Dan and Ray welcome Graham Brown Martin, a seasoned expert in education technology, for a very(!) thought-provoking conversation about navigating education in the rapidly evolving age of artificial intelligence.

In this episode:

• Discover Graham's journey through multiple technological revolutions—from early mainframes and pioneering laser-disc technology to modern-day AI.

• Hear stories from Graham's past, including his role in bringing together provocative figures like Katherine Birbalsingh and Malcolm McLaren to challenge the status quo in education.

• Reflect on the historical context of industrial revolutions and their ongoing influence on our current educational systems.

• Understand why Graham argues that education is still stuck in outdated 19th-century practices and how the pandemic reinforced rather than changed this dynamic.

• Explore why Graham believes relational skills, creativity, empathy, and human collaboration will define education and employment in the fifth industrial revolution.

• Graham's call to action? Shifting educational and economic models to prioritise human-centric skills and societal value.

Find out more about Graham on his website: GrahamBrownMartin.com

Follow Graham on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahambrownmartin/ 

In this episode Dan and Ray sit down with Dr. Nici (Nikki) Sweaney—founder of “AI Her Way,” gender equality advocate, and globally recognized AI consultant. After a fascinating career journey from butterfly ecology to statistics to AI, Nici now helps schools and organizations create ethical, responsible, and effective AI strategies. She shares her insights on responsible AI adoption, gender equity, bias, and how schools can proactively plan for an AI-driven future.

Follow Nici on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-nici-sweaney/ 

Nici's Ai Her Way website  Book in a discovery call with Nici Make an Inquiry about PD for your school: https://www.aiherway.com.au/professional-development  Book Nici as a speaker https://www.aiherway.com.au/speaking-engagements

Nici's will be speaking at lots of events in March, if you'd like to hear more, and ask your own questions!

March 5 - Australian Retirement Trust live podcast recording, Brisbane March 6 - Canon, online event for IWD March 6 - National Press Club, "Women in Media Canberra Networking Night: Democracy under threat? Unpacking mis/disinformation in Australia" Canberra March 7 - Powerful Steps, IWD Event, 'Empowering Women, Changing Lives', Sydney March 13 - Hoyts, IWD Event, Advancing Women in the AI Era, Sydney March 17 - Women in Data and Digital (Australian Public Service), Online event for IWD March 25 - ARIA's Innovator Conference, Sydney March 27 - Learning Environments Australia Conference, "Architecting Future Learning Environments with AI", Sydney

Key Topics & Takeaways

Nici’s Career Path: Ecology, Academia & AI

• How studying butterfly behavior and coding in R sparked her interest in data and algorithms.
• Transition from 17 years in academia to AI consulting, focusing on statistics, data analytics, and ethical tech.

The ‘Aha’ Moment with ChatGPT

• Discovering ChatGPT in late 2022 and realizing its massive potential for education—and society at large.
• Balancing excitement and existential questions (“What is the point of humanity?”) when first encountering generative AI.

Bias, Equity & Ethical AI

• How AI systems inherit the biases found in the internet’s data—and why that’s problematic for underrepresented groups.
• Why women’s perspectives (and other minority voices) are crucial in AI development and how current data sets often perpetuate stereotypes.\
• Nici's passion for closing the AI gender gap and practical steps schools can take.

Building AI Literacy & Culture in Schools

• The importance of having a written guideline (rather than a static policy) for AI use in schools.
• How to engage teachers and staff: start with small wins—solving real pain points such as lesson planning or admin tasks.
• Creating a “community of practice” so that staff share prompts, workflows, and best practices.

Parent and Community Involvement

• Addressing misconceptions and fears by informing families about AI’s capabilities, risks, and benefits.
• Why schools must proactively explain why they’re teaching AI skills—and how they're doing so responsibly.

Rethinking Assessment & Student Skills

• Moving beyond “fact recall” to deeper inquiry, collaboration, ethical reflection, and higher-order thinking.
• Teaching students how AI works (at a conceptual level) so they can use it responsibly and critically.
• Encouraging leadership traits like empathy, diversity of thought, and clear communication—assets for both human collaboration and AI prompting.

Global Perspectives & Data Sovereignty

• The challenges of relying on global tech giants for AI tools and data security.
• Understanding AI as a “private commodity,” not a universal public resource—what that means for Australian schools and beyond.

Practical Steps for School Leaders

• Survey staff to find out their AI familiarity, pain points, and training needs.
• Start with low-hanging fruit: use AI to streamline daily tasks, then build toward larger strategic workflows.
• Sustain momentum via ongoing PD, regular sharing sessions, and involving all stakeholders, including parents.

In this episode, Ray and Dan are joined by Danny Bielik, President of the Digital Education Council, to discuss the findings of a global AI faculty survey. With insights from 52 institutions across 28 countries, Danny shares how higher education faculty are adopting AI, the biggest concerns around academic integrity and assessment, and why AI literacy is still a challenge for many.

Key topics include: 🔹 The real impact of AI on teaching and learning 🔹 How universities are using AI for teaching materials and admin 🔹 The debate on AI and job security for faculty 🔹 Why assessment and academic integrity need a rethink 🔹 How institutions can benchmark their AI strategies

📌 Links & Resources: 📄 Download the Global AI Faculty Survey Report 🌍 Learn more about the Digital Education Council 🔗 Follow Danny Bielik on LinkedIn

Book Club Podcast?

Before we even got to the News and Research, this week we discussed the AI-related books we're currently reading:

Dan's reading:

• Where Good Ideas Come From, by Steven Johnson (TED Talk)
• Why Data Science Projects Fail, by Douglas Gray and Evan Shellshear (An interview with Evan)

Ray's reading 

• The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, by Kate Crawford (Wikipedia page)

News Links

Links to the reports and news we discuss in the episode:

OpenAI's new Education newsletter https://openaiforeducation.substack.com/

Ethan Mollick's new "AI in Education: Leveraging ChatGPT for Teaching" course on Coursera https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-ai-in-education-leveraging-chatgpt-for-teaching

World Economic Forum "Future of Jobs report" https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/infographics-94b6214b36/

Student expelled and deported because they were accused of using ChatGPT by their professor. So they're suing their professor https://www.fox9.com/video/1574324

Digital Education Council Global AI Faculty Survey 2025 https://www.digitaleducationcouncil.com/post/digital-education-council-global-ai-faculty-survey We'll discuss this report with one of the authors in next week's episode

UK government policy paper on "Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education" https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/generative-artificial-intelligence-in-education/generative-artificial-intelligence-ai-in-education

Year13 Case Study on AI use https://news.microsoft.com/en-au/2024/12/13/guiding-school-leavers-with-ai-support-year13s-mission-to-democratise-opportunities-for-young-people/

AI Use by industry employees - US, 2024 https://www.nber.org/papers/w32966

In the discussion of energy use by AI, Ray mentioned some stats from this research report: "The Carbon Emissions of Writing and Illustrating Are Lower for AI than for Humans"  https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2303/2303.06219.pdf

Research Papers

And finally, links to the research papers we discussed this week

ChatGPT and Its Educational Impact: Insights from a Software Development Competition https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.03779 

How to Align Large Language Models for Teaching English? Designing and Developing LLM based-Chatbot for Teaching English Conversation in EFL, Findings and Limitations https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.04987 

AI Meets the Classroom: When Does ChatGPT Harm Learning? https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.09047 

Are Large Language Models Good Essay Graders? https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.13120 

An Education Researcher's Guide to ChatGPT https://osf.io/spbz3 

A Step Towards Adaptive Online Learning: Exploring the Role of GPT as Virtual Teaching Assistants in Online Education https://osf.io/preprints/edarxiv/rw45b 

The AI Assessment Scale (AIAS) in action: A pilot implementation of GenAI-supported assessment https://ajet.org.au/index.php/AJET/article/view/9434 

This week we get to catch up with Katie Ford of Microsoft Australia, who tells us about the projects that have been happening in AI in Education around Australia, and shares some of the lessons learnt from the projects as well as what she is learning through her own research focus.

The examples Katie discusses are:

• Tasmania Department of Education: Collaborated with Microsoft to enhance their data estate and prepare for AI applications aimed at identifying vulnerable children during COVID, helping to reveal overlooked demographics and improve interventions.

• University of New South Wales (UNSW): Engaged in multiple initiatives including embedding AI intelligence into complex institutional systems and processes, and developing the Academic Success Monitor to predict and intervene early with students disengaging from education. This proactive outreach is personalised and has shown positive impacts on student success rates.

• South Australia Department of Education: Pioneered the use of generative AI in classrooms, equipping educators with AI tools to enhance teaching and learning, making it one of the first in the world to adopt such technology at this scale.

• New South Wales Department of Education: Implemented AI thoughtfully to support educators, focusing on significant time savings and improved experiences in the classroom, with a commitment to reducing teacher workloads by five hours weekly. NSWEduChat

• Brisbane Catholic Education: Conducted a successful pilot with Microsoft Copilot, saving educators an average of 9.3 hours per week, which led to a wider rollout across the board to boost productivity and support staff well-being.  Brisbane Catholic Education to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot to 12,500 educators and support staff, in largest rollout for K-12 globally - Microsoft Australia News Centre

• University of Sydney: Developed Cogniti to enable academics to control generative AI usage within their courses, facilitating the creation and monitoring of AI agents to enhance educational delivery and student monitoring.

• Torrens University: Used Azure OpenAI to overhaul their Learning Management System, addressing user experience feedback, enhancing accessibility, and saving both cost and labour significantly.

Of course, we get diverted off course along the way, with a mention of platypus spotting, and Ray's visceral hatred of automated supermarket tills gets ha mention

And we're back! After a relaxing summer holiday Down Under (the school year finishes late December and doesn't restart until after the end of January in Australia) we've made it back to the studio to talk again.

In this first episode of the 2025 'AI in Education' podcast, hosts Dan Bowen and Ray Fleming reflect on the major events and developments in AI during 2024. They discuss the importance of continuously addressing the adoption gap, the evolution of AI tools, and the pace of change in AI technology, exemplified by recent announcements like Project Stargate and DeepSeq.

The episode transitions to predictions for 2025, where they foresee the year being dominated by the rise of AI agents, increased research on AI's efficacy, and the exploration of AI's role in education. They also emphasised the need for ongoing experiments and adaptability in organisations to keep up with rapid advancements.

We look back on the highlights of 2024, and the mass of stories, challenges and inspirations we had throughout the year. And what a year - AI in education has been moving so fast we even invited two digital AI podcasters to take over half the episode. And, worryingly, they did an amazing job - listen for yourself...

We're going to take a break over the Australian school holidays, but then we'll be back with at the end of January 2025. If you miss us, then please go and give us a rating or review in Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and that'll encourage us to return with even more energy for 2025!

We mention far too many stories and episodes to list them all, but one thing we mentioned a few times are the top five episodes from 2024, which in chronological order are:

Assessment and Swiss Cheese - Phill Dawson - Episode 9 of Series 9

• https://aipodcast.education/assessment-and-swiss-cheese-phill-dawson-episode-9-of-series-9

From Burnout to Breakthrough: Amanda Bickerstaff on AI's Role in Education

• https://aipodcast.education/from-burnout-to-breakthrough-amanda-bickerstaff-on-ais-role-in-education 

Jason Lodge - Guiding Through Assessments

• https://aipodcast.education/jason-lodge-guiding-through-assessments 

University of Sydney and the future of assessment

• https://aipodcast.education/university-of-sydney-and-the-future-of-assessment 

Is AI the saviour of teaching? Leanne Cameron's perspective on AI across the teaching profession

• https://aipodcast.education/leanne-camerons-perspective-on-time-saving-for-the-teaching-professions 

A heap of news stories this week means we didn't cover any research at all!

AI isn’t a tool, it’s an environment by Josh Thorpe https://wonkhe.com/blogs/ai-isnt-a-tool-its-an-environment/ 

Australian Senate report into Adoption of AI https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Adopting_Artificial_Intelligence_AI/AdoptingAI/Report 

Ethan Mollick's course on Coursera: "AI in Education: Leveraging ChatGPT for Teaching" https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-ai-in-education-leveraging-chatgpt-for-teaching  I'll also recommend his book - Co-Intelligence - as a great Christmas gift for yourself or a friend

Open AI announced Open AI Pro @ $200/m https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-pro/  We like Ethan Mollick's example that showed what it could do - solving this problem and creating a working app in 15 minutes - see here: https://bsky.app/profile/emollick.bsky.social/post/3lcldsn2grk2z  

Microsoft Copilot with vision for consumers  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot/blog/2024/12/05/copilot-vision-now-in-preview-a-new-way-to-browse Demo example: https://youtu.be/H3-hHiITH_g 

Sora released https://openai.com/index/sora-is-here/ 

ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode finally gets visual context on the 6th day of OpenAI https://www.zdnet.com/article/chatgpts-advanced-voice-mode-finally-gets-visual-context-on-the-6th-day-of-openai/ 

Apple released iOS 18.2 with integrated AI https://www.zdnet.com/article/ios-18-2-rolls-out-to-iphones-try-these-6-new-ai-features-today/ 

Google Gemini 2.0 with real time speech and vision https://aistudio.google.com/live 

We're on Bluesky  https://bsky.app/profile/aiineducation.bsky.social 

"The Carbon Emissions of Writing and Illustrating Are Lower for AI than for Humans"  https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2303/2303.06219.pdf 

Microsoft's Zero-Water Solution for Data Centre Cooling https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/microsoft-unveils-zero-water-cooling-for-ai-data-centres 

This week's episode discussed the new AI toolkit for generative AI strategies from Australia's Higher Education regulator, TEQSA 

The full toolkit is available here: https://www.teqsa.gov.au/guides-resources/resources/corporate-publications/gen-ai-strategies-australian-higher-education-emerging-practice 

During the episode we referenced some of the podcasts when we'd had the chance to interview some of the people from The University of Sydney who were used as case studies in the toolkit, and here's the link to previous podcast episodes that might be helpful to go back to for more depth:

• The University of Sydney's Cogniti AI bot https://aipodcast.education/the-university-of-sydneys-cogniti-ai-bot 
• The University of Sydney's Two Lane approach to assessment https://aipodcast.education/university-of-sydney-and-the-future-of-assessment 

We'd also recommend listening to conversations with two leaders on post-AI assessment

• Jason Lodge at the University of Queensland  https://aipodcast.education/jason-lodge-guiding-through-assessments 
• Phill Dawson at the CRADLE centre at Deakin University  https://aipodcast.education/website/assessment-and-swiss-cheese-phill-dawson-episode-9-of-series-9 

Everybody or Nobody is using AI - News and ResearchSeries 10, Episode 8

We explore quite a lot of news related to AI in Education that arrived this week, which meant we didn't get to cover nearly as many academic research papers as we'd hoped. Oh well, there's still 4 episodes left this year to catch up 😊

News

Open AI released a course for teachers https://www.commonsense.org/education/training/chatgpt-k12-foundations

The AI Art Turing Test Overview: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-did-you-do-on-the-ai-art-turing Direct link to the AI Turing Test form

Avoiding the Discriminatory Use of Artificial Intelligence https://www.ed.gov/laws-and-policy/civil-rights-laws/avoiding-discriminatory-use-of-artificial-intelligence

Brisbane Catholic Education's announcement on "AI for everybody" https://www.bne.catholic.edu.au/news/Pages/Brisbane-Catholic-Education-making-significant-inroads-with-AI-enabled-teaching-and-learning-.aspx https://news.microsoft.com/en-au/features/brisbane-catholic-education-to-deploy-microsoft-365-copilot-to-12500-educators-and-support-staff-in-largest-rollout-for-k-12-globally/

New research from Google Workspace and The Harris Poll shows rising leaders are embracing AI to drive impact at work https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-research-from-google-workspace-and-the-harris-poll-shows-rising-leaders-are-embracing-ai-to-drive-impact-at-work-302314697.html

TEQSA Paper on GenAI Strategies for Higher Education https://www.teqsa.gov.au/guides-resources/resources/corporate-publications/gen-ai-strategies-australian-higher-education-emerging-practice 

Research

Unipa-GPT: Large Language Models for university-oriented QA in Italian https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.14246

Boosting Large Language Models with Socratic Method for Conversational Mathematics Teaching https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.17349

LessonPlanner: Assisting Novice Teachers to Prepare Pedagogy-Driven Lesson Plans with Large Language Models https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.01102

Automated Educational Question Generation at Different Bloom's Skill Levels using Large Language Models: Strategies and Evaluation https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.04394

Could ChatGPT get an Engineering Degree? Evaluating Higher Education Vulnerability to AI Assistants https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.11841