Latest / IB Unplugged / The IB has spoken on AI. Now what? w/ Clara Hawking

Transcript

The IB has spoken on AI. Now what? w/ Clara Hawking · IB Unplugged

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What does it mean to live in a world that is being increasingly engineered by
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and moderated by AI driven technologies?
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Hey everybody, welcome to an episode of IB Unplugged,
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coming to you live from the IB Global Conference here in Lyon, France.
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Yeah. So today we have a really exciting episode.
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We're meeting with Clara Hawking, which many of you
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have heard our episodes with her before.
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And now she stepped into this new role as the head of AI at the IB.
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And we want to talk about
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we have the AI principles, and now we want to say, now what?
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What do we do with them?
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How does it turn into this toolkit
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that we can actually bring back to our schools and make real change?
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Yeah.
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So what you're about to listen to is a live recording
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in front of an audience here at the global conference as well.
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But yeah,
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we're really unpacking those questions like, what can schools really do now?
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And if you've listened to our previous episodes,
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you know that Clara is compassionate,
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knowledgeable and knows what she's doing when it comes to the AI and IB.
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So we're really excited that you're here. We really hope
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you enjoy this special episode coming to you live from Lyon, France.
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So welcome back to the show now live.
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So obviously this is our third conversation.
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And we were just talking a moment ago about how wonderful
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it's been to see it kind of progress each time.
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And really the conversation around AI,
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as you've said multiple times, continues to progress.
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So it's cool that we get to have you here on the show again.
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However, the last time we were speaking with you,
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you were not working within the IB and now you are working in the IB.
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I'm interested which learner profile attribute have you had to lean on the most
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now that you're with the IB?
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Yeah, I love that question.
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For me, I think it's a tie between
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risk taking and curiosity.
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I have leaned in more, I think, on my willingness
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to inquire and be curious
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about what happens internally.
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What are people thinking?
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How are they working with technology?
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What are the concerns, bottlenecks that they're running into?
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What are the opportunities that they have seen that they feel are not being heard?
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And also for the greater ecosystem,
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I think inquiring into that has been a big part
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of the learner profile that I have leaned into the most.
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Nice.
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I have a warm up question for you.
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I think I see it a lot if working with edtech, that they assume
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that I just like tech everything, and it's not always true.
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What's a piece of technology
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you either reject or refuse to use AI or not?
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Yeah.
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I don't have any technology
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in my bedroom at all.
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And, I've taught myself
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to wake up without an alarm clock for that reason.
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So it is a completely analog room.
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And I did that because I realized that
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some years ago, I was starting to have trouble with my sleep,
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and I was starting to feel uneasy in the morning hours.
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And what I realized had happened was that I had one of those old school
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alarm clocks that plugged into the wall, and it had broken.
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So I started using my phone as an alarm clock.
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And what happened when I started using my phone as an alarm clock
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is that when I turned over to turn the phone off,
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I saw notifications, and so I checked them real quick.
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And then after I was done checking emails real quick
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because I realized there was a need for me to respond.
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And then slippery slope. And then real quick turns into an hour.
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And before I got out of bed to say good morning to my own children.
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I had already been around the world on social media.
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So I said enough of that.
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And I took the television out.
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I took the phone out, I took computers out and banned it from my bedroom.
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And I restored my sleep, and I restored my ability
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to wake up in the morning and say good morning to myself, say good morning
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to my family, and ground myself in my life before I joined the rest of the world.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Let's continue to help everybody get to know you a little bit.
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I know you studied in Stockholm.
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Is there a Swedish habit or tradition that you would happily bring to everywhere,
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every workplace?
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There are two, actually.
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We asked for one Clara.
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So then if I can only pick one,
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(I'm just kidding) it is the Swedish fika.
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The Swedish fika was a very, very difficult for me to adopt
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when I first arrived in Sweden because I had come from the US,
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where you run 100,000 miles an hour and that's not fast enough.
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I'm sorry. What's fika?
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So Swedish fika is having a coffee,
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having a coffee in the morning together as colleagues.
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It is having coffee together after lunch.
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And it is having another coffee together in the afternoon.
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And that fika time is used
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to share each other's feelings,
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concerns, thoughts, just being, breathing,
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taking time to reflect.
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And it was driving me absolutely crazy when I was going to Sweden.
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I'm like, can we just go to work and get this done?
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But I really learned to lean in to those moments
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of being with my colleagues, being with other people.
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You have Swedish fika
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whether you are in a business meeting at a corporation,
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whether you're in a school, when you meet with, with families.
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And, now I really appreciate that Swedish way
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of stepping back and taking time to just be together and recognize
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each others as human beings first and then get to work afterwards.
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It actually sounds really impactful that we could all be doing in schools as well.
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You know, when I think about it,
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we're also run into the next thing,
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doing the next thing right away and don't really take the time to check in.
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And yet so many times you talk to any educator
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and they say, well, it's about the relationships.
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What about our relationships with colleagues as well?
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So I appreciate that.
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And you've done a lot of studying in your time.
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You've studied theology, computer science, philosophy.
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What do you see sneaking up, maybe especially in this new role
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and really kind of coming into play with the way that you're thinking?
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Yeah.
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So what I shared in my master's studies,
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both in theology and in computer science and philosophy,
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was that I focused really in on doing research on systems approaches.
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How do systems work in the different context of what it means to be
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a human being,
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but philosophy is the one that sneaks in all the time.
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Not sneaking, it's quite loud, actually.
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And I think part of that was that
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my approach to my studies, to philosophy,
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was that I wasn't studying just in theory, it was practical philosophy.
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So the real question was how do we move this from theoretical
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systems thinking into applying it in the real world?
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And I see that coming back to me very much now.
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I think we're much more in a humanities language
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and social science moment, than we're in a technology moment.
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This is a being human moment.
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And so that I lean very heavily into my philosophical thinking.
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So let's get into the first segment here.
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You know, we're talking about the IB has spoken on AI.
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What did schools say back kind of the first thing.
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And I know the last time we spoke,
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you were helping to really shape the principles of AI use in schools.
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Now your IB's head of AI. What's changed?
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What's the view look like now that you're kind of on the inside of the IB?
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Yeah.
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The very first thing that I heard very loudly was it's about time.
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It's about time. We really need help.
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We really need help, and we want to be part of the solutions.
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So we've gotten warmly welcomed by
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all parties, all different roles in our ecosystem,
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for the opportunity to co-create solutions together.
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There's an enormous need for guidance,
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for resources, for things that work.
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and for some consistency, something to
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rely on, as we move forward in this work together.
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And I think the big shift has been that the IB has recognized that
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not only is there a need for IB leadership, but there's a need for us
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to open up pathways for us to create solutions together.
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And the co-creation approach is really landing very strongly.
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And it has created a feedback loop where we're able to see
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almost in real time what our community is thinking,
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what they want from us, what is happening on the front line,
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in the classroom, in the leadership offices,
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in the parent community, in the youth communities.
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And we can use that work to inform
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how we design solutions for the community.
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Can I lean into that just a little bit?
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Because even just chatting with
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some people, I know some people in the IB or teachers would just say,
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can you just tell us what it is? I'm not sure we want to collaborate.
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Just tell me what I can and cannot do and let me just work with it.
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Can you lean in a little bit
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more on why that collaboration piece has been the choice of the IB here?
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So the IB
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provides support around a curriculum,
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provides curriculum and everything that belongs in that ecosystem.
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But our schools are independent, and we want our schools
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to be able to reflect their local identity.
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We deal with schools
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that are in many hundreds of jurisdictions,
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and are subject to many different types of technology related regulation,
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but also regulation around child safety and well-being.
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We have districts that have certain policies
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that they are required to attend to.
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So coming out with red lines or specific,
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here's precisely what we want you to do,
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is not likely to successfully land in our community
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because it's not everybody who can do that.
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For us it's important to think about equity first and thinking about
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designing solutions that can work for everyone.
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So we can make recommendations.
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And we are, in fact, working on exploring what recommendations we can make.
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One of the ones we're hearing a lot about is ages.
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How old should children be when they're working with different types
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of technology.
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And we are looking also at the reality that some jurisdictions
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will soon have age related obligations.
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Some governments are working on setting boundaries for exposure.
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Some are already having some boundaries in place.
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And so we are preparing that work.
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But we want to be evidence based.
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We want to be research based, not hype based.
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So it takes a little time to identify exactly where
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the best recommendations are and where that special point in learning
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begins to change when technology enters a child's life.
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Yeah. No, I think that makes a lot of sense.
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And I'm wondering, as you've been doing these co-creation sessions,
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is there anything that
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what do you feel
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it's been the biggest shift or kind of biggest mindset change
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for the way that you've been approaching this,
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based on what you've been hearing from the community in these sessions?
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So I think one of the things I educators have told us that
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has actually already caused a strategic shift for us,
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has been that educators were very clear that
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there's an AI literate educator, but that kind of means two things.
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one hand, it says the adult in the room,
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the professional person, the person whose career is to be an IB educator.
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And how do I use AI in my career to further my career,
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to develop my skills, to become an AI literate
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professional.
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And then there is another pathway
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that is, how do I teach students?
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How do I learn the skills that I need as an educator
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to teach the students the things they need?
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How do I get the professional learning, where the IB workshops that I need
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as an educator to be in the classroom setting with the students?
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And those two pathways are something that we heard very early on.
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We continue to hear.
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And we've already made a shift in our thinking
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in terms of creating support for both of those, both for professional learning
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and for the curriculum part of the work as well.
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Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
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Because I know the initial principles were find after the March draft.
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And then, of course, you know,
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we saw yesterday in the opening, you know, the Denver session,
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a lot more collaboration that went on there.
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What did you hear from educators that you felt really changed your thinking
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about the way that you were approaching the AI principals?
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I think the thing we heard the loudest was a sense of frustration,
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a sense of feeling kind of burned out,
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a sense of we've just become AI police
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and a sense of disconnect
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from their own role as an educator,
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because it has been sort of sidetracked by this AI story.
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So one of the things
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we're really working on is
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rearticulating what AI literacy is for all of us,
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and taken away the big tech story about AI literacy
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being something about rushing into using tools, learning how to prompt,
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learning how to build prompt libraries and maybe some vibe coding
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and maybe some early agency to what does it mean to live in a world
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that is being increasingly engineered by
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and moderated by AI driven technologies?
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Because AI isn't just in the classroom.
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It's not just in our workflow.
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It's not just something we're catching when students are handing in
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summative work or formative work.
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It's being used in our healthcare systems.
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It's being used in decision making around social services,
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allocation of funds for education,
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in every aspect of human life.
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And so AI literacy isn’t just about a tools moment.
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It's about an infrastructure moment.
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And in order to capture that and move
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from the space where we are now, that frustrating,
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anxiety inducing space to how do we build it in?
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We're really taking a holistic approach, which means that we're going to see
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components of that building to every part of the IB experience,
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ultimately.
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I so appreciate you bringing that up, actually.
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I've often said AI seems
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to be influencing every part of my life, but when I say that statement, I'm
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really kind of thinking about just me, without recognizing,
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of course, the infrastructure everywhere else around me.
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So when we're talking to AI literacy, as you've mentioned,
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it goes far beyond assignments.
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It goes far beyond the actual curriculum in the learning here.
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It's how are we preparing everybody for an AI driven, well, AI world, I guess.
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I appreciate you mentioned that.
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We have a question from Ron here.
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Thank you, Ron.
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How do you weigh different sources and voices on the topic of AI
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and how at the IB are you feeling about the seemingly
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lack of rigorous academic evidence of the current landscape?
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Oh, that's a tough question, Ron.
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So we've collected a lot of evidence already,
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and we're going to continue to collect evidence from our community.
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We are weighing all voices equally.
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We feel that we all have equal value.
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So we are hearing from everyone, from tech companies to our students
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to our educators to school leaders,
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and even from inside of the IB and the different departments as well.
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We have not yet captured our parent voices.
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We think that there is an enormous need for our parents to come in
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and get their voices heard and capture
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their voices as well.
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But I think our first priority is
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our students.
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Our students are in the center.
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What matters to them, how they experience being inside
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of a digital ecosystem, being inside of their education,
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being inside of learning, whether that learning is in the classroom
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or at home, or with their friends after school.
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They are our point of center.
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and so anything that leads towards
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supporting them and supporting education for human flourishing
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and for them to flourish, that is where we're leaning in.
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I mean, it really does feel like we kind of have to be sprinting here.
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I mean, just in an academic sense, you know, to do proper research
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and to share about that takes time that we don't necessarily have.
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I mean,
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in the opening presentation yesterday, it was we're not responding quick enough.
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Right?
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So I must say I do appreciate, just in our conversations before,
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I know there's such an urgency to protect young people as well.
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Help them be safe.
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Yeah?
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Let's make sure we're creating a safe landscape for them.
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And so I really appreciate that,
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you know, again, we've mentioned IB’s at our AI principles.
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And I think that's useful for schools.
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But now we've rolled out into the toolkit.
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And so I want to lean into this section now.
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So what the toolkits
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actually going to be giving schools and how we can be using that quite well?
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I know it started off as a set of sort of draft tools
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that the community tested, ranked, played around with a bit.
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What will the school actually get its hands on
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and what can you share about timing of that?
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We are running fast.
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I wear sneakers every day at work.
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So this is the exception, not the rule.
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Although I can run fast in heels as well, like everybody else here.
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In case any of those hard questions coming in.
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Exactly, exactly.
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But we are working very fast.
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And we have made it clear across the internal teams
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that we need to deliver where we can't keep talking about this.
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We've got to get help out to the school.
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One of the very first things that we're working on has to do with
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both cleaning our own house and helping everybody else clean their houses.
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We got to do a little housekeeping first, and that has to do with governance,
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it has to do with safety,
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it has to do with risk management, and it has to do with policy.
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And that is also what we have heard
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most from the schools that have organized priorities,
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from everyone in our co-creation sessions that have organized priorities.
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They have said we need to get the governance and policies right.
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That's where we build the foundation.
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And we are working very hard on releasing
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where we're actually hoping to release already in December,
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the first materials,
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but otherwise it will be shortly following December
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the first materials to support schools in that housekeeping work.
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And I can say for transparency, we're doing the same housekeeping.
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We face the same situation that schools do.
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We have inconsistent use of AI.
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We don't know who's using AI and who's not.
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We have lots of pilots in the air,
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and some of them are on airplanes, and some of them are in helicopters.
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And we don't know how much fuel are on these machines,
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or whether they're planning to land.
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We're also aligning with regulations.
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So the global
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jurisdictions
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are different, but we are going with the strictest interpretation
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of AI regulation, to ensure
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that we have our boundaries set for what we are willing to do.
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And we're also leaning back into our commitments to sustainability.
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We've made commitments, but AI has sort of landed,
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and now we're taking inventory to ensure that the way we use AI,
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the way we promote AI, and the way we teach about AI
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aligns with our commitments to our planetary flourishing as well.
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And we are finding that
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we have not been successful in that, as I think many others have as well.
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And so we are
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going to have to make some changes there as well in our decision
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pathways to make sure that we are aligning.
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And many of those learnings that we are doing now internally
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is part of what we're also building into the toolkit,
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along with the needs that we're hearing from our community.
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We need policies to be alive.
21:54
We need governance, and we need help with figuring all of that out.
21:58
Yeah.
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I think that a lot of people probably appreciate the vulnerability of saying,
22:04
we're figuring this out to at the IB and knowing that
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even if they set a policy at one point, it's a good idea to revisit
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and say, like,
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does this actually align with our vision and our purpose of what
22:16
we're trying to do, especially with sustainability?
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So I think that a lot of schools probably appreciate that.
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And on that, I think that different IB schools are dealing
22:26
with a really wide range of resources and where they're at right now.
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And, there's very different
22:34
levels of AI readiness amongst all these schools.
22:37
Is there any intentionality
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in the way that the toolkits being designed to be able to support
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all of these different types of situations for these different schools?
22:48
Yeah, there is and
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there is a very much an intention to support AI literacy
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as something that we can equitably achieve across our global community,
23:00
across all of our different economic situations and across
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the different regulatory and our different missions and visions as well,
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priorities that we have.
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And one of the things that is leading
23:15
that work is the intention to help support schools
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in understanding that AI literacy is not the big tech story.
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It is not a tools or toy or technology moment.
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It is a learning moment and that you can learn
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to be powerfully AI literate,
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even in a completely analog environment.
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You don't have to have fancy technology
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in order to learn AI literacy.
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So one of the things we're looking at already now is
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we've put a work group together to work on AI literacy resources
23:56
and building AI literacy into curriculum for PYP.
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PYP is, I think, our most fragile group.
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They are the ones that are most vulnerable to
24:08
the unfortunate sides of technology.
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So we've got to do that very carefully.
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But even if they were never touching technology,
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their lives are very much driven by AI infrastructure.
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And there are many things that they can learn inside of that space.
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They can also learn systems thinking.
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They can learn about data.
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They can learn about bias.
24:31
They can learn about hallucinations.
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They can learn about how to tell the difference between truth and false,
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which is becoming increasingly difficult in this AI driven world
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and deepfake generated realities.
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Truth is under pressure.
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So there are lots of entry points that we haven't really explored yet.
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While that is sad, we're also making sure that we're creating meaningful resources
25:00
for schools that are already very much on the front foot
25:03
with technology, that are building agents, that are building tools,
25:07
that are building applications, and we want to help them as well.
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and getting in on the right areas, and also really think about
25:16
what curriculum looks like in the future
25:18
and what assessment looks like in the future as well.
25:21
One of the things I really appreciate about what you just said
25:23
is you don't have to have the AI tool to become AI literate.
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And one of the things I love
25:28
about the conferences,
25:30
and I'm sure many of you
25:30
have had this experience as well as you get to chat
25:32
with really cool people, really smart individuals out here.
25:35
I was having a conversation with somebody named Phil yesterday.
25:38
And we were talking about how AI literacy, in many ways,
25:41
kind of just comes down to the ATL’s, or you could even make an argument
25:45
that a Theory of Knowledge course is going to make you AI literate.
25:49
Do you have any comments about that?
25:50
Do you feel like that's actually what we should be leaning into more
25:53
instead of worrying?
25:54
Like we need to put computers in front of everybody
25:56
and get them to work with agents and their own sort of thing.
25:58
Is it more actually we build up these skills, these approach to learning,
26:01
the IB learner profile attribute, and that is going to lead to AI literacy.
26:06
That is a wonderful question.
26:07
And I really appreciate it, because I think that,
26:12
I had a similar conversation with an educator yesterday
26:15
after one of the co-creation sessions, and she was saying
26:18
exactly the same thing, like, can we get something to hold on to
26:22
instead of continuing to creating all this new stuff?
26:25
Isn't there anything that's consistent?
26:28
And I think our IB learner profile,
26:31
I think ATL skills and I think theory of knowledge,
26:36
and many other components
26:38
in the core, in the PYP,
26:42
the MYP and the DP and the CP,
26:45
much of what's in that core work is seeing
26:49
there are all things that we can hold on to.
26:51
I, for example, have been working recently on developing with the team
26:56
in The Hague, some connections
26:59
around AI literacy to how do we build that into
27:04
IB learner profiles.
27:06
So what part of the IB learner profile lends itself
27:09
exceptionally well to also developing AI literacy
27:13
and how can we lean in.
27:14
So rather than building a whole new framework,
27:18
that we have to learn and that we have to adopt,
27:20
I think that we can interpret what we already have,
27:23
and I think it lends itself exceptionally well.
27:26
It was one of the reasons why I actually decided that I wanted to join the IB.
27:32
There were many reasons, but this was one of them is that
27:35
I think we already have what we need to succeed
27:39
with driving into a future that is driven by artificial intelligence,
27:44
quantum simulations, enhanced encryptions, and soon quantum computing.
27:50
We can do this because we have the IB learner profile.
27:53
We can do that because we have the ATL skills.
27:56
And if we lean into what we already know, what we already have,
28:00
I think that we have a real opportunity to go through this journey together
28:05
and succeed.
28:07
Excellent.
28:08
Yeah. No, I think that's great.
28:09
And I think that was also one piece that I was really taking away
28:12
from the keynote yesterday of really being able to say, like,
28:17
if you suddenly have documentation and policies that don't connect to what
28:21
you already have, it's much easier for it to become other and different, where
28:26
if you say, no, we're going to keep focusing on the learner profile,
28:30
we're going to keep focusing on the ATLs, but now we're going to evolve our
28:35
AI governance and our AI policies to really be intertwined with that.
28:39
I think that
28:39
that's probably setting schools up for more success of actual implementation.
28:44
Yeah.
28:45
We've got a question from an audience member I want to address.
28:47
It's also from somebody named Phil.
28:49
I'm not sure if it's the same person as I was talking about, but from Phil,
28:52
what are we learning about the concerns of educators who feel uneasy about AI?
28:57
And what are we doing to bridge the gap between advanced users and
29:00
those who feel concerned?
29:03
Yep, I hear it a lot.
29:05
I hear a lot about burnout.
29:07
I hear a lot about concerns that educators are leaving the profession
29:12
because this was sort of the tipping point.
29:14
I can't take any more, enough.
29:18
A few years ago, I heard a lot about
29:21
will we really be replaced by robots?
29:24
You know, is a machine going to take our classroom?
29:28
What I would say is that I hear a lot from young people, a lot.
29:32
And I'm really glad.
29:35
I'm grateful for what they are teaching me.
29:38
And what they are teaching me
29:39
is that they want an adult human being in the classroom with them.
29:43
And so what I do when I hear frustrated teachers
29:47
saying, I'm just about ready to leave, is I say, lean in.
29:50
You know, lean into the human part.
29:52
Don't worry about the technology right now.
29:55
Lean into your relationship with those students.
29:58
Lean into what you already know.
30:00
You are an expert.
30:01
You are an educated person.
30:03
You are professional.
30:05
You know better than big tech.
30:07
You know better than the news.
30:10
You know what's happening inside of your classroom.
30:13
Lean into that.
30:15
And I think that I resist a little bit
30:19
the temptation to say that some educators are more advanced with AI than others.
30:25
I think that there are educators that have chosen not to engage with AI,
30:30
because they haven't felt that it had pedagogical value in their classroom,
30:35
so they have chosen not to engage with that technology in their classroom,
30:40
or they have chosen not to engage with the technology
30:44
because they felt unsafe, or they felt that their students
30:48
weren't going to be safe inside of that technology.
30:51
And I think that's okay.
30:52
I think that's a way to be AI literate.
30:55
I think it's a way to say this is my part of the journey right now.
31:01
And this is what I am figuring out,
31:03
while other educators are exploring, some are very advanced.
31:08
I can't believe some of the conversations I have with educators
31:12
and schools out there that are doing just unbelievable things,
31:15
like they could go straight to Silicon Valley today, I think with their students
31:19
and help train advanced models.
31:23
And that is also okay.
31:25
It's a different part of the AI journey,
31:27
but I think we're all needing to head in the same direction.
31:30
And that's the message we need to get clear for a whole community.
31:35
Let's get there together. And how we're going to get there together
31:39
it's going to look different for everyone.
31:40
Yeah, I love the idea of lean into what you're doing. You know best.
31:43
You know your context best. It sounded like, you know, have a fika
31:47
chat with a person, build into those relationships.
31:50
I really appreciate you saying that. Sorry.
31:52
Yeah.
31:52
No, I do too, and I think that there's a huge difference between choosing
31:57
not to do something with intentionality and burying your head in the sand.
32:02
And I think there's a lot of teachers who are choosing not to engage
32:05
with certain technologies and tools with really good reasons
32:10
to not do that, and that should be respected a lot more.
32:14
It's that's not the teacher just pretending like AI doesn't exist.
32:18
It's no, I know it exists.
32:20
I know what's possible, but I'm still choosing.
32:22
These are my moments that I'm going to stay offline.
32:26
These are the moments I want to go online and that intentionality is literacy,
32:31
as you said.
32:31
So I really appreciate that.
32:32
Yeah.
32:33
We have a lot of..
32:35
This is a going off of where we thought we were going, but to no surprise,
32:40
we have a lot of questions coming in about assessment.
32:44
So I was wondering if
32:46
we have Lisa, for example, she was asking, how do you think that assessment needs
32:50
to change or not change in the age of AI if we are trying to assess learning?
32:56
Yeah, it's an interesting question.
32:58
And it's a challenging question.
33:01
I think that there are
33:05
a couple of things to consider when it comes to assessment.
33:08
I think on one hand we have immediate,
33:13
I would almost call it a crisis,
33:15
because our educators are experiencing it as a crisis.
33:21
Educators are finding it very difficult
33:23
to, in good faith,
33:27
sign the record saying, I believe this is the student's
33:30
own authentic work and sending it off for moderation,
33:35
because they are not entirely sure that it is.
33:38
They find it very difficult to be assessment police.
33:43
It's impacting their relationship with students.
33:47
There are
33:48
so many stories of enormously unpleasant conversations,
33:53
both where students are getting
33:57
caught cheating, and how that conversation takes place
34:01
where students are getting caught cheating but didn't, in fact cheat.
34:06
But maybe it was caught cheating by an AI checker, or
34:10
by some lapse in communication.
34:15
There are students
34:17
who are getting caught cheating who
34:20
did submit authentic work, their own work,
34:25
who are having to dumb down their work, in order
34:27
to slip through the new police regimen.
34:31
And it's a mess.
34:33
It's a hot mess.
34:38
And we need immediate solutions to that.
34:40
So that is something that is sort of a red hot area
34:44
that we are working on solutions, advice that we can give to schools
34:49
as soon as humanly possible, that can help them through that.
34:54
But there's another part of assessment
34:57
that is a deeper question, almost a TOK question,
35:01
to what extent is assessment
35:04
reflecting student learning in the age of AI?
35:08
And we have work to do
35:10
together in thinking about whether we need
35:13
different types of assessment going forward.
35:17
We have loved many of the assessment formats that we've had,
35:21
but there is a very good possibility that is not meaningful assessment,
35:24
that is not meaningfully revealing student learning in the years going forward.
35:30
And I do expect that we will see new assessment pathways.
35:35
We haven't invented them yet or discovered them yet.
35:38
We're discovering.
35:40
But I do think that is unrealistic to expect in the long run
35:45
that assessment will look the way in 20 years
35:48
or even ten years, as it looks today.
35:52
And that is both for formative and summative assessment.
35:56
I think maybe we have undervalued
35:59
formative assessment
36:02
to some extent.
36:03
A lot of magic happens there.
36:06
But unfortunately, many students also prefer to go to formative assessment
36:10
to hand in their AI driven work just to get it over with.
36:14
But I think that
36:16
there's a lot of magic happening there that we can lean into.
36:20
And we're seeing in early research coming out from countries
36:24
that have leaned in heavily to using generative AI in education,
36:29
that they are seeing a huge surge in formative assessment
36:33
and a huge drop in summative assessment.
36:36
And I think there's something there we need to capture.
36:38
Yeah.
36:39
And I expect that we have to work together on solving that going forward.
36:44
It's such a difficult space.
36:45
I must imagine,
36:46
you know, because when I think of
36:48
many of our assessment strategies now, yes, they're vulnerable to AI.
36:51
And you must be asking that question, you know, to what extent are these
36:54
still valid assessment procedures when we know that there's this ability
36:58
of AI, like the take home essay, does that still exist in this space?
37:01
You know?
37:02
But recently and we've had the chance to speak with Matt Glanville,
37:05
the IB’s head of assessment, many times and just understanding
37:09
the deep work that goes into creating a good piece of assessment
37:13
and something that's, usable for everybody.
37:17
There's a big, big amount of work that goes into this too.
37:20
And I think I could reflect the concerns of educators in the room
37:23
as an educator myself,
37:25
there's this urgency of like, well, but fix it now, fix it now.
37:28
And just in order for us to do this right, it's going to take us,
37:32
unfortunately, just a bit longer than AI is progressing.
37:36
That's a tension I just think is getting stronger.
37:40
And I think difficult too, to process.
37:43
I guess I'm just trying to empathize.
37:45
I think that's got to be incredibly challenging.
37:48
We've got another question here from an audience member, from Thomas.
37:51
AI offers an easy way, but learning requires hard work.
37:55
What structure of education will prevent kids from choosing the easier way?
38:00
The IB Learner Profile.
38:03
I think the IB Learner profile
38:05
requires students to lean in, and I think that they are recognizing
38:09
that we are hearing that back from through the Youth council,
38:13
some of the data and surveying they're collecting from our generation
38:18
global students, they want to engage with friction.
38:24
They want to learn hard things.
38:26
They are concerned that AI is making things easy for them.
38:32
It was fun for a while, but now they feel disconnected
38:36
from their learning, from themselves, from their teachers.
38:40
And so they want to be part of that.
38:43
And I think the IB learner profile is exactly what gives us that opportunity
38:48
to go in and have those reconnections, around who we are.
38:54
Because there is no question that AI can make things easy.
38:58
There's no question that we are seeing cognitive offloading
39:02
both for us, the grown ups in the room and for our students.
39:06
And there is no question that we're also seeing d-skilling.
39:10
The young people that are coming into workflow now
39:14
are using AI for a lot of things that us
39:17
that are a generation or two ahead of them are very good at,
39:21
and we haven't even taken inventory of the opportunity cost.
39:24
What are we losing here?
39:26
And so I think that
39:30
we need to work with our students on solving that.
39:32
And I think we have the framework to do that through the IB learner profile.
39:37
I think the IB learner profile also really helps
39:40
approach it with in terms of AI and ethics as well.
39:44
And I know that this is a conversation we've talked a lot about.
39:47
And then on your own, you've, in all your free time,
39:51
have decided to write a book about, which I know is coming out.
39:55
Is it this week?
39:57
This weekend.
39:58
You've had a big week.
40:00
So it's the early stages of labor.
40:03
So yeah.
40:04
So it's available for preorder now but going to print soon.
40:07
So I'm very very excited. Yeah.
40:09
So I mean besides you know, having nothing better to do,
40:12
what made you decide to write this book?
40:16
I felt that the work that I was doing
40:19
wasn't helping enough schools, frankly.
40:23
I felt
40:25
sort of quite tired of hearing
40:28
Big Tech owning the conversation about education.
40:32
I felt that education needed to tell Big Tech what education is.
40:36
And I have been in a lot of meeting with some of the big companies,
40:41
and both behind the scenes and on stage.
40:45
And they have a vision
40:48
of what will drive their technology into schools,
40:52
but they haven't invited in educators, they haven't invited in students,
40:56
they haven't invited in our parents to be part of that strategy
41:00
and those conversations.
41:02
And I also saw that
41:06
technology has made its way into schools in areas where regulation
41:11
either is already existing or already coming,
41:14
and that a lot of schools were actually not compliant with sort of their base
41:18
obligations, but having no idea that they weren't complying.
41:23
So I felt that there was a longer conversation that needed to be had about
41:27
how did we get here?
41:28
What was the story of digitalization, what really happened in the last 20 years?
41:35
And then what are we looking at now?
41:37
What is beyond the hype?
41:39
What is reality facing schools today?
41:43
And then how do we get out of that space with real tools,
41:48
with real things that really has been tested in other schools and really works?
41:53
And what is the future look like?
41:54
How can we avoid getting back into this grid that we have found ourselves in?
42:01
And I wanted to make that available to the global community.
42:04
Yeah, it's actually an excellent transition.
42:06
We've got time for just a couple more questions here.
42:08
But what you're leading into now is like, what can we actually be doing?
42:11
And when I think about every educator that's in the room right now,
42:14
we're kind of wondering, okay, what do we do now?
42:15
What's, you know, and that's kind of the title of recession the IB spoke.
42:18
And what are we going to do now?
42:20
Let's say if a school can only focus one or maybe
42:23
three priority areas this year,
42:26
how would a school decide which one to really move on?
42:30
My recommendation is to go home and find out what
42:35
the digital blueprint is in your school,
42:38
and not to tech stack, but the experience that the student
42:42
has inside of your school in that digital space.
42:46
The experience that your educators have, that your school leaders have,
42:51
that your administrative teams have, that your well-being
42:54
and safeguarding teams have, and so on, run a full audit
42:58
of how technology is being used, how long, what type of technology,
43:04
how it's impacting students if decisions are being made
43:08
through technology, and how those decisions are being made,
43:12
both because it prepares you for the regulatory recommendations,
43:17
sorry, the regulatory obligations that you have,
43:20
but also because you need to know what's happening in your classroom.
43:24
How long is every single student on devices every day?
43:29
If they’re are half an hour or maybe only 15 minutes in each classroom
43:33
at the end of a school day, that adds up to several hours.
43:38
Are you understanding exactly what that means for the student?
43:41
How much homework is being assigned in the digital space?
43:46
How long are they are on devices when they get home just with schoolwork?
43:51
And how are the teachers really being affected?
43:55
What does the teacher reality look like with all these new technologies?
43:59
What skills are we losing?
44:00
What skills do we need?
44:02
And that's going to look really different for every single school.
44:05
But the time to do that work is is right now,
44:08
because you can't make meaningful decisions about going into the future
44:12
if you don't know what's inside of your own ecosystem.
44:16
So take the time.
44:17
Do the qualitative surveys, do the conversations,
44:19
figure out what is everything like here
44:21
and then I guess almost like a grounded theory approach.
44:23
What sort of comes out as our key thing we have to do now.
44:26
As a last question, we're going to start doing our workshops
44:29
really soon, and we're going to be breaking out and talking about policy
44:33
and governance, AI literacy or student AI councils.
44:37
Is there one question you would hope that people would be able to answer?
44:42
You don't need to give the answer, but would you give some questions
44:45
that you would hope people would be able to bring answers to?
44:50
I really like that you formed it that way,
44:51
because I think a good policy is actually driven in questions.
44:56
It's not a one stop shop, it's a continuous work.
45:00
I would encourage you to think of your AI policies
45:03
a little bit, like you think about your well-being policies.
45:06
Those are constant work and they're never really perfect.
45:10
Even the best well-being policy in the best function in school
45:15
that has all the structures in place for well-being and safeguarding
45:19
still have incidents that are difficult to deal with
45:25
and that require response, requires
45:29
remediation and requires learning so that we can do better next time.
45:34
I would encourage you to build those characteristics into your AI policy,
45:38
because the AI we have today is still relatively primitive.
45:42
It will be much more advanced.
45:44
And the way that AI impacts decision
45:46
making will become much more complex and much more opaque.
45:50
So drive the policy into a system of continuous
45:55
revision, continuous asking questions.
45:58
Hard questions. Have pathways
46:01
for incidents, remediation and learning.
46:04
Going forward, I would recommend to put that into some of the policy work.
46:09
As for the AI Council and particularly AI use Council, I would really recommend,
46:15
it has been a phenomenal experience to have youth in the room.
46:20
They are very insightful, but they're also teaching us things
46:24
about their reality and what I think first and foremost,
46:28
I have learned from the young people again and again and again,
46:32
is that what I think is their reality is not how they experience it.
46:37
And unless I talk to them, we just don't learn that.
46:40
And I would encourage you to get closer to the young people
46:44
at your school through putting together a youth council.
46:47
Give them a real seat at the table and make them part of the solutions.
46:52
Make them part of your decision framework.
46:54
Clara, I count myself so fortunate to have gotten the chance
46:57
to know you over the last three episodes that we've done with IB Unplugged
47:00
and I genuinely am so excited that you were in this space,
47:04
because you've mentioned AI
47:06
as a crisis that we are experiencing And I’m thinking, as an educator,
47:10
It's absolutely the case where you just feel like
47:12
I'm a little bit floundering here and I kind of need to know what to do next.
47:16
And when I think of you, so knowledgeable,
47:19
you're so compassionate about making sure that we're doing the right things.
47:22
I'm glad you're in this space.
47:23
But I also recognize it's incredibly complex.
47:26
But I think you're the right person for it.
47:28
And I'm really glad that we're moving in these directions.
47:30
And just with that, thank you for taking the time to chat with us here.
47:33
I know you're super busy at the conference now, doing all sorts of things,
47:36
but for taking the time to chat with us here, as Courtney just mentioned,
47:40
we're going to move into an action space of like taking action in our room.
47:43
So don't leave.
47:44
Stick around.
47:45
You're going to get some really, really good stuff here.
47:46
But can I just say massive thank you to you, Clara,
47:48
for taking the time with us. Thank you.
47:59
I love talking with Clara.
48:01
Me too. That's why we've done it three times.
48:03
She's the only person who's been on the show for three times.
48:05
And you can see why.
48:06
She's somebody who's super knowledgeable,
48:08
who's really compassionate, who really understands the context,
48:11
I think, of what many schools are going through and why,
48:13
when we're talking about trying to implement
48:15
AI governance, AI policy, AI like ideas here in education,
48:20
she's got a whole, like, the whole picture together.
48:23
And I think that's really important.
48:24
Exactly.
48:25
No, her context comes in so clear that she's been in the schools.
48:28
She's been working with the IB for a long time, in the IB,
48:31
in the classrooms, and is really taking that extremely human approach.
48:36
I think a couple things that stood out to me
48:38
were one, when she was being quite vulnerable about the IB’s
48:42
figuring this out too, like we don't have this nailed either.
48:46
And I like that she was talking about we thought we had a policy,
48:49
but then we realized it didn't actually line up
48:51
with our vision of sustainability, and now we're revisiting it.
48:54
And so all of the things that she's suggesting you're doing in a school
48:58
they’re walking the walk to with everyone, figuring that out.
49:02
Yeah.
49:02
And I genuinely appreciate that
49:04
collaboration piece, not the sense of just like,
49:06
here's the governance that you all have to adhere to,
49:08
even though I think there's plenty of voices out there right now
49:10
that would say, like, just tell us what we have to do.
49:12
But I appreciate that they recognize the different contexts of different places
49:15
that people are working and their entry points
49:17
and how they're actually dealing with there.
49:19
So I do appreciate it.
49:20
And I think when I think of people like Clara,
49:23
at the IB, I feel more confident about where we're going
49:26
as a whole organization, as an educator in those schools.
49:29
I feel like here's somebody who cares a lot, here's
49:31
somebody who is knowledgeable, and I'm in good hands.
49:33
Exactly.
49:34
No, I think we started this season with an episode with Clara
49:37
talking about the principles.
49:39
Now it feels like we really did get those answers of now what.
49:42
And it feels like,
49:44
yeah, we're in good hands and we're in a good next stage of this process
49:47
of figuring that out. Yeah, definitely.
49:49
We hope you enjoyed the episode and it's been great here meeting
49:52
a lot of you as well.
49:53
So thanks for joining in and see you next time.
49:57
IB Unplugged is a Kognity podcast for IBDP educators,
50:00
helping you teach with more confidence, creativity, and joy.
50:04
This podcast is hosted by Courtney Marline and John Patton
50:07
and produced by Katilina Gaffney, edited by Damir Zvekanov
50:11
and supported by Karla Cetina.
50:13
If you have a topic or question for us to explore,
50:16
please reach out on kognity.com/ibunplugged.
50:20
See you next time.