Latest / IB Unplugged / Indigenous Knowledge Systems in AI w/ Wakanyi Hoffman

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Indigenous Knowledge Systems in AI w/ Wakanyi Hoffman · IB Unplugged

• 0:00
  Welcome to IB Unplugged, a Kognity podcast for IBDP educators,
• 0:05
  that tackles your submitted challenges and questions by connecting you with
• 0:08
  experts and peers who share their ideas and stories from real classrooms.
• 0:13
  Whether you're a seasoned educator or new to the IB world, each bi weekly episode
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  and guest aims to equip you with practical tips and positive inspiration,
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  helping you teach with more confidence, creativity, and joy.
• 0:26
  So whether you're walking your dog or commuting to school, hit play and join
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  a community of educators ready to learn, laugh, and thrive in your IB journey.
• 0:35
  Hello everybody, and welcome
• 0:36
  to another episode of IB Unplugged.
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  In today's episode,
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  we spoke with with Wakanyi Hoffman,
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  with a really incredible, discussion.
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  And I'm pretty excited for each of you to listen to to what's going on.
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  We unpack so many different things.
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  But first, a little bit about Wakanyi.
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  Yeah. I mean, it was such a great conversation with her.
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  She was absolutely brilliant.
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  Wakanyi Hofmann is an indigenous thinker, public speaker, ubuntu philosophy scholar,
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  and folklorist who weaves together the ancestral threads of African
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  indigenous wisdom with the fabric of modernity.
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  Her groundbreaking work
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  advocates for the integration of the African ubuntu philosophy
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  into AI systems as an ethical framework that supports human flourishing,
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  guiding technology to reflect indigenous ways of knowing and nurturing
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  inner well-being for both community and planetary health.
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  As a researcher at the inclusive AI lab within the center
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  for Global Challenges at Utrecht University in the Netherlands,
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  she's leading the charge in responsible and sustainable AI designed for Africa.
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  Additionally, she's the author of several children's books that promote African
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  indigenous knowledge systems.
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  Her latest book seller, Mountain Warrior, was published
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  by Otter-Barry Books in the UK and is available worldwide.
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  So, I mean,
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  her biography could keep going on and I just was endlessly impressed by
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  I think this idea of what she said in the biography of this, like,
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  balance between modernity and really respecting,
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  the culture, like the cultural phenomenon that are
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  not just in one place, but really, what does it mean for global education?
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  I loved when she was talking about how she was studying
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  global education, but realized that it was only kind of coming from
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  certain perspectives, that it's like a certain perspective on global education.
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  So I think that she,
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  she has so much humility and recognizes that all educators
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  really need to bring that humility to the conversation with AI.
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  And I loved also that she was so positive.
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  Also, it was like, yes, I know there are parts
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  that are really scary and there are parts that we should be cautious about,
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  but she was just so positive and how much
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  AI can enhance and improve learning.
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  And I just loved to hear her ideas on all of that.
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  Yeah.
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  It was really quite encouraging, actually, as an educator.
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  Because you see, AI as this, like thing that we've got to kind of work toward
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  and you're almost like, I'm kind of shooting in the dark here,
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  and I'm kind of figuring it out at the last minute and,
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  and trying to be, you know, an educator for students on this one here.
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  But, yeah,
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  I thought it was really powerful and really inspiring
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  the way that she spoke about it as like an additional,
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  an additional philosopher in the room and another way of like,
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  kind of humbling yourself as the educator.
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  I mean, like, I don't have to be the oracle
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  of all information anymore, but instead I'm going to co construct this information
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  together using all these different tools that I now have at my,
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  at my disposal so that I can help young people
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  become more of themselves and help them become that authentic human.
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  And I think that was something that really stood out with me
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  as well as it's it's more than, you know, just kind of meeting qualifications and,
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  and going through the motions of trying to figure something out
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  for a career or something like this, but more about like,
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  how do we truly understand this philosophy of ubuntu
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  and how do we know ourselves
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  and really bring the best out of ourselves in that process.
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  I agree, and
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  I think that's something that was really interesting in, I guess
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  in the way that we think about how we ask questions in the podcast is
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  what she was talking about with the prompting
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  of usually when we ask somebody about how can you use AI in the classroom,
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  they think about specific ideas of ways to use it.
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  Where for her it was like, how do we use it is like, okay,
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  how do we teach students to think about it?
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  How do we incorporate ethics into this conversation?
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  How do we talk about sustainability in terms of kind of
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  the environmental footprint that you're creating by using AI too much?
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  It was really about
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  how do you use AI in the classroom as a more meta question, like backing up,
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  not just these are specific tools and edtech ideas,
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  but really like know
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  what's the conversation and how do we form a space for learning
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  that is ethical, sustainable, safe and positive?
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  So it really was a really interesting perspective on it.
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  Yeah.
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  This and and so many other golden nuggets are just strewn throughout this episode.
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  So we hope you enjoy. And now onto the show.
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  Hi, Wakanyi, welcome to IB Unplugged.
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  We're so happy to have you here today.
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  Thanks for having me.
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  In this episode, we're going to talk about indigenous knowledge systems and AI.
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  I'm really excited to dive into these topics with you,
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  but we like to start with a few warm up questions that we ask our guests
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  and so the first one that we have is, why has education
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  been a core focus in your career and in your research?
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  That is a loaded question.
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  Thank you so much.
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  That's the warm up.
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  That is a really good warm up. Thank you.
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  Well aducation I guess has been central to my life.
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  You know, since as a child I was always fascinated with learning different things.
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  And I grew up in a area close to a forest.
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  So I like to say that I grew up in a forest.
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  And so there was always that kind of learning.
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  And you mentioned indigenous knowledge, you know.
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  So I had that mixture between an indigenous way of living,
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  you know, very much in the natural world and indigenous ways
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  of thinking about community and who we are
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  as human beings in relationship to other beings.
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  And then my school, my little primary school, was actually inside the forest.
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  So I spent majority of my childhood,
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  in formal education, being educated in the forest.
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  So the forest was a teacher and the teachers inside the school in the forest.
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  So education for me began that way.
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  And, over time, you know, I'm a mum also.
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  I've got four kids.
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  I have,
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  you know, raised my children in different parts of the world.
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  We're an expat family.
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  So we've lived in many parts of the world
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  and we've been to so many different school systems.
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  We've been to eight countries and our oldest one has been
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  to about nine schools.
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  So we've seen what education looks like from different,
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  countries and also different curriculum.
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  And so I'm always fascinated and trying to understand
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  what is the best education for each individual child,
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  because there's not one school that fits one child.
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  And we've, you know, it's still a journey.
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  We're still sorting that out.
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  But at least I can say that we've come around to understanding
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  that it's not so much the buildings or the school or the curriculum.
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  It's really what the child has within them.
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  You know, their talents particularly, and what they're interested in.
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  That then determines the kind of education that they want to
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  and they should have access to.
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  And I've also done, a bit of education training myself.
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  I'm a, trained, global educator.
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  I've got a master's in global education, and my PhD
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  is actually on research in AI,
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  which is also starting to look very much at AI in education.
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  So I'm surrounded by this, you know, this phenomena of
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  what does it mean to be educated, what is education even?
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  And, combining that with my own education from my childhood.
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  It's such a deep passion.
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  You can tell, just like having this interest,
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  not only an interest in education,
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  but something that influences so much of our lives all the time.
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  I guess.
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  And so I guess with that in mind,
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  and maybe you've already kind of alluded to it,
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  but when we think about where education is going, what do you think,
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  what's going to be like the future of the educational landscape
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  in the next years, in the next, you know, time ahead of us?
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  It's so difficult to tell because we're in the midst of it when the midst of
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  something really new, the innovation in AI is so new and it's evolving.
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  And every day we've got a new story about where AI is heading.
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  And it's really frightening on the one hand.
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  And I try to stay in the side of positive, energy.
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  Let's move in the direction of where things could go well
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  and not how badly they could be, because we could dwell on that forever.
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  And I think, you know, one of the things that I think education is going to be
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  transformed heavily around is, how we use technology
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  and how we, how we inspire
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  children to want to continue learning, because pretty much everything they want
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  to have access to any kind of information is available.
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  Right?
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  So you could even say artificial information is already there.
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  But what is really artificial intelligence like?
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  What is that intelligence side of things and how do we activate that?
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  How do we keep them engaged and excited to become more of who they are
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  rather than, you know, absorbing more information out there?
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  And so I think education in the very near future
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  is going to have to embrace, you know, educators all around
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  the world are going to have to learn how to use AI tools in the classroom,
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  whether they like it or not.
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  It's kind of just that's a reality.
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  And I say that with the, you know, sort of
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  also feeling a little bit at a loss as to what that means for educators.
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  However, at the same time, just being realistic about the fact
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  that, you know, education has always been, in transformation.
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  And so we have that.
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  And at the same time, I think also we're going to have
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  to look very differently at how students learn, how children actually learn.
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  And what is it that they want to learn. Right?
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  Because like I said earlier, they can learn anything.
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  They can teach themselves anything.
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  I've got a daughter in college who tells me, well,
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  I mean, film class and pretty much everything the professor is telling us,
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  we could have done that in a YouTube tutorial, you know?
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  Right? Five minutes. I would have sorted that out.
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  And I'm like, right, so that's not education.
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  So I think a lot more around
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  discussing even the philosophy of learning is going to be where
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  we have to steer our young ones towards wanting to discover
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  more of what meaning, meaning making more than information itself.
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  Yeah, far less about like the information transfer from one person to the next
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  and more about, as you say, like inspiring people to want to continue learning
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  and then also having that deeper discussion about
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  what does this mean in terms of a positive life, what does this mean
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  in terms of like influencing others in a positive way and receiving that back?
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  I guess so it's yeah, I like that as far less about just getting knowledge
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  into somebody's head, recognizing it can come from other places, right?
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  Exactly. And it's really,
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  also our well-being, you know, what is this information.
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  How is this information influencing my well-being, our flourishing
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  not only as individuals but actually as a communities, as a society.
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  So I think there's a lot, you know, we can't underestimate how much children,
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  receive just from being around
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  and also being around nature, being around, you know, television, whatever,
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  wherever it is that they're getting that source of information.
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  So they're aware of what it means to live a good life, you know,
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  whether we, you know, and we can argue about what this values are, right?
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  Whether we're looking at the values of money
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  is a marker of good life or something else.
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  But I think real education is going to have to steer them
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  towards the idea of what does it mean to have to live well, to have a good life,
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  to flourish, as you know, on the inside and less on
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  what they can receive from the outside.
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  Our last follow up question, or our last warm up question is, as somebody
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  who's obviously extensively researched curriculum and education,
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  you ended up choosing the IB program for all four of your children.
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  And I'm just wondering, yeah, why did you do that?
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  Why did you come to that conclusion
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  that this was the path you wanted to take with your children?
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  I think, firstly, it was quite accidental as all parents, you know, do,
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  so, like I said earlier, we've lived in so many different parts of the world.
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  And the IB education was one of our first,
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  one of our many, education systems that we've been exposed to.
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  And I think what struck me was how much it resonated
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  with my own childhood experience, this idea
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  that we could experiment with different ideas.
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  And you could you could spend a lot of time
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  in one topic, really understanding it deeply.
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  And also the idea of choice, like you could choose what you want to study
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  and become really good at that, because you also enjoying it.
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  So I felt like and this was quite early on when our oldest one
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  would have been 5 or 6 starting kindergarten.
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  She was in International School of Bangkok, which has an IB.
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  You know, it's one of the probably one of the best IB schools in the world.
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  So she didn't, you know, our daughter did not even get into the IB
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  then because she was only in kindergarten.
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  But I could kind of get a sense of where that was going.
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  It felt like it was a true international education in the sense that it embraced,
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  you know, a lot of different ways of learning, different ways of knowing.
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  And this is really resonant with my own indigenous ways of thinking,
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  you know, knowledge is one way.
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  It's not one curriculum doesn't fit everyone.
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  We bring different knowledges into the classroom.
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  And then what can we do with that?
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  And I felt like the IB was responding to that.
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  So I put a mental note, knowing
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  that I would always want the kids to graduate with an IB diploma.
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  And that has been the journey.
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  And all of our kids are actually in IB schools at the moment.
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  I love that, and I think that I'm also I haven't been an IB educator,
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  but I've been kind of surrounded by that IB in a for quite a many,
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  quite a few years now.
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  And I do think that it is that idea, especially when you're somebody that's
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  living in a lot of different countries, in a lot of different places.
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  In some ways it's comforting knowing that there's,
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  a thread that kind of
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  goes through all of these different schools,
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  no matter which country that you're in, but another that
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  that's not sacrificing anything, but that's really enhancing it, that
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  you can take those different perspectives from the different countries.
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  Like I'm sure that the experience is different for your children that are
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  in Japan, that are in the Netherlands, but there's still some kind of core
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  that you can grasp on to knowing that they're getting that kind of education.
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  Absolutely. In this continuity.
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  And obviously the teachers are trained to teach, you know, the IB curriculum.
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  So there is nothing is new, just a we can be in a new country,
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  but the kids are able to access the same level and quality of education
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  and interact with the teachers in the same manner.
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  Right? So it's not a newness to them.
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  And they're able to learn new things within the same curriculum.
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  So I really enjoyed that these are continuity.
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  And in fact, we tend to choose places that we're going to live in
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  based on where the nearest IB school is.
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  Yeah,
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  I think,
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  I mean, I think any IB educator, and especially the IB themselves
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  would be pretty excited to hear what you're saying here,
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  especially with regard to like continuity of experience,
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  and especially this idea of like, you can still get that
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  intercultural experience in IB program depending on where you might be.
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  But just the general approach to knowledge acquisition,
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  understanding your own position as a know where and how that influences
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  what comes your way
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  and your own biases on that, and sort of taking the time to really
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  unpack that while you dive deeper into the subjects of your choosing.
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  Yeah, I mean, we're not here to promote the IB necessarily,
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  you know, you got to do it.
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  But this was pretty solid.
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  That was a good one for it.
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  We do sometimes look at ourselves
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  and we think we could be the poster family for the IB.
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  Yeah.
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  Just based on the number of, you know, numbers in the just the data
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  we have for kids and they're all going to, you know, end up in somewhere
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  the other graduating from an IB school somewhere.
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  And so here we are. Yeah. Nice.
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  Well, let's dive into that a little bit more.
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  Obviously you've shared a bit about, you know,
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  your kids going through all these different IB programs as well.
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  But let's talk a little bit more about you as well.
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  And, what you kind of bring with this because I know,
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  you know, you're currently working on your PhD.
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  You're lead researcher for sustainable African AI systems,
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  focusing on impact in education.
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  And I wonder if you could just unpack that a little bit for us, as we kind of get
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  to the main theme of what we want to discuss in this episode,
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  how are we using these like sustainable African AI systems?
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  How is AI influenced, how is it developed right now?
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  And what do we need to know as educators
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  to help us be using it more effectively?
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  As you say, it's probably gonna be a big part of our future as educators.
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  So what's going on here and help set the scene here
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  for our discussion.
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  So I got into this space of AI
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  from a very anti-AI perspective.
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  Right?
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  I was not at all bought into this whole idea that,
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  you know, AI needs to be influencing our lives, particularly children's lives.
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  Like I said, you know, I'm a mom and we've seen what social media has done.
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  So this is very much my own desire
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  to influence it in a particular way, in a particular direction.
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  And I was particularly thinking about Africa as a continent
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  and how a lot of times we tend to have something developed elsewhere,
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  and then it's brought into the continent and then the experiment
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  is carried out there.
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  And I could see that this could very well be the scenario.
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  So I wanted to understand what is AI and how can we make it
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  sustainable and ethical.
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  Actually, the real point is ethical AI.
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  And then I started looking at my own upbringing.
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  And what is an ethical approach
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  to learning, to educating children in Africa.
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  And so this philosophy of ubuntu, which is this concept
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  of what it means to be human, ubuntu actually means being human
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  or how you activate your personhood, how you become a person in a group.
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  You know, that philosophy exists pretty much across the continent.
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  Maybe it's called different names, but really ubuntu
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  is a word that is most popular or most well known.
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  And so I wanted to look at how can we use ubuntu ethics
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  to help design sustainable AI systems in Africa, so we don't lose
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  that cultural, knowledge and that way of being human, right?
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  Because as you know, as we're talking about AI, on the one hand, we're
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  also talking about what will it even mean to be human, a human being,
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  you know, working with this artificial other being, right?
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  Something that is mirroring to us who we think
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  we are or what we've put out there as ourselves.
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  What does that mean to begin with about how you know what it means to be human?
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  And so I got into that, very much from a philosophical perspective.
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  And then I realized that this ethical framework of ubuntu
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  could be a framework of ethics for designing AI systems in Africa.
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  And at the moment, I'm really looking at that from an education perspective.
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  What does it mean to have AI systems that are in the education system
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  in Africa that have been embedded with the ubuntu philosophy, ubuntu ethics.
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  And from that perspective, then we start to talk about education
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  from a humanistic perspective, actually,
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  from what does it mean to be human?
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  All of these qualities, what makes us become a community
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  that is flourishing together, that is harmonious, that is peaceful living?
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  And can that be part of what the AI
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  can help us, in the education system.
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  So that's really what I'm working on, is the ethics of ubuntu in
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  AI and how that can influence education across Africa.
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  It sounds like a really fascinating and kind of complex leap, really.
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  I mean, when we look at
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  when I think about AI, it's kind of like another form of information, right?
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  That can, or another way of like supporting how I'm already kind of
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  going about essentially information and what I'm doing with it.
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  And I know we've constantly had that question
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  with, like, our students here at the school
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  and our teachers as well, like, what's our role look like now?
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  What does it mean to be a human
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  in the age of AI, where all this information
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  is available and, you've got an artificial intelligence
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  or large language model that can sort of figure things out
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  and keep moving forward with you.
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  But I wonder
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  when you talk about, like, ubuntu ethics being present with AI, for me,
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  that's I'm still not totally clear in terms of, I guess, what that means,
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  because I see it so much as like, here's information and here's how you can, like,
• 21:21
  benefit from this information.
• 21:22
  But in terms of like ethical, transmission of knowledge, ethical like
• 21:26
  ways of living, ways of essentially finding that human space in a place
• 21:32
  that's otherwise kind of being occupied or being used by AI.
• 21:37
  I'm interested to learn a lot more about this.
• 21:39
  Well, I'll give you an example.
• 21:41
  Just think about what we're talking about right now in AI.
• 21:43
  We're talking about agentic AI.
• 21:46
  So I agents that will then essentially be helping, assisting us do different tasks.
• 21:52
  Right?
• 21:53
  But we're talking about it as if it's something out there
• 21:55
  that's far removed from us.
• 21:56
  We designed, human beings designed, and we're designing these agents.
• 22:00
  What are the ethics, of that design model?
• 22:03
  Right?
• 22:04
  And whose culture is influencing
• 22:08
  this design of this, this AI agent, when a student is prompting
• 22:14
  any kind of AI system or an agent to do something on their behalf, right?
• 22:18
  What is the response?
• 22:20
  Where is the response coming from?
• 22:22
  I'm really curious about that.
• 22:24
  You know, and we already know that AI, especially large language
• 22:27
  models or OpenAI or generative AI has a lot of biases.
• 22:31
  Right?
• 22:32
  So not everyone's culture is there, particularly indigenous
• 22:35
  people's, you know, thinking or ways of being
• 22:38
  is not really present in the way that they would want to be present.
• 22:42
  Right?
• 22:43
  So there's a lot of missing information.
• 22:45
  And yet AI is supposed to be this one
• 22:48
  sort of source of information, almost like a truth teller in many ways.
• 22:54
  And so, as an educator and as a parent, you know,
• 22:57
  you have to question where is that information coming from?
• 23:01
  Is it influencing us to think in a particular way,
• 23:04
  or is it leaving us with an open ended way of thinking?
• 23:07
  Right?
• 23:08
  If it's closed ended because of the culture
• 23:11
  that's influenced that AI system, then we have a problem.
• 23:14
  But can we design?
• 23:15
  So actually more for small language models so communities that can build their own
• 23:21
  little language models to actually try and curate
• 23:25
  different ways of knowing, different knowledge systems.
• 23:28
  And then from there we can have sort of this little mushrooms
• 23:31
  of knowledge mushrooming in different parts of the world.
• 23:35
  And then we can start to see what are
• 23:38
  our common threads of values or ethics around,
• 23:43
  especially the question about what does it mean to be human?
• 23:46
  So how does it look like from country X or community X versus even a school?
• 23:52
  You could take your IB school and say, this is a little,
• 23:56
  little small, language model.
• 23:59
  This is our knowledge.
• 24:00
  This is the quality of our knowledge.
• 24:02
  These are the students that have come here, you know. In international schools
• 24:06
  you have lots of kids from different countries, but not from all countries.
• 24:10
  So what is that knowledge that they've brought into this school?
• 24:13
  And can you start to see how children, students are interacting with each other?
• 24:18
  What questions are holding about each other?
• 24:21
  So really starting from a very, sort of small level
• 24:26
  and then get slowly to that macro level.
• 24:29
  Why are we using a larger language model?
• 24:32
  You can see how how powerful that would be in that dynamic space as an educator or,
• 24:37
  you know, when you were trying to build this concept
• 24:39
  of intercultural understanding and respect,
• 24:41
  if we're constantly influenced
• 24:42
  by one particular biased AI language, that saying here
• 24:45
  all the information we're getting is coming from these spaces,
• 24:47
  and this is what you need to know
• 24:48
  that's going to decrease that intercultural understanding and respect.
• 24:51
  And I think when you bring up this idea
• 24:53
  of like small language learning models, almost
• 24:55
  the first reaction is like, well, wait, but then you're missing perspectives.
• 24:58
  But that then highlights that role of the educator, right?
• 25:01
  It just says, hey, no, we want to, let's pull in all these different areas.
• 25:04
  And now we can develop a better understanding
• 25:06
  of intercultural understanding, because otherwise we're really just
• 25:09
  getting a cultural understanding instead of multiple.
• 25:13
  And we have to realize we're dealing with kids.
• 25:15
  We have to go back to kindergarten when it comes to AI with children, right?
• 25:19
  We have to start from the very basic level.
• 25:22
  What do they understand about themselves?
• 25:25
  And even as an educator in a very multicultural environment,
• 25:30
  AI would be an amazing tool.
• 25:32
  A small language model would be an amazing tool where you can actually use it
• 25:36
  to help you bridge the cultural gaps in your own classroom.
• 25:41
  So you could use that as a source
• 25:46
  to what's going on in your own classroom.
• 25:48
  And then it begins to train itself around
• 25:51
  what is in your own little ecosystem,
• 25:54
  rather than imposing a much larger ideas,
• 25:58
  much larger ideas from other parts of the world
• 26:01
  that may not really be relevant to the group of kids that you have.
• 26:04
  You could have a class,
• 26:06
  you could be in a school that mixes, you know, different age groups, or has
• 26:11
  children of different learning abilities or even physical abilities.
• 26:15
  That's unique to you. Right?
• 26:17
  But the larger language model is not trained to understand
• 26:20
  your own micro environment.
• 26:24
  So I think starting from there really, and then using the other large
• 26:27
  language model for other things.
• 26:29
  But starting small,
• 26:30
  I think, would be the best way for educators to look at AI systems.
• 26:34
  All right. I think I get it.
• 26:36
  So like this idea of like,
• 26:37
  you take your school's mission, your school's culture, that sort of thing
• 26:41
  that you're really trying to emphasize,
• 26:42
  which we would say, okay, you do that in a normal, interactive sort of sense.
• 26:46
  And the relationships that you build now, it's
• 26:48
  just enhancing that into the digital space and helping people understand that, like
• 26:51
  as we use our small language models or our AI that's there to help
• 26:56
  enhance our own school culture
• 26:57
  our own school mission, our values and what we want to try to see happen.
• 27:01
  And then from there, we can build in the other information that's available
• 27:04
  across the world to help us become more aware, more respectful of more,
• 27:08
  knowledgeable about other systems.
• 27:10
  You've got it.
• 27:10
  And I think you've got an AI system in the making.
• 27:14
  IB schools AI system, you know, with all your ethos in there.
• 27:19
  And then from there you can start to look at
• 27:21
  what would you know if a student is prompting your IB AI,
• 27:25
  a particular question, then it's easy to understand where they're coming from.
• 27:30
  Because you understand
• 27:31
  an IB learner, what that profile of that student is like.
• 27:35
  But when they're looking at it from a whole other, it's it's so abstract.
• 27:39
  And you could be dealing with problems that have no direct impact
• 27:43
  on your particular environment or school,
• 27:45
  and that influences the way that learning happens.
• 27:49
  So I think we need to look at
• 27:50
  who are we, who do we need to become in particular settings before
• 27:54
  we can look at that sort of the much bigger global perspective.
• 28:35
  And I think that when we were talking last week, we were talking about
• 28:39
  not just with small language models, but also if a student is using ChatGPT,
• 28:43
  how it's, you know, in the IB, it's yeah, you have to submit your prompt with it.
• 28:48
  But it's not just about submitting it to prove
• 28:51
  you're not cheating or something like that, but it's really about like,
• 28:55
  I loved the way that you were talking about how to think
• 28:57
  critically as an educator about those prompts and be like,
• 29:01
  what the student is asking reveals just as much about what they know
• 29:05
  and where they're coming from and their background as necessarily
• 29:09
  the final product or the assignment that they submit.
• 29:12
  But really digging into those prompts, and I'd love for you to talk
• 29:15
  a little bit more about that.
• 29:17
  Thank you.
• 29:17
  Well, it's actually taking responsibility for the
• 29:19
  feedback that the children get. So,
• 29:22
  you know, we talked about that where I've seen this trend
• 29:25
  with educators particularly concerns really around concerns.
• 29:29
  And we're all concerned about, you know, how our critical thinking
• 29:33
  skills would be affected or even children's cognitive development
• 29:37
  to be affected by the AI use.
• 29:40
  And so but if we go that direction, then all we are telling kids is that, hey,
• 29:45
  we developed this system,
• 29:46
  we don't trust it, and we now don't trust you to use it, but you can use it.
• 29:50
  But we don't trust you.
• 29:51
  I mean, what are we saying to this kids?
• 29:54
  Why would they not use it?
• 29:57
  And it's not really cheating when you think about it.
• 29:59
  They're just using whatever tool is available
• 30:01
  to survive the education that they're learning or whatever.
• 30:05
  So I think, you know, flip that and say, let's talk about what you're prompting
• 30:10
  and why you have, why are you holding that question.
• 30:14
  And that's why, again, you know, I'll say it again and again,
• 30:17
  that having a small language model that you already know
• 30:21
  how it's built, what the values are
• 30:25
  then helps you with the learners determine the level, the quality of questions.
• 30:31
  And I think actually one of the most amazing things
• 30:34
  that the teachers could jump on board
• 30:36
  right now is helping students learn how to prompt AI.
• 30:42
  And really learning the quality of the questions that you ask.
• 30:46
  Because from there,
• 30:47
  then you can start to understand where the student is coming from.
• 30:50
  You live and discover
• 30:51
  what kind of struggles they're having just based on the prompt itself.
• 30:54
  Rather than saying, show me a prompt
• 30:56
  and let me see the response and let me see whether you are cheating.
• 30:58
  Like, that's really not, you know, we’re all going to cheat
• 31:02
  if that's the story, you know, we've all used Grammarly to edit our stuff.
• 31:06
  Is that really cheating?
• 31:07
  So I think rather than go that direction, let's come back
• 31:12
  to the beginning and train ourselves to understand what it means to prompt AI.
• 31:17
  Because also, another thing that maybe we don't realize is like,
• 31:20
  where are also training AI to retrain itself, right?
• 31:23
  Yeah.
• 31:23
  So we will voluntarily become AI creators.
• 31:27
  So any prompt that we put out there helps retrain itself further.
• 31:31
  So can we help students understand that anything you put out
• 31:34
  there is also helping the AI train itself?
• 31:37
  So if it's a biased question or if it's whatever question, it could be,
• 31:42
  that's what AI is is now assuming is interesting to a particular group of people.
• 31:47
  And so it's going to continue
• 31:49
  discovering more information about a particular thing.
• 31:52
  That might not be a good thing. Right?
• 31:53
  So we need to understand that.
• 31:55
  And also when we're talking about sustainability, we cannot
• 32:01
  underestimate how much energy consumption
• 32:05
  that is going into AI systems.
• 32:08
  You know, the data centers that are set up
• 32:11
  in various parts of the world, particularly on indigenous land.
• 32:15
  So and this is part of the education especially for an IB school.
• 32:21
  Like talking about sustainability and environmental sustainability.
• 32:25
  So it counters that language that,
• 32:28
  learning that you're trying to, expose the children to.
• 32:32
  So having a small language model, again, also contributes
• 32:35
  towards less, you know, less amount of energy use.
• 32:39
  And also asking the children, how much AI do you need?
• 32:43
  Let's talk about the prompt, the question that you have, right?
• 32:47
  And can we have that response within us before we prompt it.
• 32:50
  So by the time you're prompting, you have a very high quality question
• 32:55
  to stick in there.
• 32:56
  And then you're getting a very high quality response.
• 32:59
  Yeah, I think the
• 33:01
  so okay, what I heard is you definitely have to make sure
• 33:03
  we've got good prompts we're analyzing,
• 33:05
  like how we're getting the prompt together and make sure we've got a good question.
• 33:07
  But I loved that point you just made with regard to like how much AI
• 33:11
  do I actually need, like helping us be a bit more critical about
• 33:14
  what is it that I really need?
• 33:15
  And am I just pitching this over to some other thing to do the thinking for me?
• 33:20
  And that, I think, implores all educators to really think about the questions
• 33:24
  and the types of assignments and I think, like how we're building
• 33:27
  the curriculum, basically, are we building a curriculum
• 33:30
  that basically just asks children to be like the facilitators
• 33:34
  of the curriculum being answered by AI and then going back, you know, because
• 33:38
  you can see that in certain things
• 33:39
  that do show up in the IB programs, whether that's MYP or DP.
• 33:43
  You know, I was just looking at a personal project earlier today.
• 33:45
  I was looking at some IA’s, just yesterday.
• 33:48
  And you can see where like,
• 33:50
  okay, if I'm not very specific as the educator and intentional
• 33:54
  about the types of questions I'm asking and the type of assignments
• 33:57
  and opportunities I'm giving for learning to the students,
• 34:00
  it can very easily just turn into the student feeling like,
• 34:03
  I don't understand why I have to just go to AI
• 34:05
  and answer this question for this teacher who can't just do it himself.
• 34:09
  So I think it's like
• 34:10
  we have to think very critically, as you say, about like,
• 34:12
  what are we actually
• 34:13
  asking from our students in terms of the curriculum itself?
• 34:16
  And, then, yeah, empowering the students like how much this
• 34:20
  to really need to use AI for versus can you generate some of this on your own
• 34:25
  and where is that
• 34:27
  coming back to what you're saying before, where is that human factor
• 34:30
  that becomes so critical in understanding things like, you know,
• 34:33
  like the impact that you were just talking about with, you know, the data centers
• 34:37
  and keeping all the environmental impact of those data centers alone.
• 34:40
  We have to think critically of that, because the further removed
• 34:43
  we are from it, the less we actually recognize,
• 34:44
  like even something as simple as refining a prompt, as I put it into AI over
• 34:49
  and over and over again is going to be generating a lot of sort of,
• 34:53
  harmful situations in terms of the overall planet itself.
• 34:56
  And that's so much harder to visualize, too, because,
• 35:00
  I mean, if you're looking in the kitchen and you're looking at paper towels versus
• 35:04
  a rag, it's really easy to see the waste that's created from the paper towel.
• 35:08
  And it's like, I could have just used a rag.
• 35:10
  It would have been fine.
• 35:11
  But if you're not visualizing that impact, it's like,
• 35:15
  I could have just taken a minute and thought for myself,
• 35:18
  or I could just throw it in five prompts and you don't really see the impact.
• 35:22
  And I think that is definitely a challenge for educators
• 35:26
  to really have that critical thinking of why to use it as well.
• 35:30
  I do think that's a really hard thing to grasp
• 35:34
  the enormity of what your,
• 35:37
  your footprint could be if you're recklessly using AI.
• 35:42
  Well, just to give you, statistically, just to put it into perspective,
• 35:47
  every prompt like it
• 35:49
  takes, so the statistics are that
• 35:52
  one prompt generates about 500 ML fresh water.
• 35:57
  And just, just think about that.
• 35:59
  It is hard to fathom. Right?
• 36:01
  So how many prompts does one person need a day.
• 36:05
  And so how much water are they using.
• 36:08
  So and this is we're talking fresh water.
• 36:10
  We haven't you know
• 36:11
  AI haven't sorted out how it needs to cool those data systems yet.
• 36:14
  You know it's working on that I guess.
• 36:17
  And a lot of people would argue
• 36:18
  that we need AI to help us solve this problem that we don't yet have.
• 36:22
  You know, we can't think about yet.
• 36:24
  And AI will rapidly, you know, increasingly be able
• 36:28
  to figure out how to maintain itself and to have a life of its own.
• 36:32
  But at the moment, this is what we're dealing with.
• 36:34
  And I think, you know, going back to John's,
• 36:37
  statement there about,
• 36:38
  you know, helping students understand sustainability and also,
• 36:42
  helping teachers particularly understand how to be part of that process.
• 36:48
  Right?
• 36:48
  So I think when you look at it this way, you could even think of it as,
• 36:53
  can we empower students to be part of the creators?
• 36:57
  Do they really understand that they're creating this world for themselves?
• 37:01
  This is their walls that they're going to walk into.
• 37:03
  This is a world that they're going to inherit.
• 37:05
  So if you give them that, that mindset, that understanding
• 37:09
  that it's not really about you personally benefiting
• 37:13
  from the AI, helping you get a better grade or whatever,
• 37:18
  but it's that you're actually helping to create a new world.
• 37:22
  So if you think about it that way, then you can, you know,
• 37:25
  you can have them think very critically about that
• 37:27
  every prompt to ask, say something about you
• 37:31
  and the ones that you imagine you want to live in.
• 37:34
  So imagine if they thought about it like that
• 37:36
  and they thought, okay, so what question do I want to ask so
• 37:39
  that we can have a better, more beautiful world in the future?
• 37:43
  Then it becomes this sort of this lived, living experience.
• 37:47
  It's not something to come to.
• 37:51
  There's no end to that, that it's continuously AI is continuously going
• 37:55
  to be creating a new world, and that you can be a part of creating
• 37:59
  that new world, or you can sit back and be a passive consumer of it and then,
• 38:03
  you know, not complain about the kind of world that you live in.
• 38:06
  So having them understand that we're not worried about you
• 38:10
  cheating because AI is its own thing and we all use it,
• 38:13
  but we're concerned about what kind of world you want to live in.
• 38:17
  And can you use AI using your prompts to help you discover a better world?
• 38:23
  That's so inspiring to hear you talk about it that way.
• 38:25
  And while you're talking about there, I've got this tension in my head of the
• 38:29
  of the IB sort of program, and I will say it
• 38:32
  like I'm a big believer in the IB, big believer
• 38:34
  in the IB deployment program and what we're able to do there.
• 38:37
  And yet, you know, we look at this tension of like knowledge acquisition
• 38:40
  and of course like qualifications that are going to drive like here's
• 38:43
  what I have to demonstrate that I can know.
• 38:44
  So I can go on to this next thing.
• 38:46
  And yet at the same time, the mission of the IB,
• 38:49
  which is a lot of what we've been discussing,
• 38:50
  this idea of like creating a better, more peaceful world through intercultural
• 38:53
  understanding and respect and that, I think, is such a foundational element
• 38:58
  that when we're, you know, when we're in the thick of it
• 39:01
  in the classrooms, the day to day
• 39:02
  kind of stuff, and you're getting assignments
• 39:04
  in, you need to submit work to be marked and moderated.
• 39:06
  And and students futures depend upon how they did on a particular mark.
• 39:10
  You can see where,
• 39:12
  you know.
• 39:12
  Yes, I really want students to be thinking critically about that.
• 39:15
  I think that's the aim of what we're going to be doing.
• 39:17
  And I can also see it from students perspective.
• 39:20
  I need to earn this qualification, and I want these points to get there.
• 39:24
  And so I'm going to ask these questions
• 39:26
  now I'm going to put these prompts in because this is the assignment
• 39:30
  that I've got to do right now to kind of push it forward.
• 39:33
  So I wonder, you know, you've been doing some research on this as well.
• 39:35
  In what ways can we see like
• 39:38
  adjustments possibly to the to the curriculum adjustments
• 39:41
  to like how we go about education so that we can be mindful of these things.
• 39:47
  But also to an extent that we could emphasize this type of stuff more so
• 39:53
  then you know what is taking up students
• 39:56
  minds right now, as they kind of think about getting that assignment in.
• 39:59
  Right.
• 40:00
  So I want to back up even to the how the IB is structured.
• 40:04
  Right? And we've got a few kids in IB schools.
• 40:07
  I could take the exams myself.
• 40:09
  I feel the exam pressure.
• 40:12
  but the exams are coming
• 40:13
  I’m as pressured as an IB learner.
• 40:17
  And I think what I love about the IB is that there's a concept of choice.
• 40:22
  So you have a number of subjects that you can choose to take.
• 40:27
  Let's go back to that space where before
• 40:30
  the student has made their choice of their six IB subjects.
• 40:34
  And let's help them understand
• 40:36
  that it's not so much about competing with what is out there in the world.
• 40:41
  It's about
• 40:43
  what are you really good at, right?
• 40:45
  That you really enjoy?
• 40:47
  And within these subjects that have been provided,
• 40:49
  what are the subjects that you can take so that from that perspective of choice,
• 40:55
  you've chosen your good six subjects that you really enjoy doing.
• 40:59
  And then from there, the AI is really just helping
• 41:02
  you understand more of the subject, not helping you pass the subject
• 41:06
  because you know, deep inside that you're really good at these subjects,
• 41:09
  you're really clever at these topics and that you really enjoy them
• 41:13
  in the first place.
• 41:14
  I think one of the things and I struggle as one, as a mom is
• 41:18
  explaining to my kids that,
• 41:21
  what you're really good at,
• 41:23
  you could get paid to do what you're really good at, right?
• 41:26
  Right.
• 41:26
  But then the rest of the world produces a whole different narrative, which is that
• 41:31
  you need to get into the corporate world
• 41:32
  and earn your, you know, X amount of money.
• 41:35
  So this is in contrast.
• 41:36
  This is a tension that I think we all hold as parents and as educators.
• 41:40
  When you know that this child is really good at this particular path.
• 41:44
  But then they're, you know, socially pressured
• 41:47
  or, socially pressured
• 41:50
  to be something that they're probably not going to be very good at.
• 41:55
  So I think if we start from there, that's for me, that is the main
• 41:58
  gap is trying to advise them and empower them
• 42:02
  in what they're already really good at.
• 42:05
  And once they make that solid choice of subjects that they're really good at,
• 42:10
  then how they use AI is going to be beneficial to them.
• 42:14
  Not trying to cut corners, right?
• 42:16
  Not trying to use it so that they can get a better grade.
• 42:18
  But that actually they're using it
• 42:20
  because they already know they're really good at it at the subject that they have.
• 42:24
  They probably don't need to use ChatGPT to find out everything
• 42:27
  about that particular, exam or topic,
• 42:31
  but that they can then use it to enhance what they already know.
• 42:35
  So working with it, rather than having it, be
• 42:38
  something that helps you get ahead of everyone.
• 42:44
  It's a way to empower them to believe in themselves.
• 42:47
  And once they have that belief in themselves and they've made
• 42:50
  a very good choice of subjects, then AI is just enhancing that self-belief.
• 42:56
  And you could again, with a small language model, you could already have that kind
• 43:01
  of, those kinds of values embedded into the foundation of the design.
• 43:05
  And I love that you talked about peace education.
• 43:08
  I think that's another great use of AI, right, is something
• 43:11
  that can harmonize the differences.
• 43:13
  The IB is like a
• 43:17
  microcosmic example of what the world looks like.
• 43:20
  Right?
• 43:21
  When we take all the children and all the cultures that are represented,
• 43:25
  you know, hundreds of cultures are represented in IB schools,
• 43:29
  that is also potential for a lot of divisions
• 43:34
  and problems, you know, intercultural problems.
• 43:38
  So can we use AI to sort of develop this language of peace.
• 43:43
  So that when they're using that tool, they're able to get responses
• 43:47
  that enhance their understanding of who they are in the world
• 43:51
  and who they are as different people from different parts of the world.
• 43:55
  So I think that empowerment needs to happen before we can get into the AI.
• 44:00
  It sounds like, you know, we really need to build up a solid understanding of self
• 44:05
  right before they kind of go into here's what I want, here's what I want to study.
• 44:08
  I want to know these things a little bit more.
• 44:09
  It's like I need to know one that I like it and that I'm good at it.
• 44:12
  And now, you know, my role as a university and careers guidance counselor.
• 44:16
  A big part of this is like speaking with students in the pre IBDP
• 44:19
  and helping them select their subjects.
• 44:20
  And and you know, there's a lot of tension there.
• 44:23
  A lot of students are not so clear in terms of even one.
• 44:27
  What are they good at.
• 44:28
  And what do they actually like.
• 44:29
  And then two,
• 44:30
  as you say, the different pressures,
• 44:31
  the societal pressures that are there all around,
• 44:34
  both from, you know, from parents, from just general societal
• 44:37
  expectations of, like, the success looks like this.
• 44:40
  And therefore you have to study these things.
• 44:42
  And, and sometimes I'll sit there
• 44:43
  in these conversations and I'll see where a student who I know
• 44:46
  is maybe extremely talented as a musician or a very good actor or something
• 44:49
  like this, pulling away from that and choosing other subjects that you know,
• 44:54
  they think are going to
• 44:55
  fit them for a better, you know, career in business or something else.
• 44:59
  And so, I think what you've brought up is,
• 45:02
  is hugely important because as we go to use AI,
• 45:04
  it goes away from this idea of like, I just use it to cheat.
• 45:07
  It's to enhance the things that I'm already good at.
• 45:09
  But that in itself depends upon experiences for a young person
• 45:13
  before they get onto the diploma program that help them show like,
• 45:15
  I am good at this thing, I love this thing.
• 45:17
  And you know, that is represented in many ways
• 45:21
  from our quantitative feedback, our qualitative feedback.
• 45:23
  But I think ultimately what you've just highlighted for
• 45:25
  me is like that role of the teacher, that role of the educator and the parents,
• 45:29
  for that matter, prior to the selection of subjects
• 45:33
  is hugely important to inspire students to understand like,
• 45:36
  these are the things that help you be more of you and that ultimately the
• 45:40
  IB diploma program, and for that matter, AI can help enhance it.
• 45:43
  Once we figure those things out.
• 45:45
  First we've got to have that solid concept of self.
• 45:48
  Is that kind of a safe summary of what you're mentioning there?
• 45:51
  Absolutely.
• 45:52
  And I love that you've you've transformed
• 45:54
  the role of the educator to be someone that identifies
• 45:59
  the strengths and weaknesses of the student,
• 46:02
  which has always been the role of the educator, mind you, right.
• 46:06
  Hopefully.
• 46:09
  You know, that's the original role
• 46:11
  of the educator wasn't to to dispense knowledge.
• 46:15
  It wasn't like a knowledge dispense.
• 46:17
  It was more of a here's what I know about this topic
• 46:20
  and let me know what you know.
• 46:22
  Let's kind of discover what we know together.
• 46:24
  But now, you know, exams and the curriculum and
• 46:28
  all of that is taking off.
• 46:29
  And we've kind of forgotten that that was the main role.
• 46:32
  And I think to your point about how to be a human,
• 46:37
  if you think about that, being part of the role of the educator
• 46:41
  is to try and help learners understand who they are as human beings.
• 46:46
  First and foremost.
• 46:47
  And that is ubuntu in essence. Right?
• 46:50
  So if you have an AI system that already has these ethics
• 46:53
  of ubuntu embedded into the design of the system,
• 46:59
  then you could even use that
• 47:01
  in that space of advising or before they pick the subjects,
• 47:06
  you could use AI to have a dialog between you and that student
• 47:10
  so that you're not sort of the the one with all the answers.
• 47:13
  You could say, let's have AI help us understand who you are as a learner,
• 47:17
  whether it matches with who
• 47:19
  I think I've observed you to be. Right?
• 47:22
  And then, of course, you have this system that is trying to enhance this quality
• 47:26
  of being human.
• 47:27
  And from there, then there's this trust between you and the student
• 47:30
  so that they're not thinking, well,
• 47:32
  I'm under pressure from my mom to be this thing that, you know,
• 47:36
  she wanted to be right, or my dad or whatever, or the society
• 47:41
  or my community even, you know, you're talking about the IB schools also kind of,
• 47:48
  have all these students that
• 47:49
  are very competitive, and they're coming from backgrounds
• 47:54
  where they shown some strong leadership skills.
• 47:57
  So there's a lot of pressure on them to be something.
• 48:00
  But to be human is not competitive.
• 48:03
  It's basically who you are on the inside.
• 48:06
  So I would love to see a system, an education system where AI becomes
• 48:12
  this third observer, this sort of voice of reason
• 48:17
  or wisdom keeper, even in between the learner
• 48:22
  and the adults, because we've lost that, you know, we can't be
• 48:26
  we don't have authority about children and we never had anyway.
• 48:32
  But now in the absence of that authority, they also have no real role modeling.
• 48:38
  They're not able to see sort of the things that you can see
• 48:41
  ahead of them just because you're slightly older than them.
• 48:44
  Right?
• 48:45
  So I think that having this space in between where we can have dialog
• 48:49
  and within that, then we know that the system that we're using,
• 48:53
  the AI system that we're using to communicate between me and the student
• 48:56
  also is designed sustainably and ethically and has the right values.
• 49:02
  So again, going back to
• 49:04
  one of the values that we want students to understand about being human.
• 49:08
  If you have that, then you have a better chance
• 49:11
  of helping them steering them towards what they're good at
• 49:15
  and then making the right subject choices.
• 49:17
  And then whatever they use AI for will be to enhance what they're already good at.
• 49:22
  But that conversation needs to happen
• 49:24
  earlier, and AI could participate in that conversation earlier.
• 49:28
  And then throughout the learning journey.
• 49:32
  Are you an IB educator, wanting
• 49:33
  to improve your practice and needing just a bit more support getting there?
• 49:37
  Ever wanted to learn more about a specific aspect of the the diploma program?
• 49:41
  Or just ask a question to an educational theorist about a specific IB aspect?
• 49:46
  IB Unplugged is the place for you.
• 49:48
  Simply visit kognity.com/ibunplugged to submit your question to us,
• 49:53
  and have your question explored in more detail in an upcoming episode.
• 49:56
  And now, back to the show.
• 50:00
  In your experience,
• 50:02
  now that you've you've become an IB expert through the fork heads,
• 50:06
  when you have been thinking about these ubuntu ethics
• 50:10
  or the indigenous knowledge systems and kind of comparing it to
• 50:13
  the structural foundation of the IB, what are the pieces that you think
• 50:18
  align really well,
• 50:19
  and what are the pieces that you feel like are still at odds that you think
• 50:23
  maybe need to find some kind of way of co-existing in a good way?
• 50:28
  So one of the, or rather, the main principle
• 50:31
  of an indigenous way of thinking, and this is ubuntu ethics
• 50:34
  in a nutshell, is the concept of reciprocity and reciprocity
• 50:38
  being how we relate to each other as human beings
• 50:44
  and then how we relate to the world, the world of non-human life.
• 50:49
  Right?
• 50:49
  So this principle of interconnectedness or inter being if you want,
• 50:53
  is really the kind of the operating, principle of ubuntu ethics.
• 50:58
  And one of the things within the IB,
• 51:01
  framework of ideas or values,
• 51:04
  I think collaboration is key within the IB
• 51:10
  education that I see that there's a lot of collaboration
• 51:13
  that children are able to see themselves as collaborators
• 51:16
  with each other and with the educators.
• 51:19
  But I think that could also, you know, there's a slight,
• 51:25
  a very thin line between collaboration and competition.
• 51:29
  Right?
• 51:30
  And I think we need to enhance more the collaboration part,
• 51:34
  and the competition needs to be more about
• 51:36
  competing with your own self, competing with the best version of yourself.
• 51:40
  Right?
• 51:41
  So the best version of me is the one that's coming out more and more.
• 51:45
  Then I'm able to collaborate with others
• 51:47
  without necessarily trying to beat the other person down.
• 51:50
  Right?
• 51:50
  I'm not trying to compete for the perfect grade.
• 51:53
  I'm competing for becoming a better version of myself.
• 51:57
  So whether that means, today I get a B or a C or whatever
• 52:01
  it is, or a seven or a six,
• 52:07
  that it is showing
• 52:09
  an improvement in your own,
• 52:13
  experience as a human being.
• 52:15
  And it also in your experiences work, in the way that you are right in the,
• 52:20
  in the quality of your learning rather than trying to compete with others.
• 52:24
  And so trying to enhance that quality of collaboration,
• 52:29
  but with competition being about yourself and not so much about others,
• 52:34
  I think that's one of the key elements for IB
• 52:39
  schools that I would love to see become a central, a centerpiece.
• 52:43
  And then also, you know,
• 52:44
  you ask the question, you know, what are the the gaps there
• 52:48
  from an ubuntu perspective, the end goal if you want.
• 52:53
  If you were to think of this is the five steps to becoming more of,
• 52:56
  more human, you know, a better human being.
• 52:59
  I think it is to be able to find your place in the world and that,
• 53:02
  you know, from an ubuntu framework that the last principle is dignity.
• 53:06
  Dignity of all beings, dignity of your own life.
• 53:09
  So where you've learned how to dignify your own life
• 53:12
  because of the quality of relationships that you're able to maintain
• 53:16
  and your ability to survive.
• 53:17
  So your cognitive development, your emotional maturity,
• 53:22
  and your ability to see each other as equals,
• 53:26
  and to be able to form bonds with others
• 53:29
  that you live with wherever you are in the world.
• 53:32
  But dignity really is the ultimate goal of ubuntu ethics.
• 53:38
  And so from that perspective, you can already see that
• 53:40
  that very much aligns with this concept of being a global citizen,
• 53:44
  which is obviously very much an IB
• 53:47
  And so enhancing that, you know,
• 53:50
  aligning those principles of ubuntu with an education that brings
• 53:56
  that out of students, right, where you understand that
• 53:59
  at the end of the day, what I'm trying to really become is
• 54:02
  a human who can live with any other human beings around the world.
• 54:07
  And that's dignity in a nutshell.
• 54:08
  And not just other human beings, but actually be able to find my place
• 54:12
  in the natural world where there is other forms of life, as well.
• 54:17
  As I think about what you're mentioning here,
• 54:19
  I think about each of the different
• 54:20
  curricular areas, and they're rife with opportunities
• 54:23
  for doing this sort of stuff.
• 54:24
  And when we talk about like reciprocity, for example, and like how our actions
• 54:27
  can have another action that comes as a result of that.
• 54:31
  Right?
• 54:31
  And I think
• 54:32
  in, you know, you see it in the sciences, the individuals in societies courses
• 54:36
  that there's a big focus on things like, you know, if we talk about economics,
• 54:40
  there's the basic supply demand, and this causes an action
• 54:42
  that somebody else is going to do back forth.
• 54:44
  And the geopolitical landscape, sort of situations that we might just
• 54:48
  study in geography or politics or biology as we look at, you know,
• 54:52
  climate change impact and,
• 54:53
  you know, my choices that I might make have this end of life sort of thing.
• 54:57
  So you can see where there's lots of ways that the curriculum that the IB is set up
• 55:01
  has the opportunity,
• 55:03
  I think, to get into a lot of what you're discussing here
• 55:05
  and help people understand, like myself and help to understand like that
• 55:09
  dignity of who am I am what am I contributing to those around us?
• 55:13
  What's my citizenship here and how am I impacting that otherwise?
• 55:16
  And I think that that is kind of a main goal of the IB itself.
• 55:19
  And so as you were talking here, I'm just seeing like I hope,
• 55:22
  for any educator who might be listening or watching that, you see, like
• 55:25
  that opportunity exists in our curriculum and hopefully like you're getting
• 55:28
  that same inspiration of like, I can do these things.
• 55:31
  I can build that.
• 55:32
  In fact, the way that the program is laid out
• 55:34
  isn't just to know a bunch of stuff and tell somebody else about that stuff.
• 55:37
  It's to become more aware
• 55:39
  of all these things that contribute to the problems and situations
• 55:42
  that are associated with that subject, that now I can take my position
• 55:46
  on that subject and build off the knowledge I've gained in the IB,
• 55:50
  and now start to bring that forward in a way that shows,
• 55:53
  yeah, I know my place, I know who I am in this world,
• 55:56
  and I know how I'm going to contribute to it in a positive way.
• 55:59
  So I think it's
• 56:00
  yeah, as you were speaking, it's just it's really inspiring me to think
• 56:04
  pull those things out of our curriculum
• 56:06
  as IB educators, pull that stuff out and make sure that that becomes
• 56:10
  the emphasis in terms of what we're doing on a day to day basis.
• 56:13
  And this could form the basis of your really wonderful prompts for AI.
• 56:17
  If you want to.
• 56:19
  If you think about it that way, as an educator,
• 56:21
  you don't have to be the one imparting this knowledge.
• 56:23
  You don't have to be the the son of the IBPR teacher.
• 56:28
  You can be, you can use this other system
• 56:32
  to discover more of what that actually means.
• 56:35
  Right?
• 56:36
  And for the students, what does it mean to be a world citizen?
• 56:40
  Can we find that out together?
• 56:42
  You know,
• 56:42
  and then you can really have a philosophical debate about it,
• 56:45
  because again, you're having this response is coming from one system.
• 56:50
  But in your classroom you might have students
• 56:52
  from different parts of the world,
• 56:53
  and they're coming at it from different perspectives.
• 56:56
  So then you're building this concept of what it means to be a global citizen,
• 57:01
  and at the same time being able to use,
• 57:04
  a very innovative tool that helps you kind of align
• 57:08
  all those ideas that are emerging to class in, in one way.
• 57:13
  So hopefully it feels
• 57:14
  a little bit more achievable now because honestly, sometimes when we talk about
• 57:18
  like what we can do as educators in terms of closing that gap from how we can use
• 57:21
  AI in all the ways we've discussed versus like the way I'm practicing right now,
• 57:26
  it just feels like there's kind of a gap and like, how do I close that gap?
• 57:30
  And so myself, we've spoken about it makes sense
• 57:31
  to me, like engaging in a dialog with students,
• 57:33
  helping them to understand a little bit more about that prompts,
• 57:36
  the questions they're asking.
• 57:37
  But I wonder, do you have
• 57:38
  do you have more sort of tips for educators, like right now
• 57:40
  if they want to put some of this into action, how do they kind of close
• 57:43
  that gap from their current practice to using AI and really effective ways
• 57:48
  that are ethical, that are helping students
• 57:50
  understand their place and helping them become more human?
• 57:52
  Yeah.
• 57:53
  Well, first of all, I empathize truly, truly.
• 57:55
  Because from a parental perspective, it feels like teachers
• 57:59
  are experiencing what parents experience with social media, where there's suddenly
• 58:03
  some other source, some other invisible person in the house.
• 58:06
  Right?
• 58:07
  And now you've got an invisible teacher who's supposedly much smarter, right?
• 58:12
  Yeah, yeah. Well, in my case definitely smarter.
• 58:20
  completely irrelevant in your knowledge.
• 58:25
  So I think firstly, it's accepting that being able to have that conversation
• 58:30
  with students and say, we have this new system
• 58:33
  and it has a lot of information that I am not privy to.
• 58:35
  I can't possibly, as a human being, be able to connect all these dots
• 58:40
  that an AI system can connect.
• 58:41
  And that's great.
• 58:42
  That's amazing.
• 58:43
  But it can't connect the dots that we have in this particular setting,
• 58:46
  in this particular classroom, in the moment that we're having.
• 58:50
  So being able to understand that AI is not a person, right?
• 58:54
  It hasn't got a historical experience around who we are as human beings.
• 59:00
  It just has data.
• 59:01
  Right?
• 59:01
  It's a bunch of data
• 59:03
  put in there and some algorithm that spits out whatever,
• 59:07
  based on the quality of the question.
• 59:10
  So I think that firstly I would want,
• 59:14
  I would actually want to relieve teachers of the burden of thinking that they need
• 59:19
  to know everything right, or to understand everything,
• 59:24
  and to try and bring in this other system into the classroom in a healthy way.
• 59:30
  And say to the students, let's discover this together.
• 59:33
  Let's find out what we don't know together, right?
• 59:36
  So I don't have to compete with it. Right?
• 59:40
  I have to understand, like I'm not here to try to be better than AI, I am recognizing
• 59:43
  this is another assistant in the room.
• 59:45
  And not to be threatened by it because it almost feels like somehow,
• 59:49
  you know, as a teacher, you're going in, then you're wondering,
• 59:51
  how do I help the students learn how to use AI?
• 59:54
  Well, they already know.
• 59:55
  They already know what's missing, right?
• 59:57
  And they're looking at you like, well,
• 59:59
  what new thing have you got for us?
• 1:00:01
  So I think being able to say, okay, fine, we've got this new thing with us,
• 1:00:06
  but within our little classroom and that's like,
• 1:00:09
  I'm going on and on about small language models
• 1:00:12
  within our small ecosystem, our little school here
• 1:00:16
  in the middle of Austria or Netherlands or Kenya or wherever else.
• 1:00:22
  These are the problems we're facing as a community.
• 1:00:25
  This is who we are.
• 1:00:27
  Let's focus on this.
• 1:00:28
  Our very little ecosystem and let's see
• 1:00:32
  if AI can be, you know, help us have a dialog.
• 1:00:35
  You know, it could help us, resolve,
• 1:00:38
  a particular problem in school that we're having.
• 1:00:41
  But within the context of who we are in this small, microscopic,
• 1:00:46
  system, rather than feeling like
• 1:00:49
  the world has this new, system that's come up, and now we have
• 1:00:53
  to implement it into our school, and we don't even know where to begin.
• 1:00:56
  I think that it was very frightening.
• 1:00:58
  And actually, in the end, what are we talking about?
• 1:01:01
  We may as well not have schools at all. Right?
• 1:01:03
  So just send the kids home with assignments and have them,
• 1:01:07
  use ChatGPT and tell you that they used it so that you can check what they did.
• 1:01:11
  Again, you know, that's not real learning.
• 1:01:12
  So can we find a way to use I almost want to
• 1:01:17
  I think of AI in a classroom as this philosopher in the classroom.
• 1:01:21
  Right?
• 1:01:22
  There's this philosophical, perspective that you can get on
• 1:01:26
  any number of questions or any number of ideas that you might have
• 1:01:30
  rather than having that debate or banter between you and the student,
• 1:01:34
  because they are going to always, of course, think that they know better
• 1:01:38
  because they can access some of information elsewhere.
• 1:01:41
  So rather than go down that direction, can we go a different direction
• 1:01:45
  where we say, this is how much I know, that's how much you know, let's
• 1:01:49
  find out how much we can build together using this system.
• 1:01:54
  Humility and co construction of knowledge through collaboration.
• 1:01:58
  There you are.
• 1:02:00
  That's right, that's right. Yeah.
• 1:02:01
  All right. I'll get over myself.
• 1:02:04
  You’re not getting replaced,
• 1:02:05
  you just getting a philosopher in the classroom,
• 1:02:10
  somebody that can help you really kind of,
• 1:02:13
  enhance your experience in the classroom.
• 1:02:17
  Yeah.
• 1:02:17
  I think that it's a great opportunity to kind of keep
• 1:02:20
  talking about this co-creation piece because I think in so many classes
• 1:02:26
  with so many IB teachers, there's always this idea of, like,
• 1:02:28
  I really want to go beyond just that information transfer.
• 1:02:33
  But then there's always the pushback of like, oh, but I need to make sure
• 1:02:37
  my students get this information for the exam.
• 1:02:41
  It's always coming back to this tension between exam prep and exam readiness.
• 1:02:47
  And educating in the way that you philosophically want to do.
• 1:02:53
  And I think that this is really forcing teachers
• 1:02:57
  to acknowledge this idea that they can't
• 1:03:01
  just be providing information like, that's not going to cut it anymore
• 1:03:07
  because they're not the best person to give the information,
• 1:03:12
  but they are the best person to create meaningful learning.
• 1:03:16
  So I do like I think that is a really positive thing
• 1:03:19
  that comes from it, is that you don't get to kind of hide behind.
• 1:03:25
  Oh, but there's just too much content.
• 1:03:27
  I don't have time for doing anything other than information transfer.
• 1:03:31
  And so I do think that that is a really positive way
• 1:03:35
  of looking towards what is evolving.
• 1:03:38
  But it shifts what you're taught,
• 1:03:39
  you know, because like the
• 1:03:41
  I think so often teachers kind of get this idea of like,
• 1:03:42
  it's a teacher led classroom and you to be in control of it.
• 1:03:45
  And therefore I need to like, I'm going to dictate
• 1:03:47
  what's going to happen when I've got to have my plans.
• 1:03:49
  I'm going to say like, this is going to happen at this point.
• 1:03:51
  And and here's what students need to know.
• 1:03:53
  And if I haven't said it, if I haven't covered it from the syllabus,
• 1:03:56
  they might not know it. Right?
• 1:03:58
  And I think it's that shift from what you were talking about as well,
• 1:04:01
  it's like it's not necessarily a teacher led classroom.
• 1:04:04
  It's actually not necessarily a student led classroom.
• 1:04:06
  It's a collaboratively led classroom together.
• 1:04:08
  And I think, you know, like whether we're talking about AI or
• 1:04:11
  if we're talking about other edtech, like for example, Kognity
• 1:04:14
  or other ways that kind of bring these other experts
• 1:04:17
  or philosophers, I'll use your phrase there into the room.
• 1:04:20
  You know, it enhances a learning experience that I think
• 1:04:23
  ultimately, hopefully, teachers are looking at this as a way of like,
• 1:04:26
  this is going to take some of the load off of me.
• 1:04:28
  I need to think more collaboratively
• 1:04:30
  of how we're going to construct this knowledge journey together, as opposed
• 1:04:33
  to feeling like I have to have complete, explicit control over the whole thing.
• 1:04:36
  And for people like me who have to control a place, that's
• 1:04:39
  going to be pretty tough.
• 1:04:41
  Well, I mean, when you think about it, I love that.
• 1:04:44
  And when you think about it, you know,
• 1:04:45
  what is the purpose of any kind of learning experience?
• 1:04:48
  It's meaning making.
• 1:04:50
  That's all we're doing, really.
• 1:04:51
  We're just trying to make meaning of our lives.
• 1:04:53
  And so if you always come down to that, then you can.
• 1:04:57
  Surely you can then, you know, humbly declare that I don't have
• 1:05:03
  an understanding of everything and neither do the kids.
• 1:05:06
  But here we have something we have an opportunity
• 1:05:09
  to try and make meaning together, to collaborate
• 1:05:13
  towards this process of meaning making.
• 1:05:16
  We can even create stories out of it, right?
• 1:05:18
  You know, so it doesn't even have to be something so abstract or philosophical.
• 1:05:22
  It could be that let's create a story out of the questions that we're holding,
• 1:05:26
  and let's find out
• 1:05:27
  what AI actually thinks about who we are here in this particular classroom.
• 1:05:31
  And then from there, you know, it goes on and on.
• 1:05:33
  So that's that concept of collaboration and co-creating knowledge together
• 1:05:37
  rather than saying, you know, teachers have been replaced.
• 1:05:40
  So now, you know, we're going to have to cover ourselves with AI,
• 1:05:43
  how the students are going, like what teachers don't know
• 1:05:45
  as much as we know, actually, nobody knows anything. Right?
• 1:05:48
  So it's a question of can we discover,
• 1:05:52
  can we go on this discovery adventure
• 1:05:55
  that we've always been on, but now we have another way of doing it.
• 1:05:58
  We have a third.
• 1:06:00
  We have the third part. The third way.
• 1:06:02
  Yeah.
• 1:06:02
  It's far more authentic experience of an educational journey.
• 1:06:05
  Yeah.
• 1:06:06
  I want to pull up on the the Creating Stories
• 1:06:09
  piece. You created your own children's book didn't you, Wakanyi?
• 1:06:13
  Yes, I did.
• 1:06:14
  Can you tell us a little bit about it?
• 1:06:16
  I love that.
• 1:06:17
  Thank you.
• 1:06:18
  Well actually it came out of desperation.
• 1:06:20
  I mean, going back to a lack of, you know, feeling inadequate to,
• 1:06:26
  dispense my knowledge and my thinking.
• 1:06:28
  And I thought, well..
• 1:06:31
  The kids were then very little.
• 1:06:32
  They were just probably all under the age of eight. And,
• 1:06:37
  and I realized that I was reading my kids children's books
• 1:06:42
  that had no characters that look like them, and even the books
• 1:06:44
  that I thought that were based in Africa or in Kenya or whatever,
• 1:06:49
  they were written from a very different perspective.
• 1:06:50
  So going back to, again, the biases that we can uncover and debunk in AI.
• 1:06:56
  So to me, as someone who loves to read and loves to expose children to stories,
• 1:07:02
  I found it really sad that even at the highest international school level,
• 1:07:07
  you still have very limited experience when it comes to,
• 1:07:12
  culturally diverse materials.
• 1:07:14
  And it's not because the school doesn't want to.
• 1:07:16
  It's just that the publishing industry is that way.
• 1:07:18
  You know, the system that we live in.
• 1:07:20
  So I decided to do something about it, and I begun telling the kids my own stories.
• 1:07:25
  And after a while,
• 1:07:26
  I realized that actually the stories could become weird to write them down.
• 1:07:29
  So we started writing them just as our own, you know, stories at home.
• 1:07:33
  And then over time, I went into a master's program
• 1:07:37
  where I did my global education studies at UCL.
• 1:07:41
  And it was a very interesting moment of realizing
• 1:07:46
  that global education, as it stands and even it's still
• 1:07:50
  and this is a criticism I have about around global education.
• 1:07:54
  We talk about global education,
• 1:07:55
  but we talk about global education from one perspective.
• 1:07:58
  My own supervisor had never even been to
• 1:08:02
  to Africa, and he was talking about global education systems.
• 1:08:06
  And I was like, well,
• 1:08:08
  you know, there's a whole other way of learning called the indigenous
• 1:08:10
  Knowledge system that does not exist anywhere in the materials
• 1:08:13
  that I've been provided with to learn and to do my masters.
• 1:08:18
  Where does that fall?
• 1:08:19
  You know, how does that fall into global education?
• 1:08:22
  This indigenous knowledge system.
• 1:08:25
  And so I started thinking about what is indigenous knowledge, right?
• 1:08:28
  And I realized that all the knowledge that I had gotten as a child
• 1:08:32
  was a form of indigenous way of thinking and knowing,
• 1:08:35
  and it was all transmitted through stories.
• 1:08:38
  So then the stories became
• 1:08:41
  a curriculum, actually for this,
• 1:08:44
  for passing down indigenous knowledge, which is really that's what it is, right?
• 1:08:48
  Oral storytelling in African communities have been used
• 1:08:52
  for millennia as a way of transmitting knowledge to children.
• 1:08:56
  So I started with that, and I formed what's
• 1:08:58
  called the African Folktales Project, which is just a little project of my own
• 1:09:02
  to try and curate and collect on these African stories.
• 1:09:05
  And now it's become this kind of, you know, fairly
• 1:09:08
  big, project that I'm still working on.
• 1:09:11
  And I've been using the stories to help,
• 1:09:15
  learners, teachers, educators,
• 1:09:18
  learn how to talk about certain things
• 1:09:21
  using stories and actually have my own AI bought as well,
• 1:09:24
  that only responds in stories and not a whole lot of information.
• 1:09:30
  It's sort of leads you to think about why you're asking
• 1:09:33
  the question that you're asking. So, I’ve been working on this a little bit.
• 1:09:36
  But I need storytelling, and I think we cannot under
• 1:09:40
  estimate the power of storytelling to help us get away from,
• 1:09:47
  the knowing, you know, because I think we get held down by that.
• 1:09:51
  I must have the answer.
• 1:09:52
  And so, of course, the children also think that they too must have the answer.
• 1:09:55
  And that's all we are
• 1:09:56
  doing, is competing around who has the better answer than the other.
• 1:10:00
  But what if we just had a story and we didn't have an answer at the end of it?
• 1:10:04
  It's just a discovery, and we're going to discover
• 1:10:06
  some new knowledge and bring it into the story.
• 1:10:08
  So co-creating that using the power of storytelling.
• 1:10:11
  And so I've written several children's books
• 1:10:15
  and that's really going well.
• 1:10:16
  And I think that as well is a way to look at transformation in education.
• 1:10:20
  Could an AI system be a way of developing our ability to tell better stories?
• 1:10:27
  Because that's all we have, really. We're storytellers.
• 1:10:30
  Human beings exist.
• 1:10:31
  The World that we live in exists because we tell stories about the future, right?
• 1:10:36
  We're the only ones
• 1:10:36
  who can envision or imagine a future and then work towards that direction.
• 1:10:41
  Because we told the story about it.
• 1:10:42
  So can we understand that this is a superpower that we have
• 1:10:47
  as humanity, and that losing that, or giving up that power
• 1:10:52
  to another system that we created could actually then end up being
• 1:10:57
  you know, our downfall, you know, not really understanding who we are.
• 1:11:01
  It connects right back to what you were talking about
• 1:11:02
  at the top of like, you know, being human.
• 1:11:05
  And one of the things that does make us humans, that connection
• 1:11:07
  of our own experiences and how we share those experiences
• 1:11:09
  with other people that build those closer relationships
• 1:11:11
  and that builds greater trust, as you were talking about before.
• 1:11:14
  And then when you're trying to bring out the strengths of an individual
• 1:11:17
  and help them choose right subjects
• 1:11:18
  and the contributions they can make in the globe,
• 1:11:20
  like all that has its roots in a strong connection.
• 1:11:24
  And I think any educator who's listening this can think of the times
• 1:11:27
  when they switch mode from knowledge transmission to I'm going to tell a story
• 1:11:31
  and you notice there's a palpable change in the room
• 1:11:36
  in terms of how people are responding to whatever's going on.
• 1:11:39
  And so, yeah, that power of storytelling, and it's a good reminder
• 1:11:42
  just what you're talking about now.
• 1:11:43
  Just a good reminder like, yeah, I need to infuse that more into my teaching.
• 1:11:47
  Absolutely.
• 1:11:47
  You could respond
• 1:11:48
  to any number of questions, even in a subject as abstract as maths.
• 1:11:53
  With a story, we just talk about the story.
• 1:11:55
  And then before you know it, whatever that equation was that was so difficult
• 1:11:59
  for one student to understand, suddenly they're like, oh, I get it.
• 1:12:03
  This is why that makes sense.
• 1:12:04
  And that's why that doesn't make sense.
• 1:12:06
  So storytelling.
• 1:12:08
  And again, you could prompt AI to tell you
• 1:12:11
  a story about this particular question,
• 1:12:14
  Then you could work with that in the classroom.
• 1:12:16
  So we can be creative around how we're using this technology,
• 1:12:20
  rather than being so afraid of what it's going to do to us.
• 1:12:23
  Is it going to change who we are?
• 1:12:25
  Why don't we give it the ability to learn about who we really are?
• 1:12:28
  We're storytellers, so why don't we tell stories instead of,
• 1:12:32
  asking sort of abstract questions that are kind of
• 1:12:35
  leading to more competition and less collaboration?
• 1:12:38
  Why don't we talk stories and then see how that connects us?
• 1:12:42
  I love it. Me too.
• 1:12:43
  Well, Wakanyi, thank you so much for this conversation.
• 1:12:46
  I really, really have appreciated the time, the learnings.
• 1:12:50
  I think it's brought so many really fantastic perspectives to
• 1:12:55
  what could sometimes just be like a very,
• 1:12:59
  uncomfortable conversation about,
• 1:13:01
  am I using AI the right way as an educator?
• 1:13:04
  But really opening it to there's a lot of right ways to do this, but
• 1:13:07
  as long as we're really being thoughtful in how we're using it in our classroom,
• 1:13:12
  we can really evolve it into something quite positive with our students.
• 1:13:16
  So I really appreciate it.
• 1:13:18
  Thank you so much for being here today.
• 1:13:20
  Yeah, Wakanyi, you're incredible. This was a great conversation.
• 1:13:22
  Really appreciate I get to know you a little bit more and unpack
• 1:13:24
  some of these, you know, deep concepts and deep ideas together
• 1:13:28
  and see the positive impact we can have in education for the future.
• 1:13:31
  I think that's great.
• 1:13:32
  Thank you so much.
• 1:13:33
  I have a lot of respect for the work that you do.
• 1:13:36
  And as we were saying earlier, you know, maybe the movement
• 1:13:39
  should come from teachers and parents coming together
• 1:13:42
  because we are raising the next generation of global citizens here.
• 1:13:46
  Thank you. Agreed.
• 1:13:48
  Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you.
• 1:13:51
  IB Unpluged is a Kognity podcast hosted by John Patton
• 1:13:54
  and Courtney Marline and produced by Katilina Gaffney.
• 1:13:57
  Be sure to subscribe or follow and share with your fellow IB educators.
• 1:14:01
  If you'd like to submit a topic, request or a question, please do
• 1:14:04
  so on kognity.com/ibunplugged.
• 1:14:07
  Let's keep the conversation going
• 1:14:09
  and support each other in teaching with confidence, creativity, and joy.
• 1:14:12
  See you next time.