Helping TAFE Gippsland on their gen AI journey.

It was wonderful to reunite with ABC personality and Aussie genius Adam Spencer at the TAFE Gippsland Staff Conference in regional Victoria on Tue 28th April, 2026.

TAFE Gippsland has 9 campuses throughout Victoria and about 500 of their staff gathered at their Morwell campus for a day of conferencing.

Adam Spencer was the main keynote presenter. Adam is a well-known Australian broadcaster, comedian, and self-described “maths geek” who became a household name through his long-running work with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), particularly as host of ABC Sydney’s popular breakfast radio program. With a background in mathematics from the University of Sydney, he blends sharp intellect with humour, making complex ideas (especially around science, technology, and numbers) accessible and engaging to a broad audience. Known for his energetic style, quick wit, and ability to connect big ideas with everyday life, Adam is a champion for education, curiosity, and the joy of learning.

We have both aged a bit since we last presented together at the 2019 Future Focused Learning STEM Conference in Regional NSW,

Adam’s very entertaining keynote was titled Achieving Ambition amid the GPT Revolution. He shared about the value of a number of gen AI tools and how they are being used in society and education. He quoted former Canadian PM Justin Trudeau when he said, The pace of change has never been this fast before … And it will never be this slow again.

He shared a number of AI trends and concerns and how gen AI is changing the face of education globally. He talked about, and provided examples of, vibe coding and how it enables anyone to be a coder.

Adam quoted Dr Kellie Nuttall (AI Institute Leader and Strategy and Business Design Leader for Deloitte Australia) who says the whole notion of traditional organisational structures needs to be rethought entirely … Shift your focus from training people to compete with AI to helping them augment it. Invest in creativity, emotional intelligence, complex decision-making, systems thinking—the skills machines can’t replicate

Adam’s main message was that AI is impacting most industries, we can either deny it, push back against it, let it happen or better still … embrace it, empower ourselves, keep what we do best at the core of our role and augment our skills with these new technologies.

I had the pleasure of running two repeated workshops to about 80 TAFE staff titled AI as Your Teaching Apprentice: Practical Gen AI Applications for Teachers

I introduced everyone to my new Gen AI Resource for teachers and encouraged them to view my analysis of almost 50 gen AI apps that are being use by teachers these days.

We also went though my new prompting resource and Safe & ethical AI use framework.