By Owen Henkel & Libby Hills
Join two former teachers - Libby Hills from the Jacobs Foundation and AI researcher Owen Henkel - for the Ed-Technical podcast series about AI in education. Each episode, Libby and Owen will ask ex
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The podcast currently has 22 episodes available.
In this episode, Libby and Owen are joined by Craig Barton, Head of Education at Eedi and host of the Mr Barton Maths and Tips for Teachers podcasts, along with Simon Woodhead, Director of Research at Eedi. Together, they explore the world of educational misconceptions—what they are, why they matter and how AI and data science can help tackle them.
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Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design
In this short, Libby and Owen discuss recent research from Anthropic looking at sycophancy – the tendency to agree with users – in large language models (LLMs), and key research from educational psychology about how important feedback is for learning. Libby and Owen connect the two papers and explore why sycophancy is especially a problem when it comes to using LLMs for educational purposes.
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Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design
In this short, Libby and Owen discuss automated lesson planning tools (after Owen stops talking about his Tim Walz crush). There’s now a growing number of lesson planning tools out there for teachers who are using AI: Khanmigo, Magic School, Diffit and Oak National Academy (who will soon release a lesson planning tool) to name a few. Libby and Owen cover what some of the automated tools do and what some of their features are. They share their thoughts about the value and benefits of the tools. They also do a quick primer on lesson plans and how they differ from other education materials for all the non-teachers who listen.
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Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design
In this short, Libby and Owen discuss a recent paper that has generated interest and discussion called ‘Generative AI Can Harm Learning’. The paper presents the findings from a thought-provoking study of nearly 1,000 students in Turkey. The study tested the effects of giving students access to two different versions of GPT-4 while studying math: one was essentially ChatGPT and the other was a version of GPT-4 that had been tailored for tutoring with a thin prompt wrapper – so it didn’t just give students the answer.
The main finding (that the title is based on) is that access to generic ChatGPT had a negative effect on students’ math test results, versus the control group who studied with no access to a chatbot. Not everyone agrees that the results justify the somewhat dramatic title, or that the title reflects the most interesting findings from the study. Listen in to see what Libby and Owen think.
The ‘Generative AI Can Harm Learning’ paper can be found here.
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Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design
This episode, Owen and Libby speak to Carmen Strigel, Senior Director of Education Technology at RTI, a non-profit global research organisation. Carmen has been the driving force behind a number of successful EdTech products built and used in low resource settings. Carmen tells Owen and Libby about Tangerine, data collection software used in more than 60 countries, and Loquat, a machine learning tool that provides feedback to teachers on their classroom talk.
This episode builds on earlier interviews this season about voice AI with Alyssa van Kamp from TeachFX and Peter Foltz from the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. Carmen tells Libby and Owen aboutvoice AI in low resource settings. They also explore how contextual factors, like different pedagogies and classroom settings, influence EdTech product design in low resource settings.
Carmen and Owen connect over their shared passion for assessment - watch this space for the ‘Formative Assessment Fanboy’ t-shirts proposed in the episode.
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Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design
In our second short episode of the season, Owen and Libby chat about the recently released results of a US poll (conducted on behalf of Walton Family Foundation and Renaissance Philanthropy) looking at the views of teachers, parents, and students on AI chatbots. There were some surprising findings: more than 8 in 10 participants think technology in education has had a positive impact, and parents want to see AI chatbots used more in their child’s education. Listen in to hear more highlights from the poll.
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Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design
In this episode of Ed-Technical, Owen and Libby speak with Becky Allen, co-founder of Teacher Tapp, a survey tool that polls a representative sample of teachers about what's happening in their schools, classrooms, and lives at the end of every school day. The conversation covers a range of topics related to AI and education, including how teachers are currently using large language models, the potential for AI to address the "lockstep problem" in education (that all students are expected to progress together, despite their differences) and the future role of technology in schools.
Becky shares insights from Teacher Tappp surveys, revealing that many teachers are actively using AI tools for tasks like lesson planning and content creation, particularly in English and upper upper primary education. She discusses the challenges of personalissed learning and the importance of considering teachers' preferences when implementing new technologies. Becky also offers her perspective on the future of AI in education, suggesting that while independent learning may see significant changes, the structure of classroom instruction is likely to remain largely unchanged due to the complex social dynamics of schools.
“You've got about a third of the teachers that seem to be actively using large language models during their work. What they said about how they're using it, some of it isn't surprising, like things that we would call kind of admin of some description. But the thing I didn't expect is the extent to which now teachers are using it for lesson planning and by lesson planning I'm talking about a massive kind of broad range of things that has to happen before the lesson can take place.” Becky Allen
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Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design
In the second episode of season two Owen and Libby speak to Alyssa Van Camp, Head of Research at EdTech start-up TeachFX. TeachFX is an app for teachers that uses voice AI (a combination of automated speech recognition and natural language processing) to analyse classroom talk and then provide automated feedback to teachers.
Owen and Libby talk to Alyssa about the challenges with transcribing and analysing classroom talk and how TeachFX is overcoming some of these issues. Alyssa also shares some interesting reflections about how TeachFX approaches data privacy, and navigates the tension between being a tool for teacher development while responding to the needs of administrators (who are often the purchasers of the tool).
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Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design
In the first short episode of season two, Owen and Libby share their warm takes on two big releases from OpenAI and Google. They reflect on the OpenAI demo video of Sal Khan’s (Khan Academy’s founder) son using their latest model (GPT-4o) as a maths tutor, and Google’s paper describing how they trained and evaluated a fine-tuned version of Gemini for educational purposes. Share your takes on these announcements with us over social media or in the comments!
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Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design
This season Libby Hills from the Jacobs Foundation and AI researcher Owen Henkel continue to speak with leading researchers, practitioners and educators on the Ed-Technical podcast series about the cutting edge of AI in education. They will break down complex AI concepts into non-technical insights to better understand what the research says and help educators sift the useful insights from the AI hype.
In the first episode of Season 2, Libby and Owen speak with Peter Foltz about his work at the intersection of cognitive science, AI, and education over the past few decades. Peter discusses his experience building an automated essay scoring system in the late 1990s, which provided students with immediate, formative feedback on their writing. Peter reflects on the potential of large language models to enhance these systems by offering more substantive feedback to help students become better thinkers, not just better writers.
They then discuss the challenges and opportunities of using speech-to-text AI in educational settings. Peter’s team uses AI to analyze student conversations during group work, providing insights into collaboration, respect, and equity within teams that is fed back to the students to reward positive contributions. Despite the technical difficulties of accurately capturing audio in noisy classrooms, Peter highlights the potential of these tools to support teachers in assessing and fostering effective teamwork among students. They also touch on the importance of co-designing these technologies with teachers, students, and parents to ensure their appropriate and acceptable use in the classroom.
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Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design
The podcast currently has 22 episodes available.