Category: Blog

For all the talk about the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence in education, there remains a gap between the hype and the reality of classroom practice. A new report, “Demystifying AI: Preparing K-12 Teachers to Integrate AI Tools into their Practice,” offers an evidence-based look at what it takes to prepare educators for the age of AI. Published by WISE in collaboration with the MIT pK-12 Initiative and MIT RAISE, the report provides insights into the challenges and opportunities we face in vocational education and training (VET) across Europe. The study is impressive in its scale and diversity, evaluating the […]

My colleague George Bekiaridis drew my attention to a post by Cristobal Cobo on Linkedin. Cristobal was commenting on a new report by Turintin – Crossroads, navigating the intersection of AI in Education – who have surveyed 3,500 higher-education stakeholders—including administrators, educators and students—across Australia, India, Mexico, New Zealand, the UK/Ireland and the US in August 2024 to assess AI’s role in teaching and learning. Turintin are the controversial company who make and market plagiarism checking applications especially to higher education providers. Anyway the report sounded interesting so I tried to download a copy. Turintin asked for a form to […]

When we set up the AI Pioneers community, three years ago. there was a spreading panic in higher education about the impact of Generative AI. The majority of assessment was being organised through written essays and AI chatbots like ChatGPT were very good at quickly writing reasonably erudite essays. What was worse was that the detection applications traditional ed tech providers rushed to the market didn’t work, returning both false negatives and false positives. Over time, the panic has subsided, with universities developing new (and sometimes innovative) approaches to assessment. Indeed there has been a general acknowledgement that assessment needed […]

Graham and I were discussing what personalised learning actually means in terms of the promises made by ed tech companies to use AI to offer differentiated and personalised learning. Graham introduced me to the idea of ants following predefined pathways as a metaphor for learners following AI predictions of what to study next. The more ants following the same pathway, the more that pathway becomes used, the more likely the AI is to suggest it. The pathway is never truly personalised, just branching options of a choose your own adventure story where the endings are pre-defined. I had always assumed […]

Maria Perifanou has announced the Call for Papers for a Special Issue in the Educational Technology Research and Development (ETRD) Journal on Generative AI and the Future of K–12 Education.The issut aims to advance research, theory, and practice on the responsible, sustainable, and ethical use of GenAI in K-12 education, promoting the significance of human agency within GenAI implementations. It invites contributions that explore and discuss the ethical equity and policy dimensions of GenAI adoption in K-12 educational contexts. Submissions may include theoretical reviews discussing frameworks, theoretical and conceptual analyses, ethical implications, empirical studies, and critical reviews. Collectively, these contributions […]