Esports event, Salford

I recently had the pleasure of presenting on esports at The Lowry Academy, alongside Kalam Neale from the British Esports Federation.    I have long been a believer in the potential for esports to be a positive vehicle for supporting student engagement but also the development of a lot of the soft skills that are important in life beyond school, including leadership, resilience, and teamwork to name but a few.   It was therefore great to be able to share but also even better to hear what the staff and students at The Lowry Academy, alongside 3 other United Learning Salford schools are all doing in relation to esports.

In terms of my presentation I would like to just share some of my thoughts and 5 pieces of advice in relation to esports, based on my experiences at Millfield, and as shared at the event.

It is not all neon lights

When you think of esports and when you look at professional events it’s all neon lights and high-powered PCs, expensive gaming keyboards, mice and headsets.   From the point of view of schools, this is difficult to square away especially where funding is often limited.    Although creating such environments may have its advantages it isn’t a requirement.  When we launched esports at Millfield we had a couple of IT labs which needed to be updated, plus we were moving to standard desktops rather than the overpriced all-in-ones we had previously.   We knew that the labs needed to be appropriate for Computing teaching and we didn’t want to distinguish these rooms from our other IT labs which weren’t up for replacement.   As such, in looking to prepare to deliver some esports provision we basically increased the spec of the PCs in terms of the graphics card, processor and memory, but opted to keep it in the same PC chassis we normally used.    So, we had two labs with PCs capable of running Overwatch 2, League of Legends and other esports games but the labs themselves didn’t look any different to other IT labs.  I note the higher-spec machines had other potential benefits beyond esports in terms of software they could run to support Computing, Art and other subjects.  That said, later when we started looking at esports and Rocket League in particular at our prep school we simply used the i5, 8Gb PCs we already had, and this worked fine.

Small is good

Now our upgrade work involved two labs as these labs were up for refresh anyway and therefore all we were doing was increasing the cost a little in line with higher spec machines however there is no need to go full lab.  If looking at Rocket League for example it might be ok to have only 3 machines to run a team playing against other schools, or maybe have 6 machines to allow two internal teams to play off against each other.   You can scale the equipment based on your available financial resources combined with your anticipated interest in your planned esports provision.

Beware updates

One thing that has snagged me a few times, usually after a holiday period has been game updates.   Myself and the students have rocked up ready for a bit of Overwatch 2 for example, following the easter break to find each machine needs a 6 or 7Gb update.   Queue a wait before you can get a match started and queue my network team asking what the hell is eating up all of our internet bandwidth suddenly.   As such it is well worth planning to check and update games towards the end of holiday periods to reduce the risk.   The game vendors might still release an update but hopefully by keeping on top of things it will be a smaller rather than cumulative update, and therefore a lesser delay.

Consumables

We haven’t provided any fancy keyboards or mice, which may make us a little less competitive, but it means where there is wear and tear we can quickly replace it.   That said I haven’t seen significant issues with keyboards and mice, however where we have used controllers, these seem to suffer wear and tear and therefore factoring this in to allow for occasional replacement is well advised.   In terms of headsets, the key is to avoid going too cheap, ideally spending a bit more on good headsets, which therefore, with careful treatment by students, are likely to last longer.   I learned this lesson in relation to headsets as an IT teacher years ago, that spending a bit more makes sense and that savings in the short term, on cheaper headsets, often ends up more expensive in the longer term.

Work across year groups

Initially, when I looked at esports I focused very much on getting students in teams with their peers, in the same age group and year group.   This, in hindsight, is I believe a mistake.  I had some issues with low-level behaviour and with the engagement of some students.   As soon as I put students together across year groups it worked much better and I also think it required students to develop their communication and collaboration skills more, given they were having to work with students who may be younger and older, but towards a common aim of winning their match.  I would therefore recommend any esports provision allows students to work across year groups, although within reason.

Conclusion

The FE colleges are doing some amazing things in relation to esports, often spurred on by offering esports BTecs as a programme of study.   Schools lag behind but the potential benefits are the same and the cost of getting involved is minor.   You don’t have to have a room painted black, with neon strip lights, expensive gaming chairs and £2000+ PCs.     All you need is a couple of PCs with the appropriate specification and you can get started.   It was great to hear from Lowry Academy and some of the other United Learning schools in relation to their recent pilot of esports and their Rocket League competition across 4 schools. The student enthusiasm was obvious for all to see. I can only hope that following this event more schools get involved. I look forward to continuing to support the growth of esports in schools and seeing more schools pick up on the potential which esports has to offer.

Is doing more and efficiency our aim?

I have long been concerned by the “do more”, and “be more efficient” narrative which seems to surround our everyday lives.   We are constantly seeking to improve in all we do, which I think is a fair endeavour, but at what cost?   This was recently brought further into focus as I started reading “Thank You for Being Late: An optimists Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations” by T.L. Friedman as I found myself with an hour to spare while waiting to meet someone.   I found myself that bit more content and relaxed as I used the extra hour which had become available to start reading the book and to engage in a bit of people-watching, watching the world rush about its business.  But are these opportunities to stop and reflect reducing in frequency and length?

I look at teaching for example, where I qualified as a teacher back in the late 90’s.   Looking at teaching now, there are so many more things to consider and to do whether this relates to educational research that we are considering, safeguarding, well-being, health and safety, neurodiversity, and much more.  Now all of these things are important but each is another thing to consider, additional cognitive load, or an additional process or task which needs to be completed.  Is there an extra resource in terms of time or cognitive capacity to undertake these things?   The answer is No.   We simply fold them into our everyday workload, which invariably means that although our efforts are getting better, we are also doing more than we ever did before.

Now generative AI can help a little here in that it can help us with some of the heavy lifting and free up some time for us.    This particular post was edited with the help of AI although it wasn’t initially drafted with AI;  I didn’t draft it with AI as this is very much a brain dump of thoughts and as yet AI solutions can’t interface with the human brain, although that may become possible at some point.    But in editing it with AI, I was able to proofread and make changes quicker than I would have been able to do myself therefore reducing the time taken to produce the post.    The challenge here however is this still all exists against a backdrop of “do more”, so the time I may have gained through the help of AI may simply be swallowed up by the next task I need to undertake to continue down the road of continual improvement.   In effect, the net benefit of AI may be quickly nullified by our continued drive for efficiency and maximising output.

Circling back to teaching, this therefore means that generative AI may benefit teachers for a short period, but that eventually, the benefits may simply dissolve in the face of ever-increasing requirements.    But the benefits are so important, that extra time might allow for greater teacher reflection on teaching practice, student learning and student outcomes, it might support greater networking and sharing of ideas plus might support improved well-being for teachers, which I would suggest may result in better teaching, better student outcomes and also better student wellbeing as the students see their teachers modelling good wellbeing practices.   The time AI solutions will provide might support us in spending more time on focussing on what it means to be human and on “human flourishing”.

 Maybe we need to question to “continual improvement” and “efficiency” narratives in that they need to exist in balance and cannot be assumed to be the “right” path.   In relation to continual improvement, I often refer to MVP, minimum viable product and “good enough”.    In relation to efficiency, if I wanted to be more efficient maybe I should stop taking breaks or work through my lunch.    We also need to consider decreasing marginal gains, and maybe that is where we are now, that a lot of the improvements we are bringing about are minor, iterative improvements, but at the cost of cognitive load, time and other resources which may outweigh the resultant benefit.   The extra effort required for each incremental change remains the same, yet the resulting gain is reduced with each change. There is also the challenge of complexity, where more complex processes or systems often bring about greater risk of failure or greater reliance on particular people or tools. And I haven’t even mentioned the speed of change, which the book I am reading refers to in its title, in the “age of accelerations”.   So all of this is happening quicker than ever before which therefore suggests the amount of time we have available to adapt to changes is decreasing.

I don’t have any answers here, so the purpose of this post is not to share a solution, but to pose a question.   I think I know the answer to the question, but not necessarily the answer to the problem it hints towards, but I think the best thing we can do is to start to talk about it and consider it.   So what is the question:

Can we keep adding to the things we need to think about, the processes and the complexity of our lives, or is there a limit?   

AI and general knowledge

I recently was musing on the benefits of general knowledge.   A recent conference I attended involved Prof Miles Berry where he talked about Generative AI as being very well-read.   I had previously seen a figure of around 2000- 2500 years quoted in terms of the time it would take a human to read all of the content included in the training data provided to GPT 3.5, which in my view makes it very well read indeed.   So, I got to wondering if it is this broad base of knowledge which makes generative AI, or at least the large language models so potentially useful for us.

A doctor and AI

Consider, for instance, a medical practitioner. While their expertise lies in diagnosing and treating illnesses, plus their bedside manner and ability to interact with patients and other medical practitioners, their effectiveness as healthcare professionals hinges on a robust understanding of anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, and medical ethics—domains that draw upon general knowledge. Similarly, an engineer relies on principles of mathematics, physics, and material science to design innovative solutions to complex problems.    As a professional, we are required to study and learn from this broad body of knowledge through degree programmes and other qualification or certification requirements.   But we are inherently human which means just because we have learned something at some point, and successfully navigated a qualification or certification route, doesn’t mean that we will remember or be able to access this information at the point of need.    If the medical practitioner therefore uses the AI to assist them initially, they will therefore be drawing on a bigger knowledge base than a human is capable of consuming, plus a knowledge base that doesn’t forget, or fail to remember content at some point learned.     The medical practitioner will still apply their experience and knowledge to the resultant output, bringing their human touch to help address the challenges of generative AI (bias, hallucinations, etc) however the use of generative AI to assist would likely make diagnosis quicker and possibly more accurate.

My changing workflow

The above seems to align with my views in relation to workflows I have changed recently to include generative AI.  Previously I might have known what I wanted to write and therefore get to writing rather than seeking to use generative AI.    Now I realise that, although I know my planned outcome, something which generative AI cannot truly know, no matter how much I adjust and finesse my prompts, generative AI brings to the table a huge amount and breadth of reading I will never be able to achieve.    As such, starting out by asking generative AI is a great place to start.    It will give you an answer to your prompt but will draw upon a far bigger reservoir of knowledge than you can.   You can then refine your prompt based on what you want to achieve, before doing the final edits.    It is this early use of generative AI which I think is the main potential for us all.   If we use generative AI early in our workflows we both get to our endpoint quicker, plus it also opens us up to thoughts and ideas we might never have considered, due to generative AI’s broader general knowledge. I still point my own personal stamp on the content which is produced, making it hopefully unique to my personal style and personality, but AI provides me with assistance.

Challenges and Considerations

Despite its tremendous potential, the integration of generative AI into everyday life and specialized domains poses several challenges and considerations. Chief among these are concerns regarding the reliability and accuracy of AI-generated content, as well as issues related to bias, ethical considerations, and privacy concerns. I do however note here that the issues of reliability, bias, ethics and privacy are not purely AI problems and are actually human and societal issues, so if a human retains the responsibility for checking and final decision-making, then the issue continues to be that of a human rather than AI issue.

Conclusion

Generative AI stands as a transformative force in harnessing and disseminating general knowledge, empowering individuals with instant access to information, facilitating learning and comprehension, and augmenting domain-specific expertise.    It provides a vast repository of knowledge acquired from its training data, which can be used to assist humans and augment their efforts.   I note this piece itself was generated with the help of generative AI, and some of the text and ideas contained herein are ones I may not have arrived at myself, plus I doubt I would have completed this post quite so quickly.    So, if AI is providing a huge knowledge base and assisting us in terms of getting to our endpoint more quickly, plus opening up alternative lines of thinking, isnt this a good thing?   

For education though I suspect the big challenge will be in terms of how much of the resultant work is the students and how much is the generative AI platforms.   I wonder though, if the requirement is to produce a given piece of work, does this matter, and if AI helps us get there quicker, do we simply need to expect more and better in a world of generative AI?

I suspect another challenge, which may be for a future post, is the fact that Generative AI is a statistical inference model and doesnt “know” anything, so is it as well read as I have made out? Can you be well read without understanding? But what does it mean to “know” or “understand” something and could it be that our knowledge is just a statistical inference based on experience? I think, on that rather deep question, I will leave this post here for now.

Google Discovery Day

I was lucky, thanks to a kind invite from Gemma Gwilliam, a colleague from the Digital Futures Group (DFG), to join staff from several Portsmouth schools in a visit to the Google offices in London.  Now I note my school largely uses Microsoft however I have made use of Google as the primary platform in previous schools I have worked with.    For me, the focus for all schools should be using the best tool for the job and therefore this may involve using Google and Microsoft tools at different times and for different jobs.   In this post, I would like to share just a couple of my key takeaways from the event.

Accessibility

This was definitely one of the key areas for the event in discussing the various gaps which exist within education, whether they are academic performance gaps or digital gaps.    The gap related to disadvantaged students, in particular, was discussed but also gaps in relation to accessibility related to special educational needs and disabilities were also raised, including a visit to the Google Accessibility Discovery Centre (ADC).  It was key for discussions and the various sessions which were delivered that technology, including Google technology, has such potential to help us with narrowing these gaps but in itself this presents a bit of a paradox as we would need to first address the gap of access to reliable infrastructure, devices, support, etc.   

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Unsurprisingly AI was on the list of discussion points and I was really happy to hear some of the same messages I have provided being reiterated.   I liked the example used in terms of how a generative AI solution works in particular.  We as humans when given a question use the information we have absorbed to predict the answer, and a generative AI solution isn’t that much different.  I also liked the comment in relation to hallucinations being a term we should avoid however my concern has always been about this anthropomorphising genAI solutions whereas on this occasion it was raised that it was providing an answer we didn’t expect or which was simply wrong;   Would we want our students claiming they had simply hallucinated or is a wrong answer a wrong answer?      The key here was definitely that AI will increasingly make its way into our daily workflows and the suggestion was that for many of us, it will simply appear in the products we already use and therefore will be almost transparent to us.   This seems to ring a bell as we have been using AI for a while in our spellcheckers, preference functionality in Amazon and Netflix and our search engines, yet have never really identified it as being AI as opposed to being simply how the platform works.

Networks and sharing

One of the key takeaways from this event as with so many other events I have attended is the power of a group of people sharing.   We might not all operate in the same context in terms of our schools, or have the same views, but together sharing ideas, successes and failures, we are all better collectively for it.   David Weinbergers quote continues to be my go-to quote:  “The smartest person in the room is the room”.   The more we share, the more we come together and discuss, accepting disagreement as much as we accept agreement, being brave and encouraging diverse people and views, the better we all are.  

Context is king

One of the other points which really stuck with me in the event was in a presentation which talked about educational research.  The key thing which chimed with me was a warning regarding people who quote that “research says…..”.    I have heard this so often however the reality is that most research is limited in scope to be suggestive in terms of the context, impact, application, etc.    That’s not to discount research as educational research is very important, but we mustn’t lose sight of the importance of context and how something that succeeded or failed in one content, may do the absolutely opposite in a different context.    Education is simply too complex with too many moving parts, the students, the teachers, the parents, the school and many more variables which means that research can be very helpful but it will never provide a cause and effect.   So it’s a great guide and provider of direction but never an out-and-out proof of what will work across all schools, students, etc, in general.

Conclusion

I very much enjoyed the event and feel I took quite a bit from it.   My day-to-day largely does involve Microsoft however I try to avoid referring to my school as a Microsoft school.   We seek to use the tools which have the best impact so it was great to see and hear what Google have to offer and there definitely was a lot that they can offer.  And, an opportunity to network with staff from other schools and contexts is always valuable.    This I suppose is why I believe so strongly in the Digital Futures Group which myself and Gemma are part of, and without which I am not sure this opportunity would have arisen for me.   The more networks like this that exist the better, and hopefully the DFG will help show some of the potential impact and point the way for others looking to set up similar networks.

Phones: a problem or a symptom?

I have recently been reading an interesting book on depression, Lost Connections by J. Hari, as this is something I feel I have struggled with at times, albeit this is a self-diagnosis rather than any form of clinical diagnosis.  Personally, I feel we all suffer depression to a greater or lesser extent, albeit maybe not clinical, at various points in our lives in response to events, challenges and other issues.   Within the book Johann points to societal issues being partly responsible for the increasing number of people suffering anxiety and depression, also talking about societal “junk values”.   This got me thinking about digital addiction and phone use, and my interest was further encouraged by a post from Mark Anderson where he provided some statistics in relation to phone use (see the post here).   But what if our addiction and increasing use of our phones, and other digital devices, isn’t the cause and the thing we need to seek to ban or reduce, but is actually the symptom of a different and broader issue?   Now I don’t propose to have solutions here but this post is about throwing out some thoughts and ideas.

Fame and likes

We have all at some point looked up to a famous person and thought, “I wish that was me”.   Whether it was a famous singer, an artist, or a movie star, I think we all generally want to be more than we are.  Now I am not sure if this want to be better, as measured by others, is intrinsic or whether it has been conditioned over time.   The adverts we consume on TV tell us we need to buy this body spray, or this car or that running shoe to be better so maybe we come to believe we need to be better.   Then in steps social media providing a measure of our fame, with the count of friends or likes, and we chase the thing we can measure rather than what we really want which is to be better.  And so we are forever on our phones seeking to post and share hoping to go viral and get all those likes, rather than looking towards ourselves, being comfortable in our own skins and seeking to be better but in our own eyes and on our own terms.   So is our excessive phone use a symptom of a need to have ourselves validated by others, rather than seeking to value ourselves?

Connectedness

I think it is important to acknowledge that we are still animals in some sense, albeit very intelligent ones, but we still have so much in common with the apes we came from back in the mist of time.   And as animals we need that connectedness, that social interaction of the herd or troop, and again in steps social media and our phones with connectedness on steroids.  Suddenly I am connected to friends, family and many more people, those with similar views and interests and this connection is constantly updating.    The issue here, as I have posted in the past, is that this online connectedness, although it appeals to our inner needs, it doesn’t truly address them so we find ourselves retreating from face-to-face, proper connectedness which will fulfil our needs, in favour of easier but shallow technology enabled connection.   We maybe therefore need to spend less time on digital connectedness and more time on actual connectedness.

Fear of missing out

I have already mentioned how our digital world is constantly updated and always on and this in itself breeds an issue, being we develop this fear of missing out (FOMO).   We are worried about missing out on important information, or the latest viral craze, so we seek to be constantly checking our devices for updates.   We might even become worried that there is something wrong when we haven’t received an update or our phone hasn’t buzzed for a period of time.    We build the habit of constantly checking our devices and constant vigilance to the call of our device for attention whether that be a buzz, a chime or a flashing screen.    But maybe there is another way and maybe we need to spend more of our time and our focus on being in the moment and experiencing our current environment, the company we are in, and the discussion, rather than bothering so much about the online conversations we may or may not be missing.

Efficiency and always connected

The world is only getting busier as we constantly seek to add more tasks and seek to get better.   If you were to look back on the last 6 months and list the extra things you are now doing I suspect we all would have at least a few items however if I was then to ask you to list the things you have stopped or been asked to stop doing, I suspect a shorter list, or maybe blank list would result.   If we do X this will make Y better sounds logical whereas if we DON’T do X this will be make Y better, doesn’t sit as comfortably with us.   And so we create this illusion of the need to be hyper-efficient, always on, always moving, and our devices are happy to play to this.   They facilitate us being connected, us collaborating, us communicating, anywhere, anytime.    But is this truly what life is about, to get as much done as possible and be constantly focused, or is there value in disconnection, quiet contemplation and meditation? 

Commercial interests vs. the user

In writing this post I couldn’t miss raising the issue of the device manufacturers and the platform developers.   They are commercial entities with shareholders.   They want profit and profit comes from keeping users buying their products and their services, keeping them using devices and staring at screens.   They want you alerted and increasingly are pushing further and further into our existence.    Most of our discussion on devices focuses on phones for example, yet now how many of us have wearables such that the notification is unavoidable being strapped securely to our wrists or in future, in the glasses we need to wear to see?   So these companies don’t have our best interests in mind and their approach to dealing with people’s concerns is to provide controls and data for the individual to use to manage their own usage.   But humans aren’t particularly great at doing what is best for themselves as individuals, just consider alcohol, smoking and more recently vaping.   And when faced with a societal push to stay connected, FOMO and much more, the companies must know that putting the control in the hands of individuals will see little progress, although it will allow them to say they did what they could while still reporting positive usage data back to their shareholders.  I think this is where society has to play a part rather than focusing on either the profit-focused companies, or the ill-equipped individual to solve the problem.

Conclusion

I suspect I could write much more on this topic and as I write this I can see so many opportunities for further research.    Rather than seeking to ban, which I am against, or manage, which I am much more supportive of especially in schools, do we need to ask the question of why we are all so quick to reach for our phones and digital devices?   If we consider our usage a problem, then surely we need to get to the why, the cause, as opposed to seeking to address the symptom which is the eventual usage.   Maybe even discussing this with our students will help?

My sense is that a large part of the issue is the values which society currently applies to us.   It isn’t enough to just be me but I have to attain status, I need to be hyper-connected, I need to work stupidly hard and efficiently, and I need to show other people all of this, and our devices deliver on these needs, or at least appear to.   As long as we continue to address this at an individual level, which tends not to work, we fail to get into the bigger problem but how do we bring about societal change?   One step at a time?   One blog post at a time maybe?

ISC Digital Conference 2024

I once again was privileged to speak at the ISC digital conference the other week, this time as the vice chair for the ISC digital advisory group as opposed to a member.   It was, as it was last year, a very useful and interesting conference, combined with an iconic location in Bletchley park.   I scribbled many notes from the various sessions and therefore wanted to distil those into a couple of key thoughts below.

Prof Miles Berry was his usual barrel of energy in his presentation, putting forward lots of interesting points for consideration.   Following on for the Oxford Academies Business Managers Group (OABMG) conference I attended the other week, Miles certainly was brave in his presentation, opting to actually do a live demonstration to illustrate the potential power of generative AI in terms of helping towards the challenges related to teacher workload.   I have attended so many conferences which discuss AI but it was so nice to actually see it in practice as Miles took a topic from the audience and worked through the creation of content for students, resources, lesson plans, etc., all in the space of minutes, but also highlighting that a teacher at their best could likely do better, but certainly not quicker.   This clearly highlights the efficiency and workload benefits of generative AI, but also the importance of seeing genAI as an assistant to be paired with our own human strengths.

Neelam Parmar then presented on developing an AI curriculum and there was one question which stuck very much with me.   What is AI?    Now why this stuck with me is both the inconsistency in terms of the use of the term and related terms (machine learning, deep learning etc.) but also in terms of the broader question it might hint to in terms of what is intelligence.    Can we accurately and consistently define what we mean by intelligence?    And if we cannot can we truly be confident in creating an intelligence, an artificially created intelligence or AI?    It’s a bit deep, but maybe this is a question we maybe need to consider, as it also hints towards considering the differences between human and artificial intelligence, and therefore the benefits and drawbacks of each.   I do often wonder how different an AI is to human intelligence in terms of how the human brain really works in processing the huge amount of “data” in the experiences and information we consume throughout our lives.   Is the key difference between AI that of emotion and the physical nature of our intelligence in relation to our physical existence?   

The AQA presentation was next up in terms of ideas which stuck with me, helping me feel a bit more positive in terms of where we are in terms of exam board engagement in relation to the use of AI in assessment and in schools.  I will admit to being disappointed that the Polish and Italian trial has been pushed back further to 2027, which I think is too far away, however, I get that it takes everyone to be onboard to move this forward so there are hoops exam boards must go through.  That said there were definitely positive noises in relation to analytical data on outcomes with school data being pulled in, and resulting info pushed back.   This goes to reducing the administrative burden but also to more effective use of the vast amounts of data schools gather.  It was also good to hear of AQA seeking to share a diagnostic tool for Maths;  Tools like this might just help us to find the best way forward in relation to adaptive, diagnostic and even summative testing.

I once again enjoyed hearing Tom Dore talk about esports and the potential benefits for schools adopting this.   It aligned so well with the earlier presentation which highlighted some of the softer skills which the World Economic Forum have identified as important for the future.  It is so much more than simply gaming, but involves communication, leadership, resilience, problem-solving and so much more, plus it often engages students who may be otherwise less engaged.   It was also so good to hear Amy-Louise Cartwright’s approach in her school and how they, albeit in their early stages of development, have already made progress and have plans for the future.  I loved the esports suite they have created, as although we have been involved here in esports for a while we have been using our normal IT labs, albeit with upgraded PCs capable of supporting the relevant esports games.

Conclusion

The ISC digital conference, like so many other conferences, is about getting schools and school staff together and sharing.   This year’s conference did exactly that, and that let me get my piece in as well which was nice.   It was also nice to be at Bletchley Park and its wonderful auditorium.   Now I will note my train ride to and from the venue was far from straightforward, but the trek was worth it, and I look forward to seeing where we stand in a years time, at the 2025 conference.   Will we have progressed significantly, be asking the same questions, or will the challenges have changed or even been addressed?   Only time will tell.

Is Gen AI Dangerous?

I recently saw a webinar being advertised with “Is GenAI dangerous” as the title.   An attention-grabber headline however I don’t think the question is particularly fair.   Is a hammer dangerous?   In the hands of a criminal, I would say it is, plus also in the hands of an amateur DIY’er it might also be dangerous, to the person wielding it but also to others through the things the amateur might build or install.     Are humans dangerous, or is air dangerous?   Again, with questions quite so broad the answer will almost always be “yes” but qualified with “in certain circumstances or in the hands of certain people”.    This got me wondering about the dangers of generative AI and some hopefully better questions we might seek to ask in relation to generative AI use in schools.

Bias

The danger of bias in generative AI solutions is clearly documented, and I have evidenced it myself in simple demonstrations, however, we have also more recently seen the challenges in relation to where companies might seek to manage bias, where this results in equally unwanted outputs.   Maybe we need to accept bias in AI in much the same way that we accept some level of unconscious bias in human beings.    If this is the case then I think the questions we need to ask ourselves are:

  1. How do we build awareness of bias both in AI and in human decision-making and creation?
  2. How do we seek to address bias?   And in generative AI solutions, I think the key here is simply prompt engineering and avoiding broad or vague prompts, in favour of more specific and detailed prompts.

Inaccuracy

I don’t like the term “hallucinations”, which is the commonly used term where AI solutions return incorrect information, preferring to call it an error or inaccuracy.   And we know that humans are prone to mistakes, so this is yet another similarity between humans and AI solutions.   Again, if we accept that there will also be some errors in AI-based outputs, we find ourselves asking what I feel are better questions, such as:

  1. How do we build awareness of possible errors in AI content
  2. How do we build the necessary critical thinking and problem-solving skills to ensure students and teachers can question and check content being provided by AI solutions?

Plagiarism

The issue of students using AI-generated content and submitting it as their own is often discussed in education circles however I note there are lots of benefits in students using AI solutions, particularly for students who experience language or learning barriers.    I also note a recent survey which suggested lots of students are using generative AI solutions anyway, independent of anything their school may or may not have said.    So again, if we accept that some use of AI will occur and that for some this might represent dishonest practice, but for many it will be using AI to level the playfield, what questions could we ask:

  1. How do we build awareness in students and staff as to what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in using AI solutions?
  2. How do we explore or record how students have used AI in their work so we can assess their approach to problems and their thinking processes?

Over-reliance

There is also the concern that, due to the existence of generative AI solutions, we may start to use them to frequently and become over-reliant on them, weakening our ability to create or do tasks without the aid of generative AI.   For me, this is like the old calculator argument in that we need to be able to do basic maths even though calculators are available everywhere.    I can see the need for some basic fundamental learning but with generative AI being so widely available shouldn’t we seek to maximise the benefits which it provides?  So again, what are the questions we may need to ask:

  1. How do we build awareness of the risk of over-reliance?
  2. How do we ensure we maximise the benefit of AI solutions while retaining the benefits of our own human thinking, human emotion, etc?   It’s about seeking to find a balance.

Conclusion

In considering better questions to ask I think the first question is always one about building awareness so maybe the “is GenAI dangerous” webinar may be useful if it seeks to build relevant awareness as to the risks.  We can’t spot a problem if we are not aware of the potential for such a problem to exist. The challenge though is the questions we ask post-awareness, the questions we ask which try to drive us forward such as how we might deal with bias where we identify it, how we might ensure people are critical and questioning such that they sport errors, how we evidence student thinking and processes in using AI and how we maximise both human and AI benefits.  

In considering generative AI I think there is some irony here in that my view is that we need to ask better questions than “Is GenAI dangerous”.    In seeking to use generative AI and to realise its potential in schools and colleges, prompt engineering, which is basically asking the right questions is key so maybe in seeking to assess the benefits and risks of GenAI we need to start by asking better questions.

OABMG Conference

I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at the Oxfordshire Academies Business Managers Group (OABMG) annual conference earlier in the week where I was speaking on AI in education and the possible impact and implications on school business managers.    It was a lovely event and I really enjoyed Sarah Furness the keynote speaker, however, sadly I had to leave following my session in order to catch a train, one of a number of trains needed to get me to and from the event.

Be brave

Sarah was both insightful and entertaining and to be honest, I could likely write a whole blog post just on the stories she shared however let me just summarise my key takeaways from her presentation.    Her key message, which resonated for me, was the need to be brave, which aligns with the values of my school, and also is so very important where we have technology advancing at such a pace but with regulation lagging so far behind.   We have no choice but to be brave especially given both students and staff are already experimenting with the use of AI.  We need to be brave in engaging, we need to be brave in experimenting and we need to be brave in accepting where things don’t go quite as they planned, but learning from these experiences.   The need for sharing, asking difficult questions and accepting challenges also aligned with my thinking, and again looking to AI in education, if we are to find our way with AI in schools I think this all rings very true indeed.  We need to be sharing our thoughts, and both challenging and accepting challenges from others, if we are to move forward.    Sarah’s talk was about leadership, using her context as a military leader and pilot;  maybe this will be key in the use of AI in schools, the need for effective, brave leaders who value and encourage diversity, sharing and challenge.

AI in education

Going into my presentation my key aim was to discuss AI in education and some possible uses for school business leaders.   I don’t have all of the answers, and to be honest, I don’t feel anyone has all the answers when it comes to AI and education, as AI is advancing at a rapid pace where education has changed little and is under both funding and also workload challenges.   That said, as I shared in my presentation, “The smartest person in the room, is the room”.   This David Weinberger quote is one of my favourites and is often used, as it highlights the need to discuss and share, in doing so we hopefully engage others to think about the issue, in this case, AI in schools, and collectively our thinking, our ideas and experience is enhanced.

Now you can view my presentation slides here if you are interested.   

At the end of my presentation, a couple of questions were raised which I would like to just pick up on, namely school engagement in AI in education, policy and also regulation.  

School Engagement in AI

I would like to draw attention to the article in the Express which highlighted that 54% of the students they surveyed were using AI in relation to their homework.  The key thing here is that students are using AI independently of whether schools have considered or talked about AI.  And it isn’t just students, you will also likely have staff, both teaching and support staff who are using AI.   The AI genie is out of the bottle and attempts to block it will inevitably be futile so, in my opinion, it is key that we engage with the use of AI, we talk with students and staff about AI, and that schools experiment and share.    But the fact AI is already here isn’t the only reason to use it in education.   We talk about the need to support individual students, differentiation, English as a second language and also SEND barriers to learning; all of these can be addressed to some extent through the use of AI tools.   Now I will note here that the use of AI tools may also increase some challenges, such as that of digital divides, but that was a key part of my presentation in talking about the risks and challenges first, as we need to use AI but only from a position of an awareness of risks and challenges.

Policies

Linked to the above, I think it is very important that schools put in place an AI policy if they haven’t already done so.   This allows the school to set out its guardrails in relation to the use of AI in the school.  Now there is a brilliant template for this, as created by Mark Anderson and Laura Knight, which can be found here.   Looking to the future I suspect the AI policy might be eventually absorbed into the IT acceptable use and/or academic integrity policies however for now, while AI use in schools is so new, I think having it as a standalone policy makes sense.

Regulation

There will need to be some form of regulation in relation to AI tools including their use in education however we have already seen that the technology is developing very fast while the regulation is lagging so far behind and is slow to adapt.   As such I think we should hope for and support some form of regulation to protect people, including our staff and students, and their data, but I don’t believe we can wait for this to happen.    AI is already here and students and staff are likely using it.  We can’t stop this, so I think we need to run with it, to try and shape the use and hopefully in doing so shape the regulation which follows.  This will mean making risk v. benefit decisions but seldom do we see anything which is beneficial without any risks.

Conclusion

The OABMG conference was enjoyable even though my visit was brief.   It was good to get to share some thoughts on AI in education and I hope those in attendance found the session useful.   My two key thoughts from the event are, the need to be brave, remembering we learn most from our mistakes, and the need in this ever-busy and complex world to share as collectively we are all better for it. I think these are two things I will try do more actively in future.

Digital Standards

I have been lucky enough to be able to see some of the draft versions of the Department for Educations (DfE) digital standards and to provide feedback.   In some ways, I am really keen on them but in other ways, there are aspects of them which I am not so happy about.    But that said, I think we should accept them as they are, and that they are a step forward.

For quite some years, there has been a void in relation to guidance on technology for schools with some schools navigating this void well, using networks such as the Association of Network Managers in Education (ANME) for help, however, other schools have not been so fortunate.   Technologies were bought but without plans for replacement, while other technologies were bought which didn’t meet future needs or would have worked well except for basic infrastructure which wasn’t there.    Years ago in Abu Dhabi, I discussed the need for a strong foundation in relation to EdTech before we got to teacher and student confidence and eventual embedding of technology in teaching and learning.   The DfE Standards are not the single solution but they at least provide some guidance and seek to fill this void.

The issue however is that schools and school contexts vary so much across England and across the wider UK so for any single set of standards to fit it needs to be very broad to the point which the resultant standards may have become less useful, especially for those schools without the relevant experience, skills and focus in relation to technology.    In trying to be more useful the standards are a bit more specific which means they don’t fit all contexts or all viewpoints in relation to how technology in schools should look.

If we accept the DfE standards as being imperfect in their inability to cover every school context and school eventuality, then we can make positive use of them.   As an imperfect instrument, we can take what we can from the standards while identifying where some things don’t fit.    One example is Cat 6A cabling;  I get it that we might want to put Cat 6A everywhere in a new building possibly, but in a refit where cabling runs make Cat 6A more difficult, why can’t Cat 5E be good enough?   Isn’t the biggest pinch point likely to be our internet bandwidth rather than having 10Gbps to desktops?   Maybe we can save money on cabling to spend more on bandwidth?  Maybe we might install some Cat 6A for Wireless Access Points (WAPs) but Cat5e elsewhere? 

I don’t think the standards can ever be perfect and black and white, but when is this world ever perfect or black and white, and more importantly when does this ever happen in the messy world of education?    Raising concerns about their imperfections or highlighting issues doesn’t move technology in schools forward.   So, if we accept the standards are imperfect, we might just be able to use them to do what they are meant for, which is to help and provide some guidance.   We might then be able to move technology in schools forward in more and more schools.

Some DigCit resources

Following on from my blog in relation to internet safety day I thought I would share some of the actual presentations I have used recently with students when discussing differing parts of internet safety. 

Now all the presentations are on the short side as they are designed to provoke thought and further follow up discussions with each presentation designed around a 5 to 10 minute assembly.   

I hope the presentations are useful or at least provide some ideas.   I am also open to any thoughts or ideas for other topics or areas which should be included in future presentations.

This session revolves around a tweet from a parody HRH Prince William account which was picked up by some UK radio broadcasters as fact where there was no evidence to support the figures quotes. Also the session looks at the possible impact from generative AI in relation to fake images or video.

This session is very much about asking the students if they feel comfortable with their technology use and then discussing ways that a balance might be achieved. It is also important to discuss how “screen time” is an overly simplistic measure and that all screen time is not equal.

This session focuses on binary arguments and how two opposite viewpoints can actually both be true or both be false. Some discussion of why people might seek to exploit binary arguments, social media algorithms and echo chambers is also included.

This session focuses on some examples of social engineering and how human habits can be used against us by malicious individuals. The key message is the increasing “sophistication” of attacks and therefore the need to be more vigilant and careful.

This session looks at data breached from sites and how this is leaked online. It may be worth getting the students to use HaveIBeenPwned if possible to see how many students already have data leaked on them online. The key closing point is that as we do more online we need to be aware of the resulting increasing risk.

The key feature of this session is the predictability of human choices in relation to passwords. You may wish to use the Michael McIntyre cyber video here or simply ask students about where the capital letter, number and symbol in their passwords might be.

This includes reference to an OSINT tool which allows you to identify the date and time of a photo based on the position of shadows within the photo;  This illustrates how even simple things might give away information about us.

It also contains a “pick a number” to illustrate how we can be easily influenced.   As the presenter you would stress the trackers slide and “14” to see if you can then encourage students to select 14 later in the presentation. If we can be that easily influenced then what might social media and other individuals be able to do with much much more data?

This session looks at public good vs. individual privacy and how these two issues may be at opposite ends of a continuum. The key is to show how we need to find a balance between these two extremes.