Latest / IB Unplugged / Curiosity in the Age of Instant Answers w/ Tim Lovatt
Transcript
- 0:00If the goal isn't sort of that immediate academic success,
- 0:04but the goal is curiosity,
- 0:06and the goal is is finding out something that you didn't know before,
- 0:09that's a different framing.
- 0:11And that's something that we as educators have to work really hard on,
- 0:13I think.
- 0:17Hi, everybody.
- 0:18Welcome to another episode of IB Unplugged.
- 0:21We're super excited you are here.
- 0:22Now, I know that many of you are educators and like me,
- 0:25you've probably been in a classroom
- 0:27where you've watched one of your students who just really wants to do well,
- 0:30answering all the questions by going to AI.
- 0:33And so it begs this question how do we deal with that?
- 0:36How do we actually make a difference so that we're not losing
- 0:40that curiosity piece from young people, but when they have access
- 0:43to every single answer out there, how do we cultivate curiosity?
- 0:47Exactly.
- 0:48So we wanted to dive into this, and we found Tim Lovatt
- 0:51to be the perfect person to talk to you about this.
- 0:53He's head of digital learning at UWC Southeast Asia.
- 0:56He's also a physics teacher, and he's done a lot of work in his school
- 1:00about really answering these kinds of questions and supporting
- 1:03teachers and helping answer them, too.
- 1:06So today, we are going to talk about curiosity
- 1:09as a kind of fundamental element of the learning experience,
- 1:13how to connect the school's mission and purpose into the way
- 1:17that they talk about technology and a lot of other good things.
- 1:20So we're excited to dive into this, and let's get started.
- 1:29Hi, Tim. Welcome to IB Unplugged.
- 1:31Thank you.
- 1:32So to start off we usually do some warm up questions.
- 1:36And so the first one is we are going to be talking a lot
- 1:39about your all the different roles that you have at your school.
- 1:42But I think where you kind of started is ultimately as a physics teacher.
- 1:46And so to kick the theme of creativity
- 1:49and curiosity off, what does a physics classroom look like
- 1:54when you have a really curious class, compared to maybe other subjects?
- 2:00I think curiosity is different
- 2:02in every classroom, and it's different for every individual.
- 2:06I think it's about finding things that energize you.
- 2:09It's about finding things that give you passion.
- 2:12It's about finding ways in which you can find out more
- 2:17just because you want to, not because it's going to be on a test
- 2:20or, you know, there's going to be some kind of
- 2:23point attached to it in some way.
- 2:25But just because you want to know why.
- 2:28And so, you know,
- 2:29I feel lucky being a physics teacher because it's an experimental science.
- 2:33You know,
- 2:34kids can do things with a hands and they can notice things
- 2:38and they can wonder why of things that are sort of right in front of them.
- 2:43And so I guess the
- 2:46kind of the physical, practical, interactive nature of it helps.
- 2:50But then there's also some super theoretical aspect of it as well.
- 2:54There are incredibly abstract and sort of multi-dimensional and,
- 2:58you know, just kind of watching kids
- 3:02build their own understanding of the world around them
- 3:05is something that I see a lot in a physics classroom.
- 3:11There are humanities teachers that would say that's
- 3:14exactly what they're doing in that classroom as well.
- 3:16And, you know, it would look totally different.
- 3:18But for me, it's about experimentation.
- 3:21It's about exploration.
- 3:22It's about trying something out.
- 3:25Oh, it didn't work very well.
- 3:27Trying something different,
- 3:28you know, iteration, design, thinking those kind of things.
- 3:31And it's all over the place.
- 3:34I can definitely identify with that.
- 3:36I know at the start of every year, we always try
- 3:38to do a couple of experiments like that that get the kids really engaged.
- 3:41And I remember speaking to our lab tech a while ago, because I'm a biology teacher,
- 3:45and I was like, it's just they get so excited
- 3:47in the physics classrooms, like, what are we,
- 3:48what do we have in bio that we can really get them going?
- 3:50Like, you can't crash anything or have any mechanics, like any ball
- 3:54swinging here.
- 3:55Like it's a very different thing when it comes to bio.
- 3:58So I am a little bit jealous because, you know, physics is just full of
- 4:02all sorts of that stuff that kind of looks like magic.
- 4:04Right?
- 4:04And then kids kind of dive deeper into it and, yeah.
- 4:07So it's cool. That's cool.
- 4:08But I'm in biology does as well.
- 4:09You just have to wait two weeks and then you come back later.
- 4:12You just have to wait a little while and let it smell.
- 4:14You know, if it smells funny, then it's biology.
- 4:16Yeah, right.
- 4:19But, you know, I think
- 4:20in science teachers, you know, we tend to get these great questions.
- 4:23I wonder, is there a moment recently where students
- 4:25surprised you with a question that you hadn't expected?
- 4:29I think students have great questions, just broadly anyway, because
- 4:34they're still kind of forming their sense of the world.
- 4:40When I was thinking about this,
- 4:41I think that the question that,
- 4:45really jumped out at me and this is
- 4:46kind of linking to our conversation later anyway.
- 4:48But the question that surprised me recently was from a parent, actually.
- 4:53And, I have a lot of conversations with parents.
- 4:57Tech is a hot topic.
- 5:01And it's also a very polarizing topic.
- 5:04And so, in the space of about 45 minutes, I had two parent meetings,
- 5:11a couple of months ago now, and,
- 5:15one parent said, you know, get rid of all screens.
- 5:21We need to be banning everything.
- 5:23You know, there's no place for these kind
- 5:26of distraction machines in our classrooms.
- 5:31And then, off the back of that conversation, I went into
- 5:35another parent meeting who said to me,
- 5:39you know what you should do, right?
- 5:40You should figure out all of the kids who are finding sneaky ways to
- 5:46get around that firewall and to access crazy things online and to
- 5:50go on the dark web.
- 5:51And you should reward them, because that's the kind of creativity
- 5:56that is going to help them succeed.
- 6:00That's when you go
- 6:02what was your kid's name again?
- 6:03Let me just write it down. Yeah, right?
- 6:05It's like two totally polar
- 6:08opposite opinions within 30 minutes of each other.
- 6:11And it was, you know, things like that
- 6:14often the things that surprised you the most is the strength of people's
- 6:18opinions in opposite corner.
- 6:19Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
- 6:20You have to be kind of ready for it.
- 6:23But at the same time you can't be ready for a lot of things.
- 6:25So you just have to be kind of open and go,
- 6:26well, yeah, that's an interesting idea. Yeah.
- 6:28And who's going on the dark web now?
- 6:30Who should I be looking for? Right.
- 6:33Yeah. Yeah, maybe he's not wrong.
- 6:34You know, those kids are going to do really well in the future, I’m sure.
- 6:38What they do well at that's questioning.
- 6:40There's an argument there, right?
- 6:41You know, you got somebody who's pursuant to something,
- 6:44who's interested in things wanted to have into a deeper.
- 6:46Yeah, I understand where they're coming from.
- 6:47I don't know if I agree with the method, but, I understand where the coming from.
- 6:52And, I mean, a lot of this, of course, is related to AI now and a lot of
- 6:56I think that's where probably a lot of the parents are also stepping in in a way
- 6:59that they maybe didn't fully understand before or didn't care as much before.
- 7:04But for you, if you had to describe the relationship between AI and curiosity
- 7:08right now, what would it be?
- 7:12Tense.
- 7:13I think.
- 7:14It could be going either way.
- 7:16Right?
- 7:16And it depends entirely on your understanding of yourself and your
- 7:20thought processes and your metacognition and your self-regulation, I guess.
- 7:25All things that teenagers are really good at.
- 7:28Oh, yeah. Really strong. Yeah.
- 7:30But if you have a tool that can either
- 7:35give you kind of generic, mostly correct answers
- 7:39to pretty much any question that you could ask versus
- 7:43you have a tool that can challenge all of your preconceptions about something
- 7:48and give you three alternative perspectives
- 7:52that you would never have thought of yourself and help
- 7:56you build an understanding of a link with a subject that you have absolutely
- 8:00no experience of whatsoever.
- 8:03You know, those are
- 8:05two powerful diverging streams of curiosity.
- 8:11In one, you know, curiosity is kind of getting
- 8:13systematically squashed without you really noticing.
- 8:17And in the other your curiosity is being amplified
- 8:20and it's the same tool.
- 8:23Right?
- 8:23It's just purely down to the interactions with it and the user.
- 8:26And, so there's this kind of tension there.
- 8:29And there's this real element of importance,
- 8:34the sort of knowing why you're doing things
- 8:38and how your brain works and things like that.
- 8:41Like, it's been important.
- 8:43It's been important in the past,
- 8:44and it always has been arguably important for the learning process,
- 8:47you know, learning science and learning how to learn and understanding
- 8:51your sort of neural pathway formation.
- 8:54And, you know, all of those kind of things.
- 8:57But but now it's important, not just from a sort of additive perspective,
- 9:03but from a reducing that diminishing perspective.
- 9:07Tim, that answer has me pretty excited for our conversation here.
- 9:10And it really lends itself well to our first sort of area,
- 9:14our first sort of segment here
- 9:16where I really want to get into that idea of curiosity in the age of AI,
- 9:19because just as you've said, and I've noticed as a teacher,
- 9:22you kind of do have this dichotomy, or maybe even more where you have
- 9:27some students who are just focused on the grade,
- 9:29and so they see it as the ultimate answer giving machine.
- 9:32But in some respects that actually causes a lot more stress, a lot more anxiety,
- 9:35because they're like, well, I didn't know that.
- 9:37Do I have to know that to understand this other thing?
- 9:39And suddenly the whole idea of like scaffolding a curriculum
- 9:43and helping students understand things bit by bit so they can piece it
- 9:46together is gone, because they're just here's my answer machine.
- 9:50But just what you said there, like, it can expand perspectives
- 9:53and this sort of thing.
- 9:54So yeah, let's dive into that a little bit.
- 9:57Like if a student can ask AI anything, get an instant answer,
- 10:01what happens to that sense of wonder,
- 10:03and how do we kind of cultivate that sense of wonder in young people again?
- 10:07Yeah, something that I say to my students is
- 10:13if you're just asking AI questions,
- 10:17you're kind of using it wrong.
- 10:18Right? It's the replacement.
- 10:20What I think that students do a lot of
- 10:23and I think this is, you know, global
- 10:26and adults do a lot of as well is that it's kind of a replacement
- 10:29for a search engine in a lot of ways.
- 10:32And it doesn't help that Google stack it at the top of that search engine.
- 10:34That's unhelpful.
- 10:36But what really should be happening is AI should be asking you questions.
- 10:41And, as soon as you kind of flip that narrative,
- 10:45then your instinct to wonder becomes reflective as well.
- 10:49You know, if you're like, you can wonder
- 10:52about the things that you think you know and you can wonder about the next thing
- 10:56that you want to know and how that might connect with things.
- 11:00And so I think that the kind of instant answer machine, it's
- 11:06where all the big tech companies want us to think the AI is for.
- 11:10It's for speeding up things.
- 11:13It's for making you more efficient.
- 11:14It's for, you know, offloading menial tasks.
- 11:17It's for kind of supporting you in your work,
- 11:21but what you really want it to be doing,
- 11:22and if you are concerned about your instinct to wonder,
- 11:25you want it to be challenging you.
- 11:28You don't want it to be making your life easier.
- 11:31You want it to be making your life harder.
- 11:33Now, this is if you're using it for learning,
- 11:34if you're using it for, you know,
- 11:36optimizing your calendar organization or whatever,
- 11:40sure.
- 11:41Or if you're, you know, an established professional
- 11:43with decades of experience in a particular field
- 11:46and you know exactly what you're doing and you're choosing
- 11:48to cognitively offload some of those things, fine.
- 11:51But if you want to learn something
- 11:53then AI should be increasing
- 11:56the friction for learning, not decreasing it.
- 11:59And the instinct to wonder, to be curious about things
- 12:05is even more important when you can get those instant answers.
- 12:11It's harder to contain in yourself when it's so easy.
- 12:16And particularly difficult for teenagers.
- 12:19You know, teenagers don't cheat because they're lazy.
- 12:22Teenagers cheat because they have 12 different deadlines.
- 12:25They've messed up their time management.
- 12:27They've, you know, they've actually got service.
- 12:30They've been sent,
- 12:31you know, in an international school context,
- 12:32the competitive international school context,
- 12:35they've finished school at 3:30 p.m.
- 12:37They've then gone for two hours of tutoring,
- 12:40then they've had two hours of music lesson,
- 12:41and they've gone and played their sport. And then it's 11 p.m.
- 12:43and they've got to do their homework that's due tomorrow.
- 12:46Of course, right?
- 12:47The option is there.
- 12:48But if the goal isn't sort of that immediate academic success,
- 12:54but the goal is curiosity
- 12:55and the goal is finding out something that you didn't know before.
- 12:59That's a different framing.
- 13:01And that's something that we as educators have to work really hard on, I think.
- 13:05Tim hits on a key insight.
- 13:06Students are rarely cheating out of laziness,
- 13:09but usually out of being overwhelmed.
- 13:11Research from Stanford's challenge success program highlights how reducing
- 13:15deadline stacking dramatically decreases academic integrity violations.
- 13:20This sometimes feels impossible with IA’s or exam season, but really working on
- 13:24this as a schoolwide structure and plan can help bring out tangible change.
- 13:29Absolutely.
- 13:30I think that's a huge thing we have to do because we really have to make sure
- 13:33that we're framing it around the genuine learning,
- 13:36the development of the skills and that sort of thing.
- 13:38And I think it's a great thing in the diploma program where
- 13:41there is that focus on approaches to learning, there is that focus on,
- 13:44for lack of better term, soft skills.
- 13:46And that's helped to bring out a curiosity.
- 13:47And, you know, inquiry is one of our biggest things.
- 13:51And yet, yes, you do have students who are really quite focused on.
- 13:53But these are the hoops I have to jump through.
- 13:55These are the hurdles I have to go over in order
- 13:57to get these grades and that sort of thing.
- 13:58So the pressure's on,
- 14:00and that manifests itself in lots of different ways.
- 14:02But what what you just mentioned there has got me really curious.
- 14:07Give me an example.
- 14:08What do you mean like,
- 14:10how could I kind of flip that so much easier?
- 14:12Because of course, most
- 14:13AI prompts are sitting there like, hey, what can I help you with?
- 14:16How do I kind of flip that
- 14:17so that it's asking me the questions that expand my thinking?
- 14:21That's the million dollar question, I think.
- 14:23And there's a foundation there of explicitly teaching metacognition.
- 14:29I think that there's that students have to understand how learning works
- 14:34in order to be able to make intentional choice for that learning.
- 14:40If you're looking to build metacognition into how you talk about AI use
- 14:44in your classroom, you can explore Harvard's Project Zero's Visible Thinking
- 14:47Routines, which are specifically frameworks like claim, support, question,
- 14:52or I used to Think now I think or, parts, purposes and complexities
- 14:57and you can apply them to AI use in specific projects.
- 15:01And I think that starts quite young.
- 15:03I think that with a sort of articulated route through that
- 15:07learning from primary, certainly from primary school,
- 15:12all the way through to the end of high school
- 15:14and the DP program, I think that there're
- 15:18kind of ways in which they can develop those and thinking routines
- 15:21that they can go through and reflective routines
- 15:24that they can go through to investigate
- 15:27their own schemas that they have and things like that.
- 15:31Part of it is what we emphasize through assessment.
- 15:34And I think that, for too long,
- 15:37assessment has been well, I mean, to put it frankly,
- 15:40how much can you remember from a two year course
- 15:42in a 2.5 hour exam paper?
- 15:45Now IB is, you know,
- 15:49is dynamic and conceptual, but at the same time,
- 15:53it's still assessing the kind of understandings of the student,
- 15:58rather than assessing the process through which they went,
- 16:02to get that understanding.
- 16:05And I think that, in some way,
- 16:08and I think the AI is just accelerating this change,
- 16:10I think we've realized this for a while, and, in some way,
- 16:16AI is accelerating that in so much
- 16:19that it can provide,
- 16:23first of all, an incentive for teachers to change up the assessments, like,
- 16:27we're seeing a lot of students with credibly creative
- 16:31ways of avoiding plagiarism detectors, for example,
- 16:35and rather than kind of
- 16:38rather than engaging in that constant, you know,
- 16:42erosion of trust fundamentally,
- 16:45I think that, going through process, we've had a huge amount of our teachers,
- 16:50whether through professional learning or through sort of organic need,
- 16:53redesigning assessments to be more about,
- 16:56kind of oral defenses or,
- 16:59kind of the sort of reflective examining
- 17:03of text that they have written or produced,
- 17:07or the sort of, like exhibition
- 17:10style persuasion of an argument that can,
- 17:14you know, that can come across in that interpersonal interactions,
- 17:18all of those kinds of things, they focus more on
- 17:21the process of developing and understanding, rather than
- 17:25having the understanding itself.
- 17:27I think that assessment will change.
- 17:29I don't know how quickly external assessment, like the IB, will change.
- 17:32I think they have all sorts interesting pilots on a go at the moment,
- 17:35and I think that they will materialize into some really, really cool things.
- 17:41And I also think that within schools we are going to come up with some really,
- 17:45really clever ways of measuring that process.
- 17:49What were you actually thinking when you wrote this?
- 17:52How did reading this paragraph or writing this paragraph,
- 17:54how did that change your thinking?
- 17:56What's one doubt you still have about what you understand from that?
- 17:59You know, those kinds of questions about going through that learning process.
- 18:05I think that there just going to be more and more important.
- 18:07Towards the beginning,
- 18:08you were talking about this idea of like the process that grows over time.
- 18:11And I think that you are
- 18:12in a really great position where as head of digital learning,
- 18:16you work K through 12, so you get to kind of be,
- 18:22like spider in the
- 18:23web of how it grows and evolves over time.
- 18:26Is there anything that you feel like you do specifically at your school,
- 18:30at your campus, in your role to,
- 18:34I think one of the things that you are talking about
- 18:37with the process, it does align with curiosity.
- 18:40It's like, how do I make these students care
- 18:44about what they're doing, not just remember the things
- 18:46and how do I have them think critically and wonder and all of this.
- 18:50So like, I think it ties really well, but I'm curious if there's anything
- 18:54that you do specifically to not lose
- 18:58the skill of curiosity or the desire to have that be part of learning?
- 19:04Yeah, I think that that's a really important thing,
- 19:07because all of that metacognition and all of that stuff is a foundation
- 19:11for curiosity, but it doesn't itself create curiosity.
- 19:14The curiosity is created through the,
- 19:18sort of personal relevance and context and something that matters to you.
- 19:23And it's about helping students find that thing that matters to them.
- 19:28And, there's another fine line here, but
- 19:31something that we do is
- 19:34we're very mission aligned.
- 19:36We're very driven by our mission and our values.
- 19:40And they show up in all kinds of the things that we do.
- 19:45We have high service expectations for our students.
- 19:48We have high activities expectations.
- 19:50We have high outdoor education expectations of our students.
- 19:54And because of that, they're exposed to a lot of things.
- 19:58And a lot of the time
- 20:00they accidentally discover one of those things that
- 20:06it turns out they're really passionate about.
- 20:09Now, it doesn't work perfectly for every single child,
- 20:12but giving students a range of experiences, regardless of their,
- 20:16sort of levels of comfort
- 20:18with those experiences, initially enables them to find,
- 20:22like a real passion and a calling and a thing to be curious about.
- 20:27And, those kind of contextual experiences
- 20:32help students be like,
- 20:34oh, well, you know, it's one thing to
- 20:38oh, no, global warming is a big global problem.
- 20:41But you know, what can I do about that?
- 20:45You know, sure, I can sort of recycle more or take the bus or whatever.
- 20:48But if you take those contextual experiences and you help
- 20:51students apply them to their own personal lives.
- 20:55So, for example, rather than
- 20:58a project on environmental sustainability of food,
- 21:03for example, you get students to
- 21:06identify the sort of food
- 21:09miles from their local takeaway place
- 21:13and then, kind of go in and intervene the workers and
- 21:17chat with them about alternative sources for that, you know, meat
- 21:21that's flown in from Argentina or, you know, whatever, that sort of thing,
- 21:25and those kind of dialogs,
- 21:28and those kind of explorative
- 21:30things that are relevant to them,
- 21:33really, really help to nurture that and have a challenge for
- 21:35that is that it can feel tokenistic.
- 21:37And so what needs to happen then is you need to have structures in place
- 21:42that students can then take on that project in subsequent years
- 21:46when they're not, you know, it's not like, oh, now it's a new school year,
- 21:50someone's got a totally different set of things
- 21:52that we're going to think about.
- 21:54And it's finding that balance between independent exploration
- 21:57and sustainable innovation.
- 21:59Yeah.
- 22:00Because, I definitely see that from, at least
- 22:02I see that a big responsibility that I have,
- 22:04is to create a breadth of experiences, at least in the biology course
- 22:08and for that matter, in the DP that say, like you might when you take biology,
- 22:12you might think, oh, this is the path to being a doctor
- 22:14without recognizing there's tons of different opportunities
- 22:16that kind of present themselves in the course.
- 22:18So I think many educators would look at that as like, this is our
- 22:22role is to kind of show all the different things
- 22:24that you might dive into and say as a student, oh, I love that thing, actually.
- 22:28And I've never looked at it from that perspective,
- 22:29and I want to go further into it.
- 22:31But I love what you say about the systems
- 22:33necessary to follow it on, because it can't just be a one off
- 22:36sort of token thing, but you're not really sure
- 22:39what part of your course is going to grab a student.
- 22:43So it's a fun challenge, and I guess it just requires us
- 22:47to be really in tune with it, really aware and ready to have that deeper dialog
- 22:52as it comes up,
- 22:53and I guess then it's also an encouragement not to just get stuck on
- 22:56what's going to be on the assessment
- 22:58and am I teaching them to do well on the assessment, but am I giving them
- 23:01a breadth of opportunities to discover their strengths
- 23:04for their interests and talents and that sort of thing.
- 23:07So, it really lends itself quite a bit because I think
- 23:10what we're talking about here is developing true curiosity.
- 23:12And so far it sounds like
- 23:14you've got to kind of pivot away from just what's the answer here,
- 23:18and more that like, how do I bring out some more inquiry.
- 23:21And I know you've done a ton of work at this at UWC and so I'm
- 23:25wondering like, how do you build in that AI strategy around human skills?
- 23:29And you mentioned you're very mission driven there.
- 23:31So tell me a little bit more about that.
- 23:33How we use education in a way that helps
- 23:37AI integration still building curiosity, that sort of thing?
- 23:40Yeah, that's a big question.
- 23:45So, I think that, fundamentally, I think it's about having
- 23:48a really organizational wide
- 23:51clarity on why you do what you do.
- 23:55And, if your goal is to get
- 23:59a bunch of students into the IB League, then,
- 24:03great.
- 24:04If your goal is to equip
- 24:07students with the necessary skills
- 24:11to kind of thrive and feel like that they have a life of meaning.
- 24:15Great.
- 24:16Our role is to make education a force to unite people
- 24:21nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future.
- 24:24So, that is an indelible part of our fabric.
- 24:28And it's kind of woven into all of our strategy documents.
- 24:31It's woven into all the questions that we ask of any new initiative.
- 24:35It's woven into questions that we ask the students.
- 24:37And, you know, I mean, they're teenagers,
- 24:39so they roll their eyes at things like that.
- 24:40But then, you know, they come back to us as alumni 20 years later
- 24:43and they're like, you know what? That really shaped my life.
- 24:46And that's really, really cool.
- 24:49And then because it really shaped their life, they really want to give back.
- 24:52And they host all kinds of things and they
- 24:55come in and we have a kind of mentorship program
- 24:57where you know, young aspiring innovators are connected
- 25:02with mentors to help them, you know, develop ideas and things like that.
- 25:05And it's kind of cyclical.
- 25:08And people come back and they give back.
- 25:10So I think the first bit is to have that real identity
- 25:15and to make sure that it is woven into the things that you're doing all the time.
- 25:20And then the second thing is about having a way
- 25:22for students to explore with each other in order to fail.
- 25:27And it's really, really difficult to explain the value of failure
- 25:31to a teenager who's studying for exams.
- 25:36Because it's sort of,
- 25:40you know, a scary word.
- 25:42It's sort of highly discouraged every other part of their life.
- 25:46Yeah.
- 25:47And so having opportunities for them
- 25:51to sort of constructively fail,
- 25:55I think is really vital.
- 25:58And, some students lean right into that.
- 26:02And, you know, they're the students that rock up at the makerspace at 6 a.m.
- 26:05and they're, you know, they've snapped the first skateboard
- 26:08that they built.
- 26:09And they're going to build another one sort of thing.
- 26:11And then those students kind of lean into it.
- 26:14Then you have students that can go for it,
- 26:17when they perceive that the risk isn't very high.
- 26:21And so that's about the sort of pedagogical approaches,
- 26:24that's about how you talk about it and how you talk about learning
- 26:27and how you talk about failure in class.
- 26:31And then these students who,
- 26:34whether culturally
- 26:35or personally or otherwise,
- 26:38are terrified by it.
- 26:42And obviously, they're the kind of hardest group
- 26:44to support through those kind of learnings about failure.
- 26:49But I think that with the right level of school culture
- 26:53and again, like rationale for why you're doing all of this stuff,
- 26:58with the right levels of connection with people who have
- 27:02failed before and can talk all about it,
- 27:04and with the right language used by parents and educators, you know,
- 27:07there's a homeschool partnership thing going on there as well.
- 27:09Yeah, parents don't like failure generally.
- 27:12Yeah.
- 27:13And there's a sort of cultural thing there as well.
- 27:16Right?
- 27:18Different cultures perceive failure in different ways.
- 27:20Different cultures perceive failure
- 27:24in different ways that impact either groups or individuals.
- 27:27And there's a lot of difference there.
- 27:30And, you know, unpacking that is something to be done as well.
- 27:35So, there's really no kind of magical solution there, I think.
- 27:39But it's kind of a values thing.
- 27:42It's a culture thing.
- 27:45It's a pedagogy thing and it's a kind of relationships thing as well.
- 27:48You know, it's how we talk to the kids and what about.
- 27:53The idea of productive failure
- 27:54has become increasingly influential in educational research.
- 27:58Scholars such as Manu Kapur have shown that struggling with difficult problems
- 28:02before receiving instruction
- 28:03can sometimes lead to deeper learning than receiving direct instruction first.
- 28:08The challenge for schools is creating conditions
- 28:11where failure feels safe enough to be constructive.
- 28:14For more support on this,
- 28:16you could check out Manu Kapur's book Productive Failure, Susan Brook-Hart's
- 28:19work on how to give effective feedback, or of course, mindset by Carol Dweck.
- 28:25How do you talk to the kids about AI then?
- 28:30Like practically, I think like, great.
- 28:33I think that it's fantastic the mission of your school.
- 28:36I think it's fantastic
- 28:37that they have a role like yours where, you know, this is
- 28:41one of the elements of it, like, what do you say and how do you do it?
- 28:45We have a wide, wide range of student perspectives,
- 28:48just like we have a wide, wide range of parent perspectives.
- 28:51And we have some students
- 28:52who conscientiously object on environmental or ethical grounds,
- 28:55and they refuse to use anything that has been touched by AI in that perception.
- 29:02That's getting harder, to be honest.
- 29:04You know, being unable to use Google is, you know,
- 29:08it's not impossible, but it's seeping in.
- 29:11But then we have other students who, you know, it's everywhere.
- 29:14And so,
- 29:17I guess the conversations that we have with students
- 29:21are values based,
- 29:23that, you know, what do you want to get out of this?
- 29:27What impact
- 29:28do you think this has on your wellbeing and the well-being of others around you?
- 29:33We have a couple of frameworks, the kind of informed conversations
- 29:37about this, so, you know, we have academic integrity conversations.
- 29:41We have, kind of guidelines on,
- 29:44first of all, what the IB say of that age, but also apart from the DP,
- 29:49we have our own bespoke curriculum throughout K to ten.
- 29:53So it's a lot about our values and our expectations and how we communicate
- 29:56those to students, things that we're working on.
- 30:00Things like
- 30:03kind of articulating and
- 30:05embedding, a sort of robust research process.
- 30:09There's a lot of, kind of,
- 30:11uncertainty with students about like, what research should look like
- 30:15when you might get AI involved and when you might not. And,
- 30:20for some students, that means kind of skirting the edge of the rules.
- 30:23For some students, that means
- 30:25being so terrified of breaking the rules that they just back off entirely
- 30:29from everything and get a book out the library kind of thing.
- 30:32We want a middle ground between that.
- 30:35And so there's a transparency piece there, and
- 30:38there's a sort of genuine conversation to be had.
- 30:42We approach a lot of our conversations with students,
- 30:46in terms of those kind of values
- 30:49based approaches. These are our school values.
- 30:52This is what we say we're here for.
- 30:54This is what you're here for.
- 30:56This is why we've asked you to use AI for this,
- 30:58or this is why we've not asked you to use AI for this.
- 31:01This is the scale we're trying to get you to develop here.
- 31:04And so if you get AI to do that scale, you know,
- 31:09that's not the goal of this exercise kind of thing.
- 31:12Trying to be
- 31:13transparent with students about when they shouldn't use
- 31:16AI for those reasons and when they can use AI for those reasons.
- 31:21You know, if they've mastered a skill already
- 31:25and they kind of find a way to speed that process up
- 31:29by outsourcing that, great.
- 31:30You know, people be using things like cite this for me,
- 31:34or my babe for decades.
- 31:38Right?
- 31:38You know, and that's, you know, sure, I know how to type out a citation,
- 31:42but really, you know, I can I can get a machine to do that for me.
- 31:46And that's not AI, but that's, you know, that's
- 31:49the same kind of questions.
- 31:50It's why are we really doing this?
- 31:53You know, and so it's those kind of conversations but it's not easy.
- 31:56And there's no easy answer, in my experience.
- 32:00If you have one, then please do let me know.
- 32:01What stage through that whole thread of what you just spoke about
- 32:04was how important it is
- 32:06for a school to identify their specific mission
- 32:09and let that permeate through all the different assignments
- 32:12and all the different things that you do.
- 32:13And that's what's really sticking with me, because, you know,
- 32:17I was actually quite impressed with how you said, like,
- 32:18if your goal is this, then great.
- 32:20If your goal is this, then great. And you didn't really change.
- 32:23I thought that was really nice because it's really true.
- 32:27You know, depending on what the aims are of the school,
- 32:29what you say you are doing as a school, well then that's definitely going to
- 32:32trickle down to everything that you do beyond that,
- 32:35like how you set your assignments, how you ask
- 32:38or instruct students to work with AI, etc.
- 32:41So I think that's actually the simple answer
- 32:45is identify your core mission, your core values,
- 32:49what it is as a school that you're trying to do.
- 32:50And then that helps to guide, I guess, what you're looking for.
- 32:53At least that's what I'm taking from what you just told me, Tim, and I think that's
- 32:57useful.
- 32:58Yeah, I think that's spot on. Well summarized.
- 33:01Excellent job.
- 33:02Thank you.
- 33:04Yeah.
- 33:04No I agree and I think it's also forcing schools to do what
- 33:10they probably should have or at least wanted to for a long time.
- 33:15Like you don't have a mission just to make a cute frame on the wall
- 33:19and then just like walk past it sometimes.
- 33:21You want it to permeate into everything that you're doing.
- 33:24And I think that
- 33:27it develops the student's understanding of why
- 33:31in a better way than maybe you used to have to before,
- 33:37where you're explaining why they should learn a skill or develop a skill,
- 33:41because they have another alternative at the ready
- 33:45in a way that they didn't previously.
- 33:46But that's also just good teaching, too,
- 33:50for students to understand why they're doing things.
- 33:53So I think that in that way it's actually a really positive evolution
- 33:57in this bigger need and accountability of
- 34:02why are you doing the things that we're asking you to do.
- 34:06Right. Yeah.
- 34:08On that note, I have this kind of epiphany
- 34:09the other day where I was teaching some sort of graphing skills,
- 34:13the sort of thing that we do in physics and,
- 34:17you know,
- 34:19I don't know. Well, there's a biology
- 34:20teacher here is probably going to say we roll balls downhills, which is probably fair.
- 34:24And then we drew a graph and I got them to do it by hand.
- 34:30Right?
- 34:30And I got them to draw the line of best fit and everything by hand.
- 34:33And the students were kind of like, why?
- 34:36Why are we doing this?
- 34:39Sir, I would like to introduce you to Excel and it’ll do this for me.
- 34:43Like I have this sort of, like $1,500 machine in front of me.
- 34:46Like can’t that just do it?
- 34:47Isn’t that the whole point of this thing?
- 34:50And, you know, maybe, historically,
- 34:53I would have been like, yeah, you know, but you want to practice
- 34:55your graph drawing skills and I would have maybe left it at that.
- 34:59But this time I kind of took a step back and I was like, you know what?
- 35:04Yeah.
- 35:05And when you draw that line of best fit,
- 35:08you have to decide where that line goes.
- 35:12Right?
- 35:12You're making a conscious decision to put that line
- 35:16a little bit closer to that point and a little bit there.
- 35:19Oh now it's a bit steeper than it would have otherwise been.
- 35:21And that gradient matters.
- 35:22That's the thing that we're measuring.
- 35:24You are choosing that, you are in charge.
- 35:27You are the scientist.
- 35:29And so now, once you've made those decisions a few times,
- 35:32once a machine does it for you,
- 35:34you then have the skill to be like, oh, I wouldn't have put it there.
- 35:38I would have done it slightly differently to that.
- 35:40And you have that kind of critical lens that you would not have if you hadn't done
- 35:44that plotting by hand.
- 35:45And that's like just a little microcosm of that,
- 35:47exactly what you were talking about, Courtney.
- 35:49Yeah, but it's a perfect example.
- 35:50Yeah, it's a great example.
- 35:52And it kind of carries into this next segment here I want to talk about, you know, okay,
- 35:55school has established their mission and they know what they want to do here.
- 35:59And I'm looking
- 35:59at like the educators role here specifically because you just gave
- 36:03a great example that, you know, as a fellow science teacher,
- 36:06I think so frequently students are used to a graphing
- 36:12tech tool that does it for them that they start to miss the nuances.
- 36:16They start to not notice, for example, the line of best fit or not notice
- 36:21where there's a statistical difference
- 36:23or where there's a grouping that's completely different to another grouping.
- 36:26And therefore
- 36:27those things are kind of gone to them because they're just used to like
- 36:29seeing data being presented.
- 36:31And it's like, well, that's just a nice way to look at it,
- 36:33as opposed to really critically engaging with it.
- 36:35And so I love that example, and I want to go deeper into that,
- 36:40what does it look like to teach students how to interact with their tech.
- 36:44And I guess AI is one of them,
- 36:45but how to interact with their technology so that it deepens their thinking.
- 36:49And I guess in that example, it was like, take the technology out of it,
- 36:52but are there ways
- 36:53that we can kind of deepen that thinking instead of replacing their thinking
- 36:56with their tech tool?
- 36:58Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
- 37:00And this is the sort of crux of that debate
- 37:03between no screens, maximum screen somewhere in the middle screens.
- 37:06Right?
- 37:06The pendulum is swinging back towards
- 37:09the anti tech movements and things like that.
- 37:12But, the key there is in the balance
- 37:16between the two sides.
- 37:19And there's, as with everything,
- 37:21that sort of nuance and subtleties and you know,
- 37:25the key is helping students to be intentional about what they
- 37:31want to learn, what they want to get out of the exercise.
- 37:34And part of that is telling them what the exercise is for.
- 37:36Like there's been the teaching like, in the past has been like
- 37:40this kind of, you know, yeah,
- 37:41well, we, you know, we write the learning objectives on the board.
- 37:43And this is what you all know by the time you leave the lesson and
- 37:47yeah, but we've never really like gone
- 37:50as far as to saying this is why we're doing this task in this way.
- 37:54And actually, I think that's,
- 37:57in some circumstances, for some ages of students,
- 38:00I think that's doing them a disservice.
- 38:01I think that they by naming those things and by saying,
- 38:06you know, we're doing this because we're going to nurture this skill.
- 38:10Like, to give an example of tech being used to amplify.
- 38:16Like we have a middle school DT department
- 38:19doing kind of design thinking processes and stuff like that.
- 38:23And they create a whole bunch of different personas with different needs.
- 38:26And they help to stress test a prototype.
- 38:29And, you know, it takes no time.
- 38:33You don't need to get loads of guest people to come in.
- 38:34And the students practice their questioning techniques
- 38:38and all that sort of stuff.
- 38:39And then later on in the unit, someone with a kind of specific
- 38:43set of disabilities, for this particular need,
- 38:46comes in and, and they have that same conversation live.
- 38:49But the students feel empowered that they've had that level of practice,
- 38:53that they're more confident in that prototype
- 38:55because it's been stress
- 38:56tested in multiple different directions, and they feel more able
- 38:59to engage with that, honestly, incredibly valuable resource
- 39:03that is presented in front of them,
- 39:05like the lived experience of another human.
- 39:07That is an extremely valuable resource,
- 39:10and they wouldn't
- 39:11be able to get as much out of that if it hadn't been for those rehearsals.
- 39:15And the thing that made those rehearsals possible is the the kind of
- 39:19AI chat bots that have been built around it.
- 39:22So, again, one small example, but it's a way of really challenging
- 39:27the students to think about A, how they're thinking
- 39:32and what they're thinking about,
- 39:33but also kind of reflect and rehearse and be like, oh, you know what?
- 39:37That didn't work that time.
- 39:39It goes back to what we were saying earlier about failure.
- 39:41Like it's lower stakes failure than it would be to sort of get up
- 39:46and speak in front of an audience, you know, our languages department
- 39:50do a lot of work with audio generation and doing that kind of practice or,
- 39:55you know, having repetitive ability to practice
- 39:59in a low stakes environment or a no stakes environment where
- 40:02all you're doing is talking to a machine and it doesn't, you know,
- 40:06does it really matter.
- 40:07The machine's not going to judge you, hopefully, yet.
- 40:10Oh, yeah. Yeah.
- 40:12But all of those kind of opportunities for creating
- 40:17ways in which students can feel successful,
- 40:20which just wouldn't have been possible before,
- 40:22those are the things that are overlooked from some aspect
- 40:25of that dialog at the moment in the sort of mainstream media.
- 40:30I don't want to come across as, like a sort of vehement pro tech person.
- 40:34I think that those arguments against tech have a lot of merit as well.
- 40:39And I think that there's, you know, that there is a recalibration
- 40:44of the educational landscape needed, especially after Covid.
- 40:48But I think that there is still value there.
- 40:50And I think that we have the opportunity to open up
- 40:53some of that value that we just wouldn't have been able to access before.
- 40:57If we do it right.
- 41:00As we wrap up here,
- 41:01I have so many more questions, but I'll just stick to one.
- 41:05Obviously different teachers have different levels
- 41:08of maybe readiness or opinions or willingness.
- 41:12You have a huge spectrum.
- 41:14And I guess in your role you're working with all of the teachers here.
- 41:17Is there any advice that you'd have either to someone in a similar role
- 41:20or a teacher who wants to work with other teachers that can help build
- 41:26not saying help win everyone over and have a big pro-tech party like you
- 41:30said, but how do you get teachers to have the at least the confidence
- 41:35to have the right conversations with their students and with their peers?
- 41:39I think providing, and this is really difficult
- 41:43in almost every school, but providing opportunities for people to explore,
- 41:50I think that one thing
- 41:51that was established reasonably early,
- 41:55after the advent of GPT 3.5, or whatever it was
- 42:00in November ‘22, was it kind of depends on the person.
- 42:05Right?
- 42:06And so how you interact with AI, some people feel
- 42:09deeply, deeply uncomfortable about it, writing any of their emails.
- 42:14Right?
- 42:14And some people just can't wait to offload that.
- 42:18And that's fine. Right?
- 42:20And some people feel really deeply uncomfortable about having a conversation
- 42:23about lesson planning with it.
- 42:25You know, that's a human endeavor,
- 42:27and that should, you know, that should really sit with the humans.
- 42:29And some people, well, we'll get it to sort of critique their lesson plans
- 42:33and, well, it's how you interact with it is varied for everybody.
- 42:37And so, I think, the best things that I have seen done
- 42:42is when departments or teams have said,
- 42:45you know, here are some rough guidelines,
- 42:48just spend 15 minutes with no objective,
- 42:51just trying to do something.
- 42:55So, there's like, one of the things we have Gemini as a school
- 43:00and one of the things that we're doing,
- 43:02actually doing on Wednesday with a group of teachers, is
- 43:05just kind of
- 43:06getting people together and saying, look, here's Gemini Canvas.
- 43:09It can kind of build apps for you, right?
- 43:13Here's a couple of examples.
- 43:15Get some sort of kind of crazy data problem
- 43:19that you've been wrestling with,
- 43:21or some data that you wish that you could gather
- 43:24and you've been like thinking, oh, you know what?
- 43:26I'd be really cool if I knew all of this stuff.
- 43:29And then just try and build a thing for it and, you know,
- 43:32and just play around with it and then show it to someone else
- 43:34and see what they think, and then iterate it.
- 43:36And the things that I have seen not work is when the organizational leadership
- 43:41says, we are using AI for X and Y, but not Z.
- 43:45It never gels with people's workflows.
- 43:47People have different workflows, and people do things in slightly different ways.
- 43:52And so getting people to kind of wrestle with it
- 43:55and solve their own workflow problems, which are different
- 43:59to the person sitting next to them, who does exactly the same job.
- 44:02I think that those are really good ways of building goodwill and building,
- 44:07a kind of shared understanding of both the capabilities
- 44:11and the limitations of the technology.
- 44:12And then you can start to think about, like what organizationally,
- 44:18which of these things should we be building out.
- 44:22Because by the time people have understood the value proposition,
- 44:25then they can start to get on board with things that
- 44:28they might not have designed themselves, but they can see the value in them.
- 44:32But I think that that initial kind of hearts
- 44:34and minds thing where you're like, you know, this isn't necessarily the enemy.
- 44:37This isn't just the homework cheating machine.
- 44:40This is actually something that can help you out as well, and that
- 44:43this can make a meaningful difference to both you and your students.
- 44:46People kind of have to
- 44:47stumble over that themselves,
- 44:48and you just got to give them the opportunity to do so.
- 44:51But I think when you do that, you've got to have
- 44:53that framing that you've brought up a few times in our conversation.
- 44:56And what I've heard a lot of is metacognitive priming.
- 45:00It's thinking about your thinking your questions,
- 45:03the way that you're approaching your learning,
- 45:05whether that's from a student or from a teacher perspective.
- 45:07And the thing that's really going to stick with me
- 45:10a lot from our conversation is that idea of like,
- 45:12you've got to know your purpose, your why, of what you're doing.
- 45:16And that's typically school aligned mission.
- 45:18And it of course, it manifests itself through your teaching as well.
- 45:21But that then pulls itself into how you're going to interact with this tool.
- 45:27And yeah, I think the biggest thing that I'm holding on to that
- 45:30is you frame it around that metacognitive approach, not just
- 45:33this is my answer giving machine,
- 45:35but if we want to cultivate curiosity in young people, if we want to cultivate
- 45:38curiosity in teachers and help us model that in the classroom,
- 45:42then we've also got to start evaluating our own practices
- 45:46and be a bit critical about those things,
- 45:47using a tool that can be highly personalized.
- 45:50Because just as you said, we are all going to do this in a slightly different way.
- 45:53And here's a tool that can be a good coach in helping us get better.
- 45:58So, I just I really appreciate your perspective on these things, Tim.
- 46:01That's really helped enlighten me quite a bit.
- 46:04Yeah. No.
- 46:04Thank you.
- 46:05And, I appreciate your incredible paraphrasing as well.
- 46:09You're doing a great job
- 46:10of summing up what I managed to say in ten minutes in about 30s.
- 46:13So, thank you.
- 46:15No, thanks, Tim. You’re too kind.
- 46:17Great. Well, that's it, Tim.
- 46:18Thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.
- 46:21This this has been a lot of fun.
- 46:23And yeah, we so appreciate talking to you.
- 46:25Yeah. Likewise.
- 46:26Thank you very much for having me.
- 46:28Perhaps the central challenge of AI in education is no longer
- 46:32whether students can access information, because they can.
- 46:36The challenge is helping young people develop judgment,
- 46:39agency, curiosity and wisdom in a world where information is abundant.
- 46:44That may be why conversations about mission, values
- 46:47and purpose are becoming more important than ever.
- 46:51If this is an area of interest for you, we recommend David Perkins's book
- 46:55Future Wise or the OECD Learning Compass.
- 46:58You could also see the Unesco Future of Education reports.
- 47:02All of these provide meaningful ways to refocus on the purpose of education
- 47:06as a foundation to address the challenge of AI in education.
- 47:13Yeah, so Tim's smart, Tim knows things.
- 47:16He's got some good ideas, and he's obviously trying some new stuff
- 47:19that makes a lot of sense.
- 47:20And I love a lot of the things that he said.
- 47:22But I mean, you know, from the Kognity side of things, what's
- 47:25really resonating with you from that conversation?
- 47:27Lots of things.
- 47:29Before, when I was chatting with Tim,
- 47:31he was asking me, he's like, well, because he's a podcaster also.
- 47:35And so he was like, this is my chance to ask you questions.
- 47:38He was like, what have you seen different in edtech in the last decade?
- 47:43And I said, in a good way,
- 47:46everyone's job got a lot harder.
- 47:48I think that a decade ago and a bit more,
- 47:52there was a lot more gimmicky edtech with a bit of a less
- 47:57cool Wild West feeling, of like, anybody could make anything.
- 48:02With water pistols, instead of actual pistols.
- 48:06We're still in education.
- 48:09It's not in Hollywood.
- 48:12But it was this feeling of,
- 48:14we're going to make this tool, we're going to make a freemium model,
- 48:18we're going to let a teacher start experimenting in their classroom,
- 48:21and then maybe, hopefully we'll start making some money after.
- 48:24That's how a lot of companies were.
- 48:27And I love that
- 48:31teachers have gotten way more discerning
- 48:34and schools have gotten way more discerning of
- 48:39we need to use
- 48:41technology in thoughtful ways and see, understand why we're doing it.
- 48:46I think that's a theme that's come up a lot in our episodes.
- 48:50And I think with Tim especially, it's like, I love how much they really are
- 48:56rooted to their mission of their school, and that came out clear.
- 49:00I like the idea of having the conversations about the why
- 49:06and being really intentional, and that's something
- 49:10that I think about all the time at Kognity is
- 49:13what does intentional edtech look like and what is intentional use.
- 49:20There's, I think, maybe top of mind also right now,
- 49:22is we're coming across some schools in districts that are like,
- 49:26we quit computers, like no more screen time in our school.
- 49:30Yeah, yeah.
- 49:31And that's a real thing.
- 49:33And that's not something that I necessarily love.
- 49:38That's a hard thing to work with, but it's a really important conversation
- 49:43to be having is like, that's the other end of a spectrum.
- 49:47And what do you do in your school
- 49:51to make sure that all the tools that you're using
- 49:55are used meaningfully, and that nothing is done
- 50:00just for the sake of screen time or taking away screen time, like,
- 50:05what are you replacing it with?
- 50:07If you're not using screens anymore, what are your teachers going to do?
- 50:12Like, that's just the tool or the medium?
- 50:16Yeah. We can't just be like the Luddite.
- 50:18Let's kind of, you know, go back because back worked.
- 50:21And there is a great argument for that.
- 50:23I'm not saying Luddite in a derogatory way.
- 50:25Like that's a useful thing.
- 50:28But yeah, what you're saying is like that intention,
- 50:31and this is one of the things that I think comes through in
- 50:33almost all of our conversations is what's the intention
- 50:35behind the the learning tool that I'm using, whether that is paper
- 50:38and pencil, an overhead projector or a tech tool of some sort.
- 50:42And you know what stood out to me, I think in the classroom experience
- 50:46is that, it's that intentionality.
- 50:50But I also, you know, I come away from these
- 50:52and I get excited and want to try these things out,
- 50:54but at the same time, there is, again, that sort of time aspect.
- 50:57And it's not just the time of
- 50:59let me try to experiment with it, but it's like,
- 51:01how am I going to prioritize the time in the classroom?
- 51:03Because some of the things he said made me
- 51:05so excited about teaching metacognitive strategies
- 51:09and using AI as a tool to help coach you on those metacognitive strategies.
- 51:14But I have to prime that.
- 51:15I have to teach students why I should ask AI for something like,
- 51:20here's my opinion can you give me three competing opinions
- 51:23or three different opinions that are well researched that
- 51:25that might challenge my thinking?
- 51:29I have to kind of coach that,
- 51:30you know, I have to teach students to look for those types of questions.
- 51:34And I think that's important to do.
- 51:35But I also then have to recognize where's my balance.
- 51:38And there's an argument that says, well, when you're highly specializing like this,
- 51:43then you don't have to do as much direct instruction
- 51:45because students are going to get the content at their own pace.
- 51:50That one still leaves me wondering, where do I prioritize
- 51:55my timing and my lesson planning so that I'm highlighting the metacognitive stuff,
- 52:00so they're using AI and asking better questions of it,
- 52:03to enhance themselves as learners.
- 52:07Yet, also balancing the pacing through my curriculum
- 52:11and teaching the assessment strategies and that sort of stuff too.
- 52:13So it's got me thinking about a lot of cool stuff.
- 52:17The intention is big one, the mission behind it as well.
- 52:19And now just where do I fit this in?
- 52:22And I don't mean that, like where am I possibly going to fit this in?
- 52:26Yeah. I don't have time, I teach biology.
- 52:29Yeah, exactly. You know how important I am?
- 52:31But rather like, I need to intentionally do this.
- 52:33So it's the same thing. It's intention. Yeah.
- 52:36No, it is.
- 52:37And I think that in a lot of our episodes, I listen to people saying
- 52:42things that they do really well with their students
- 52:45that I'm like, you should also do that with your teachers.
- 52:48And this one was actually a bit of a flipped thing
- 52:51where I loved his suggestion for the teachers, where he was saying that
- 52:56you can't just tell a group of teachers you use AI for this, this, but not this.
- 53:02And then just expect them to have it fit into their ways of working.
- 53:06And it's exactly the same thing, I think, for the students where you can't just
- 53:11go to the students and say, you can use AI for this, this, but not this.
- 53:15It's like, how do we sit with this and work
- 53:19and pull it apart and have time to explore and figure out,
- 53:23especially IB students never take any answer
- 53:27at face value, nor are they taught to.
- 53:31So why should this be any different?
- 53:33I guess is the idea is like
- 53:35you can't use it because it's cheating and it's like, well, like, wait a minute.
- 53:38Like, let's think about this.
- 53:40And you use the example of like, why is this bad?
- 53:43But then I mean, something like, I don't even know if I'm supposed
- 53:45to say other companies, but whatever, like Grammarly or the citation
- 53:49one or whatever it is, it's like who's drawing the spectrum?
- 53:53And I think he gives good ideas of how to do that, but it's so important to have
- 53:57that be a conversation.
- 53:58Yeah, yeah.
- 53:59I mean, Tim is definitely giving me a lot to think about.
- 54:01And I hope for our listeners,
- 54:02I hope he's giving you a lot to think about here as well and to,
- 54:05you know, to consider this in your practice
- 54:07and how you can make it a reality, both for your students
- 54:10if you're in the classroom or if you're a leader,
- 54:11how are we going to get this out from our teachers as well?
- 54:14So, super informative.
- 54:16Tim's super smart.
- 54:17This was a lot of fun and we're so glad you joined us for this episode.
- 54:20And we'll see you next time on IB Unplugged.
- 54:22IB Unplugged is a Kognity podcast for IBDP educators,
- 54:27helping you teach with more confidence, creativity, and joy.
- 54:30Our show is hosted by Courtney Marline and John Patton
- 54:33and produced by Katilina Gaffney,
- 54:35edited by Damir Zvekanov,
- 54:37and supported by Karla Cetina.
- 54:39If you have a topic or question for us to explore, please reach out
- 54:43on kognity.com/ibunplugged.
- 54:45See you next time.