UNLEASH

ED

Tag: planning

Saying No to A.I.

“I’m here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy A-I. Kill it. To accomplish this, you’ll have to capture and reprogram an A-I to be on the side of humanity, then commandeer its own time-traveling technology, send it back to the past to defeat the current A-I before it gains sentience. This isn’t just graduation day, this is Terminator 2 Judgment Day.”

“And I know, I know there’s someone sitting out here right now who’s just like, “Well, you know, what about the use of A-I to pioneer breakthroughs in medicine and physics?” Well, first of all, shut up, nerd. I’m not talking about that. Obviously, if you’re using it for that purpose, you’re not the problem, okay? I’m talking about the accumulation of cognitive debt due to excessive use of large language models according to a study by MIT published in 2025 in Archives.”

“Look, this is actually good news, okay? This is why you guys shouldn’t be scared of AI, because I think AI is just going to end up making mediocre people dumber. Have you heard how dumb people brag about how they use AI? They’re always like, “Hey, did you know that AI can now read my email, summarize it, and drop a response?” Yeah, you know who else can do that? Me. I can do that. You can’t do that? How useless are you? You need artificial intelligence just to match me? I’m a dumbass who couldn’t get into Harvard.”

“From what I can see, getting an actual advantage from AI in the future will require a minimum escape velocity of intelligence that I’m assuming you guys from Harvard have. Everyone else who can’t match that is just going to get dumber, and that’s when you run up the score on them, assuming we still have a functioning society, of course.”

“Untalented people love bragging about using AI to help them draft their speeches and their scripts and their podcasts and their promo videos for UFC fights at the White House, which to be fair, even if they had filmed that for real, it would still have looked like AI. But what they’re missing is this. The creating is the fun part. The best part of comedy writing is figuring out the puzzle pieces of a joke and getting the self-regard from having accomplished a difficult thing. Why would I want AI to take that away from me?”

“You know what problem I want A-I to solve? I want the problem of AI making everything look like shit. I want AI to solve that problem. How about that?”

Ronny Chieng, 2026

There are so many truth bombs being laid out here. There’s such a degree of humour that it’s hard to take it seriously. And yet, so much of what Ronny Chieng said at Harvard was absolute truth. As guest speaker at Harvard’s Class Day as part of their Commencement 2026, Comedian Ronny Chieng took to the stage and laid it all out. You can read the full transcript here: https://singjupost.com

A couple of weeks a go I began to get ads in my feed advertising the latest education AI build. “Get your Sundays back” it said, hinting that teachers spend their Sundays planning, and that instead of doing that, AI could do it for you, or make it so you don’t spend your entire Sunday planning.

The reality is, I choose to do my planning on Sunday, for a number of reasons. In my early career, I used to do my planning throughout the week for the following week. On Wednesday afternoon after 3pm, I would make the Maths plan. Thursday was Reading and Writing, and Friday was for everything else.

The problem was, by the time Monday came around, things had changed. Maybe on Friday we didn’t get through the work I thought we would of, and so adjustments would have to be made. What’s more, on Monday morning I would have to look at the plan to refresh my memory; given I was operating from a plan devised in the middle of teaching the plan I’d devised the week prior.

For a long time I refused to do planning in the weekend. One, I wanted to preserve the weekend for myself and my family. Two, as a Christian, Sunday was hands off for anything work related as I observe a day of rest.

I’m not sure what changed, but for whatever reason I made my day of rest Saturday, which is traditionally the Sabbath anyway, allowing me to complete my planning on Sunday. It transformed my entire workload. Things were more clear, with the week before being complete, and I could plan from where we left off exactly, rather than adjusting things if we didn’t get as much done as was hoped. But the biggest payoff by far was the retention of the plan in my head. No longer did I have two days of family time creating a mental block between my plan I made last week and what I had to teach this week. The plan from Sunday flowed into the teaching of Monday, and rarely did I have to look at my planning. Now, if I have all my resources sorted for the week, it is very rare I have to even look at my planning. Usually it’s just a quick reminder of any anomalies to the routine.

So, no. I won’t bow to the suggestion of getting my Sunday’s back. I use Sunday’s for reasons. Reasons that make my job easier, not harder.

I’ve made a conscious decision to limit my use of A.I. Especially when it comes to teaching. Those that know me, know that I enjoy making things look nice. I’m fairly particular in how I want things to look like. This ranges from resources, to classroom displays, to Powerpoints and even unit plans.

Using AI to do things like resource creation is problematic. Not because the resource is made in next to no time, but because it doesn’t end up looking like I want it to. I then have to modify and adjust the design to my liking, rather than just beginning with a blank canvas and doing it myself. Secondly, I nearly never remember anything that A.I. has done – certainly not to the degree that I remember things if I make it myself. The brain just doesn’t process it the same. The sentiments of Ronny Chieng ring true.

“The creating is the fun part. The best part of comedy writing is figuring out the puzzle pieces of a joke and getting the self-regard from having accomplished a difficult thing. Why would I want AI to take that away from me?”
“Have you heard how dumb people brag about how they use AI? They’re always like, “Hey, did you know that AI can now read my email, summarize it, and drop a response?” Yeah, you know who else can do that? Me. I can do that. You can’t do that? How useless are you?”

When I tried to utilise AI to formulate my Maths planning of three groups using a widely used resource, I found I had to double-check what it had come up with, and then spent twice as much time adjusting the prompt and asking A.I. to recreate it. By the time I’d finished, it would have been quicker, if not about the same amount of time to have just made it myself – and I would have the added bonus of being able to recall what I had made without necessarily having to re-read it all.

Having A.I. make and create planning might require no brain power and minimal time spent initially, but at some point I will have to spend that time reading it and understanding it in order to teach what it has planned for me to teach.

For me, if you begin to rely on A.I. for these tasks, you are going to lose those skills that are an important part of teaching. The creativity. The organisation. The logistics. The resource knowledge. The autonomy. As Chieng said – Why would you want AI to take that away from you?

June 24, 2026
Microsoft OneNote – Teacher Planning – Part II
Part 2 – How do I set OneNote up as my Planning Folder

As mentioned in Part I of Microsoft OneNote – Teacher Planning, every teacher, every school, plans differently. The method that follows is just one way in which teachers could use Microsoft OneNote to plan. It is not necessarily my prefered method, but is one that I can see working well with how OneNote operates, and therefore is a good example of how OneNote can be used to enhance and organise teacher planning and paperwork.

Below, I will outline how I have set up Microsoft OneNote as a planning folder for unit plans, lesson plans, and subject based information.

Step 1: Create Notebook

However you like to, create a Notebook. Clicking on the existing Notebook reveals a drop down list in the Mac version, with a grey plus (“+”) button in the top. This will allow you to open or create a Notebook. I called mine “2016 Planning”.

Step 2: Create Plan and subject folders

Along the top I clicked the tab with the “+” sign to create a new tab and labeled each one accordingly. I had a generic “Plans” folder, along with a folder for Mathematics, Literacy, and Inquiry; which make up the three blocks in my day. I added P.E. and Health as there are additional plans that do not fit under inquiry that I will be using. In turn, there may also be additional plans in the other curriculum areas, such as The Arts, which don’t fit under any of the Inquiry units. I changed the colour of each to match the colours I associate each with thanks to previous curriculum documents. These also match the colours that I used in Google Sheets last year.

Step 3: Plans folder

In the plans folder I created a series of pages on the right hand side. These are as follows:
- Yearly Overview
- Term 1 (menu holder)
  - Long Term Plan
  - Weekly Overview
    
    Week 1
*Note: The menu holder is a blank page that reads Term 1. This is merely to organise the sub pages into Terms, so within this folder, there will be Terms 1 through 4, and under each, a Long Term Plan, Weekly Overview, and the Weekly Plans. Two of these are school requirements that may or may not be necessary in your school. You’ll also see that Week 1 is a sub-page of “Weekly Overview”, though Weekly Overview is not a menu holder, in that a generic plan outline is included in this plan, with the sub pages sitting under it.

Step 4: Including existing plans or planning templates

There’s little point in throwing out the baby with the bathwater here.

Instead of creating plans and units within Microsoft OneNote, you can insert or “attach” existing documents; much like you would be able to insert plans, notes, or newspaper cuttings into a clearfile folder.

For the long term plan, rather than attempt to create the complex table in OneNote, (especially seeing as I’ve developed this plan to automatically shade in particular subjects if they are not being covered) I have merely “attached” or inserted the excel spreadsheet into the OneNote page called “Long Term Plan”.

Another option, and great feature, is Inserting a PDF printout. OneNote will go and open the selected file, print out a PDF copy of it as it is, and then insert that PDF as a page in your folder for display. A very useful feature that I am sure I will make the most of throughout the year.

Step 5: Creating Unit Templates

Initially, I thought about doing the same for Unit Plans, but quickly realised this would become tiresome as the year goes on. Essentially I would not be using OneNote at all, merely gathering files, which I may as well use Google Drive for.

So to use OneNote a little more, I decided to copy the Unit template from Google Docs and paste it into OneNote.

Seamless; aside from the superfluous Drawings/Shapes I had added as additional flare for the unit plans. These were quickly inserted by using screenshots and entering them into OneNote separately. I was amazed at how accurately it copied the table from Google Docs and added it into OneNote without any formatting issues.

I then used Onetastic to create a number of custom headings and font formats, and went through and edited the template using these. This is not a necessary part of the process, but one I like to do as a designer.

Creating Page templates is very easy in the Windows version of OneNote. I have yet to find if the OS-X version has this capability. Visit here to find out about creating page templates. Essentially, I created a blank Unit Template with the relevant headings and sample content. Saving these as templates then allows me to open them up as pages for following terms, and following years.

Step 5: Weekly Plans

Early in my teaching career I separated all my plans out, so I had a weekly overview, a mathematics weekly plan, a reading weekly plan, a writing plan, as well as an afternoon plan. I know many teachers who plan like this, and it hasn’t been difficult to go back to this after collating all those plans into one Google Sheet last year (Read here).

By creating a folder for each subject, I have somewhat forced myself to return to this system. In each subject folder, I have created a “Term 1” menu holder, much like the page structure in Step 3. This is a blank page. I then made two sub-pages; “Unit Plan” where I inserted the Unit Template from Step 5, and a “Week 1” plan, which is displayed above.

This is essentially a table copied from my Google Sheet from last year to show what happens in Literacy each day of the week, according to the Weekly Overview in the “Plans” folder (See Step 3).

Step 6: Linking to OneNote Pages

As I explored more and more of Microsoft OneNote, I needed to make sure I made use of its many facets. One of those is linking to the different pages from within OneNote, so that when I have my planning folder open, I can quickly click once on a particular part of the weekly plan and jump straight to the related week plan for that subject.

The screenshot above is the “Week 1” page within the “Plans” folder (See Step 3). As you can see, I have made five “Week 1” links under Whole Class Maths for the week.

These link to the Week 1 plan in the Mathematics Folder. This allows me to view the week overview, and directly click once on “Week 1” to automatically go to the Week 1 plan for Mathematics, rather than having to click on the Mathematics folder, and then find the corresponding week.

Next week, in the Plans folder > Week 2 page, I will change these links to point to Mathematics folder > Week 2 page.

In Conclusion

And that’s about as far as I’ve got. I’m sure that there is much more to learn about Microsoft OneNote that I will no doubt come across throughout the course of the year.

I am also very aware that there may be other ways of using OneNote for planning, and in teaching. If you do, please share these with us in the comments below. I would be more than interested in seeing how others use it and see whether such methods I could incorporate into my own planning.
January 31, 2016
Creating Unit Templates in Google Docs
One of the big shifts forward in our school this year has been the introduction of Google Docs, Google Drive, and collaborating. This also coincides with a drive and a passion to integrate our unit plans and follow the “Less is More” policy (especially in regards to paper usage!). With a Term 4 being a huge success, we are stepping out into 2015 with our best foot forward.

Part of my role as the “IT Guru” (Computer Wiz, TechGeek, whatever-you-want-to-call-me) is to make sure that
1. The introduction of new technology happens seamlessly. This means having things up and running in the background before unleashing it to the general populous.
2. That teachers are introduced to the new technology in a friendly and non-threatening way so as to learn, engage, and use it effectively to enhance their practise.
Before running my tutorial on using Google Docs and Google Drive, I had to make sure things were set up and ready to be used in the easiest way possible. Ease of use for the end user is high on my list for anything I’ve ever done in regards to IT and teachers. If it is made easy for them, then they’re more likely to want to use it.

One of the keys to this, was first making a template for the collaborative and integrated unit plan. This would enable other teachers to make a unit plan using a default (and schoolwide) template.
1. Create a document in Google Docs by clicking on the blue plus (+) sign.
2. Rename your new file by clicking on the title. Call it “Unit Plan Template” or something similar.
3. Make your template for the minimal outline of the template. Add in the text, colours, stylings to build up the template with the default text and features. These should be things that are common across ALL unit plans; not just yours. For instance: instead of having “Term 1, 2015”, have “Term X, 20XX” so that others that use the template won’t forget to change the date.
4. The next part is a little confusing. I suspect possibly because either Google has moved away from using templates, or they’re re-developing how it is to be integrated. Anyhow, this is how you make your template available to others in your organisation.
  You will need to go to “File > New > From template…“. This should load up the template gallery in a new tab.
5. On the far right you will see the text “Submit a template“.
6. This will bring up a standard form for you to submit your own.
7. Click on “Choose from your Google Docs” and find your document “Unit Plan Template”. You can search for it in the search box at the top, or scroll through your recent documents.
8. You can choose whether to enter a description. This could be quite useful if you’re planning on making a lot of different templates.
9. You can decide on your own category. I put mine under “Planners”.
10. The rest I left as is, but obviously you can set a second category if it applies, and change the language should you need to.
11. Click on “Submit template“.
12. It may take a while to appear in your list, as it has to be checked that it will work. I’ve never had any issues with this process. Usually within 5 minutes it will be made available to use.
13. It should appear under your organisations tab for templates. It will also be available under “My Templates“.
14. It will appear in this place for all the teachers in your organisation, and so they will be able to follow the process of clicking “File > New> From template…” and then clicking on the “Use this template” button.
15. Once I’ve done that, you’ll see that the document is still in your Google Docs and Google Drive. I like to create a folder called “Templates” in Google Drive and drag the file into it. That way it doesn’t get in the way and is nice and organised. It also means all my templates will be in one spot on my Google Drive. The other benefit of having the file still, is that when you edit the template file “Unit Plan Template“, the change will automatically update for the Template Gallery. Useful!
16. And you’re done!
January 31, 2015