Digital Transformation!  Digital Strategy!  Professional Education!  What do they mean, and how do we implement them in a school?  In today's episode we’re very lucky to have on three wonderful guests who operate at the intersection of educational practice and the leveraging of technology for a better learning experience.  They are:  

• James Symons, CEO, LocknCharge 
• Katie Novak, Education Strategist, Smart Technologies 
• Associate Professor Jane Hunter, School of International Studies and Education, University of Technology, Sydney 

Each of these guests has a long history of working within the education space, from engineering and installing the hardware and catering to the evolving demands of schools, to leveraging the technology as a communal bridge between parents, teachers and students, and finally to researching and understanding the added value such technologies provide for teachers and learners and how they might successfully incorporate their use into daily practice. 

Talking points and questions include: 

• The evolving demands of the classroom – what futureproofing and future planning exists in each of your spaces to accommodate new trends and developments?  For those catering to the hardware, does the school or college determine what you make, or are they, and the ways their teachers and learners perform, conditioned by you?  What space is there for reciprocity between the EdTech maker and the EdTech user? 

• Teacher professional education – how important is this?  Surely a learning tool lives and dies by the amount of training and ‘after-sales support’ is provided to practitioners?  What is the extent of the refusal by a teacher or department to adopt the technology and how is this overcome?  Is it just waving statistics about time-saving and cost-saving in their faces or is there a form of trust that must be engendered? 

• Digital strategy – this means different things to different stakeholders.  What are the commonalities that should be agreed upon for successful rollout of technology?  Obviously contextual factors are key to each school, but what are the non-negotiables?  And with regard to developments like generative AI and other future trends we can’t even predict yet, what kinds of guardrails need to be in place with teachers, leaders, and the developers of the tech to ensure ongoing supportive relationships with stakeholders.  What foundations should be in place to support digital transformation no matter the bumps in the road ahead? 

Material discussed in today's episode includes:

• LocknCharge classroom solutions to facilite mobile device workflow and management 
• Improving Access & Outcomes Through Student & Teaching Voice: EdTech Assessment in the Cherry Hill Public Schools
• Australia and the Digital Education Revolution
• Jane Hunter: High Possibility STEM Classrooms and Technology Integration and High Possibility Classrooms
• Smart Technology: EdTech Assessment Tool
• Uruguay and Ceibal Project

SCIENCE!  Under discussion today are the ways in which students who were switched off the sciences at school manage to retain their curiosity about the subjects and can even reengage with it later in life.  Professor Rose Luckin is very lucky to have in the online studio this week Dr Andrew Morris, Honorary Associate Professor at UCL, former president of the Education Section of the British Science Association, and author, whose book, Bugs, Drugs, and Three-Pin Plugs: Everyday Science, Simply Explained, is now available wherever books are sold.  

Dr Morris has an interest in serving learners and the public through scientific and evidence-based outreach.  The discussion in the studio centred around science, technology, research and practice in education.

Talking points and questions:

• The ways in which people who were switched off the sciences at school retain their curiosity and can reengage with science at a later point in life
• Examples of topics and ways of approaching science that have been revealed by Dr Morris’ science discussion groups
• Research-informed educational practice, and research-informed educational policy
• Ways in which research can be transformed and mediated for use

Material discussed in today's episode includes:

• Smartphones in schools?  Only when they clearly support learning, the 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report has just released a call for technology only to be used in class when it supports learning outcomes, and this includes the use of smartphones.
• The Skinny on AI for Education, EVR's newest publication featuring insights, trends and developments in the world of AI Ed 

Rose hosts Daisy Christodoulou, Director of Education at No More Marking in the EdTech Podcast Zoom studio this week, discussing AI regulation, evidence and effectiveness, and student outcomes in AI assessment, and what we think the future of AI-powered education might look like, and why!

In late March of this year, Professor Rose Luckin and Daisy Christodoulou spoke at the UK parliament’s Governance of Artificial Intelligence oral evidence session for education, and the discussion that took place was passionate and exciting.  A link to the video of the session is below in the Show Notes if you’d like to watch it yourself, but a lot of ground was covered, yet not as much as they wished! 

The interest in AI and its governance is very intense at the moment.  The UK government had published a white paper setting out their proposed approach to the governance of AI and the indication from the paper was that rather than give responsibility for AI governance to a single new AI regulator, it intended to empower existing regulators, and that there were several that existed in the education sector already.  Other points raised during the session included the idea of teaching a degree of scepticism in the public’s understanding of AI, meaning that the public should not believe everything that something like ChatGPT, a large language model, returns, for instance, when queried.  Concerns about the speed of AI development were raised, there were questions on safeguarding, ethics, transparency, explainability, access to the technology, autonomy, adaptivity and more. 

In today’s episode, we’d like to revisit those thoughts on AI regulation, evidence and effectiveness, student outcomes in AI assessment, and what we think the future of AI-powered education might look like and why… 

Talking points and questions include: 

• Quality of evidence for improved student outcomes using AI 
• The value of assessment: how, when, why, and in what form 
• More discussion around the future of education with AI’s inclusion, and what we can do now 

Material discussed in today’s episode includes:

• Science and Technology Committee Oral evidence: Governance of artificial intelligence – PDF transcript as well as link to the video on the first page
• Daisy Christodoulou Books
• Mindspark Research Impact
• The Skinny on AI for Education, EVR’s newest publication featuring insights, trends and developments in the world of AI Ed

Rose plays host to Nina Huntemann, Chief Academic Officer of Chegg, and Lord Jim Knight, in the EdTech Podcast Zoom studio this week, attempting to understand how best to cut through the white noise surrounding AI's hype, misinformation, exaggeration and marketing, and determining just how positive for education AI can be if done responsibly.

In our previous episodes on AI, Rose has been in conversation with universities from the US and the UK, examining what the role is for emerging technologies in higher education and what capacity exists to implement AI effectively.  The podcast also saw a contributions from Karine George in discussing whether or not the release and widespread use of ChatGPT has actually done education a favour.  Has its proliferation sparked debate about human cognition and limited understandings of AI, or initiated conversations in schools around digital transformation and strategy?    

In this episode, we’d like to extend these same thoughts on AI to pedagogic effectiveness in education and academia, and how emerging technologies like AI can be incorporated into plans for companies’ commercial services. 

Talking points in today's episode includes:

• The development of ethical AI in commercial enterprises and how they ensure their responsible technologies are developed
• Tensions between the wealth of AI tools available and regulation of the market and educational use of such technologies
• Assessing AI tools' effectiveness
• Cutting through the huge amount of hype, headlines, and sensationalism at the heart of the communications and marketing around AI

Material discussed in today's episode includes:

• Yes, AI could profoundly disrupt education, but maybe that's not a bad thing, article in the Guardian UK Newspaper by Professor Rose Luckin
• Chegg's Centre for Digital Learning
• The Skinny on AI for Education, EVR's newest publication featuring insights, trends and developments in the world of AI Ed

Karine and Rose meet this week to discuss Ofsted ratings, how AI can transform teachers' day-to-day tasks, and interview friend and colleague Dr Fiona Aubrey Smith on the recent publication of her book: From EdTech to PedTech: Changing the Way We Think About Digital Technology.  Aimed at teachers and leaders looking to create greater impact on teaching and learning through the use of digital technology in schools, From EdTech to PedTech translates research on the effective integration of digital technology in education into relevant, accessible, and practical guidance for teachers and school leaders.  This much-needed handbook bridges the gap between knowing ‘what works’ and knowing how to make it work for you and your learners.

Material discussed in this episode includes:

• • • From EdTech to PedTech: Changing the Way we Think About Digital Technology
    • UK Department for Education: Generative AI in Education: Departmental Statement
    • Institute for Ethical AI in Education: Final Report
    • OECD: Empowering Young Children in the Digital Age
    • Machine Learning & Human Intelligence 

To get the latest insights, trends and developments on AI for Education, subscribe to EVR's new fortnightly publication: The Skinny on AI for Education

The fifth and final episode in the Evidence-Based EdTech miniseries produced by Professor Rose Luckin's EDUCATE Ventures Research, exploring education, research, AI and EdTech, and hosted on The Edtech Podcast

The Evidence-Based EdTech miniseries connects, combines, and highlights leading expertise and opinion from the worlds of EdTech, AI, Research, and Education, helping teachers, learners, and technology developers get to grips with ethical learning tools led by the evidence.

In our previous episode, Rose was in conversation with representatives from Make (Good) Trouble, Feminist Internet, and Soundwaves Foundation, an organisation pursuing technology to assist with deaf or hearing-impaired students in the classroom.  We asked a number of questions that centred around what inclusive technology looks like to each of the guests in the room, given that they had and worked with unique perspectives, and what their thoughts were around user agency and why it was so vital EdTech developers be mindful of this in the creation of their products.  Our last question was on what we should demand of technology that it cater to people from diverse backgrounds.  Was it data, the context, access, that allowed tech to help those from diverse backgrounds?

In this episode, we’d like to extend these same thoughts on DEI and ethics outward, beyond the borders of the UK.

We'll be asking:

• Are international education ecosystems implementing their diversity, equity and inclusion any differently from that of the UK?  What could be learned from them that EdTech developers and educationalists can adopt and use in the UK?
• From an international perspective, is the technology developed in the first world, but exported to the third, sensitive to the context of its use or too prescriptive?  And as an additional point, has the third world reshaped its attitudes towards diversity and ethics in technology in line with what it believes the first world will find desirable or employable?
• There’s rumour of national and international standards for good evidence in EdTech coming out of some countries, with presumably varying emphasis placed on adherence to these standards by different governments and regulatory bodies.  What is our guest's opinion on how robust they think regulation needs to be where EdTech evidence is concerned, and how strictly do they think such standards should be enforced when developing and using EdTech?          

Our guest this week is Jane Mann, Managing Director for Cambridge Partnership for Education.

With over two decades of experience in the education sector, as Managing Director of the Cambridge Partnership for Education Jane is now focused on working with ministries of education, government agencies, NGOs, donor agencies and educational organisations to advocate for, design and implement effective programmes of education transformation. The Cambridge Partnership for Education works across the globe in curriculum and assessment design and development, creation of teaching and learning resources, professional development, stakeholder engagement and English language learning and skills.

Thank you to Cambridge Partnership for Education for sponsoring this episode, and for supporting the Evidence-Based EdTech series on the EdTech Podcast.

Karine and Rose meet this week to discuss how EdTech entrepreneurs and developers can evidence the impact of their products and services, with special guests Rajeshwari Iyer and Kavitha Ravindran of sAInaptic, the AI-powered EdTech app delivering interactive, instant, and personalised learning experiences for the UK's GCSE sciences.

Hello everyone and welcome to The Edtech Podcast and this final episode in collaboration with EdSurge. 

This is the last episode in a three-part series to explore the nuances of adult lifelong learners and what sparks their return to University.

A shout out to WorkTripp and Lumina Foundation for supporting this episode, EdSurge for the amazing journalism, and great to have the learner voice front and centre in this mini-series. As always, do let us know what you think. Here we go….

Welcome to the fourth episode in a series produced by Professor Rose Luckin’s EDUCATE Ventures Research, exploring ‘Evidence-Based EdTech’, and hosted on The Edtech Podcast.

For this episode we will examine topics such how we use existing technology to assist with DEI and ethics, and what we know of technology that does not include this perspective.  We ask why that might be, and we look at the art of data capture, and data irresponsibility: what are we capturing that we shouldn’t, who is being affected by our biases, and if this is a step in the development of technological interventions that organisations can afford to skip.  How do we mitigate systemic bias and scaled harm?  What are examples of inclusive technology that accommodate the learning styles, online behaviours, device access, and dis/abilities of learners?  Can we place more pressure on leadership in schools and institutions to incorporate inclusive technologies?  What do we know of user agency, and how does that affect the design and transparency of an EdTech solution?

Karine and Rose meet this week to discuss Internet Safety with Edurio's Ernest Jenavs, and Natterhub's Caroline Allams.  The group will explore Edurio's Autumn 2022 report on Pupil Safeguarding, the reaction to Ofsted Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman's 'surprise' over mobile phone use in-class, and discuss good technology role-modelling for young people.