Month: August 2022

The Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert programme

We are approaching the end of August, which is when the new Microsoft Innovative Educator Experts (MIEE) are normally announced.   I am looking forward to hopefully continuing as an MIEE for what will be my seventh year as an MIEE.   I note I am also a Microsoft Certified Educator (MCE), although I did my MCE before I got my MIEE status, although normally the route is the other way round.  So why is the MIEE status useful?

Recognition and Applications

I think the first thing to say is that it isnt the status that is useful although it is always nice to have a little pin badge and recognition.    The most important feature of the MIEE programme is the community.    I often use the phrase “the smartest person in the room, is the room” and if we take this as true, the combined experience and knowledge of MIEEs across the world is huge, backed up by various opportunities to share, discuss and collaborate.

As to the application process, this isn’t a massive effort as if you are already using technology in school, you will likely already have evidence to support any application, therefore meaning all that is required is 30mins to an hour to actually do the application itself.

Tweetmeets and Sharing internationally

Through my MIEE status I have had the opportunity to take part in tweetmeets, being part of a team of educators from across the world leading the discussion on twitter on a variety of different educational technology topics.   I have found these opportunities very useful as they allow you to share thoughts and ideas with educators from different contexts including different school types, age ranges, nations with differing education systems, differing values and cultures, and different access to technology resources.   And it is this broad sharing that I believe is the biggest benefits of the programme.   I believe the more I appreciate how education differs, and also is the same in schools and classrooms across the world, the better my understanding of education, teaching and learning, and the better I can be in supporting the use of technology in schools.

I have also had the opportunity to collaborate directly with educators in other countries as a result of the MIEE programme.  This includes working with a teacher in Saudi Arabia as a guest native English speaker to assist his students in their English language studies, plus discussing professional development with educators from Azerbaijan.   Again, I believe these experiences enhance my understanding.

Connection Calls and Face to face events

As part of the MIEE there are also the regular connection calls where latest updates on Microsoft solutions are shared, where efforts of MIEEs are celebrated and where resources and ideas are openly shared.     And there are also the face to face events, such as the MIEE gatherings at the BETT conference where you get to meet in person those individuals who previously you had only seen on a connection call teams video call.     Sadly I have missed out on the BETT meetup over the past couple of years although this is something I hope to address in 2023.

Conclusion

The Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert programme is excellent in providing access to a wide range of educators, to info on development of the Microsoft suite of products, to resources and the thoughts and ideas of educators from across the UK and the world.  

And with that I now await this years announcement and hopefully beginning my seventh year as a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert.

Its only Artificial Intelligence!

Meta released a chatbot for use in the US where its responses are based on internet based data.   It wasn’t long before the chatbot was being less than positive about Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg.   Overall, a bit of a novelty but it might also give us a little bit of insight into the Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning algorithms which underpin an increasing number of the services we use online.

It is highly unlikely that Meta specifically programmed their chat bot to suggest that the CEO did “a terrible job in testifying before congress” however this is the feedback it provided upon being asked “what did you think of mark Zuckerberg”.    This response is likely the result of the chatbot analysing data sources on the internet and identifying this response as most likely to be true, or at least true in the perceptions of those sharing their thoughts online.   So here we see a couple of problems:

  1. As users and even developers, we will not necessarily be able to identify how the response was arrived at.   It’s a black box system;  We can see the inputs and the outputs but not the process.    Considering this should make us a little bit nervous as, especially for important decisions, it would be nice to understand how the answer an algorithm provides was arrived at.   Imagine an AI being used in assessing mortgage applications;  How would you feel if no-one can example why your application was refused?    From a user point of view, as a black box system, there is also the danger that the service provider does have control over the algorithm and therefore can directly influence and control feedback to suit their own needs.  In this case the black box system provides a smoke screen for potentially unethical practices.
  2. The chatbot repeats what it sees to be true or the commonly held belief, based on the data sources it accesses.  Bias could easily be introduced here through the internet sources which the chatbot is provided access to or through the queries it might use in identifying pertinent information.   We should be naturally questioning of a solution which may be inherently biased.   One example of this is the issues surrounding facial recognition where the AI was trained largely on white rather than coloured faces, due to the predominant skin colour among those developing the AI solution.  As such we ended up with AIs which did a poorer job of facial recognition when presented with faces with non-white skin colour.
  3. Again, relating to the repetition of commonly held belief, the chatbot may simply act as an echo chamber for commonly held beliefs, disregarding minority views.    And if a number of chatbots were to be used together they might be able to powerfully shape the truth on social media channels through repeatedly posting.

Some of the above is of concern but then I start to think about the alternative and a human rather than AI based system.    Humans are not transparent in their thinking processes although they might seek to explain how they arrived at a solution, we rely on sub-concious influences and decision making processes to which we have no access.    Humans equally like an AI based system may be biased or may seek to service their own needs or the needs of their employer.    And humans also tend towards the likeminded, which therefore creates the echo chambers mentioned above.    So maybe AI is no more problematic than a human based solution.   

Is the challenge therefore that AI is technology rather than a human being like us?   Is it maybe that this difference may influence our feeling of unease or unhappiness with the risks mentioned above, and that we simply accept similar issues in human based processed because, after all, we are “only human”?

Work/Life Balance

I recently went on holiday abroad, taking my phone complete with school email with me.   This is one of the reasons I havent posted anything new over the last few weeks. While away I checked my email occasionally plus replied to several emails.   This got me thinking, was what I was doing wrong from a health and wellbeing point of view?

I have previously read various people writing about the need to establish a work/life balance with email often making an appearance among the discussion.    The discussion often including tales of notifications being received late into the night, or emails requiring urgent action before Monday morning being received on weekends.    Some have suggested schools should block or prevent the sending of emails in the evenings or at weekends or have suggested that teachers shouldn’t add their school email account to personal phones, adding it only on work issued phones.   

I did have a school phone for a period of time, carrying two phones, one for personal use and one for school use.   A number of years ago I handed back my school phone as having two phones added complexity and inconvenience. E.g., Having to decide which phone to use or which phone to answer? Deciding which apps were on which phone, etc. I also didn’t see the point of the school paying for a service and device while I was carrying a personal device which could happily meet all of my work requirements.    This was a personal decision and I note that I considered the data protection implications in making the decision.  For me it is also acknowledgement that I am not two people, a personal and a professional me, but am instead a single person with two linked aspects to my life, my personal and my professional life.  

The distinction between personal and professional lives is often made, for example on social media in having separate personal and professional accounts.    I have difficulty with this.   If I post something inappropriate or at least contentious on my personal account, it is all too easy to link that with my professional account and therefore my school, so what is the point in having the added difficulty of managing two separate accounts?    In the real world my professionalism can be held to account for my actions during my down, or personal time, and I cant then say “but that was my personal account” so why should social media be different?    Now there are some data protection implications here however that’s a whole other post.   Let’s for now leave that issue with the fact, if I had a separate professional account, it would identify as being me in my role as opposed to belonging to the role, an organisational unit within the school or the school itself.   As such the account would still be, to an extent, personal to me, which only adds to view that maintaining separate personal and professional accounts adds no value.

But why did I answer my emails and basically do some work when I was on holiday?    I think part of the answer lies with the fact I am quite poor at resting.   I feel at my best with a to-do list and ticking things off.    I also feel invested, enjoyment and empowerment in my role.   It is a key and important part of my life so to dip into emails for a few minutes and pick off a few tasks felt more appropriate than leaving them for a week until I returned to work.    It was a personal decision.    And in making the decision I was happy to spend a few minutes on email however I was equally happy to leave a number of emails alone, to await my return to work.    If work/life balance is what I need to achieve, answering those couple of emails didn’t feel out of balance.

That said, I do always try to balance things out so I have set up appropriate Do Not Disturb timings on my phone plus adjusted the notifications settings to ensure I am not constantly drawn to check my phone outside of my normal working hours.   I will acknowledge I suspect I look at my phone more often than I should mainly due to my social media usage and the habits I have built up, however I am currently looking at ways to help me address this including stopping using my phone as an alarm clock meaning it no longer has to be in the bedroom in the evening and morning.

And I think this is where the answer to this situation lies.    It partly lies with the school to avoid and manage emails, and other tasks, such that it doesn’t encourage the sending of excessive volumes of email, or the sending of emails at inappropriate times.   This relates to the espoused expectations of the school in relation to email and communications, plus to the wider culture and climate within the school.   But responsibility also lies with the individual to ensure they do not contribute to the issue in their sending of emails to others, plus they consider the practices that work best for them, including if this involves answers a couple of emails while sat by the pool or looking out towards the sea on holiday.

And as a final conclusion, I did enjoy my holiday which is what matters!