployments team to ensure responsible AI deployment and equitable access across schools, drawing on her experience in classroom practice, district-level implementation, and education policy research. 🔗 ETIH