088 – Technologies for Secondary School Education

[00:00:00] Santiago: Hi, and welcome to the IDEMS podcast. I am Santiago Borio, an Impact Activation Fellow, and I’m here with David Stern, one of the founding directors of IDEMS. Hi, David.

[00:00:19] David: Hi, Santiago. Looking forward to an interesting discussion today.

[00:00:23] Santiago: Yes, and I, as always said, I’m an Impact Activation Fellow. This is going to come to a halt for a while, at least, because I found the opportunity to go back into the classroom. I was originally a teacher for quite some time before branching off to other educational work. And spending some time in the classroom is something I’m looking forward to, particularly taking some of the learnings that I gained from my work with IDEMS.

[00:00:57] David: Yes and we’ve known each other for a long time, and I know that your desire to be involved in the wider education work has always been in competition with the fact that you really enjoy the time in the classroom. You don’t necessarily enjoy all other aspects of being a teacher, but the classroom time is the bit that you love.

[00:01:20] Santiago: There is one aspect that I don’t particularly like. And it’s relevant to some of the other episodes we’ve done which is marking. And marking serves a very important purpose. You, as a teacher, gain a very good insight on what students have learned and the application of the knowledge that you try to impart on them while teaching.

However, it can be a bit tedious. One of the big challenges with school curriculums, the way they are, is finding time to give meaningful feedback to students, particularly where we have a range of abilities within the same class, because the more able students, or the ones who understand things a bit quicker than the others, tend to not need that much feedback, while others can sometimes need detailed feedback. It’s very hard to manage that balance. There are techniques, of course, giving extension work to those who don’t need that, but again, that takes a lot of planning and teachers have little time in their hands.

So we discussed STACK for universities before in quite a range of contexts. And one of the things I’m looking forward to is evaluating the potential for STACK in schools, mainly because it can, when questions are authored carefully enough, provide that targeted feedback that addresses individual students’ misconceptions.

[00:03:17] David: And for high schools it is certainly not alone in being able to do this. I’ve had discussions with colleagues who are in the US education system, particularly some colleagues related to the Utah STEM Center, who talk about the fact that there’s actually thousands of software out there which can support maths education. But not all of them do it well.

Now what’s interesting, of course, is that you mentioned STACK, which has a very specific set of strengths, which, in its niche area, it is at the forefront of what’s possible. But when you look at all of these different software there’s many of them, a lot of them are commercial, I think they were testing in the STEM Center, they tested 250 that meet their criteria. And and of the 250 they tested, only 10 had a positive effect when students used them for at least half an hour a week.

So the point is there’s an overwhelming set of possibilities, not all of them effective on average. Of course you’ve got to remember most of them I would guess would be effective for certain individuals if you choose the right one. Whereas this comes back to exactly your point that with a different range of abilities, different people need different things.

So integrating technology in is really complicated and I think, you have the knowledge of what is probably one of the most powerful systems you could use in the open source world to be able to actually develop this. But it’s a hard task and lots of people have tried to do this.

[00:04:59] Santiago: Yes, it’s hard and it hasn’t been studied in a lot of detail. There’s a lot of interest for academic studies on this. There are some interesting question banks that I have access to, that I could use. Some of them ours, some of them developed by other universities, Southampton University in particular has done a very interesting project with schools, but I believe that the level of personalised feedback that I would want to provide is not quite what they were testing.

And I’m only there for a few months and I am pretty sure I won’t be able to implement much in that period of time. But there’s the potential to stay with some sort of relation with the school and, if they are keen, integrate this. I must say I have used some systems before, there’s MyMaths, Dr Frost Maths, which serve a purpose, but that need for individualised, targeted feedback and the ability to get random variants of questions so that repetition and mastery can be facilitated, I haven’t found them particularly effective for that.

[00:06:35] David: And this is why it’ll be so interesting, I think, as you say, for you going back into this, getting your hands to the grindstone, so to speak, actually in the classroom and then seeing how the things that you’re now observing, looking out, thinking about the technology, may apply once you’re in there. Oh, it’s going to be so interesting. I look forward to hearing how that goes.

I’m keen that we also move the discussion towards the other things which people are thinking about, think about how AI tools are going to affect this.

[00:07:04] Santiago: Before we get into that I think one of the things that is particularly exciting about this opportunity is that it’s in one school, but it’s part of a consortium of other schools as well. There is a potential there to create something quite tailored for, let’s say, highly academic schools where there is clear potential to get something quite thorough, quite carefully thought through done, which could scale in a range of contexts.

[00:07:42] David: Absolutely. And I think, unless I’m mistaken, actually, the school you’re going into is doing the International Baccalaureate, which is of course as a curriculum, a very interesting curriculum to tailor to because of its wide ranging application areas, how carefully it’s been thought through, and its global applicability.

[00:08:07] Santiago: Interestingly, they do the International Baccalaureate in the last two years, but the two years previous they do the international GCSE, which is not very dissimilar to the British GCSE. Content created in Argentina for this could open up opportunities in the UK as well.

[00:08:30] David: And to me, I think it’s more about the learning. This is the key that the relevance of the learning that you’re going to get could be absolutely relevant to so many contexts. And this is where I believe very strongly that there’s nothing quite like actually, being in the classroom to understand, not just theoretically what should work, but what is needed and what could work.

I’m excited for you and I must admit slightly jealous. I didn’t teach at school levels but I was a lecturer, and there is nothing quite as powerful as being an educator. I miss it.

[00:09:09] Santiago: Yeah. And then you mentioned in a recent episode on service mentality, how you don’t necessarily get to do the things that you want to do, but you do the things that are needed instead. This is needed, but that need is questionable within other needs that are there within education. And you mentioned this rise of artificial intelligence and how it’s being used and how it could be used in the classroom. You did an interview with a lady, I can’t remember her name, who’s been working on innovations in artificial intelligence in the classroom at university level.

[00:09:59] David: Yes, and it was really interesting to hear how the sort of thinking that we’ve been doing at university level is really applicable in high schools or secondary schools. It’s something where the same thinking applies and I want to be clear that we’re talking here about generative AI in particular because, of course, a lot of these maths question systems, not STACK itself, but others would rely on AI, but not necessarily generative AI as well. And that’s another form of AI in the classroom about how you get question selection in certain ways to be able to navigate people through sets of questions.

And that’s also really interesting, but I think what you’re referring to is the potential for really generative AI in the classroom and how this can be transforming or might be transforming the interaction between teachers and students. Is that something you’re thinking about as you’re preparing to go back?

[00:11:02] Santiago: Not just thinking about it, I’ve had discussions with senior management already about their AI policy and they don’t yet have one. As you said, that conversation was very much about university level and of course, IDEMS has offered the first instance of the Responsible AI for Lecturers course, which there’s a few episodes on.

[00:11:29] David: Yeah.

[00:11:30] Santiago: And as I was editing those episodes and listening to them carefully, I kept having the feeling that so many of these ideas are transferable to schools, and are not only transferable, but highly needed in schools. The skills of how to use AI for future in life professional development, get ready for university and using AI successfully and effectively and responsibly, that is something that, you focus on universities, but what if the students getting to university already have the foundations?

[00:12:14] David: And this is something I would love to engage with intellectually, and I’m really glad that you’re going back into this environment to actually be able to. Because my fundamental challenge to engage with this is the element of centralised exams. Fundamentally, schooling systems have the concept of centralised, standardised exams, and that’s something which, in my mind, I find very difficult to reconcile with what I would recommend at the university level which is to change and to move the goalposts.

You can’t do that if you’ve got a centralised exam system. So that to me, I would be delighted to engage deeply in these discussions and I’m looking for opportunities to do so. But I do find that there is real value in centralised exams. I know people who think more radically and think that actually our current exam system isn’t really fit for purpose. And I understand where they’re coming from, but it’s so deeply ingrained in our societies that I don’t believe we should be rocking that boat right now.

And given, I believe, that we should be working within the current centralised exam systems, I’m really challenged as to in that context, what does it mean for the use of AI? Because that’s fundamentally different than the lecturer concept where I’d argue you change what you teach, you just move the goalposts of what you’re teaching. You can’t do that in the schooling context.

[00:13:55] Santiago: In one of the episodes you mentioned Bloom’s Taxonomy.

[00:14:01] David: Yes.

[00:14:01] Santiago: And luckily this school has a very student centred approach and is very much aligned with our thinking in the sense of competency building.

[00:14:22] David: Yeah.

[00:14:23] Santiago: So while the centralised exams are quite important, gaining skills that are higher up in Bloom’s taxonomy can only serve positively towards centralised exams as well. Not just education experience in general, but having higher order skills will better prepare you for exams and other areas.

[00:14:53] David: And the IB, I’d argue, is one of the examination systems which is best aligned with that in many ways. This is something which has been thought through. Now I’m not saying that other examination systems aren’t well aligned as well, but I am saying that I think that there’s, as a place to start, this is a good context to be working in.

So yeah there is real opportunity. You’re going in to an environment. You’re only going in, as you said, initially for a few months. And I’m really excited to see as you get that hands on experience again, with the thinking you’ve now had, I wonder what the thinking will be as you engage in this and really look forward to seeing that evolution.

[00:15:36] Santiago: Yes, I’m going in for a few months initially with the potential of staying longer term, because there is a real need for the sort of skills and experience that I’ve managed to gain through IDEMS, engaging with these ideas of artificial intelligence for education and how to use it responsibly. And that is something that is, I think, internationally in very early stages.

But particularly in Argentina, where I’ll be working at, they’re only just starting to think about it. Most of the responses I’ve heard are not what we would call good practices. It’s trying to find ways to avoid students using artificial intelligence rather than make a good use of artificial intelligence for their education and improving their learning.

[00:16:41] David: As we articulated in the RAILect course, there is a time and a place to have AI free elements, that is absolutely sensible to have elements of education which aren’t reliant on AI. But as you think of the whole, including AI in the mix in really positive ways is really the thinking which is going to take you to where we need to go.

[00:17:08] Santiago: And those AI free spaces, I think, are hugely important in secondary education.

[00:17:15] David: Yes, absolutely. More so, I would argue than once you get higher up. Being able to have that real recognition about where it is, what tools you’re using. I like the parallel with the calculator for that, just because the calculator exists doesn’t mean you want to use it for everything. The idea of having some things calculator free and some things with the calculator makes perfect sense. It’s a tool. The same would apply with AI and with many other tools.

[00:17:43] Santiago: But this goes well beyond mathematics.

[00:17:47] David: Absolutely.

[00:17:47] Santiago: I’ll be teaching maths. That is what I am. I am a maths teacher, at heart, and in my qualifications. But these ideas of AI are much more holistic. They’re much more applicable to a wide range of subjects and contexts, and can lead to very interesting inter or intra departmental projects.

[00:18:17] David: And I want to be clear that this is something where, our engagement with you, as even though you will be, you know, officially leaving IDEMS for at least a few months, maybe a bit longer, maybe a few years, as has happened before, when you’ve gone out to teach and come back, my expectation is that this relationship will carry on. And as we as an organisation are engaging deeply in responsible AI for different areas and we have a, hopefully, a proposal we’re going to be putting forward related to AI in education in the next few months.

So it might well be that as we’re evolving together on this journey, this is something where we can continue to deepen it. I believe that actually building out safe AI tools for education is really one of the really interesting challenges of the future, and it’s one we hope to engage in.

[00:19:18] Santiago: Yes, and I’d like to mention one of the examples that you had with Google’s AI system, Gemini, I think it’s called, where they were looking to emphasise aspects of equality and diversity. They generated images of Nazi Germany with quite a range of ethnic backgrounds, which is quite contradictory. How interesting would it be to analyse that image as part of a history curriculum? There’s so much to say about that.

[00:20:00] David: And I think one of the things which is clear there, and I’m sure I did this in the episode, but I want to keep coming out in Gemini’s defence on this. They were under so much, they got so much critique for that and so much criticism. But the point is they got criticism because they were trying to do something that’s really hard, that the technology really isn’t there yet to be able to do this well. And so the problem is that actually what’s happening is things are moving so fast in certain circumstances without people trying to do things which are hard.

They’re actually sidestepping some of these hard problems, to be able to think about marginalised communities, with respect to these technologies. And I think it’s the idea of AI and particularly generative AI being ready or fit for purpose to be able to really take a lead role in education, this is something which both excites and scares me, and in equal measure. The potential is huge and the potential for it to go badly wrong is at least as big.

[00:21:23] Santiago: David, I think we’ll have to call it a day. We could keep discussing for hours about this. But I would like to close by saying goodbye to the audience because I’m unlikely to be here in episodes as regularly as I have been. And it’s been a pleasure and an honour to be part of this project. I’m really hoping that I won’t disappear, but at least for a while I might not have that much presence in the series.

[00:21:59] David: I think you’re right. You’ve had such a consistent presence. Almost, you must have done over 20 episodes, we must have done over 20 episodes together. We could count that up. And it’s been such an incredible set of insights, both looking into how IDEMS has been formed, what IDEMS is, digging into elements related to education, which is your passion and mine. And so it’s been so great to have you help us get this started.

And what I don’t know that the audience knows is sort of the job you’ve done behind the scenes to actually make this podcast series happen. And so I want to take advantage of this to thank you for helping us get to where we are. And I am confident that this was not goodbye, but it’s see you later.

[00:22:50] Santiago: I very much hope so, at least in some minimal way. Thank you, David.

[00:22:56] David: Cheers. All the best.