Creatives international ai global congress Jan 2022 talk about how AI can practically help us in schools today and some ideas on where how and why we should go forward from here.
3. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the fastest growing deep technology in the
world, with huge potential to rewrite the rules of entire industries,
drive substantial economic growth and transform all areas of life. - UK
AI Strategy
We hear AI has great potential for efficiency and productivity and can
reduce the inauthentic labour in our lives but it could also be
extremely dangerous with dystopian consequences like the Singularity.
Is it essential we develop AI wisely and that our staff and students
become discerning users?
AI – Good or Bad?
5. What are
we trying
to achieve?
Nurturing the relationships between staff & students for independence, curiosity & wonder?
Empowering staff to enable student progression?
Supporting staff, students and parents through challenging times?
6. What are
we trying
to achieve?
Nurturing the relationships between staff & students for independence, curiosity & wonder?
Empowering staff to enable student progression?
Supporting staff, students and parents through challenging times?
How can AI help us?
7. How can schools use AI?
To increase student
responsibility for their
learning?
To empower staff to
enable student
progression without being
distracted from the
important relationships
we all need to build with
our student?
8. How can schools use AI?
To increase
student
responsibility
for their
learning?
10. The Intel AI4Youth
program and
Microsoft AI
provide self-paced
resources to
support students’
skills and
understanding of
Ethics involved
Do we need to start
earlier to integrate
programs like these into
the curriculum – KS2?
Intel
AI Integration
Teacher Videos -
examples from India
What is AI?
Problem Solving
AI Maths tools
AI Project Cycle
Microsoft
AI School
11. How can schools use AI?
To empower staff
to enable student
progression
without being
distracted from the
important
relationships we all
need to build with
our student?
16. Awad et al ‘The Moral Machine’
Nature Vol 563 November 2018
The Moral Machine Experiment platform
gathered 39.61 million decisions in ten languages
from millions of people in 233 countries
17. Do you agree with
these priorities?
Awad et al ‘The Moral Machine’
Nature Vol 563 November 2018
18. Resources and links
University of Helsinki Free Online AI Course
UK Government AI strategy
AI for Youth Program (intel.com)
Microsoft AI program
Mark Steed’s AI resources
CENTURY | Online Learning | English, Maths and
Science
Seneca Learning for A Level, GCSE, KS3 & KS2
Progressay
Merlyn Mind
Elon Musk on Artificial Intelligence
BBC Radio 4 - The Reith Lectures - Nine Things You
Should Know About AI
Intel India Teacher Integration Videos
Habs AI Project
20. UK Government AI Strategy
The UK is a global superpower in AI and is well placed to lead the world over
the next decade as a genuine research and innovation powerhouse, a hive of
global talent and a progressive regulatory and business environment.
The UK’s National AI Strategy therefore aims to:
• Invest and plan for the long-term needs of the AI ecosystem to continue
our leadership as a science and AI superpower;
• Support the transition to an AI-enabled economy, capturing the benefits
of innovation in the UK, and ensuring AI benefits all sectors and regions;
• Ensure the UK gets the national and international governance of AI
technologies right to encourage innovation, investment, and protect the
public and our fundamental values.
Notas del editor
Good Afternoon ladies and gentlemen,
Thanks Dr Sharma for inviting me and for Dr Mera for setting the scene and explaining how these complex systems fit together.
I want to talk to you today about how AI can practically help us in schools today and some ideas on where how and why we should go forward from here.
I have 35 years of classroom experience most recently as Assistant Headteacher - Director of Computing and ICT at The Haberdashers' Boys' School, responsible for developing systems which simplify the way schools enable learning.
For the last 16 years I have also been working with the Independent Schools Council’s (ISC’s) Digital Strategy Group supporting schools nationally and internationally with conferences and strategic planning through action research projects, regular bulletins, audits, workshops, training days and blue-sky consultancy.
I am so please to have been Co-editor of Developing Digital in 2020 - the guide for schools’ senior leaders developed collaboratively between schools, EdTech partners and the Education Foundation.
Naturally very passionate about the potential use of AI as a result of its ability to drive efficiency, personalisation and streamline admin tasks. We really do need to reduce teachers inauthentic labour to allow them the time and freedom to provide understanding and adaptability. Do you think there is capacity for more from teachers?
We are using AI everyday already in our everyday life but we hear so much about the negative aspects of AI from people like Elon Musk, whereas we also see national organisations like the UK government are committed to AI Strategy.
Musk is working at the sharp end of AI and so we need to take his dystopian prediction seriously.
Imagine a system that is charged with increasing efficiency and reducing errors artificial intelligence may not appreciate our beautiful imperfections and see us as candidates for removal from any system because we make mistakes – often.
All that is clear is that we need to proceed wisely with caution and make sure we don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. We cannot sacrifice relationships for more effective use of technology.
Before we look at how AI can help we need to make sure we understand What are we trying to achieve in schools?
You would think that in 2021 this would be easy to get a consensus amongst just independent schools in the uk of what we are trying to achieve let alone all schools in the UK or in the west. However as Becky Allen states in the great book she collaborated on The Next big thing there clearly isn’t. We Can’t debate this here so
From my experience the priority should be nurturing the relationship between teachers and students that can inspire and spark imaginations to a world of curiosity and wonder.
empowering staff to enable student progression?
It is also essential we support the young people parents and staff through these challenging times
Question is how can AI help us?
Break this down and just look at 2 of the 3 for the this presentation
Clearly without students developing autonomy and independence staff can’t do any more for them. Staff are at capacity already.
This will require policies, training and support for everyone in the learning community – Staff, Students and parents.
Examples systems
Accelerates learning - Intelligent personalisation improves student engagement and understanding
Some systems have created a Smart Learning Mode, which makes it easier for students to study effectively and take ownership of their learning. In general, effective learning techniques are harder than the conventional ones, which is one of the reasons why very few pupils use them. For example, doing retrieval practice takes more time. So one of the advantages of these systems is they remove "administration" time from students, so they can focus on the learning itself.
Collectively we see this shifts the focus from what the teacher can do, to what the pupil can do to improve their grades.
John Taylor High provide a mixture of Direct instruction and independent study. Their system understands the user the learning objectives and their learning style and will present topics in an individually personalised form and pace that suits them best.
Great potential of these constantly learning adaptive systems to reduce the inauthentic labour of teachers so they can do what they do best understand their pupils and intervene as appropriate. To use a football analogy – teacher can keep their eyes on the game not the football.
Self-managed learning resources Intel and Microsoft Program Goals
Deep understanding of AI: Demystify AI and equip youth with the skill sets and mindsets required for AI readiness.
Access and use of AI toolsets: Democratize access to AI tools with Intel technologies and train youth to use them skillfully.
Create solutions with AI: Meaningful social impact solutions as evidence of achievement.
I was lucky to be one of the first schools to carry out a trial from 2018 – 2020 and even with access to excellent resources, support from Intel’s best technical staff this was an enormously exciting but very challenging project for some of our smartest students, taking 2 years to create an interactive bot to help users to easily find specific resources.
These resources and many like them are available to users as standalone resources or to be integrated into the school curriculum
My conclusion after the 2 year project - we need to start earlier and integrate programs like the intel curriculum for primary schools.
AI Integration Teacher Videos - examples from India
If anyone is interested in an intro to some of the content areas, perhaps highlighting the iDEA badges we’ve supported might be worth thinking about:
https://idea.org.uk/badge/what-is-ai
https://idea.org.uk/badge/problem-solving-with-ai
https://idea.org.uk/badge/maths-tools-for-ai
https://idea.org.uk/badge/ai-project-cycle
We must Ensure these systems engage staff in their development
Teaching and school systems can reduce workload
Reduces workload - Saves teachers hours in marking, analysis and resource creation and generate data essential to enhance the relationships
Enhances teaching - Actionable data insights support timely, targeted interventions
Alpha go story
Only AlphaGo + Human can beat AlphaGo
These systems have been especially useful for reducing teacher workload and helping students to catch up on lost learning, because it provides us with data that helps us identify where students’ weaknesses are as a whole cohort and then allows us to set work to help them as individuals with the areas that they need to improve on. If we know that a weakness in Year 7 is non-fiction, for example, so our subject mentor can either assign specific nuggets from a Reading course or even set pupils the whole course and let the AI do the work.
Moving forward. The diagnostics advise students on the content for them to cover based on how they perform, so that both reduces the workload for staff and provides us with data that will help us to plan effectively.
Teachers can set differentiated assignments for their students based on each student`s individual progress so far.
Everything is automatically marked and teachers receive a full report. So, by using our intelligent features, teachers reduce the time they spend on manual repetitive tasks, but improve the data they collect from their classes, which provides them with the perfect opportunity to focus on building relationships with students and creating powerful interventions so that all pupils get closer to achieving their goals.
Another example to make teachers lives easier is a digital assistant like Merlyn mind
Imagine an Alexa in the classroom James Wilding and Ian Nairn And Gus Schmeldin
This can create a more engaging classroom experience, students are more engaged and self-directed in their learning, reflecting the power of co-orchestration in the classroom.
supporting dynamic pedagogy and student participation safely, even with COVID restrictions.
Students love to talk to the device and the visuals enhance student engagement.
Students with speech difficulties are working harder to improve their speech in a positive way….not because they were forced to, because they wanted to.
Co-orchestration (students and teachers working together with a digital assistant) is a powerful modality emerging from our field research. Co-orchestration empowers students, supports self-directed learning, and may provide more balance to the hierarchal playing field of the classroom.
We must make sure we develop the tools, with teachers not just schools and districts, so we make sure they are fit for purpose and the learning community wants to adopt the systems.
There are currently so many examples where bias and unethical use of AI is causing problems today imagine just look at some of the dystopian futures with maniacal dictators.
So we must make sure we enable students to develop the skills to use the technology but also understand and develop a set of ethics to make sure we avoid these dystopian predictions.
Here is an example of the ethics concerned with self driving cars.
The Moral Machine Experiment platform gathered 39.61 million decisions in ten languages from millions of people in 233 countries
And the results
Do you agree with these priorities?
If not what do we do about it?
We must make sure as we develop the tools with teachers so we make sure they are fit for purpose. There are currently so many examples where bias and unethical use of AI is causing problems today imagine just look at some of the dystopian futures with maniacal dictators.
So we must make sure we enable students to develop the skills to use the technology but also understand and develop a set of ethics to make sure we avoid these dystopian predictions.
Here are a range of tools to enable our young people to develop the skills and ethics to make sure we avoid these dystopian predictions. Our students will be responsible for building these systems, understanding and developing the ethics and legislation and making important decisions about the use of AI in the future.
Thank you all
I hope this has helped you understand why