It was now 12 years yesterday that I posted my first ever blog post (see here). Not sure where the time has gone but it has seen me move from the UAE and working with schools mainly in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, to working in Somerset at Millfield, but also working with the Digital Futures Group and Association of Network Managers in Education (ANME) trying to support schools across the UK and beyond.
My first post involved me sat on the bed in the evening on the 12th Feb 2013 posting my first thoughts. I am now 550 further posts on and my blog has afforded me the opportunity to share my thoughts, but also has forced me to structure my thoughts in order to write them down and has allowed me to keep a permanent record of how my thinking has progressed and changed over the intervening 12 years. I think sometimes we aren’t as conscious of how our own views and beliefs change and develop over time and with age and experience as we should be.
It has also been great to meet people and connect with people that actually have read some of my posts. This includes meeting online with discussion via social media, but also meeting in person at events including events such as BETT or the Schools and Academies Show (SAAS). I continue to believe that networking and sharing is important, and if we take into consideration the pace of technological change and the potential, or even requirement, for the use of technology in schools, it becomes all the more important. I keep coming back to the David Weinberger quote, “the smartest person in the room, is the room”, so I can but hope my posts continue to contribute to the room of global educators sharing online.
Here’s to continuing to post, to share and to the year ahead. And for those thinking about creating a blog or posting or sharing my advice is simple: just do it!
On the Friday afternoon of BETT 2025 I had the opportunity to deliver a session on cyber security for education, called “cyber resilience and schools: lets get pragmatic”. Now I will admit I was a bit worried with it being a day three afternoon session, would anyone turn up, however the session was very well attended which was great. One thing I will note though is that when I asked about the roles of the various people in the audience, around 95% of them were from technical IT roles. I get why this would be the case however I worry that this is symptomatic of cyber incidents still being see as an “IT” issue rather than a school wide issue. When an incident happens, although IT will be the people working hard to resolve it, it will be the whole school which is impacted including in relation to administrative tasks like registration and parental contact, teaching and learning, pastoral and wellbeing support and much more. Cyber resilience, or cyber security if your prefer that term, needs to be seen as a school wide issue so my thanks and applause go to the small number of school leaders who attended my session, and I hope they found it useful.
My presentation broke down into four main areas, being the current context of schools and cyber security, the need for risk assessment, the need for incident preparation, and the basics which schools need to be doing to limit risk including reducing likelihood and impact of an incident.
In relation to the context it is pretty easy to see the impact and risk in relation to cyber and schools with one school being forced to remain shut at the start of the first week of BETT due to a cyber incident. The ICO also acknowledged that reported incidents in 2023 had grown 55% over those in 2022. If putting a cost figure to things, cyber crime world wide is estimated to reach $10.5 trillion dollars this year. So cyber crime will definitely continue and will continue to hit schools. One key challenge for schools though is the limited budget available, both financially and staff resource related, to tackle cyber risks and cyber resilience. This highlights the challenge for schools however I noted a discussion in an industry event where they talked of whether doubling cyber related budgetary spend might half the risk; The common consensus was probably not. So, cries for more money, although money would help, would not solve the challenge.
It is therefore about risk management and balance. Schools can be more secure but in doing so this might impact on flexibility, and therefore on the educational experience of students. We need to seek to risk assess, identifying our risks, their likelihood and impact, plus the mitigation we could or have put in place, complete with any implications of such mitigation. Once we know our risks we can plan accordingly in terms of mitigation or incident planning.
My next main point was the need to accept that cyber incidents are a “when” rather than an “if”, and based on this we need to prepare ourselves. For me this is where desktop exercises are useful, actually working through an example incident with colleagues to identify what needs to be done, by who and when, plus to identify any assumptions which may have been made in terms of how an incident would be responded to. Now this was one of the exercises from my session however the key value is in conducting such exercises in your own school, with a cross section of your own staff and therefore where the exercise can be tailored to the specific needs and context of the school. It is all about thinking about the processes in a safe environment of a desktop exercise rather than in the heat of battle in the event of a real life incident.
The last section of my presentation, which may feel a little backwards in relation to having looked at risk management and incident planning first, was that of how we might pragmatically delay an incident occurring or limit its impact. As I mentioned earlier we don’t have the resources of enterprise organizations so we cant simply throw money or resources at the problem. For me this therefore means we need to seek to do the basics in terms of cyber resilience. This refers to forcing MFA, patching as many servers as we can, providing users only with the access they truly need, etc. It is these basics that will reduce the risk level for our school and college, and hopefully see criminals moving along to the next school or organisation in the hope of an easier target. And generally the basic steps don’t cost the earth, other than some time to undertake them.
Conclusion
My summation for the session was very much about the need for cyber resilience to be seen as a school wide issue and therefore for it to be discussed at the highest levels including governors/trustees and senior leadership. They need to have a sense on the risks being faced and guide in relation to seeking to address these risks. They may not know the technical side however they set the risk appetite and therefore guide the spending of resources, including IT staffing, plus the balance between security and flexibility, which includes flexibility in the classroom. They should also be central to considering the “what if” scenario and considering how the school might respond to cyber incidents such as data breaches, ransomware, etc. It is better to prepare than to have to work out what you are going to do while in the midst of a cyber crisis. And lastly is the basics, we simply need to do these as they are the most cost effective method to delay or limit the impact of a cyber incident.
Cyber crime isn’t going away, so we need to plan and prepare, and not just the IT staff.
Now if you wish to review my slides or the resources, which included some cyber incident cards for a risk assessment exercise, then you can access them here via Google Drive.
Continuing on my reflections of the BETT conference from my previous post, I found sir Stephen Frys discussion with Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon to be quite interesting in the exploring “science reality” and how some things science fiction have come to pass, plus in looking at how Artificial Intelligence (AI) has actually been around for some time. In terms of science reality, I did a presentation last year where I referenced an episode from Star Trek: The Next Generation, where it appears that captain Piccard is using a device very much like an iPad or other tablet device. It is notable the episode aired in the 1980’s and focused on events from the 23rd century, when in fact the iPad made its appearance in 2010. For me this highlights that science fiction sometimes presents us with novel and interesting ideas, that people then seek to make happen. It also highlights that we are pretty crap at predicting the “when” of things with any real accuracy.
In terms of the longevity of AI, the concept has been discussed since the 1950’s with period of progress and then periods of quiet, with one particular quiet period known as the AI winter. The reality is that the current progress of AI, as discussed by the sir Stephen and Dr Imafidon, is likely the juncture between increasing computing poor and increasing “oil fields of data”. I found the point regarding how we “sleepwalked into the internet age” interesting, highlighting we cannot do the same with AI, but did we truly know what the impact of the internet was going to be, so can we truly know what the impact of AI might be? I also found discuss of how social media focussed on “maximising engagement” to hit the nail of the head especially when this was expanded to include maximising bias, hatred and other negatives. The term socio-technical skills as something we should possibly seek develop, was a new one on me, but I can see the point.
The discussion then progressed to education and assessment categorising the implications of ChatGPT for cheating as a minor issue brought about by the education system we currently have. This aligns with some of my views on the need to reform education. Education is not about tests or coursework, it is about learning. It isn’t about grades. I found the comment regarding our current system “testing for ignorance” and then pushing it, to be a particular telling and critical assessment of the world we consider to be education. In the roundtable on assessment I took part in, that was one of our discussions regarding how coursework and exams are simply scalable for use across different schools, regions and countries, so we use them due to this scalability rather than because they are the best thing for education or for learning, or for our students.
As the discussion moved back more towards AI there was an interesting discussion on AI development in terms of how we often describe AI as currently being the worst it will be, and that it is constantly improving. This is fair to a point but sir Stephen referred to the internet as “filling with slop” and “contaminated” and if we assume that AI continues to use the AI in its training data then it too may become contaminated so it maybe possible to suggest that AI might be at its best now and only get worse as it becomes more contaminated by its own “slop”. And who controls the AI and its development. It was suggested that the three worst options might be the three groups most likely to lead the way on AI development, being countries, corporations and criminals. In all three cases I can see the outcomes being far from positive and we can already see the internet being used to political and national ends, for pure commercialisation, consumerisation or profit, or for crime.
I could likely write a whole series of blogs based on the session by sir Stephen and Dr Imafidon however rather than focussing on that I just want to share how they finished the discussion, on the need to find the “sweet spot”. The need to find a balance between pessimism and optimism. Now this aligns very much with my view of balance, in that most good things will have some balancing drawbacks or challenges. We need to try and find our way and find the best middle group, the “sweet spot”.
The next session I watched before hitting the BETT conference floor was a session titled “Education in the AI era”. Again I could write a lot about what was said as I found it to be very interesting indeed but am going to avoid doing that. One key comment mentioned 30% of teachers not using AI; My sense is this figure is lower than the reality. The data came from TeacherTapp which I think is great, but I also think that the subset of teachers using TeacherTapp are likely to be those who are a little more tech savvy and therefore likely to use AI, and that a greater proportion of those who don’t use AI will also not be using TeacherTapp. The bigger and possibly more important question is why some teachers who know of AI aren’t using it; Is it they don’t know they are using AI, but are, that they don’t have access, lack training, lack confidence or something else? In terms of access, this session also mentioned access to technology and affordance, which to me links to the concept of digital divides.
I also liked the discussion on banning and blocking AI where they compared it to knives in food tech. Why would we ban AI in some or all subjects when we know knives can be dangerous, yet don’t ban them? Now I know that this is a very simplistic and flawed analogy and that it was likely used for effect rather than accuracy, but I think the point is valid; How often has prohibition of anything ever been beneficial or effective? It just tends to make people do it more, but do it in secret.
This session finished on the big question, which had also been raised the previous night at the Edufuturists event, in terms of what the purpose of education is? In terms of what we measure, tests, coursework, grades, are these what truly matters? And if not, what does matter, and how might we measure it, assuming we need to?
That’s some pretty deep questions to end this post on, but that’s where I found myself and I was still in the morning of day 1 of BETT. The afternoon would see me getting around the event and doing the networking side of things, which for me is one of the main benefits of BETT, but the sessions from the morning, and some of the other sessions I attended across the conference were also very beneficial in stimulating thoughts and ideas, and in some places in confirming or challenging some of my thinking. Next BETT post to follow soon……….
Have been a little light on the posts recently having enjoyed the festive period and more recently been trying to get back up to speed with things. That and have also been struggling with a bit of a winter cold over the festive period, with this lingering into the start of the new year. But normal service is starting to resume, so let’s start with a quick photo review of 2024.
Its always difficult picking photos for this as I have so many photos of events, meetings and other things so apologies to those I missed out from the above. 2024 was likely my busiest year in terms of the things I got involved in. That said I have done my best to try and pick some of the highlights which includes BETT 2024, which for me felt like my best BETT yet; With that I look forward to BETT 2025 and actually doing a bit of speaking at the event for the first time. 2024 also included my trip to speak at Futureshots in Venice, complete with the unforgettable (although I try!) Gondola ride. I had my first visit to the EduFuturists Uprising event in 2024, plus ran the ANME Southwest meeting in “The Castle”, as well as attending the Google summit and Schools and Academies Show in Birmingham. I spoke at a KeyNote event, speaking on AI in education, and at the ISBA national conference on digital strategy. And that’s just some of the events I attended or contributed to.
On a more personal level, I achieved my plan to run 500km across the year, albeit not being as consistent with this as I would like, plus I actually attended BETT 2024 with my son, who was there in relation to Esports, which he is currently studying at college. It was nice to have him seeing what I do, but also allowing me to support him in his interests. Following a difficult start to the year the second half of the year saw things improve significantly with the support of my new partner, seeing me get away to the sun but also visiting Ibrox for a tour of the stadium, in less sunning conditions. And this supported me to see the return of my Christmas madness involving a number of members of my team and inflatable festive outfits.
2024 was definitely a varied year with ups and downs, so both positive and less than positive memories. It was certainly a journey. So 2025……I wonder what the journey might look like when I look back at this time next year?
It was around a year ago that I had the opportunity to speak at a Keynote event alongside Laura Knight, Dr Miles Berry and Rachel Evans, my fellow ISC Digital Advisory Group colleagues, so it was with some anticipation that I looked forward to involvement in another Keynote event, again including Laura and Rachel, but also including my fried Bukky Yusuf as well as Dina Foster and Dale Bassett. As with 2023, the event focused on AI in education, and included an opportunity for me to speak on AI literacy for students as well as on the potential for AI to help with efficiency and workload.
So, the opening speaker was Bukky delivering an introduction looking at what AI actually is and to some of the terminology and language which surrounds AI. She highlighted that AI isn’t new and is something which was being discussed all the way back in the 1950’s plus that, even before ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, AI was already something we were using in our daily lives in the likes of google maps. It was interesting as she discussed narrow AI, which is where I think we are now, but also Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) which some predict will be achieved by 2040, and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) which is the advancement and the scary situation that would proceed AGI. If AI achieved AGI, the issue is that it can iterate and evolve far quicker than we can as humans, so once AGI is reached its self-advancement quickly moves beyond human capacity and understanding towards ASI. We potentially become what ants are to human beings. Now I hold to the hope here that we are pretty poor at predicting the future, that this is still a couple of decades away and that we will hopefully put some guard rails and mitigation measures in place to ensure we are prepared for this between now and then.
Next up was Laura, who as always, delivered a thought provoking session which stimulated such broad thought in relation to AI and education. I loved her discussion of technology strategy metaphors and the dangers of a hot air balloon, fireworks or jet fighter approach, each with its advantages and its drawbacks. I sense I try to balance the hot air balloon and the jet fighter, seeking to have an overview but while also trying to keep a sense of momentum and direction. I think I am passed my days of seeking the shiny new thing, the fireworks, although I will note that I certainly did fall into this trap in my early teaching and EdTech days. Laura also touched on the need to be creative and yet also be an engineer which I think is an interesting challenge as it requires two different types of thinking.
My first session of the day related to developing AI literacy within students, but in fact much of what I said was equally applicable to staff as well as students. I outlined some of the knowledge which I feel is important, including knowing of the benefits but also the risks and challenges as they relate to the use of AI. Next I moved onto the skills side of things, and how all the discussion of prompt engineering and the likes paints use of AI out as being complex and technical, when in fact my recent use of CoPilot involved me simply talking to my laptop and CoPilot. The barrier to entry, to actually having a play with AI is actually so very low than anyone can do it.
In terms of skills I highlighted the need for students, and staff, to be able to think critically and to review and asses content presented to them to identify what is fake or real. Given the speed with which posts on social media become viral, and the potential for AI to be used to create or manipulate content, whether it is text, image, audio or video, the need for critical thinking is never more key. I also pointed to the need to consider the ethics in relation to AI tools, using Star Wars and the post death use of James Earl Jones’ voice and Peter Cushings likeness. Is this ethical? How do we seek consent or permission? Are there risks of mis-use? Data literacy was my next focus, in the fact AI relies on data and therefore we need to get better at understanding what data is gathered, how it is used, how data might be inferred and more. One of the attendees also raised the issue of the environment, and on reflection, I should have included a slide to this, to the need to consider the environmental impact of the user of genAI.
After lunch the next session was another Laura session this time looking at the safeguarding implications of AI. This session went into some of the murkier implications of AI including the use of AI imagery and maybe even chatbots to support criminals engaged in sextortion. She talked about the shame that people feel when they get caught up in technology enabled safeguarding incidents, such as sextortion, and I think the emotional side of things is very important to remember and to consider. She also raised the issue of some students possibly withdrawing and relying on AI as their friend and confidant, and the implications of this from a privacy point of view as well as from a safeguarding risk point of view where an AI could guide a child towards inappropriate or even harmful behaviour. The challenge of privacy was also covered, acknowledging that we humans are pretty poor at this often agreeing to app terms and conditions without any consideration for what we have actually agreed to, a challenge that is becoming more and more difficult in my view as we share more information with more apps and services.
My final session of the day focussed on AI and efficiency and also on the possibility it can help to address the current workload challenges in education. Now Bukky bigged this session up as the “unicorn” session so my first step pre starting the session was to use genAI to get a nice photo of a dog with a unicorn horn on its head; I simply don’t think anyone has the answers here, or the unicorn, it is just a case of prompting discussion and sharing ideas. My session was very much about getting attendees to collaborate and share their own idea and experiences. I have long said the smartest person in the room is the room and this session focussed on exactly that and on getting the audience themselves to share their thoughts and ideas, before I then went on to share some of mine. One of the highlights for the event as a whole was an attendee picking up on my comment regarding the need to build networks and communities, suggesting that the attendees were themselves now a network and therefore it would be worth seeking to find a way to continue discussion beyond the event; I highly hope this is something we can get off the ground as I truly believe our best chance to realise the potential of AI, or maybe just to survive the fast paced technical change, is to work together and to actively share and discuss issues or ideas.
The event then closed with a panel session involved myself, Laura, Rachel and Dale. And before you wonder about if I suffered my usual travel woes, lets just say I stupidly decided to climb the stairs at Russel Square tube station, clearly missing the warning sign. Approx. 170 spiral stair case steps later and I almost never made the conference the following day!
It was a long but very useful day with lots of things to go away and think on. I also made use of Otter to record my own presentation with a hope to use this to improve my preparation and my delivery for future events. I am also hopefully that maybe the attendees will indeed engage with sharing and discussion beyond the event itself, as this is the most likely method in ensuring the discussions and sessions shared bring about the positive change myself and the other presenters would love to see.
It was great to lead the ANME southwest meeting on Tuesday last week at the amazing offices of CoreToCloud. There aren’t many IT companies that I know of that can claim to have the address “The Castle” but CoreToCloud call it home. Now as is the case with me and travel, the travel to this event wasn’t without issue with the M5 being closed following a sad and tragic loss of life. And so my day started off with a good period of time in a car park, or at least that’s how the road seemed to me, before getting to the event later than planned, with a later kick off for the meeting as a result.
As always the key aim of ANME meetings is to provide a network for school IT professionals to share thoughts, ideas and issues and this meeting provided for that. There were two great presentations from ANME members firstly looking at how apprentices can be a key part of IT staffing, and how to ensure apprentices are properly developed to become an effective part of a school IT team. This presentation was made all the more powerful through the contributions of a current school IT staff member who was an apprentice but now runs a school site. Now I myself have seen the benefits of apprentice students being supported however I also understand the time required to do this. The issue of time for training of apprentices and other new, possibly young staff, often gets me thinking of the Richard Branson quote regarding the cost of training people up and them leaving when compared with the cost of not training someone up and them staying. But it does also raise the usual challenge of the finite nature of time when compared with the frenetic nature of IT roles in schools.
The event also included a few cyber security presentations from IT vendors with tools around detecting and isolating ransomware, from a data point of view rather than an endpoint based detection point of view, and on automated penetration testing. These presentations were very useful in providing IT staff with possible solutions they can consider as part of a layered approach to cyber security. Sadly, as is often the case, one of the challenges here continues to be that of budget and also of recognition as to the potential risk. How do you convince those with budgetary power of spending money, which could be spent directly and immediately on teaching and learning, on preventing a possible, future cyber incident, which may then impact on teaching and learning plus school operation.
The second of the ANME member presentations was on going cloud and was one I identified with, including discussion of the sudden surge towards the cloud as associated with remote learning being brought in during the pandemic. The presentation touched on the challenges of change management as well as on resource management. It also presented how internal charging for IT services in a multi-school trust might be a useful vehicle in establishing the value of IT staff involvement and services. I was particularly interested in the discussion of professional development and professional education for IT staff in schools, as this is something I consider to be important but also something which can be difficult in terms of finding appropriate training content, cost of content and also finding the relevant time to allow it to occur. I have myself allocated time in the past for staff to do this however found it difficult to protect this time. This is definitely something I need to revisit in the future, possibly looking to allocate time but allow for staff members to arrange it themselves but with some sort of line management process to ensure the time is used and that the outcomes are meaningful and add value.
The ANME meetings continue to be a valuable space for IT staff in schools to get together and share what works, the challenges and also the things that don’t work. I continue to believe that in a world of fast paced tech change and increasing use of tech in schools, and in classrooms, there are no school leaders, technology leaders or other staff in schools who can handle things on their own. It is therefore critical to network and to share. As I often say, “the smartest person in the room is the room” (David Weinberger), so the more people we can get in the room, including the ANME meeting room, the smarter we all are collectively.
I cant wait until the new ANME South West meeting, and I hope that it sees yet more new faces joining and sharing their thoughts and ideas.
This week saw me taking a trip to Mercedes World to speak at the InTec IT Innovation in Education event in relation to esports and also to host a little esports round table. Now as usual my travels weren’t without their issues which started from the outset with the car park at the station being full, so no spaces, and then was promptly followed by a delayed train meaning I missed my connection. I do sometimes wonder why I continue getting the train however I suspect, if I drove instead, there would just be significant traffic jams plus I wouldn’t be able to work or have a beer in the process of travelling. As it was the already long journey took just over 5 hours to complete.
So as to the event itself. The first topic covered was AI in education and in particular Microsoft’s Co-Pilot. Now this session focussed on the paid version of Co-Pilot where it exists in Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc, rather than the free version. The capabilities are impressive as was evidenced by the demo video which was worked through however two challenges currently exist in schools. One is that of cost, with a cost of around £25 per user per month the scalability of CoPilot in its paid form across whole school staff bodies is rather limited. That said it could be issued to key users. The other issue is that of data protection and data security in relation to how CoPilot may surface data which it shouldn’t but where permissions and labelling of data has been historically poor. Now an example I used here, and experienced recently albeit not actually involving copilot, involved a poorly configured MS Team with data pertaining to a trip. Permissions made the team available to all within the organisation, including students. Now in the past this wouldn’t have been a problem as students would either need to find the link or get very lucky in stumbling across the Team however in this case the AI in office 365 which tries to predict what might be useful, surfaced some files from this team following a number of staff accessing said files. Office 365 was just presenting “this file might be of interest” however surfaced information which wasn’t meant to be available to students. In a world of CoPilot this is likely to happen all the more often and present significant potential risk.
Next up was a discussion on cyber security and safeguarding. I liked the strong linking here between safeguarding, which is rightly viewed as critical, and cyber security, which is often shown lesser consideration. It may be that the best way forward in terms of schools and cyber security is to view it as an aspect of safeguarding in keeping student and staff data safe and secure, and through this protecting them from potential harms. And isn’t protecting student from harm exactly what safeguarding is about?
During the lunch break I got my hands on a very nice Sim racing rig and got to do a bit of racing. To start with I didn’t do too well, treating the pedals like an Xbox controller, with a brake and accelerator pedal with an up and down position and nothing else. Cue, spinning off the course and missing corners. I joked with one of the Mercedes staff that I was driving a lawnmower given the amount of time I was spending on the grass. Later I started to get a better feel for things and for being more careful with my acceleration and braking, at which point I started to make gradual improvements, eventually getting my lap time down below 1 minute and eventually coming 5th on the leader board.
After lunch there were sessions on infrastructure and IT planning. I think the key messages were the importance of a modern infrastructure to support the increasing number and differing types of devices, including VR headsets and 3D printers among many other items. Also, the need to plan and plan early. This always makes me think of failing to plan as planning to fail, however in this case its not just about planning but about planning early to allow time for those things we cant predict.
My session was largely on esports, talking about how easy it is for schools to get involved with esports plus about the potential benefits in terms of soft skills development but also in terms of the potential career pathways which esports, and the soft skills it helps develop, might open for our students. I still sense that esports continues to be adopted more by the Further Education colleges than it does within schools, and I feel this continues to be a shame as the benefits are not limited to those 16+ year old.
My session also had a second topic being the ISBA Technology Survey. Now I led on the development of the 2024 survey and resultant report, picking up from the work of Alan Hodgin and Ian Philips who developed the 2018 survey. I continue to feel that technology changes so fast that no school or staff in a single school can effectively adapt and therefore we need to seek collective solutions. To that end the ISBA Technology survey is about gathering data and presenting baseline information to schools on how technology is being used across schools, to help in comparison and in planning.
Conclusion
The event was very enjoyable and the Mercedes World venue was perfect, especially given the opportunity to get some Sim racing done before then presenting on esports. It was also a great opportunity, like so many other similar events, to network and share thoughts and ideas, including getting to catch up with a few colleagues from other schools where I haven’t seen them in person for a number of years now.
AI does continue to be a common topic in education circles at the moment, and this event was no different, however I am increasingly seeing discussions of esports; This is something I find very heartening and something which I hope continues. It would be great to see more and more schools get involved in esports, helping students develop the soft skills which esports support, plus introducing them to the many career paths which esports links to.
2023-24 was such a busy year with so many great opportunities and so many great people to meet and share thoughts and ideas with. From the outset and attendance at the ISMG Cyber Security Summit then presenting on AI at the VWV conference, it always looked like it was going to be a packed academic year but little did I know quite how packed it was going to be. Little was I to know that the year would see me speaking in Amsterdam, Venice, Birmingham, London, Cardiff, Bristol, Leeds and a fair few other locations, and never mind the locations, it was the brilliant people that I had the pleasure to meet up with and talk all things technology and education with along the way that made it so very worthwhile. The academic year also saw me become vice chair for the ISC Digital Advisory Group and become one of the founding members of the amazing Digital Futures Group (DFG).
This collage of some of the photos is just the tip of the iceberg which was 2023-24 including some amazing memories from BETT, the Schools and Academies Show, The Edufuturists Uprising, EdTech Europe and also an attempted murder at FutureShots in Venice. I can only hope that 2024-25 sees similar opportunities arise and further chances to share and collaborate with such great people, albeit hopefully without the attempted murder!
As a new academic year begins, this being my 26th academic year (has it been that long??) I just thought I would share some thoughts and maybe predictions.
Artificial intelligence
I don’t see the discussion of artificial intelligence in education going away as there is such potential. The use of AI to support students, to help teachers and rebalance workload and much more. It also makes for a good talking point for conferences or for developments. I have two problems though. One being that I think there will be a lot of talk, especially from vendors, without the reliable evidence supporting the impact and benefit of their tools. As such I feel there will be a lot of misdirection of effort and resources when looking across schools in general. Two is that artificial intelligence is all well and good, but it needs the relevant access to devices, to infrastructure, to support and to trained and confident teachers. These digital divides need to be addressed before schools in general can then seek to use AI and leverage its potential benefits.
Online Exams
The issue of online or digital exams feels partly related to the sudden growth in AI and the resulting potential for AI marking of student work and therefore for AI based marking of student exams. Again, I see this as another talking point for the year ahead but again am not sure we will see much real progress, possibly seeing less progress in this area than in AI. The issue is that exam boards are taking things very tentatively so there first step will be “paper under glass” style exams which simply take the paper version of an exam and digitise it rather than seeking to modify the exam or examination process to benefit from the new digital medium. For me the key benefit of online exams will be realised when they are adaptive in nature so can be taken anywhere and at any time. This then means that schools wouldn’t need access to hundreds of computers for their students to sit an English GCSE exam as the students could sit the exam in batches over the day or over a number of days. This would help towards the digital divides issue as it impacts online exams as schools wouldn’t need as many devices, but they would still need the infrastructure and the support to make digital exams work.
Mobile Phones and Social Media
Oh yes, and then there’s this old chestnut! I suspect the phones and social media discussion will trundle on. Students are being given phones without any parental controls and then schools are having to deal with this. And some schools are taking the prohibition approach which is unlikely to succeed and may just deplete patience and resources. I continue to believe we should be seeking to manage student mobile phones in school, so might restrict use in some areas and at some times but embrace and use them at other times. We need to spend time with students talking about social media and its risks and benefits helping to shape the digital citizens which the world needs.
I also note here that social media is being blamed for the lack of focus and ease of distraction in students, and through association it is the fault of smart phones. The world isn’t that simple, and having recently finished reading Stolen Focus by Johann Hari I am not more aware that other factors such as increasing levels of societal pressure to succeed, increased consumption of processed foods and our on-demand culture are all having an impact on our children. Yes, social media, and by extension smart phones are playing their part but they are not the root and sole cause of the issues in relation to attention which we are seeing in schools and more broadly with children.
Fake news and deepfakes
This links to AI and also to mobile phones and social media, in the increasing ease with which fake news content can be convincingly developed including the use of images and video, and then shared online. As fake news becomes an increasing issue, which I suspect the US elections will draw some focus on, there will be an increasing need for schools to consider how they discuss and address this challenge with their students. More locally within education and within schools will be where we start to see increasing use of AI tools to create “deepfakes” by students and involving other fellow students, either “just having a laugh” or for the purposes of bullying. This will be very challenging as the sharing of such content will quickly stretch beyond the perimeter of schools, spread through social media, messaging apps and the like, but where the victim and likely the perpetrators will be within the school.
Wellbeing
This one came to me last, but if I was re-writing this I would likely put it first. We talk about wellbeing very much but every year we look to see if the exam grades have gone up and are faced with increasingly compliance requirements around safeguarding or attendance or many other areas. Improvements in results, or even the efforts to improve results mean more work, which means more effort and more stress. More compliance hoops equally mean more effort and more work. So how can we address wellbeing if educators are constantly being asked to do more than they did previously. And exam results and compliance are just two possible examples of the “do more” culture which pervades society possibly driven by the need for economic and other growth as something to aim for. Although growth and improvement is something laudable to seek, it cannot be continuous over time, not without deploying additional resources both in terms of money and human resources. As such there needs to be a logical conclusion to the “do more” culture and my preference would be for us to decide and manage this rather than for it to happen to us. AI can help with workload for example giving more time for wellbeing however my concern here is that this frees up some time to simply do more stuff, albeit stuff which might have an impact, but not positively on wellbeing.
Conclusion
The above are just five areas I see being cornerstones of educational discussion in the academic year ahead. I suspect other things will arise such as equity of opportunity, although I note this links to pretty much all of the above. There will also be other themes which arise but it will be interesting to see how these particular five themes develop during the course of 2024/25.
And so with that let me wish everyone a successful academic year. Let the fun begin!
Am currently reading The Lonely Century by Noreena Hertx and managed to get a good few chapters read while on the train from Bristol up to Leeds for the EduFuturists Uprising event. It was in reading it, and on thinking of AI in education, the efficiency narrative and concerns in relation to mental health and wellbeing, that I thought I would scribble this blog post together. And I apologise in advance for what will likely be a series of rambling and loosely connected thoughts, but hopefully you will find some value in them and be able to draw some semblance of sense from them.
Now I have written on the efficiency narrative before, that we are forever looking to be more efficient. This is about getting more done with less so taking less time, or using less resources, or reducing errors. The issue though is that this isn’t sustainable as ever time we save time, or save resources, we simply identify further things to do which will make use of the saved time, or saved resources. Often under the guise of “continual improvement” we end up doing more, but we cannot continue this approach indefinitely. One look at the teacher wellbeing index and we can see the resulting stress and workload issues brought about by a culture of “efficiency” and “do more”. So individually we are all being challenged to do more, and our organisational structures, our teams, our leadership structures, etc, are all being challenged also to do more, but also to oversee continual improvement, which in turn means doing yet more things.
I have also written in the past on the subject of social media and the false sense of connectedness that it provides. I have found myself surrounded by virtual friends and colleagues, sharing thoughts and ideas, but still finding myself isolated and alone. This presents another challenge as we seek to be connected, to get involved and contribute, but all without the benefits of face to face get togethers and proper, real life socialisation.
Loneliness, or as Hertx describes it, that lack of connection not just from friends, family and colleagues but from our wider communities, our political parties and society as a whole is another concern. Now Hertx points towards this as being a contributory factor in the fracturing of current society, including the growth in extreme views particularly as related to far right politics. Now for me this links to social media where such ideals can be easily shared and garner favour or even see their way to going viral. And for the students currently in our schools this is quite significant given that all they will have lived through is a world of social media, of extremist views, the breakdown of social cohesions, covid and its related lock downs and isolation, and similar other challenges.
Maybe we now live in a world where more than ever we need to reconnect with what it means to be human and in particular being the human, social, animals we are. Maybe we need to spend time rebuilding our communities and rebuilding the social cohesion which I feel, on reflection, was an important part of my childhood. A time where we knew who our neighbours were, and we worked, or as kids, collectively looking after each other, our kids and our families. Technology can do so much for us but I do wonder if too much of our lives are now experienced or moderated through technology, rather than being “properly” experienced. As I sit typing this on the train, I can see some irony in that. I note I did enjoy some momentary chit chat with my fellow travellers, given the crammed nature of the train. I could have been getting on with work and being efficient, but instead I sparked up a conversation with the strangers around me and felt, in myself, a little better for it.
Maybe it is these conversations which we need to have much more, putting down our technology, putting aside our “get more done” culture and just being human social animals a little more!
Technology and Learning