Transcript

Nigel

And so thank you for joining us for the for this software strategy podcast. We're looking at AI in the future of the classroom. For those people that follow SSTC, you'll know that we've got some interest in that in the “ed tech” space.  We have seen it reported from many places that AI is causing a revolution in teaching practice. We saw some pieces of what would now be called AI come into the classroom in my time at Power School. So they were using it in the advanced analytics area to devise individualized learning plans.  Another area was to preempt students from being excluded from school with interventions when leading indicators informed us that a student needed support. However, things have moved on a great deal since the time that I was at Power School.  SSTC is extremely fortunate to have been able to talk to Sven Carrington, who is executive head teacher of the British International School in Riyadh. Sven, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to Software Strategy podcast. 

Sven

No worries at all. It's a subject very close to my heart. 

Nigel

When we were discussing this interview, we were sort of reflecting on how different learning delivery is from what I experienced when I was growing up. And there's a few years between us, so I presume when you were growing up as well. So perhaps the best way to start is to describe what happens in the classroom now. 

Sven

Yeah, definitely. So I think I'll caveat it straight away and say this is obviously our approach at bir. We are an organization that definitely promotes evidence based research practice best in the field. So the way, the way that we try and do things here is we are very conceptual, concept led in our in our learning. So we really, I think the biggest thing Nigel is the shift in education. There's so much work around neuroscience and neuro development, and we understand now that knowledge is perhaps something which we don't need to focus on quite so much. Now, I know some people have recoiled. You know? What does that mean? Basically, that knowledge is at your fingertips. Now, you know AI is going to be able to do so much stuff. Yes, we need children to be able to read and write, but we definitely promote the skills. And by the skills, I'm thinking about things like the six C's, which, if anyone's interested, Michael Fullan and his team did work on so you're looking at critical thinking, collaboration, character and so on. And I think I said to you last time, a kind of good way to put it is back back in our day, when we were at school, the teacher was on that mountain right at the top, and they had all the knowledge, and they were kind of pulling the students up towards them, whereas we kind of think about it now as we are coaches and facilitators of those children's journeys up that mountain, and how they get around it, how they navigate it to the top and beyond, is something we need to help them with. We might not have all the knowledge there, but we can definitely help them to do that again the way we do that is a bit different. Now you probably when you're at school, just textbooks, it was a lot of rote learning, whereas now there's far more student agency. Everything we do in the classroom has to engage the children in a passion. I feel like, if they haven't got that passion for the learning, then they're not going to want to be better, obviously. And we really make everything culminate in the real world action. So making sure that there is something tangible by the end of this, it could be informing people about something entertaining, campaigning, but one of those things has to be produced at the end. So I think that's that's a bit of a different approach to when we were at school. 

Nigel

So when, when we were speaking earlier, we also talked at length about the changes in how progress and mastery actually assessed and measured. Can I ask you just to expand on those aspects and how you bring that out in the classroom as well. 

Sven  

There's a really good little piece that Simon Sinek does. You might know Simon Sinek. He's a kind of business guru. He's got the golden circles, and he talks. He's got this bit about a a a computer game company that actually, whenever they release an absolute hit, they don't have a party, but when they have an absolute failure or a fall, I think fall is a better word, because you get up from a fall, they have champagne, they celebrate because you learn more. Um. Um in your falling than you do in your success and and just to bring that back to the classroom, it's it's allowing children to kind of fall repeatedly through those six C's, learning from them, coaching them to get better in those those skills that will allow them to get into the jobs that haven't been created yet. And it's a bit of a cliche, but that's the way we do it. A lot of what we do is around portfolioing of work and reflecting. So if I kind of explain that a little bit if, if a child has just done some some kind of project or some kind of piece in that that lesson, we asked them to reflect at the end of the lesson on what they've done, the skills they've used, what they could do better next time, and then portfolio those digitally into a piece of software we've got called toddle. And they would portfolio those into those six C's, those different categories, and they would reflect with coaches. It could be their teacher, it could be an older student, or, unbelievably, it could be a bot that we've created to kind of think about that lesson, reflect on it what skills they've done, what they could do next time to be even better. So that then becomes the kind of assessment of that journey, yeah, and it would kind of culminate in a in a student led conference, where, traditionally, like, if we go back to your schools days, Nigel, you probably didn't even go to your parents teacher, you know, conferences, but now they lead them, you know, they are showing their parents their proudest piece of work, and where they've where they were, where they've gone to. So it's quite different.

Nigel

Interesting. You mentioned a couple of pieces of technology in there. Can you describe the landscape of educational technology that is helping you at the moment?

Sven

Yeah. So I think most, most of what we've been using at the moment, we started out with chat, GTP, as most people did, and started playing with that. I've personally been using Gemini a lot recently, and I find that to be very intuitive, and that's that's helping me with I've run school, so a lot of what I do is policy writing and implementation and that kind of stuff. But definitely when it comes to the classrooms, the toddle technology is a really good tool that we use for parent communication. Feel like we say portfolio in one of the one of the main features that people are using it for is to take pictures of what the children are doing in class. Or even the children do this themselves, then at home during dinner. You know, you always ask your kid that question, would you do at school today? No one says anything, but because you've got it right there on the iPad that they bought home. Ah, what were you doing here? Two digit, you know, multiplication, ah, and then the child really gets into it and understand, you know, can can articulate that to you. 

Nigel

One question that I think most parents would want to be asking is where are you seeing downsides of bringing AI into the classroom? 

Sven

Yeah, it's a big topic. There's kind of two sides to this. One of them is the academic side.

And I know as someone who's lectured at university, you've been involved with this. You know, the kind of plagiarism side. I'm going to leave that aside because I think that's been debated quite a lot.

I think for me in the primary sphere, I'm not too concerned about that side of things as much. But for us, the absolute first thing on our agenda at all times is safeguarding. So we have now got digital literacy lessons for children starting from the age of five on how to use technology safely.

Now that might be as simple as things like how much screen time you're having. But it can be, you know, as you go up the primary school to things like, you know, AI and safe use of AI in terms of not giving out any data, making sure your data is protected. So I think it surprises some parents that we're teaching that kind of thing.

But for them to be digitally literate is incredibly important. And like I say, safeguarding is the top priority. I think any school that's using AI now must make sure that they've got a AI policy, that all the staff are aware of that.

They're aware of the restrictions on, you know, ages, because, you know, some of these sites, including open source and chat GTP, they have age restrictions on them. So it's not just a case of going kids going nuts on AI. You must be very, very vigilant and have policies and procedures in place for it.

Nigel

So it sounds like you are at least taking that meeting that new forefront of safeguarding where the sort of digital and physical worlds meet like quite early on in the education process.

Sven

Oh, yeah. You know, the worst thing you can do is ignore it and pretend it's not there and hope it will go away. You know, it's not.  It's here to stay. The children will be using this for the rest of their lives. So we've got to make sure that, you know, they've got the tools they need to kind of navigate it.

Nigel

Sven.  On Behalf of SSTC and our followers.  Thank you for joinging us. 

References

Michael Fullan the 6 C's https://youtu.be/czBkxkYREG8