John Simkin's blog - latest post

Should history students be using ChatGBT?

Last week during a history sessions with the University of the Third Age one of my students mentioned that William Wilberforce was an important figure in the abolition of slavery. I pointed out this was a common misinterpretation as he was concerned with bringing an end to the slave-trade and for most of his life he was supporter of slavery. He was obviously not convinced by my comments and when he got home he went on the ChatGPT AI website and typed in the question "Did William Wilberforce abolish slavery?" He then sent me by email the answer it gave.

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John Simkin

In September, 1997, Spartacus Educational founder and managing director John Simkin became the first educational publisher in Britain to establish a website that was willing to provide teachers and students with free educational materials.

According to a survey carried out by the Fischer Trust, Spartacus Educational is one of the top three websites used by history teachers and students in Britain (the other two are BBC History and the Public Record Office’s Learning Curve). The Spartacus Educational website currently gets up to 7 million page impressions a month and 3 million unique visitors.

As well as running the Spartacus Educational website John Simkin has also produced material for the Electronic Telegraph, the European Virtual School and the Guardian's educational website, Learn. He was also a member of the European History E-Learning Project (E-Help), a project to encourage and improve use of ICT and the internet in classrooms across the continent.

We have published six e-books, Charles Dickens: A Biography (October, 2012), First World War Encyclopedia (October, 2012), Assassination of John F. Kennedy Encyclopedia (November, 2012), Gandhi: A Biography (December, 2012), The Spanish Civil War (December, 2012) and The American Civil War (December, 2012). He also contributed an article to the recently published book, Using New Technologies to Enhance Teaching and Learning in History (December, 2012).

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