I have recently been thinking about phones in schools again, and yes I know we should be over this topic by now however the issue at hand had me thinking a little different about the issue. Basically, I missed an important call on my mobile due to having Do Not Disturb in place as it was later on in the day. Now having missed the call it got me thinking there clearly must be a way to override do not disturb such that a few key people could call me, and where my phone would ring, even when do not disturb is on.
For those who aren’t aware Do Not Disturb allows you to set your phone up such that your notifications, your alerts, your calls and messages are supressed during certain hours of the day, such as in the evening when you are trying to get some sleep. And you can decide which apps or callers you will allow.
It turns out it is very easy to set overrides such that certain individuals can call you, or certain apps will notify you even when Do Not Disturb is on. And as I dug a bit further I found that you can also trigger on other things rather than just time, so you can setup a work mode which triggers when you are near a particularly location such as your work. So, this mode might be setup to stop notifications and calls during the work day.
All of the above is good, but this got me thinking about all the functionality which is now in the modern smartphone specifically to help us manage distractions and our time on our phones. I for example track my screen time which current averages at around 2hr 48min. But the issue will all of this is who is actually telling people about all of this functionality and how to use it? In my case I had a need to use it, and knew it was likely there plus how to search for the relevant info to get it all setup. But what of the student who doesn’t identify a problem with their screentime, distraction, etc despite high volumes of use or even addiction? What if the student who knows they have a problem but doesn’t know there might be a solution or doesn’t know how to find it?
I cant help but think the tech companies do a good job of adding this functionality, thereby showing their efforts to protect people and to empower them to make decisions as to their device use, etc, however I am also conscious of their need to please their shareholders and to make profit. The cynical me wonders if the lack of press or training or awareness regarding all this good functionality, is simply the outcome of needing and wanting to keep peoples eyes glued to their devices, and to keep the money flowing in.
Aside from the above, maybe we also need to acknowledge the issue isn’t solely the tech companies issue and that we, the users actually have some agency here. We can choose to look at our phones less, to explore the safeguarding and wellbeing functionality which is available and to turn it on where possible. Sadly, I feel the effort of turning on the functionality which might help us, is often greater than the effort required to point at vendors, blame them and expect them to address the challenge.
So have you looked at the wellbeing controls on your device or on your kids device recently? And if not, it might be worth doing so.
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.
So the 2nd half of the half term begins and I spent my half term finding some time for myself including a bit of a holiday with some excellent company, but with a little bit of an intrusion from work. I went through some traumatic travel situations, as I often do, some poolside trauma and have had a difficult family issue arise. All this in a half term. So it got me thinking about wellbeing, which made me put fingers to the old keyboard and put this post together as I started the journey on my second of four trains for the day.
Wellbeing?
One of my first thoughts on wellbeing is simply the complexity of it. It’s a simple word and its easy to say your wellbeing is ok or not, or for wellbeing to be put on the agenda for weekly meetings, but what is wellbeing? Now am not going to say I have done any real research on this but for me there are a number of aspects including our physical fitness, our mental wellbeing, a spiritual element and well as elements related to stress, both positive and negative, agency, purpose, family and much more. It’s a bit of a complex soup of things yet I feel that often when organisations look at wellbeing they look for simple solutions where none really exist.
Work and wellbeing
I think this area is particularly complex. As mentioned in the intro, work intruded a little in my holiday abroad, through email notifications I saw on my phone which led me to feel the need to act and respond. I also had an emotional response to the message which had an impact where I had to that point being getting quite relaxed and very much in holiday mode. Now it is important to note that there was no explicit need in the emails for my response but I felt the need to respond. I had the agency to respond or not to respond, and had the agency to disable notifications had I wished. There was a lot in my control. But equally I feel there is an increasing narrative around the need to be efficient, to be effective, and therefore having identified an issue via a notification I felt a partially intrinsic but partially extrinsic need to act, independent of being on holiday or not. Technology facilitates many benefits but putting these notifications in front of me, may be the flipside, and negative side of this.
Stress
The word stress often brings with it a negative image. With the M5 closed, and being my main route to the airport, with all surrounding roads clogging up as everyone else, like me, sought to find alternatives, it certainly wasn’t positive stress I was experiencing and it wasn’t how I anticipated my holiday to begin. But equally the November ahead of me and the number of events which I will be contributing to, equally represents stress but I see it more as a positive challenge, challenging me to better prioritise, to network, to us resources at my disposal and to grow professionally. As I write this it gets me thinking of “desirable difficulty”. It therefore worries me that we seek convenience, ease and the status quo all too often. There is negative and avoidable stress that we should rightly seek to avoid. But equally there is a lot of stress which we should seek to embrace. From my holiday one such stress was my irrational fear of bodies of water, where my gondola ride in Feb caused some distress, and where this time it was a pool by the apartment. Like with the gondola, I once again embraced the stress in the hope of growing, this time entering the pool, albeit in the shallow end. That’s the first time I’ve been in a pool in over 20 years, and I hope is another step in trying to grow personally and get comfortable with that which makes me uncomfortable, and which stresses me out. I think this also links back to my previous comment on agency, in that I can control this stress and how I engage with it. I feel a lot of the stress in our lives, we can either control or at least control how we respond, and that it the key, to avoid the emotional hijacking which often arises from stress. Maybe if I had avoided such a hijacking I may not have responded to the email notifications, and may have left it for others to pick up or for me to pick up on my return. Who know how that may have turned out?
Wellbeing initiatives
I have a particular view on wellbeing initiatives in that I feel they are largely ineffective. They often represent activities which can be accessed and sometimes, unfortunately, which are made compulsory. These simplistic measures don’t do much to address the complexity of individual wellbeing. I will however note, taken at a macro level, they may have a positive average impact on a wider staff body, but I write this from the point of view of an individual. The initiatives I have seen so far fail to deal with the complexity of wellbeing. For myself, at the moment, the family issue which has recently arisen is definitely not going to be addressed by any activity my school can put on or arrange. It can however be addressed by a strong open and warm organisational culture, complete with appropriate line management structures. It does make me think that we should spend less time on wellbeing discussions and initiatives and more time going back to the basics of leadership and management, and making sure staff feel supported, positive challenged and engaged, fell they have agency, etc. If there is one other thing that I think schools and colleges need to do it is to provide the time to stop and reflect as this long train ride is providing me on this Sunday afternoon.
Conclusion
Wellbeing isn’t simple. It’s a bit of a soup of factors. As I sit at my 2nd last station of this leg of my trip I wonder whether I would benefit from a bit of a force analysis of the internal and external factors which impact my wellbeing and about what I or other can do to support my wellbeing. Might that help to unpick things? I also wonder if thinking about wellbeing when discussions of wellbeing and stress are often framed in a negative fashion, may bias me towards more negative views as to my own personal wellbeing. I am not sure, although if there is one thing I am sure of it is that an analysis would take some time, and if there is one thing that would positively impact my wellbeing it is to have the time to stop and reflect.
Now how do we build that into the school programme and how do we support all to stop and reflect?
And also how do we manage the narrative around wellbeing to reduce the largely negative framing which I feel currently exists?
Technology and Learning