I have previously written about the future and cyber security for schools, so I thought it might be equally useful to consider Artificial Intelligence (AI) and schools and what the future might look like given we now have all of these generative AI tools available at our fingertips and the fingertips of our students.

Personalised Learning (for students and staff)

This for me is the key advantage in that an AI solution, gathering data on a students every interaction with online learning content, can then provide individualised feedback to that student.   The current classroom model of a teacher and a number of students, suggests that each students only get a fraction of the available teacher time no matter what strategies are employed.   But with an AI solution, each student would get the full attention of their own online AI based tutor.   Khan Academies Khanmigo gives a taste of what this might look like.   Now the likelihood is this will first impact on the core subjects such as Maths, English and Science, the subjects for which there are already a large number of learning platforms, with inbuilt content available, albeit without the AI personal tutor element.    After this I suspect we will see its growth into the other subject areas however at a slower rate.

And why should this personalised experience be limited to students.   Couldn’t it also provide personalised professional development content, curate research materials on pedagogy based on your interests, link you up online with colleagues in others schools for support and ideas, etc, providing regularly updated recommendations to help your professional development journey.   

A personalised learning experience may also free up some time within the curriculum, plus free up teachers, to focus on the things which AI is not able to address.    This might therefore allow for more discussion as to the impact of technology on our lives, looking at digital citizenship.   It might provide time to consider and discuss human characteristics and issues such as wellbeing, mental health, equality and diversity and resilience to name but a few.  

Personalised AI based learning will also enable real time feedback to parents, giving a much more detailed and regularly updated report on a students progress, their strengths and areas for development.    In turn this will help with teacher workload as this will reduce the need for the regular writing of reports which are sent home, thereby freeing teachers up to focus on teaching and learning.

Personalised Learning for students with special educational needs

Linked to the above is the potential for students to receive additional AI based support where they have special educational needs.    Through looking at the data associated with students interactions with a learning platform, an AI solution might be able to highlight possible learning needs at an earlier stage than a teacher may be able to do;   This is simply due to the Ais ability to focus on each individual student plus the wide variety of data it would have access to.    Upon identification an AI platform might then be able to appropriately provide advice, guidance and additional support in line with the students needs.    And this would be available to every student.    This is one significant advantage of AI within education, the ability for it to scale up personalised 1:1 learning content and support.

Creativity

We have long talked about creativity;  I remember it being one of the 4 C’s although there are now more than 4 C’s.    The issue has, in my experience, been the difficulty in convincing students as to their creativity.   They might have idea but find difficulty translating these into the reality of a piece of written text, an image or graphic, an animation, video or some other output.    Through AI tools the power of creativity is now easily in every students hands.    Not sure of what to include in a script, ChatGPT can help.   Need an image but am not that good with artwork, then Midjourney can help.   And the same for video content, audio, music, programming code, programming code and many other areas.    Through the use of AI tools every student can exercise the creativity of their imagination.    As I heard Dan Fitzpatrick describe it, AI will “democratise creativity”.

Questioning

I think one area which AI will help us build in relation to education is the art of questioning.   Generative AI by its very nature requires questioning or prompting.   AI outputs allow for the creation of realistic images, audio or video, which this therefore requires us to more often question what we read, see or hear, especially when accessed via social media and the internet.    I note that our conventional media is equally guilty of simplistic reporting and presenting a biases picture, it is just the social media does it with a greater volume of content and 24/7 unlike the scheduled national news broadcasts and daily newspaper prints.   Questioning, being inquisitive and constructively critical, debating and navigating complex and confusing problems will become increasingly important therefore schools will need to spend more time working on this with their students.

What I havent mentioned

There are a couple of AI benefits which I havent mentioned above largely because they are already here and have been for some time, however in the interest of completeness I will mention briefly.  Firstly, tools to help students where English is not the primary language.   There are already tools to help with translation of text, such as Google Translate, and also with translation of spoken content such as displaying subtitles in a students native language as a teachers works through a PowerPoint slide deck.   

Another area is grading and marking;  We have long had tools to allow the automatic marking of multi-choice tests however increasingly we have seen the ability to mark written responses against a marking criteria or rubric.   This will only continue with further opportunities for AI based automation being identified on an ongoing basis to help teachers and students.

Conclusion

There are likely many more ways AI will impact on education especially if you start to look beyond the 5 to 10 year mark and consider more general AI as opposed to the narrower AI and generative AI we have now.   At this point I don’t feel confident enough to even propose what education might look like at this point as it may be indistinguishable from what we see as education today.   That said education also tends to be slow to change, and any significant change would require everyone to get onboard, students, parents, teachers, schools, government, inspection regimes, exam boards, employers and may more.   As such I suspect there may be an amount of “kicking and screaming” as educational change comes to pass.   With two such significant catalysts for such change in the pandemic and now the sudden ease of access to generative AI, I feel that change is all but inevitable.

There are some pitfalls and challenges in relation to AI and education however I will pick these up in my next post.    For now though lets conclude on the fact that AI is here now, and will only get better.   We, those in schools, need to shape the solutions and its use while campaigning for appropriate guidance, frameworks and regulation of what, how and when AI should be used in schools.   We cannot however wait for the regulation to occur, as by the time it does the technology will already have moved on.   

I have found myself repeatedly mentioning the importance of schools in general having an open culture and a positive climate.   My intention with such comments was specifically to address culture and climate at the organisational level, looking at each individual school as the whole unit however I have had cause to reflect on this and consider a more macro viewpoint.

What would the culture and climate of “schools” in general be?

What I mean by this, is that if we were to consider all the schools and all educational staff, including leaders, teachers and support staff, as the scope of analysis and as a single unit of study what would the culture and climate be.

The first issue I have with the above is the question is the evidence which is used in such a judgement.   Thinking about education and schools in general and the things which come to mind as possible evidence the various comments on social media including twitter, facebook and LinkedIn are first to stir in my conscious thoughts.    The television and printed news would also serve as evidence which is quick to present itself.     The issue I instantly have with this is that these are things which come easily to mind as they are most easily accessible in my memory, not that they are most representative of the truth, however my perception as directed by my memories is my truth.

As such my truth with regards how I perceive the culture and climate of schools in general could be shaped by the below:

• Teachers Strike: Hundreds of school to close across England.
• ‘Disaster’ SATs results will have ‘serious consequences’ for schools warns Labour
• School’s out for ever: A tale of two teachers

Having read the above, how do you yourself feel about schools?

I don’t feel quite as negative as I possibly should based on the examples above and the many similar posts, articles and stories however this is due to being conscious of the fact that these items only way readily on my mind not due to be fact but due to just being readily available.    That they are readily available is partly related to the media and the need for a good story along with the tendency to report the extremes as opposed to the everyday, the more mundane and also the more representative.   This in turn leads to retweets and responses to articles which emphasise these reported extremes, in turn reinforcing stories like those mentioned above.

Could it be that we are in a cycle of negativity?

I hasten to add that I am not suggesting with the above question that all is perfect in the world of education and that we should stop moaning and get on with it, far from this.    Education the world over has many issues, with each individual country and education system with its own demons to wrestle.   Some countries are making better progress than others, and some other countries are suffering a quicker or lesser decline than their neighbours.   We need to address the issues in hand and this requires making them known and discussing them in a hope to find solutions.

But wouldn’t it be nice if in all of this teachers had at least a few thoughts which came easily to mind which were positive about the work we do.     Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a positive cycle of news relating to successes, ideas, etc.

As the 2015/16 year draws to a close wouldn’t it be nice to show the world that there is a culture of working to make things better, of positivity, of sharing, of openness………..hold on, would it be nice to show the world the face we show our students every day we are with them!

P.s. Following writing this I observed #teacher5aday and calls for tweachers to tweet thanks to other educators who have inspired them.

This and the resulting stream of thank you tweets flying around twitter is exactly the positivity that I was referring to above, and the kind of example which I would like to see come easily to mind among teachers and also the general public.   This is the culture and climate we want to seek to encourage.