Latest / IB Unplugged / Ending Assessment as We Know It w/ David Spooner
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to IB Unplugged, a Kognity podcast for IBDP educators,
- 0:05that tackles your submitted challenges and questions by connecting you with
- 0:08experts and peers who share their ideas and stories from real classrooms.
- 0:13Whether you're a seasoned educator or new to the IB world, each bi weekly episode
- 0:18and guest aims to equip you with practical tips and positive inspiration,
- 0:22helping you teach with more confidence, creativity, and joy.
- 0:26So whether you're walking your dog or commuting to school, hit play and join
- 0:29a community of educators ready to learn, laugh, and thrive in your IB journey.
- 0:35Hi everybody!
- 0:35Welcome to this week's episode of IB Unplugged.
- 0:38For this episode, we are bringing back David Spooner.
- 0:41So for those of you
- 0:42who are with us on season one, David talked about demystifying TOK.
- 0:47And for this reason, in this episode, we brought him back to talk
- 0:51about education and keeping kind of this human element in the age of
- 0:55AI in your teaching and how to balance between the two of them.
- 0:59Now, for many of you, you'll remember, David, of course, he's a TOK teacher.
- 1:03He's, philosophy, English language and literature teacher as well.
- 1:07He's lead TOK workshops and he's written books in this sort of thing.
- 1:11And in this episode here, we're not necessarily focusing
- 1:14on any of those subjects, per se.
- 1:16We're focusing on what does it mean to be an educator in the age of AI.
- 1:20So if you're asking yourself questions like how many of these tools should
- 1:23I start to be using?
- 1:24And why should I be using these tools with my students themselves?
- 1:28Or even just sort of asking yourself, like, am I just churning this machine
- 1:32to try to get students ready for assessment?
- 1:35Am I kind of missing the point of education?
- 1:37Then, you know, we've got something really great for you with this episode here.
- 1:40It's such a pleasure to have David back to talk with us on these topics, and let's
- 1:45bring him out onto the show.
- 1:52Hello, David.
- 1:53Welcome back to IB Unplugged, our first repeat guest.
- 1:57We're so glad to have you back.
- 1:58My word. John. Hi. How are you?
- 2:00I'm so honored to have been brought back for season three.
- 2:05Are we all now or halfway through season two?
- 2:08Still in season two.
- 2:09But we tell you what we were just so excited to to keep chatting with you.
- 2:12And we think back to the first episode that we got to do together.
- 2:15There were lots of areas where we thought, oh, we could we could dive into that.
- 2:18We could have a whole separate episode on that.
- 2:20We could have a whole thing there. So, we're really excited
- 2:22and thanks so much for coming back to chat with us again.
- 2:24It's my absolute pleasure.
- 2:26I mean, I'm honored beyond belief.
- 2:28I'm also feeling a little bit of, imposter syndrome.
- 2:33But, let's say you, the two of you,
- 2:38one a cocktail waiter,
- 2:39John. And,
- 2:42the effervescent Courtney.
- 2:49Well, we're looking forward to it nonetheless.
- 2:51So, we've done kind of the warm up questions with you before and,
- 2:55and for our listeners or,
- 2:56you know, if you haven't already listened to the first episode with David Spooner,
- 2:59then by all means, go back and check that out.
- 3:00It's it's really quite a gem.
- 3:03So as such, we're kind of skips coming to some of the normal warm up questions.
- 3:06And now let's get a little bit more into the heart of some of these things here.
- 3:08And specifically, I want to know, because the last time we spoke,
- 3:13I thought there was so much richness
- 3:14to what you were talking about and specifically around TOK
- 3:16and what we can do as educators.
- 3:17And so I'm just interested to know
- 3:19where do you find the most inspiration and meaning in your teaching?
- 3:23It's a nice question.
- 3:24I mean, and I think the answer to it, also includes the, the word meaning.
- 3:31We live in a world where we are increasingly
- 3:35pressured to try to make sense
- 3:38of a variety of different stimuli.
- 3:41And we are constantly, what's the phrase?
- 3:45We're permanently online.
- 3:48We're constantly being saturated
- 3:51with images, ideas, content.
- 3:56And trying to piece together
- 3:59the various concepts that are surrounding us every day,
- 4:04trying to make meaning out of the various
- 4:10phenomena that we encounter,
- 4:13every waking moment of every single day.
- 4:17I think that's the job of educators to help young adults
- 4:22and even younger students than young adults,
- 4:26to negotiate that, to try to find how to
- 4:31form patterns, to make connections,
- 4:36and to have,
- 4:39or to encourage students to develop
- 4:42some kind of filtering mechanism,
- 4:46that will help them connect those dots
- 4:49and to make meaning out of
- 4:55random series of phenomena that appear meaningless.
- 5:00And I think that's where I get my inspiration from helping students
- 5:05to make meaning in
- 5:08what Friedrich Nietzsche would call a meaningless world.
- 5:11And maybe that answers my question of what the point of education is to you, but
- 5:17is there anything else that you feel like is really core,
- 5:20in this kind of meaning?
- 5:23The point of education
- 5:25becomes increasingly important.
- 5:27The point of education is to help young people to make meaning,
- 5:33to construct meaning, in a seemingly meaningless world.
- 5:39And the point of education has always been to
- 5:43prepare students for the so-called real world, right?
- 5:48I don't understand what is unreal about the world of education,
- 5:53but we're constantly told that
- 5:55our job is to help prepare students for the real world.
- 5:59And, increasingly
- 6:02in the age of encroaching,
- 6:06ever more encroaching artificial intelligence into our lives,
- 6:11the pressures on young people to be seduced by
- 6:18a device or technology
- 6:20which offers them the seduction
- 6:24of having meaning made for them is something that I think
- 6:28we increasingly, as educators, need to help them to navigate.
- 6:33So the point of education has always been to help
- 6:36prepare students for the so-called real world,
- 6:40as if their daily 9 to 5 were not real enough.
- 6:45But the best way in which we can
- 6:46do that is help them to make meaning
- 6:50in the, you know, the fundamental, constructivist sense
- 6:56of helping them to spot patterns,
- 6:59to see connections, in this,
- 7:04kind of random world
- 7:06of phenomena that don't initially seem
- 7:09to have any connection, the one phenomenon with another.
- 7:14It's so refreshing to hear somebody say that, because often
- 7:17when we start talking about what's the point of education, people
- 7:19will kind of go down the, the typical roads, right, of, well,
- 7:22you got to be prepared for the economy or we need
- 7:24be ready for democracy to be a participant in socio cultural sort of things.
- 7:28And, and so I like that sort of stepping back on just let's,
- 7:32let's make meaning of what was otherwise a meaningless world.
- 7:35And I especially like that perspective of the real world
- 7:39is obviously something that anybody is experiencing at that moment.
- 7:42As opposed to saying it's somewhere else, something intangible
- 7:44that you haven't come to yet.
- 7:46Now, you've alluded to it already in this answer.
- 7:49And I know we we kind of spoke about it in the previous episode.
- 7:52And those of you who've been listening for a while know
- 7:54we've been talking about AI quite a bit and the changing landscape of education.
- 7:58And so now I'm just interested from your point of view, David,
- 8:02as we go through these changes in this educational landscape,
- 8:05what do you feel
- 8:06are the essential elements that must stay, not that are going to stay,
- 8:10but we as educators have to be intentional about ensuring that they stay.
- 8:15I, I think one of the things that,
- 8:18as IB educators, we are
- 8:21sometimes guilty of increasingly losing sight of
- 8:25is that we're not in the business of knowledge transmission.
- 8:30And, you know, when it comes to five year evaluations and so on
- 8:34and so forth, we can talk the talk and we can persuade the,
- 8:40evaluators that, you know, we are actually in the business of,
- 8:44encouraging students to understand
- 8:47rather than merely to acquire knowledge.
- 8:51But in our day to day practice, I think there's sometimes goes out of the window.
- 8:56And I think we have to revisit,
- 9:01in, in what you call this educational landscape,
- 9:05we have to revisit our fundamental commitment
- 9:09to our pedagogy.
- 9:11And remind ourselves that that when not mere,
- 9:16facilitators of knowledge transmission,
- 9:20because the knowledge doesn't need to be acquired in high school
- 9:24and secondary school, that knowledge doesn't need to be acquired.
- 9:29Where we come in is helping students to understand
- 9:35the connections between different,
- 9:37if you like, areas of knowledge,
- 9:40the connections between different ideas and concepts.
- 9:44The knowledge itself is merely the vehicle
- 9:48for encouraging students to understand the connections
- 9:53between those different areas of knowledge and so on.
- 9:57And we need to remind ourselves that we're in the business
- 10:02of helping students to understand rather than to know,
- 10:08to make meaning out of that understanding
- 10:12rather than learning stuff.
- 10:15And the, the, the kind of tech borrows, and so on.
- 10:21I think want us to forget that
- 10:24they want us to replace
- 10:27and they're encouraging us to replace,
- 10:31the centrality
- 10:32of understanding and making meaning
- 10:36with simply acquiring knowledge and then applying it.
- 10:41And I'm I'm going to repeat, I think, something
- 10:45which is becoming a basic sort of axiom for me, this knowledge
- 10:50that we, are dealing with in secondary
- 10:53school doesn't need to be learned.
- 10:56It's not the acquisition of the knowledge that matters.
- 10:59Right?
- 11:01I read, a few months ago there was a very,
- 11:05pertinent, tweet or whatever it's called now.
- 11:10An X,
- 11:13there was very sort of memetic,
- 11:15but nonetheless it stuck, stuck with me and it said,
- 11:20the the using AI in
- 11:23the classroom is like using a forklift truck in the gym.
- 11:28The weights don't need to be moved from place to place.
- 11:32It's what happens to you
- 11:34while you're pumping iron or whatever it is people do in gyms.
- 11:38I've never been to one in my life, so I don't know.
- 11:41It's it's what you do while you're pumping iron that matters.
- 11:44Yeah. Not the pumping of the iron.
- 11:47And I was really inspired by,
- 11:51one of your most recent podcasts with,
- 11:54Jennifer Brownsburg Engelman.
- 11:56And it changed, quite
- 11:59a few, things in my, teaching.
- 12:03And it inspired, certain reflections in my teaching.
- 12:08And I've been using her podcast with my TOK students
- 12:11because they all do economics that constant challenging of axioms
- 12:18reminds us and
- 12:20remind students that it's not about acquiring
- 12:24knowledge of Keynesian supply and demand curves.
- 12:28It's about recognizing the human, in that way
- 12:33of looking at the relationships
- 12:36between markets and human beings.
- 12:39The whether you learn about Keynesian
- 12:43supply and demand is almost irrelevant.
- 12:46It's what you're doing whilst you're doing that,
- 12:49acquiring of knowledge that matters.
- 12:53Yeah. No, I think that makes a lot of sense.
- 12:54And I think I, I do like the gym analogy.
- 12:57And I think that's something that we've talked about in a couple of episodes.
- 13:00We talk about it all the time at Kognity, like it's so
- 13:04maybe dangerous is extreme, but it's detrimental
- 13:07to recklessly use technology in classrooms because then, of course,
- 13:12if you use bad tech, just like if you read bad books,
- 13:16like not bad, as in banned but as like poorly researched,
- 13:20poorly developed, any kind of resources that you're using.
- 13:24If they're not actually helping learning, then what's the point?
- 13:29It's taking up space. It's taking up energy, time,
- 13:32it's stressful for teachers and students to learn how to use these tools.
- 13:36And I think that, yeah, it goes the same with AI.
- 13:39If if everyone just going through the motions
- 13:42without having meaningful learning, then yeah, there is no point.
- 13:49This really
- 13:50sets the scene quite well for what we want to be talking about today,
- 13:53because I think often while while I agree, and I would imagine many people
- 13:57who are listening will agree with you, David,
- 13:59with this idea of like the content is kind of the vehicle
- 14:02for the great learning and the great connections
- 14:03and the meaning making that goes on, obviously where we are or to a certain
- 14:08extent bound by an assessment that has a fair amount of content in it.
- 14:12Now, kudos and credit to to the IB,
- 14:15because I know they are aware of these things
- 14:16and they're developing them and they're making adjustments in this sort of thing.
- 14:19And at the same time, it's still content heavy.
- 14:22Kids need to know a lot of specific stuff.
- 14:24And I think in the age of AI and its onset,
- 14:28the content thing we're talking about
- 14:29is like, well, we have to ask better questions.
- 14:30We have to ask questions that aren't just
- 14:32AI abhor right things that that students actually have to do the heavy lifting.
- 14:36To use your analogy, so they can learn from.
- 14:38And so it's really making us reevaluate.
- 14:40But I think this comes to this idea now,
- 14:44to what extent are we talking about shifting
- 14:46the assessment model to try to make things a little bit more meaningful?
- 14:50Or is it do we have to kind of get rid of assessment in general?
- 14:53Because we are in this age of AI.
- 14:55And I guess to start the the conversation off, let's dive into
- 14:59maybe this first part of like education, artificial intelligence itself.
- 15:03How did we go from assessment
- 15:05for learning as a way of helping students understand
- 15:09this is what I know and this is what I still need to learn.
- 15:11And here's how I can apply this in different ways
- 15:13to now assessment of learning
- 15:16specifically with grades, qualifications, that sort of stuff really driving
- 15:20so much of what students are trying to do as they go through the diploma program.
- 15:23Get ready for for university.
- 15:25Let's let's talk about that for a little bit.
- 15:27How did that come about and where do you think we are right now
- 15:30and that sort of move
- 15:32now in conjunction with AI?
- 15:33Well, a fascinating question.
- 15:35How did it come about?
- 15:36I think the, the, the, the seed,
- 15:40that was planted was planted about 30 or 40 years ago.
- 15:44Right?
- 15:45This idea that, we are assessing,
- 15:50skills gradually got, supplanted by the idea
- 15:56that what we are assessing is,
- 15:59the acquisition of knowledge of subjects.
- 16:03And it's always been, in the DNA of the IB that things like TOK
- 16:08will disappear, and become,
- 16:12a natural part of the teaching of other subjects.
- 16:15But whilst we're still siloing areas
- 16:18of knowledge in different subjects,
- 16:22from the inception of the, of the diploma program,
- 16:25we were always going to end up here.
- 16:28It was inevitable that we were going to end up here
- 16:31because there's no real way to assess skills.
- 16:35But there is a really, really easy way to assess content,
- 16:39knowledge, understanding, ability to apply content knowledge
- 16:45and understanding to, a range of,
- 16:49hitherto unforeseen circumstances or phenomena.
- 16:53Right?
- 16:54And at the same time, at the same time,
- 16:58we've increasingly moved away, I think, from,
- 17:03what the
- 17:04originators, or at least the pedagogical originators of the,
- 17:08the IB diploma, had in mind,
- 17:12you know, Dewey's idea of,
- 17:16education for creativity, or rather education
- 17:20as a way of allowing students to demonstrate their creativity
- 17:25was one of the sort of founding pedagogical principles of the
- 17:29of the International Baccalaureate Organization, let alone just the DP.
- 17:34But that creativity is being,
- 17:37has been slowly squeezed out of the diploma.
- 17:42It's been injected into the PYP and the MYP,
- 17:47but it's being slowly squeezed out of the diploma.
- 17:50And when we think about as Neil's idea of,
- 17:54student agency as being at the center of their learning,
- 17:59that too has been, slowly,
- 18:02squeezed out, I think.
- 18:05And so you, subtract,
- 18:10student creativity, you subtract student agency.
- 18:14All you're left with really is assessment, not,
- 18:18of or for learning, but assessment, terminal assessment
- 18:24of what they have learned during two years.
- 18:30And at the same time,
- 18:33I think Michael Sandel, the, Harvard University
- 18:37professor of philosophy, has,
- 18:40highlighted the kind of sociological,
- 18:44part of this pincer movement.
- 18:46Right?
- 18:47And he wrote a book a few years ago called The Tyranny of Merit
- 18:51and the Idea of Meritocracy has taken hold,
- 18:56at least in the Western world over the last sort of 20, 25 years.
- 19:01And the, the, the, the,
- 19:03the concept of meritocracy is quite pernicious in one sense.
- 19:07I mean, it sounds nice, right?
- 19:09You have worked hard and you have acquired all of this
- 19:14well-being or whatever it is, by dint of your own efforts.
- 19:19But the reason he calls it the tyranny of merit is that
- 19:22it becomes a very isolating philosophy
- 19:26for a society to propound, because it cuts the individual off
- 19:32from the rest of the, of their society, the rest of their surroundings.
- 19:38I have gained what I have gained by dint of my own,
- 19:43hard work, and nobody else has any right to it.
- 19:48But of course, nobody, gets anything
- 19:52by dint of only their own hard work.
- 19:57You come to school by bus every morning.
- 19:59There are people paid to keep the streets clean.
- 20:03There are people paid to construct and maintain those roads.
- 20:08Putting in a great shift at school
- 20:11and, you know, acing, your homework, that's one thing.
- 20:15But you wouldn't have been able to accomplish any of that,
- 20:19without the help of other, human beings.
- 20:24And and yet this concept of meritocracy
- 20:28is part of the same pincer movement
- 20:31that, has operated to shift the focus
- 20:35to assessment for grades and qualifications as being
- 20:40the only measurable way in which student
- 20:44attainment, can be displayed.
- 20:48You see so much that present with students and their parents as well.
- 20:52I mean, I think any IBDP coordinator or university
- 20:54encourage guidance counselor would recognize this or right away,
- 20:57whether, you know, students are trying to apply to universities
- 21:00or something like this,
- 21:01and you suddenly have to do predicted grades or you have to give specific
- 21:04merit judgments on, here's how you can judge this individual
- 21:08on sort of this horizontal discourse of where everybody else is leveled out.
- 21:12It's like this person stands above this person because of these things,
- 21:16and then it becomes the main,
- 21:18in many cases, one of the main motivators for for young people
- 21:21and especially for certain parents, you know, when they
- 21:23when they're choosing schools or when they're looking at how
- 21:25well a school does, they're of course, coming back to
- 21:27what are the grades and how well they're performing.
- 21:30But they only care about that because it's then
- 21:33what what university is my kid going to get into?
- 21:36I'm paying for this school, right, to make sure that they can get into XYZ
- 21:41University also, which then just sort of fills up
- 21:45that that earlier philosophy of like, well, we're educating for the economy.
- 21:48And it to me it feels like there's a when we think in that meritocracy,
- 21:52we think of the grades and that sort of thing.
- 21:53It's very much just we're pushing back to make sure that you can be successful.
- 21:57In other words, you can earn some money and be doing okay in society
- 22:01as opposed to what you were talking about at the top of the show,
- 22:03having the ability to make
- 22:05meaning out of many different things that are going on in the world around you.
- 22:08And so I'm wondering, especially now, where we definitely see a fair amount of,
- 22:15unethical use
- 22:16of AI tools and that sort of thing from students who maybe are saying, well,
- 22:21if this is so meritocratic and I have to earn this particular thing
- 22:24in order to get recognized, to go on to university to do this next thing,
- 22:27why not take this particular option to get me there?
- 22:31And you see, I think where if we are so grades focused,
- 22:35our assignments maybe are not as strong and they're no longer
- 22:39they're not encouraging the soon to think for themselves.
- 22:41They're actually encouraging the soon
- 22:42to use an AI or some other thing to get past it.
- 22:45And they think of education as something they can just get past
- 22:47so they can get on to university and then to that next thing.
- 22:51There's part of me that just wonders,
- 22:53do we have to really destroy a sort of this model of assessment
- 22:57to get back to the root of what we really want to do with, with generating people
- 23:00or helping to create people
- 23:01who can contribute positively to societies and democracy.
- 23:04And all this sort of stuff.
- 23:06Yeah.
- 23:07If you're if you have this is kind of that urge.
- 23:09It's almost like AI is kind of giving us that push of like, hey,
- 23:12either I have to change it now or,
- 23:15or deal with what we're going to, what we're going to see from our students.
- 23:18Beautifully expressed. There's
- 23:21I hesitate to call him a philosopher of technology.
- 23:24There's a technologist, called, Jaron Lanier who,
- 23:30he wrote a book a few years ago called I Am Not a Gadget.
- 23:34And he, he has this beautiful phrase in it
- 23:37called the Apocalypse of Self Application.
- 23:40And we come back to the forklift truck in the, in the gym.
- 23:44Right?
- 23:45Moving the weights about acquiring knowledge is not what,
- 23:51either exercise or education is about.
- 23:55But we have been encouraged.
- 23:57Teachers have been de-skilled,
- 24:00and encouraged to, believe
- 24:04that because of this pressure from parents, from students themselves,
- 24:08from our colleagues, from our administrators,
- 24:11from educational institutions, because we have been encouraged to believe
- 24:16that the overriding purpose of secondary education
- 24:20is to get kids into college come what may.
- 24:25We have been encouraged to
- 24:28adopt a very, very utilitarian approach to assessment.
- 24:33Predicted grades are about data points that we can,
- 24:39look back at during the 18 months of,
- 24:43diploma studies, and we can mathematically calculate what really
- 24:48we can mathematically calculate a predicted grade. For a human.
- 24:52Right, for humans. This kid is a 5.6 human being.
- 24:57So please accept them onto your course.
- 24:59Yeah.
- 25:00And we wrap ourselves up
- 25:03in not trying to appease universities
- 25:07where we I remember we discussed in, in our previous meeting,
- 25:12we have to stop kowtowing to universities.
- 25:15We have to start telling them
- 25:18what kinds of students we are going to be sending them,
- 25:22rather than allowing them to dictate to us what kind of students they want.
- 25:28I mean, we,
- 25:30we, secondary, primary and middle school educators
- 25:34have arguably one of the most important jobs in the world,
- 25:38and that is to educate young people,
- 25:41to educate future adults.
- 25:44It's not for universities to tell us
- 25:47how we should be molding or socially engineering 12 year olds.
- 25:52It's for those of us who know what 12 year olds are like
- 25:56to be telling universities, this is how you should be re-engineering
- 26:01your courses to suit the kinds of human beings
- 26:05that we think, society
- 26:08needs, not the other way around.
- 26:11It's a you know, I remember we spoke about that in our earlier one.
- 26:14That got me thinking quite a bit too, because I, I'm often one to go
- 26:17knocking at the door of the university and go, come on, you got to sort this out
- 26:20and there's been some cool work there, by the way.
- 26:22I mean, for our listeners, if you've
- 26:23if you go back and listen to, things like the learner passport with Conrad and,
- 26:27and some of these, these other great ideas that are coming up
- 26:30that are kind of pushing at universities and saying, hey, we're going to
- 26:32we are going to establish who who you're going to see.
- 26:35And at the same time, I'm also conflicted, thinking,
- 26:38well, certainly, I work with people at universities.
- 26:41They can be smart.
- 26:42They're intelligent individuals who know, like, no,
- 26:44this isn't the only thing that matters.
- 26:46And we we do see ourselves as co constructors of a society as well.
- 26:50So there is like this giant machine, I guess, if you will, a giant system
- 26:54that isn't just,
- 26:55I think, the admissions counselors at universities,
- 26:57but there is this sort of meritocracy, as you're saying, that kind of
- 27:01embeds itself, and I
- 27:02guess makes this challenge even more challenging.
- 27:05What makes this problem even more difficult.
- 27:08But, you know, one thing I've really appreciated
- 27:11about getting to know you, David, as is how much you
- 27:14you dive into this idea of of critical thinking.
- 27:17You dive into this idea of inquiry skills, really contributing
- 27:21to that human experience and helping people understand who they are
- 27:24and how to make meaning.
- 27:25And I'm wondering, is there a way that we can,
- 27:28if we focus more on that
- 27:29development of critical thinking, if we focus more on that inquiry skills,
- 27:32do we kind of remold things without having to just say we're in a system
- 27:37that we can't break right now, or we can only marginally chip away at it?
- 27:42Does this development of
- 27:43critical thinking inquiry skills allow us to do that more?
- 27:46And should we as educators be pushing more emphasis on that?
- 27:49It's a very seductive question.
- 27:51I like it, let let's let's flip it a little bit.
- 27:55Right?
- 27:56The, the overwhelming pressure seems to be coming from
- 28:00this idea that we have accepted technological determinism,
- 28:05as a kind of inevitable sign of progress.
- 28:09Whatever progress means, right?
- 28:11So we need to have more and more edtech
- 28:15because, technology is the future and all this kind of thing, right?
- 28:20We need to be integrating untested,
- 28:24longitudinally untested, edtech into our classrooms.
- 28:29Because in 20 years time, we're all going to be robots or whatever it might be.
- 28:33Right?
- 28:34We seem to have,
- 28:35and I come back to Jaron Lanier,
- 28:37we seem to have abdicated, our humanness, as as educators,
- 28:44we seem to have abdicated our humanness in this thing.
- 28:48All of a sudden, every class, there's a Kahoot.
- 28:52I'm sorry to name the competitors, but every class has a Kahoot!
- 28:56Or every class has an online quiz or something like that.
- 29:00But we haven't really stopped to think about as you,
- 29:04John, as a biologist, must have done the,
- 29:08cerebral rewiring
- 29:11the that that much interaction with technology
- 29:14is going to do to the average biological human brain.
- 29:19Yeah.
- 29:20But because we are so seduced by this idea
- 29:23of technological determinism, we're going along with it.
- 29:27And we educators ourselves are using
- 29:31large language learning models, to,
- 29:35plan classes or units of classes.
- 29:38Why on earth is any educator
- 29:41using a large language learning model to plan,
- 29:46a class or a series of classes?
- 29:49The usual argument is it saves time.
- 29:53Well, if you're wanting to save time from thinking
- 29:57about the planning of your classes, maybe you should,
- 30:02not be a teacher.
- 30:04I'm going to be quite Luddite and, you know,
- 30:08quite demanding about this, right?
- 30:12What a large language learning model
- 30:14or even an AI can't do is
- 30:17tell you what it's going to be like to experience
- 30:21the class that it is putting together for you.
- 30:24It can't tell you, what your possible experiences
- 30:29of running that unit of work in the classroom might be like,
- 30:35because only you as a human educator can know that.
- 30:39And so why aren't you constructing your class
- 30:45plans?
- 30:46Why aren't you constructing your own units of work?
- 30:49Because only you can see what the potential flaws, are going to be.
- 30:55It's why I talk about AI and large language learning models
- 30:59de-skilling teachers.
- 31:02Because part of, the the the skill,
- 31:06the art of teaching is not just the, the the 80 minutes
- 31:10or whatever of classroom interaction with students.
- 31:14It's the thinking and the planning of how that interaction is going to look over
- 31:19the course of that 40 minutes or 1 hour and 20 minutes or whatever it is now,
- 31:26does that mean that we should, strive to prohibit students
- 31:31from using AI or large language learning models?
- 31:35Well, too late that horses already bolted right?
- 31:39I think we spend a lot of time wastefully
- 31:43also trying to encourage students,
- 31:46the average 17 year old,
- 31:49to ethically cite
- 31:52AI use in their assignments and whatever.
- 31:56That's never going to happen either, because they just don't, right?
- 31:59They try to get away with it.
- 32:01The more conscientious ones will.
- 32:04But most of the time, in my experience, they don't.
- 32:08And I suspect
- 32:10most educators like you and I
- 32:14and those listening to this
- 32:17know that students aren't going to bother doing that because they're probably going
- 32:21to get away with not having to do it, but they're still going to use AI.
- 32:26So it then becomes, when it comes to critically thinking
- 32:30about the effects of AI on human beings
- 32:35and human relationships, helping them to develop the skills
- 32:39to critically assess what it is pumping out to them.
- 32:44And how and why becomes important.
- 32:47I was reading an article this morning in, the British Guardian newspaper
- 32:53about how increasingly aid agencies
- 32:57are turning to AI generated, photographs
- 33:02to use, in their campaigns.
- 33:06And on the one hand, the argument runs that they're concerned
- 33:11about the ethics of using photographs of, of real human beings
- 33:17in conditions of poverty or suffering and so on.
- 33:21And therefore, in order to obviate that negative
- 33:25portrayal of people who are suffering, they're turning to AI.
- 33:31But the algorithms generating,
- 33:35what some people have called, poverty
- 33:38porn photographs raises a whole set of issues.
- 33:43Now, students and educators are still going to come across those images.
- 33:47We're still going to use them in our classrooms.
- 33:53But what's
- 33:54important is not the product but the process.
- 33:58And when it comes to thinking about how we can use AI in the classroom
- 34:04because we inevitably have to,
- 34:06I think we should be focusing more on the process and not the product.
- 34:10And I think sometimes we're focusing more on the product
- 34:14rather than the process.
- 34:17Becoming a better
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- 34:42Simply navigate to today's episode and click Free Summary
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- 34:58There's a lot to unpack and I think if I'm
- 35:01looking at the different pieces there, I think
- 35:05the first part where you're talking about like teachers
- 35:07using AI,
- 35:10I think there's a few pieces there that I think are interesting
- 35:13in what I agree most with you is like the human heart
- 35:18is the most important part, and I think AI without humans
- 35:23is not good in a classroom.
- 35:26Like I think that it's it's super problematic.
- 35:30I agree, I it's never going to understand,
- 35:33the nuance about what creates a great learning experience for the students.
- 35:39When I think about maybe what could be a good
- 35:42example is when it's what's the point
- 35:46just to save time, it's like,
- 35:47well, then what are you going to spend that time on instead?
- 35:51Is it
- 35:52I'm going to take like for example, with Kognity I mean, David,
- 35:55you were one of the authors, one of the Kognity resources
- 35:58you've poured so much time and energy into thinking
- 36:02of really great examples,
- 36:05in the resources, really great learning experience is there
- 36:09if you're then developing lesson plans using AI, but starting with
- 36:16content that someone like you
- 36:18or any of our other authors created, and then you say like,
- 36:23okay, let's tailor this to my classroom and you make your whole prompt.
- 36:27And then it's like, great.
- 36:28I've now used like examples coming from experts.
- 36:33I've found a process that speeds that up for me.
- 36:37And then I review it as a teacher, and I make changes
- 36:42based on what I know will resonate with my class.
- 36:46I think that's where it actually can become something positive,
- 36:51and I think that's where it actually can become meaningful,
- 36:55a meaningful process that's not just dumbing things down,
- 36:59but it's speeding things up to then if you're spending that time
- 37:03building out your lessons more, giving more,
- 37:08thoughtful and productive and constructive feedback
- 37:11on your marking, things like that, then I see it as positive.
- 37:16So I think that's just one one piece that I think is an important distinction,
- 37:21where is it,
- 37:23okay, I use AI, therefore I'm a bad teacher because now I'm lazy
- 37:27if you're not doing anything with that time.
- 37:30Otherwise, if you're not thoughtfully
- 37:32considering the way that you develop your classes, it's not great.
- 37:35But if you're using it in a constructive way, I do think there is
- 37:40a positive thing that could then transfer over to your students.
- 37:43Then you can show to your students that there are ways
- 37:46that we're not going to hide in the sand from AI, but,
- 37:51the process,
- 37:52like you said, is so important to get it right
- 37:55and to keep the human parts in it as well.
- 37:59Yes. I mean, one of the things that,
- 38:02I mean aside from hallucinations and all of that stuff, right,
- 38:07one of the things which is true about large language learning models
- 38:11is that they never make mistakes apart from hallucinations, right?
- 38:15They invent stuff which never happened, but more or less,
- 38:20the output from ChatGPT or some such is
- 38:24is is rarely irrational and it's rarely wrong.
- 38:29It rarely makes mistakes.
- 38:31But what human being can be
- 38:34said to, do those things?
- 38:37I mean, human beings make mistakes all the time.
- 38:40Sometimes I give really boring, terrible lessons.
- 38:45And sometimes, students
- 38:47don't do what I have programed them to do.
- 38:50And this is part of, the the experience of education, right?
- 38:56I mean, not every lesson can be a zinger, and not every learning,
- 39:00teaching and learning experience can be in a wow, eureka moment.
- 39:07But again, it's about process, not product.
- 39:09Right?
- 39:11One of the resources that that,
- 39:14I developed when we worked together ages ago, for Kognity,
- 39:21was a,
- 39:22a classroom activity called Poker Face and,
- 39:26as briefly as possible.
- 39:28Basically, it's a card game, and it involves three rounds of playing cards.
- 39:34And the students have to try and guess the hidden rule.
- 39:39I remember this because I had to get like, because it was like,
- 39:42okay, we're technically producing something that's talking about gambling.
- 39:45Are we allowed to do I don't know, let's just go.
- 39:49Sorry. Continue.
- 39:50I just remembered this.
- 39:53So, there are three rounds of the game, as it were, and the students
- 39:58in small groups have to try and guess what the hidden rule is
- 40:02that I'm using to either accept or reject their cards.
- 40:06And, the kind of trick is this, right?
- 40:09In the first two rounds, the the hidden rule is based
- 40:13on the cards themselves, either the numbers or the colors
- 40:17or the sweets, or something like that of a standard deck of playing cards.
- 40:22But the in the third round,
- 40:25it's not based on anything to do with the cards themselves.
- 40:29You know, teachers can invent a stupid rule like I will only accept cards,
- 40:34handed by a male student with the right hand who is smiling.
- 40:40Because the the
- 40:40students have become so programed to think that the the hidden rule
- 40:45must be to do with the data contained in the cards,
- 40:49the rug is pulled out from under them.
- 40:52With that third game.
- 40:53Now, you couldn't possibly,
- 40:57ask ChatGPT
- 40:59to predict what the hidden rule is going to be,
- 41:03and you couldn't possibly, ask it halfway through the game.
- 41:07What do you think the third rule is going to be?
- 41:12But watching students and being with students
- 41:16while that that rug is pulled out from under them
- 41:19and hearing the recriminations and hearing the,
- 41:24you know, the problems that they had with with my structuring of the game
- 41:28and listening to the winds and the moans and the it's not fair,
- 41:33Mr.. David. Now I don't have lunch money. Mr. David.
- 41:38That's right.
- 41:39Catching. Thank you very much.
- 41:41That can that cannot be planned by,
- 41:45an artificial intelligence and it can't be designed,
- 41:50because that that on the ground,
- 41:52being with the students is not possibly something that can be designed,
- 41:59by any other program than a human program, I think.
- 42:03What I actually like about that game,
- 42:05and one of the things you mentioned before, I was
- 42:07I really want to get in on that is it reminded me of Jennifer's episode.
- 42:10You were just talking about Jennifer's episode with economics.
- 42:12And I think one of the key things
- 42:13that really struck me with that was the assumptions we make.
- 42:17And in her episode, it was all about, you know,
- 42:18we assume that the market is kind of everything.
- 42:20And what you were just talking about a moment ago was this idea of, we're
- 42:24almost assuming that we have to follow
- 42:27this, this techification of of life.
- 42:30We have to we have to say, well, we are going to become integrated with AI.
- 42:34We must do these things, and we have to follow this assessment model.
- 42:38And it almost prevents us from really thinking about it like a system like.
- 42:42And as you're talking about here, education itself, these can be things
- 42:45that can be put into education to help assist this along the way.
- 42:50But we have to constantly be questioning whatever assumptions we might be making.
- 42:54And, you know, like what you just mentioned, Courtney,
- 42:56I agree with a lot of that.
- 42:57You know, you can
- 42:58you can use these tools that can help to make things more efficient.
- 43:02It's what we're doing with the rest of our time that I think really matters.
- 43:05And I know, you know, just watching kind of the screen here.
- 43:08David, I know you were applauding that as well.
- 43:09That idea of like, you are freeing up time and what are you using that time for?
- 43:14And I think critically, we've really got to get back to
- 43:17what are the assumptions we're making, what are the assumptions
- 43:19we're not totally aware of that we think are true,
- 43:22but we're not really asking that fundamental question.
- 43:24As we unpacked in your first episode, how do I know?
- 43:26How do I know that this is the most important thing that's moving us forward?
- 43:30How do I know
- 43:31that this assessment model or whatever I'm doing is going to determine
- 43:35if I'm going to be a positive contributor to society or something like that?
- 43:38And so I think, yes, use the models or use the things to kind of free up your time.
- 43:43I mean, they're effectively a teaching resource.
- 43:45But at the same time, think about what do we actually use
- 43:47with that extra time that might be there?
- 43:49And are we developing the critical thinking?
- 43:51Are we developing the inquiry as it sounds like this,
- 43:53you know, this poker face game really does.
- 43:55Right? Develops our inquiry idea of
- 43:57why did that go the way it did? And I thought it was going this way.
- 44:00Well, let's unpack that. Why did you think it was going that way?
- 44:02And how can we apply that to our own lives right now?
- 44:06Why do we think that education or knowledge or assessments for that
- 44:10matter, are going to stop being useful?
- 44:12Because now there's this tool that exists.
- 44:15So I think it kind of leads us on to maybe one of the last things
- 44:18I want to kind of bring up, or that we could talk about
- 44:20in this particular episode.
- 44:21And, and that's just this idea of how are we staying human
- 44:25in that lions landscape, in the modern education?
- 44:27How are we going to evolve as a society in the age of AI?
- 44:32What sort of assumptions do we need to,
- 44:34you know, question and pull the rug out from under
- 44:38so that we can have a better idea of what we are actually learning,
- 44:41what we're trying to develop, young people to be contributors for.
- 44:45I think
- 44:46my answer to that is contained in your question, John.
- 44:49And again, we come back to the podcast that inspired me with Jennifer.
- 44:54Right? And, and also,
- 44:57Wakanye Hoffman's podcast,
- 44:59which was, also inspiring to me and which I've used in the classroom.
- 45:06I created a TOK
- 45:08task for my students, with that podcast.
- 45:12So this is where most of the hits feel podcasts are coming from.
- 45:15I'm using in the classroom.
- 45:19The questioning
- 45:20of assumptions in the The Poker Face game.
- 45:24There were a few rules, but there wasn't a rule about collaboration.
- 45:29And so because I divided the students into groups, they assumed
- 45:33that the whole thing was competitive and therefore they had to compete
- 45:37with each other and hide information from each other.
- 45:41But there was no rule saying that they couldn't just combine their resources.
- 45:47Had they done so, the game would have been over in two seconds flat.
- 45:51Right?
- 45:52But the assumption there,
- 45:54was that that we have to be competitive.
- 45:58The assumption behind the use of edtech
- 46:01is that it helps to give our students an edge.
- 46:06They assumption behind using large language learning models
- 46:11to give you ideas for an essay,
- 46:14which you then take and rewrite in your own words.
- 46:18The assumption is that it gives you an edge in some way.
- 46:22The idea of asking, a large language learning model essentially
- 46:27John Sayles Chinese room, the assumption is that,
- 46:32it can
- 46:32give you an edge in this meritocratic society that we have created in this,
- 46:39technologically deterministic landscape that we're currently inhabiting.
- 46:46But one of the assumptions that we are permitted to stop and question
- 46:50fundamentally is why on earth are we learning any of this stuff?
- 46:55Why are we acquiring knowledge in economics
- 46:59or in mathematics or business management or psychology or whatever it might be?
- 47:04Why are we why are we doing this when there's no quintessential
- 47:09need for that knowledge to be acquired?
- 47:14And by, again, by siphoning off
- 47:19or siloing out subjects into different,
- 47:24areas of knowledge, we're discouraging,
- 47:28the very things that the IB was set up to, to, foster
- 47:32and to promote in the first place, the idea of transdisciplinarity,
- 47:37the idea of student creativity and student agency. And
- 47:44when it comes to therefore saving time.
- 47:48And why are we using certain things in order to save ourselves time?
- 47:53Well, the time that we save needs to be spent
- 47:56on thinking about those things, not how can I become a better
- 48:00educator of whatever it might be, computer science or chemistry?
- 48:06But how can I become a better educator
- 48:09of young adults, of 15 to 17 year olds,
- 48:14who are going to shortly be,
- 48:16inhabiting a world that you and I when we were young?
- 48:20Well, I, when I was younger, because you're both still spring chickens.
- 48:25I could never, have imagined.
- 48:29And so we are at the same
- 48:32time, nonetheless driven by,
- 48:36wider society, by parental expectation, by,
- 48:40peer pressure from our colleagues,
- 48:43to, believe
- 48:46that the be all and end all of our task
- 48:49is to get students better and better grades.
- 48:53But by and large, students get into the universities and colleges
- 48:57that they want to get into, irrespective of whether my kids all get a seven
- 49:02or a six or an A or a B,
- 49:05they still managed to get into those who want to go to university,
- 49:10still managed to get into good universities.
- 49:14So why are we spending time trying to become better
- 49:19teachers of increasingly, niche, narrow
- 49:23subjects rather than, questioning
- 49:27the very assumptions of those subjects and their place in society?
- 49:33I think Jennifer mentioned, the Indian, thinker
- 49:37and economist Amartya Sen and his idea of human flourishing.
- 49:43Why are we not spending that freed up time
- 49:47thinking about how better, as educators
- 49:50we can promote human flourishing?
- 49:53The American philosopher Martin Nussbaum calls it creating capabilities.
- 49:59Why are we not spending more time as educators thinking about that?
- 50:05Well, we know why.
- 50:07Because the structural tensions
- 50:10in this, endeavor
- 50:13of education that we're all involved in
- 50:16pushes more and more to not think about that stuff
- 50:21and to think about grades and predicted grades.
- 50:26And if it moves, give it a mark.
- 50:29You want to go to the bathroom?
- 50:31Depending on how long you take, I'm going to give you 40% or whatever.
- 50:36And, such is the pressure from the top, from universities
- 50:41into the diploma or A-levels or whatever it might be,
- 50:46that that it rolls downwards.
- 50:49We then put as diploma teachers pressure on MYP colleagues
- 50:54and students to prepare themselves for the diploma that,
- 51:00goes down into the PYP and, and all of a sudden we've got six
- 51:04year olds with ridiculously large backpacks and three devices,
- 51:09thinking that unless they can, get into Harvard
- 51:14for their MBA, their life will have become meaningless.
- 51:18It's all based on these, these assumptions.
- 51:21And I think if we're not going to model how to think very critically about
- 51:25why are we learning and effectively ask that question that you just said,
- 51:28you know, if we are going to free up this amount of space,
- 51:31why would we want to go ahead and become even better at this particular
- 51:34niche thing?
- 51:34Why not?
- 51:35Let's just reevaluate.
- 51:36Why are we education in the first place?
- 51:38You know, that's kind of the question at the top of the show.
- 51:40And I think one that we all need to consciously come back to as educators.
- 51:43What's the point of this whole thing?
- 51:44What are we really trying to do here?
- 51:46And I think one, if as educators, we do that more,
- 51:50it will naturally show up in our lessons as well.
- 51:52And I think that will naturally lead students to start asking
- 51:55those questions of like, well, why university do I do I need this one?
- 51:59Do I have to go to that particular one
- 52:01just because that's the one I've heard of multiple times?
- 52:04I think the more we model it,
- 52:05the more we will allow students to think more critically,
- 52:07will allow them to be more inquiring about and to really ask those deeper questions
- 52:11about stuff instead of just feeling like, you know, they're Pac-Man out there,
- 52:15just going through getting as many grades as they can
- 52:16so they can get on to the next, you know, university thing.
- 52:19No, let's remember, there's a point and a meaning behind
- 52:23this education that we're doing.
- 52:24We're creating meaning out of a meaningless world.
- 52:26To use what you've paraphrased earlier.
- 52:28And I think when we really dive deeper into that
- 52:32and we don't allow ourselves to just be thrown into follow
- 52:36the assessment model, follow this thing so that we can get specific grades.
- 52:39You are just there to facilitate and pour knowledge into this vessel
- 52:44that needs to spit it back out later on, but rather dive deeper into the meaning
- 52:48we're trying to create.
- 52:49I think then we have the potential to create a really bright future.
- 52:53We just have to be aware that if we don't think about it all the time,
- 52:58then we could very easily fall,
- 52:59you know, just just succumb to the path of least resistance, say, yep, use AI,
- 53:03beat the assessment model, do well, go on to that university, whatever it is,
- 53:07and we miss out the whole human experience of the real world
- 53:11that we're preparing them for.
- 53:12Or rather, the real world that they are experiencing with us.
- 53:17Today's KogTip
- 53:18is from Julius from Red Cross Nordic.
- 53:22Julius says, encourage your students to use Kognity’s Practice section.
- 53:26Your students have a great platform where they can put their knowledge and skills
- 53:29to practice, get automatic feedback and compare their solutions.
- 53:33And as teachers, we can get feedback on areas
- 53:36where the class has strengths and weaknesses.
- 53:39Thanks, Julius.
- 53:42No, I agree because I mean, if we're talking
- 53:44about preparing for the real world, like the real world has AI and I mean, I,
- 53:48I've literally been in, in a job interview where I could tell
- 53:51somebody was just like reading notes off of something else.
- 53:54And it's like, no, I want the human answer.
- 53:57So, I mean, it's going to permeate into every part of the real world after school.
- 54:04So I think the technological determinism, I hear that,
- 54:07but then I also think it's like, well, while I would love to have no technology
- 54:13in a lot of situations in my own daughter's life, for example,
- 54:17it's like you want to be like, great,
- 54:18I want you to basically live in the woods for the first ten years of your life.
- 54:23But then if we're thinking about it in a school context, it's like,
- 54:27at what point is it a disservice
- 54:29to not make sure that students can think critically about technology?
- 54:33And part of that does mean interacting with it as well, and interacting with
- 54:38good technology and being able to answer, why do I use it this way?
- 54:43What's problematic about using it in incorrect ways?
- 54:47And how do we do this in a meaningful way, where I am still learning,
- 54:51not just using a forklift in the in the gym
- 54:55and actually being able to be,
- 54:59constructive contributor and have original thoughts.
- 55:02And why is that? Why does that matter?
- 55:04I think that's an essential part of also preparing for the real world.
- 55:09I, I agree with you, fundamentally Courtney and not, but,
- 55:14I, I find the, the kind of edtech,
- 55:19playground.
- 55:21The education has become a little bit, concerning, right?
- 55:26Years and years ago,
- 55:28before I lost my hand-eye coordination, I used to play a lot of Xbox.
- 55:32Right?
- 55:33And, around the time that I was, killing
- 55:36strange alien beings with plasma rifles and stuff, I read a book
- 55:40by a guy called Steven Johnson called Everything Bad Is Good for You.
- 55:45And, in that book, he argued that
- 55:49the kind of moral panic,
- 55:52over violent video games and so on and so forth, was misplaced
- 55:58because the, the skills that that the young people and,
- 56:02and older people like myself were acquiring and putting into play
- 56:08by engaging with such formats
- 56:11were actually, very, very,
- 56:15for want of a better word, educational.
- 56:17Right?
- 56:18Not just, sort of motor skills, but, but the conceptual understanding that,
- 56:23that you need in order to play Minecraft or Halo
- 56:27or even a GTA or something like that are phenomenal.
- 56:32And that's what he was arguing.
- 56:35All well and good.
- 56:36Now, the problem with AI in the educational setting is that
- 56:42it hasn't been around for long enough for there to be any longitudinal studies
- 56:48about whatever it's either positive
- 56:52or negative effects might be.
- 56:55And in no other walk of life
- 56:58would we accept that as being legitimate.
- 57:03Right?
- 57:04Except when it comes to technology
- 57:06in education, it's like the Wild West.
- 57:09We're taking anything that the tech pros throw at us,
- 57:14and we're just running with it in the classroom.
- 57:17Now, I read an analogy a couple of days ago.
- 57:20If you walked into a cafe,
- 57:23and a guy said to, you know, here I've got some great drugs
- 57:27which are guaranteed to kill whatever you would insist, quite rightly,
- 57:31on saying the, the, the peer reviewed,
- 57:35publication, talking about the merits and demerits
- 57:39of this drug, from, The Lancet or something.
- 57:43But when it comes to technology in education,
- 57:46we've already thrown our hands up and said, yeah, give it to us.
- 57:50We will experiment with young people using this stuff.
- 57:55And it's like we switched off our critical faculties.
- 57:58There we go.
- 57:59We switched off the critical faculties,
- 58:02which normally would lead us to
- 58:06be initially skeptical about
- 58:10accepting into educational settings,
- 58:16something which claims to be positive for education,
- 58:21until such time as the results have come in.
- 58:26Except when it comes to edtech.
- 58:28It's like bang it in the classroom.
- 58:30And let's experiment on young people with it.
- 58:34And then in 40 years, we'll see what mush their brains have become,
- 58:39by which time it will be too late.
- 58:42Thinking critically about technology,
- 58:47at secondary and middle school,
- 58:50even primary education, yes, is necessary,
- 58:54but engaging with it in order to think critically about it
- 58:59isn't necessarily,
- 59:03hell, I'm going to repeat the word “necessary”,
- 59:05isn't necessarily necessary.
- 59:08We can think critically about it sociologically,
- 59:12societally and so on and so forth.
- 59:15But until the results are in, in terms of what it actually does
- 59:19to the human brain, I think we need to hold fire a little bit.
- 59:23It reminds me, actually, of the episode we did with Gareth,
- 59:27and he was talking about when you speak with,
- 59:29with edtech providers, one of the first things he does
- 59:31is, you know, what cognitive principles is this thing founded on?
- 59:33And I know, you know, Courtney and stuff like Kognity does,
- 59:37there's a ton of effort and research going into why does this thing work here
- 59:42and why are we promoting it the way we are?
- 59:44Well, it's based on specific cognitive strategies and
- 59:47and things that we know about how we can develop that cognition
- 59:49and metacognition in young people.
- 59:51And so I agree with you to that extent, David.
- 59:53I think the idea of like, let's not just grab the VR
- 59:57goggles or grab whatever it might be and run with it because it seems fun.
- 1:00:01Let's recognize there is a tool here, but we need to evaluate its usefulness.
- 1:00:06And yeah, we may not have the empirical studies
- 1:00:10yet. I think it's still
- 1:00:11important we ask the question, why was this created the way it was?
- 1:00:14Why have you created this edtech thing like this?
- 1:00:17What is what is that based on?
- 1:00:19What sort of theories informed this?
- 1:00:21And that might get us again, it's that critical thinking element.
- 1:00:26It's not just accepting it as the thing, it's asking the question why?
- 1:00:29And I think we need to model it.
- 1:00:32We need to see our young people doing that as well.
- 1:00:34And yeah, I think in everything that we do as educators,
- 1:00:37when we're with our young people, where
- 1:00:38we're role modeling that not just pouring in the actual knowledge itself.
- 1:00:42So hopefully that will then bring out,
- 1:00:45more of that critical thinking from young people as well.
- 1:00:47Now, I say that and criticism myself, knowing that hope is not a strategy,
- 1:00:51but can be useful nonetheless.
- 1:00:53Yeah.
- 1:00:54No, I, I definitely agree, and I see I really do empathize with the point
- 1:00:58when I really think, of course, it's so important to make sure
- 1:01:02that you're not just throwing random edtech at students.
- 1:01:08That is
- 1:01:08so critical, as we've talked about in a lot of episodes of like,
- 1:01:11how do you know what a good tool is or not?
- 1:01:14And I think that John had a really good point of like,
- 1:01:17are there fundamental learning principles behind it?
- 1:01:20Like, I know at Kognity,
- 1:01:22it's something that I, I wouldn't be able to stand behind
- 1:01:25working in a company that was throwing random tech at students.
- 1:01:30There's a reason why AI has been out for quite a bit of time.
- 1:01:34We haven't released anything yet.
- 1:01:36It's not because
- 1:01:37we don't care.
- 1:01:38It's because we want to do everything thoughtfully.
- 1:01:40And I think that it's really important on the edtech provider side, of course.
- 1:01:44But also you were talking about like de-skilling of teachers.
- 1:01:48I think one really important skill of teachers is also to be able
- 1:01:51to evaluate the tools that they bring into their classroom.
- 1:01:55Teachers got really good at evaluating textbooks
- 1:01:57because they've been doing it for a long time.
- 1:02:00It's they're pretty confident in deciding which ones are good or not,
- 1:02:04even if they're not peer reviewed at all.
- 1:02:07They're just released.
- 1:02:08And, you know,
- 1:02:09there are quality controls and things like that, just like edtech tools.
- 1:02:13But I think that it is down to the teacher to look at a textbook
- 1:02:18and make sure it's not just pure
- 1:02:21propaganda or a horrible, not resourced,
- 1:02:25not referenced text.
- 1:02:28So I think like anything, it is
- 1:02:29also, there's a huge responsibility for a teacher to have control over
- 1:02:33what goes into their classroom and feel like they can stand behind that.
- 1:02:37Yeah.
- 1:02:37Which actually brings us back to that idea of using AI
- 1:02:40to plan your lessons and that sort of thing as well. Right?
- 1:02:42What are we drawing this from?
- 1:02:43And am I asking critical questions about why am I choosing this way and all that?
- 1:02:47So boy, what a what a fruitful conversation this has been, David.
- 1:02:51I mean, we've gone into so many different aspects here and I think
- 1:02:55had a really enjoyable conversation and really thoughtful conversation.
- 1:02:57I think for me as an educator, I'm definitely walking away from this inspired
- 1:03:01with wanting to make sure I ask myself that question all the time,
- 1:03:05why am I doing this thing that I'm doing in my classroom?
- 1:03:07And why do I think that's going to be a useful endeavor for young people?
- 1:03:12And how am I contributing to them becoming a positive member of society?
- 1:03:15And I think if if I were to take anything from all the different things
- 1:03:18and I think there's a lot I want to go back and listen to,
- 1:03:20but if I were to take anything from this, it would be definitely that.
- 1:03:22Just continue to ask your question, why am I doing this thing with students
- 1:03:26right now?
- 1:03:27Precisely.
- 1:03:28And I think, at the risk of of repeating myself, it reminds me
- 1:03:33of one part of the conversation we had with our previous, podcast meeting.
- 1:03:39The question is, how do you know? Right?
- 1:03:41How do you know what you claim to know? You,
- 1:03:45using this piece of, technology.
- 1:03:50Do you have a way in which
- 1:03:52to properly assess,
- 1:03:55the effectiveness of it?
- 1:03:59When you ask a teacher, why are you doing this?
- 1:04:03If the first thing that comes out of their mouth is
- 1:04:06because it will help them to get a better grade,
- 1:04:09then you clearly know they haven't thought about,
- 1:04:12the broader, overarching question of
- 1:04:16of why you're doing anything at all in education.
- 1:04:19Yeah.
- 1:04:20If you're using this piece of edtech or whatever, it might be,
- 1:04:23this piece of technology, because it's,
- 1:04:27more effective in transmitting,
- 1:04:30some piece of knowledge, then you clearly hadn't thought about why you're using it.
- 1:04:35Powerful stuff.
- 1:04:36David, it's such a pleasure to to speak with you again.
- 1:04:38And, thanks so much for taking the time to come back and chat with us once more.
- 1:04:42It's really, genuinely a pleasure, for for me and I think for Courtney as well,
- 1:04:46just to get a chance to chat with you and and talk about these things as well.
- 1:04:48So I really, really appreciate you taking the time. I enjoyed it.
- 1:04:51Thank you so much for, inviting me yet again.
- 1:04:55I mean, I know that Kognity Unplugged
- 1:04:58podcast series, are quite young,
- 1:05:02but I'm still really proud of the fact that I'm the only person
- 1:05:06to have been invited back.
- 1:05:07I don't I don't quite know why.
- 1:05:10And I'm sure after today will never happen again.
- 1:05:13But I've really enjoyed it.
- 1:05:14You forced me to think about,
- 1:05:17things that we
- 1:05:18don't as educators often think about, right?
- 1:05:22We we we're quite unique,
- 1:05:25in our profession at being very good, as we said before,
- 1:05:29talking about the minutia of what we teach.
- 1:05:34But stepping outside of that and thinking about the purpose of education
- 1:05:39in wider society is something that we're we're either reluctant to do
- 1:05:44or often times not very good at or confident about doing it.
- 1:05:49And so you've inspired me today to, to think about that
- 1:05:53and to step outside of the confines of my own
- 1:05:57subject specialist knowledge.
- 1:05:59I hope it's been,
- 1:06:02useful and interesting.
- 1:06:03And rather than rather than just,
- 1:06:06spoon of the globe on the stick, spouting off
- 1:06:08a few opinions about things. No, this has been great.
- 1:06:12And, yeah, we've invited you back many times.
- 1:06:14I've worked with you for seven years, maybe even more now.
- 1:06:18And, I don't think you're,
- 1:06:20I don't think you're going anywhere, so thank you.
- 1:06:22Thanks for joining.
- 1:06:24And, yeah, great to talk to you again.
- 1:06:26My absolute pleasure.
- 1:06:27Thank you so much, Courtney. Thank you, John.
- 1:06:30IB Unplugged is a Kognity podcast hosted by John Patton
- 1:06:33and Courtney Marlene and produced by Katilina Gaffney.
- 1:06:36Be sure to subscribe or follow and share with your fellow IB educators.
- 1:06:40If you'd like to submit a topic, request or a question, please do so on
- 1:06:44kognity.com/ibunplugged.
- 1:06:46Let's keep the conversation going
- 1:06:48and support each other in teaching with confidence, creativity and joy.
- 1:06:52See you next time.