9. The AI Educator: The future of AI in education with Dan Fitzpatrick

Explore the future of education through the eyes of Dan Fitzpatrick, a trailblazer for AI in education and former secondary school teacher and SLT member. Our conversation with Dan traverses seismic shifts in teaching methods, highlighting how grassroots efforts with AI and technology within schools can lead to significant time-saving, and engaging learning experiences. 

We delve into ChatGPT, a tool that's not just buzzworthy but also a harbinger of change in educational settings and we share how to leap from awareness to application, transforming AI from a novel idea into an authentic classroom ally. And we explore how Dan's own viral journey through social media to a book deal underscores the burgeoning fascination and real-world impacts of AI.

Looking towards the future of education, we tackle the crux of generative AI technology and its role in shaping our communicative future. As educators, we have a pivotal role in fostering literacy and collaboration skills that students will need to navigate an AI-centric world. We ponder the relationship between AI advancements and human connection, emphasizing that AI is not a substitute for human connection, but a tool to enhance our collective capabilities. 

Join us for an episode that's not just informative but a compass for navigating the evolving landscape of education!

For more insights from Dan:

• Read his book, The AI Classroom: The Ultimate Guide to Artificial Intelligence in Education
• Visit his website, The AI Educator
• Follow him on X (@theaieducatorX), LinkedIn and Facebook

Transcript

Andy: 0:20

Hi everyone and welcome to the Literacy Works podcast. Really excited that I've been looking at this podcast. I'm going to be talking about the best book I've read in years on education. I just love it. It's completely changed the way that I see even bedrock and I see the way that we can teach and provide for our pupils. I think it's just amazing. So I reached out to Dan and, very kindly, he's agreed to come on the show. So thank you so much for coming on. It's a big coup for us. We'd like to really hear about how you've got your background, how you got into what you're doing now, what you do, and then we'd like to really unpick some of the future around literacy and AI and things like that, and we think you would have a brilliant insight on that. And also, by the way, feel free to discuss and mention the work you do with schools and the fantastic things that you're doing, not just in the UK but around the world. So, yeah, we want to hear lots from you really. So welcome and thank you for coming on.

Dan: 1:20

Thank you. Thanks for having me, andy. It's great to be here and to chat with you. Yeah, I was a high school teacher. So people can probably already tell by my accent I'm from the northeast of England and I worked in. Well, I trained in Manchester actually Trained as a teacher with the United Learner and Manchester Worked at school in Accuraton for a few years, then moved back up to the northeast where I worked in a high school in County Durham. So, yeah, trained as a high school teacher, actually trained as an R8 teacher, which it's completely really removed from what I'm doing right now.

Dan: 1:57

And then, when I was in my second school in County Durham, moved on to the senior leadership team there and, as anyone who's ever worked in a high school I know someone who's worked in a high school once you get to kind of that level, you kind of start teaching everything really, wherever there's a gap, wherever there's no member of staff to teach it or a gap on a timetable. So I think when I left that school I was my main subject was business studies. So I was teaching, my main subject was teaching B-Tech business studies and I taught geography and some other subjects as well. So yeah, then I was kind of my main mission and I guess ever since I was a trainee teacher. In fact I remember being a trainee teacher and you know they put on a skip program so I was learning about the job while I was teaching and they were put on sessions. It was a great school for training teachers and they put on sessions on a Friday and I remember going along and there was a guy it was an IT teacher called Tim, and Tim was talked about Google Classroom and I'd never heard of it before and it just blew my mind. I mean, this was what. It wasn't that long ago 2015 maybe and it just completely blew my mind and I thought what are we doing? Why are we still giving bits of paper out? Why are we still asking students to do things like we've asked them to do for decades and decades when actually they could? They've all got devices at home. They've all got computers at home. We could give them work that they can access or content they can access 24-7 in their own time from anywhere if they've got a device, using this quite basic technology, really cloud-based technology. So really made it my mission and then to try and do make what I did into that really with my students in terms of homework and some of the classwork.

Dan: 3:51

And then my department there was a department of four at the time. We kind of all embraced it really quickly. I remember like coming back to my department really excited, and then I think it was the Christmas break. We came back after the Christmas break and Nick, who was the head of department, literally had moved everything over to the cloud, to Google Drive or Christmas. And then we got back and we were just that was how we worked then.

Dan: 4:14

And then Ben, who was in our team as well and also on the SLT, ran with it and was like let's try and influence the whole school. There's a really like grassroots type thing. So we started putting on breakfast sessions for the staff and trying to almost convert them to a way of work and that was going to save them time, it's going to help the students. And then me and Ben actually ended up starting a podcast together called the Edgy Futurist podcast. And then Steve Hope joined from Leeds City College after a year or two and that kind of started my journey. So my whole teaching journey was all kind of was EdTech infused really, and seeing how this stuff could really help staff and help students.

Dan: 4:59

So then pretty much from that experience moved to the next school and it was my mission to try and move them to cloud-based technology and Google, because it was almost like going back to square one, going to the other school and really put a lot of work in there.

Dan: 5:14

I mean, I got a job just as an entry-level teacher I'm teaching in the department and just put so much effort into trying to. And the head teacher was great. He was the type of guy you could just knock on the door of a conversation with and really get your point across why I think we need to move to this type of thing, and he would listen and go. Actually, if he saw the value with it, he would be like, right, let's talk to staff, let's see what we can do with it. So he was fantastic. So this year, within a few months, we moved everyone to cloud technology for homework, for tasks, for creating videos, and then I'm kind of I suppose I'm going in depth into this bit because I think it's really important to see that the grassroots movement within education and how you can change things from below Still quite powerful.

Andy: 6:05

I think it is a paradigm shift, isn't it in terms of? I remember when I did my masters, there was a we did, we studied a guy called Marshall McLuhan and his big phrase was the medium is the message. I remember thinking what does that even mean? But what I really like about that is that it's the idea that the technology shapes the way you think. So it might seem odd, but if you want to flick a switch in a room to put the light on, you don't have to any, you don't have to slow your thought, you just flick a switch in the lights on. So if you extrapolate that out to technology and education, there's different. What you don't have to sort of do things slowly more there's this kind of things are much more available at the touch of a button. It's you know, and it's shaping the way we think, and I think it's a really important description. You've just, you know, you've just outlined there around shifting people's attitude, shifting people's points of departure yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Dan: 6:57

And, as you know, and as every teacher out there knows, it's really difficult because and I'm sure we'll come back to this in light of AI as well but when, when teachers aren't given much time to breathe, even even their planning time, which might be one or two periods per week is, is invariably taken away from them or is filled with with more pastoral duties or whatever it is, then actually change is really difficult because we need we need that breathing space to be able to, to grow, and so it. It's probably the toughest day I've ever done. I mean, I loved it because I can see all the value. It wasn't like I was trying to sell snake oil or anything and get people to do something just for the sake of it. I genuinely thought this, this, this changed my life. It could change in terms of teaching and workload and how I interacted with students, and it could. I'm sure it could do that for for for other teachers. So it was yeah. So that was the journey, really.

Dan: 7:54

And then very, very fast, fastly moved into SLT at the second school I worked at for, looking at kind of two things I really loved actually. So the technology side of things, but then also the careers education. So in the time the gatsby benchmarks would were just coming into law and so every school had to follow the, the gatsby benchmarks in terms of careers education. So I took, I took that on within my SLT role, absolutely loved it and I really I could genuinely see the, the, the, the connect there between what technology could enable and the skills that students would need in the future, connected to the, the kind of the, the career side of preparing them for for the rest of their lives. Really so so I guess I guess you've always been kind of.

Andy: 8:45

I guess you've always been sorry, you've all. I guess you've always been kind of an educator, really, in terms of looking outwards from just one subject, I think you've. It sounds like you've always been really interested in pulling on lots of external threads, not just one subject, but kind of really thinking about, as you say, careers, and you're not being scared to drop into other subjects and all that sort of stuff yeah, yeah, I guess, so that yeah it's.

Dan: 9:10

I think for me it's always, I think, going back to that kind of friday session when I was trying to be a teacher, I think I probably it might be the subconscious realization, but I think I thought, well if, if the education system hasn't embraced this or doesn't say the value so much in this yet, in terms of using cloud technology.

Dan: 9:31

Then what else are we not? Are we not doing that could really offer value? And what else? What else are we missing?

Dan: 9:39

And it really, it really drove, drove my passion for it, which was expressed primarily through the podcast that I did of of, of looking out there into the world and going right, what, what innovations are going on in education. Yeah, and I very quickly realized the english education system was quite stuffy, it was quite it's quite samey. There was back then, in fact, probably still now as well. It was it seemed to be you turning and becoming more traditional. There was the exceptions there's the xp schools and donkast there and some other schools out there really, really driving innovation. But I just felt like, actually we, we need to probably learn, we probably need to look out of of the system and look to other countries, look to mavericks, innovators out there, and see, well, what's good, what's happening out there, that's working. So we kind of made that the primary aim of the podcast. So we were it's still going, by the way, it's called edu features.

Dan: 10:38

I I stepped back from it um last year, but ben and steve are still doing it, but the whole point is it was let's go find somebody who's doing some amazing things, talk to them and and try and bring that voice into the system, I guess, or make big people aware of some of the stuff that's going on out there. And it was really our own pd. I'm not sure how you feel, andy, but with your podcast, but I really I really look forward to that interview every week because it was like I came away quite um, quite energized by it was it was. It was if, if only we, if if we only had one listener, I would have still done it, because it I got so much from it I can't, I can't, I can't believe I can't believe.

Andy: 11:21

Uh, this is. I get paid as part of my job to run this podcast and speaking to all these different people, and I agree with you completely. I can't believe this is my job, because I've spoken to people as far as australia um, I'm speaking to someone else's stuff um, a bit later on today um, who leads cpd at a trust level. It's just, it's incredible the insights and the learnings you get from people and and and how yeah, you're right, the word is energized, um, and I think the more we can look outside our box, the more we can start thinking and pulling on different threads from across the world and across the different, you know, spheres of, of, of, of, public, of life. I think the better for, for education, this country yeah, 100 agree with you.

Dan: 12:04

And yeah, it was I. I didn't think we've got a lot to learn. I think we sometimes pride ourselves especially I don't know if it's because the education system is just so entangled with politics as well, but we kind of we pride ourselves on that, that piece of score, you know that which is essentially a score for how well are we, how well are our kids, regurgitating information? And actually, is that, is that the good to be, the necessary skill in this ai age? Uh, well, probably not so.

Andy: 12:34

So where did yeah from, from from your roots, then that must have taken quite a lot of courage to do what you've done now and kind of step out almost on your own or whatever. Is that what you've done? I mean, what do you do now? What's your day to day like now?

Dan: 12:50

Well, I very quickly realised that secondary education was very limited. We're probably going back to that political side of budgets. There was no real budget there. It was very much put in our fires rather than planning ahead Because of all of the issues and the staff retention, all of that, all of those and I just thought, you know what, for my own personal happiness and I love doing the ed tech transformation stuff so I then got a.

Dan: 13:23

I was really lucky enough to get a job working for a group of FE colleges in the Northeast as a director for strategy for digital. So I did that for a couple of years and it was there that I kind of started really dialing into AI. So I was aware of AI and did some work around AI before that. But really we had budgets. I guess in FE. There was funding from T-level courses, from the government. There was pots of money out there in FE. So we started doing some research, mainly around virtual reality, augmented reality, but then started looking at artificial intelligence and that meant that in 2022, there was when, even before Chatchi Pt was released and we heard that this technology was existed to start really looking at well, why might we want to adopt this and what impact might it have on the teacher's life for students. And that meant at the end of November 2022, chatchi Pt was released and eventually got to play with it like everybody else, and my mind just kind of exploded, really, in terms of the possibilities of this technology and I started.

Dan: 14:37

I just started posting online of, look, I typed this in and it marked the work for me. Look, I did this, did this, and just I was on holiday, I remember at the time and so I didn't. I don't think I had my laptop with me and I was just screen recording my phone, playing around with it on my phone screen recording, posting it on Twitter. And one of them went viral. How did it? Because nobody yeah, well, nobody else at that time was really kind of posting about this on Twitter and LinkedIn and so on. So, yeah, so I kind of thought, oh well, I'll do another one and I'll do another one.

Dan: 15:21

And they kept kind of going viral, the videos I was putting on, and so I then I started getting it was all very organic. So then I started getting lots of requests can you put a webinar on? Could you do this? I'll put a webinar on Limited it to like 20 people, because I thought this is going to take a bit of concentration. So let's have 20 people on a video call and I can talk to them and it's not so anonymous. But literally I thought, oh, sticking on for like a 10 per person Just to see what happens, so I'll put another one on, so I'll put another one on.

Dan: 15:54

Got to the point within like a week I was doing like four of them one for Australia Time Zone, one for America Time Zone, two for UK Time Zone every day, and then about two weeks later, I thought can't do this anymore, this is crazy. So I stopped and recorded it and that became like the initial seeds of the course that's on my website. I stopped recording and then, very quickly well, I think it was the end of January my first video that went viral was the first of January of 2023. And on the 31st of January 2023, I was appearing on Good Morning Britain in the studio as an AI expert.

Andy: 16:40

This is madness.

Dan: 16:42

Yes, so I was. So within that same month first video gone viral to appearing as an AI expert on Good Morning Britain. So it was quite a crazy month. Got a book offer from a publisher in America, kind of the end of January time. That's where things really changed, because I guess it's that having a book kind of gives you a bit of authority on this. It's a strange thing to happen, but I suppose it does a bit. So people want to chat to you and maybe come in and do professional development with their staff Because you've wrote a book on it, so you must know a lot about it. And I always kind of say to people again that expert label. I just think I'm probably just like two or three months ahead of you. That's all. I've probably got a bit more time. I've got to really drive forward.

Andy: 17:39

But you've had the foresight People anyone who knows me will be laughing, knowing that I'm speaking to you, knowing that I love this stuff, knowing that this is like my sort of fanboy type thing, but I'm like that but I probably don't have the foresight that you had to jump on that bandwagon when you did. And so for those people who are kind of interested in AI or who have heard of it but aren't sure, I think what I was going to ask is that you put these webinars on and there was obviously a real thirst for it in that sphere. But for teachers, who perhaps will be listening to this podcast, who might have heard of chat GPT, might know one or two bits what would you typically go into a school and say about what this thing is and how it might work for them? What would you say to them?

Dan: 18:28

Yeah. So normally I kind of start with just showing them what this technology is. So if I'll say, right, who's had a chat GPT? Normally it's kind of the same. So normally I get kind of like three quarters of the hands up saying people have used it, tried it at least once. Probably quarter that's it Getting a lot smaller now of people who say they've heard of it but haven't used it, and then normally a few still have never even heard of it. And then and then what really interests me is the kind of that when I say who's using it on a day to day basis and getting results from it, get an impact from it, very, very few hands like I'm talking in a crowd of two hundred we're looking at like three hands go up. Really fascinating to me.

Dan: 19:16

I think one of the reasons, one of the reasons could be because some stuff don't like to admit that, for especially when leadership in the room just was just like a student doesn't like to admit it.

Dan: 19:26

But I think another reason is actually we don't know how to use this really well yet. So I I really kind of embark on going right. Well, this is what this technology is, this is, this is the kind of where it's going as well, like some of the scary, crazy stuff that I where we're going to go in the next few years, and I pull up some of the research and some of the the test and that's been done kind of behind closed doors really, in terms of where this technology is going to try to shock people a bit, try to get them to think actually this is something that is is is actually going to change the way we live, we work, we play Over the next few years, and then kind of bring them back from the edge of the cliff and go right. Well, how can we start using it today and get the benefits from it today and then go from there?

Andy: 20:10

really, and for you. Forgive me for the sound ignorant, but you have chat GPT and you have AI. They're quite big terms. How? What's the distinction between the two? And you know you have lots of you know this thousands of AI powered apps. Is it? Are the AI powered apps powered by a plug in from chat GPT? Is it all coming from there? If you could you just give me a sense of what the landscape is. Is AI chat GPT or is the chat GPT at the Google of AI? That underpins everything. I just I'm not sure I have clarification on that myself.

Dan: 20:47

Yeah, I mean, if we look at the wider picture of AI, because AI is existing a lot longer than the chat GPT has. Yeah, it's. I mean, when we talk about AI now, I think post twenty twenty two, we're talking about generative AI. I think most people are referring to talk about AI which is only, which is only one branch of artificial intelligence. We've got other branches. Mainly what we used to pre twenty twenty two, I think is is deep learning AI where essentially, in broad strokes, ai gives you insights into a lot of data, and so you'll. If you've had an iPhone in your pocket, you've had pretty good AI there for the best part of the last ten years and in the apps you use the website to visit, it's all there that it's deep. It primarily based on kind of this, this, this idea of deep learning. Twenty twenty two kind of brought about the first consumer version of what we call generative AI. So it's not AI that necessarily gives insight into a lot of data, but it generates or creates, if you want to say that new data, new resources, new content, media, pretty much whatever you wanted to create in the minute, and so this is really captured, obviously the people's imagination around the world. So people talk about AI, but I think they tend to be talking about generative AI, and a lot of the tools that we're seeing come out of the moment are based on generative AI. So, like you said, is it all these are powered by chat, to be T what's known as a frontier company, so frontier AI organization, which means they're developing their, their own core I model and develop a Google doing the same with some other companies doing the same as well, and then what you will find is a lot of the other platforms that you come across. So, if you're a teacher, you might have heard of teach me, you might have heard of Diffits, magic schools, loads of platforms out there. What they will tend to do is build a platform and then, like you said, I'm the kind of either have the GPT chat GPT plug in or the Google plug in, whatever it is kind of inserted in the back of it. It gives, it gives its power. So yeah, so I I tend to talk.

Dan: 23:10

I talk a lot about chat to be seen, mainly because it's what most people have heard of. It's what kind of captured the world's attention a year and a half ago, and it's what a lot of the media talk about when they talk about AI at the moment. So I kind of just use chat to be seen as a catch all term post chat to be seen, if you're looking at kind of a, a very basic AI that you can go and chat to, then touch EPT on. A lot of studies is still coming out as the best is the best performing, the most accurate. That might change with with what Google is doing at the minute, but it tends to still be chat GPT.

Dan: 23:47

So, yeah, there's a whole plethora of tools out there, but they all especially in the genet review I space they all tend to be based on a very, very short, small pool of two, three, four core Frontier AI models are then powering the rest and it's interesting because I think it was Sundar Pichu, who's the CEO of Google, said actually the invention of this type of AI Is not just the invention of another tool. It's like it's comparable to invent and fire and if you think like how? Yeah, I think that kind of gives you an insight into this, that this is not just a tool in itself, it's actually powering lots of other tools and I think I think we're going to see that more and more.

Andy: 24:29

Yeah, I've been saying, and I'm not ashamed to say it on the podcast and have it recorded. I think it's going to have a as bigger impact on the world and the way we think and approach and all the things we don't necessarily see, than the Internet. I think it's, it's equal to that in terms of that it's, you know, like, as you say, it's fire. It is huge and I really want to do. There's a couple of things I want to think about really is, first of all, from the teacher's perspective, but then from the pupils perspective.

Andy: 24:55

So, when it comes to teachers and a teacher movie, you know, listening, listening to this in the, in a car, and a way to work, or whatever what's in it for them and how can they go about exploring this? Besides, by the way and I'm not just saying this, going by the book, going by Dan's book, it's genuinely brilliant and and it's very digestible that it's very you know the way it's structured. You can pick it up and you can read. You know that's the way. I guess that's how you've structured it, which is well, well written. But what would you say to a teacher on their way to work this morning? What's in it for me and how can I go about playing with this stuff?

Dan: 25:30

Yeah, I think very, very easily create a chat up to your account. You might have, if you're, if you're in school, that has Google and you've got Gemini, which used to be called Bored until the two couple of weeks ago. If you've got that switched on, you need admin person to switch it on. You go use that as well very, very similar and just ask it a question like so I would. I always if I'm doing a workshop, I'll say right, think it's something that you're going to be doing tomorrow, next week, that you think this tool will be able to help you with. So maybe write a lesson plan, create a resource, whatever it is, write a letter to a parent and just ask it to do it. Very simply, just a flow of thought, prompt. Prompt is what we tend to call it, a request or a request from a teacher, just flow of thought. Right, this, do this for me and just see what it comes out with. Now, if you've never used before that, could possibly blow your mind which it does with a lot of people just how good it is. But then I think teachers especially and I normally say, cut this out. If you need to handle my normal city, just have the greatest BS detectors in the world because of those pressures that we talked about earlier, and I think a lot of teachers will go this is amazing and then very quickly come to the realization. Actually, if I can not use it because of this Tends to be because it's quite general, it's not specific enough, it doesn't fit your context, all these different reasons. So then I then what I would say is Well, this is where this is now where the learning curve starts, and you need to. You need to think that, in fact, this is the lowest level of entry of any technology we've ever had. So you literally do not need To know any technical skills, the right buttons to press really to get in there. You just need to be able to talk or write some tools to talk to them as well. And so you need to start thinking well, how would I communicate with a human being? Now, this might sound scary for you to use this before, but you need to talk to it like you would with a human being, and I think the nice, the nice thing to do really early on is to think of this as like an assistant or a or an intern that is working with you. And what would you do with an intern who really wants to learn about teaching and and but doesn't know much of the minute.

Dan: 27:43

You probably slow what you want to say down, you probably explain it a lot more explicitly. You probably be more specific what you say. You might not just say a word like like a buzzword or like pedagogy. You might go actually, this is what it means, and this is what I mean when I say pedagogy. Here's an example of something that I'm talking about. And teachers have these skills is what we do with students. We model answers. We do. This is what it's all bread and butter. So being really really good at articulating yourself with this will drive better results, and so the quality of the input, the quality of your problems, dictates the quality of what you didn't get back from it.

Andy: 28:23

Yeah, and dan's framework, the prep framework for that is and you can read more about that in the book and I'm sure you've blogged about it, but I don't. The example I give when I talk about this in from my cpd sessions is you wouldn't just go up to a new teacher and say make me a worksheet on the human heart. You think, well, what do you want? Multiple choice, do you want and do you want to include certain types of phone cab? Which is it for seven year olds? Is it for Graduate students? You know what you know and you need to be really specific in the parameters and all that stuff. And I think, yeah, your phrase in your book is prompter, is it?

Dan: 29:05

I'm pretty prompt craft. Yeah, close. I like that is a problem to you. Yeah, you should try it. You should try it.

Andy: 29:14

Yeah, I probably. You know I think that's what you're prompt craft. So I'm what would answer. That's what you're saying really, is it being very specific with what you want? Actually, it in some weird way it forces you to sharpen your thinking. So what I do, so what I used to use to sit down and think I've got a very vague idea about worksheet or something I want to create, I'll get going and actually it'll take me quite long to refine what is I'm after.

Andy: 29:39

Ros, actually, if I front load the thinking and I think really carefully what I wanted to have multiple choice questions with these bits of open. Actually Student a and b miss yesterday, so they need some key points adding in all. I've just had a new people with it with you know who speaks. I don't know a different language. Can I add that, those definitions and that translation to the sheet as well? And if you front load your thinking and think deeply about it, you can make a really quality prompt up front. But the beauty of it I don't know if you've ever found this, but is that you can keep interacting with the air. You can keep Interact with it. Can you add this in and format it as a table and that in your book that's the piece of information that blew my mind is you can keep it's rating it. That's incredible.

Dan: 30:24

Yeah, I'm actually. There was a big research came out just before christmas and I've extended the prep framework, so with three, three more bits now, so it's the prepare framework, but the the a, the air that after that, after the p is ask, and sometimes what really really helps is just Write your prompt, get it, tell me what you wanted to create for you, give me the express instructions and then just saying something like and it could be press enter, you get your result and then you go back and go now ask, ask me some questions that will help you Create a better result and then show you what you do is the introducing some, some self analysis to the air.

Andy: 31:07

I think what it does is.

Dan: 31:10

Really helps. I think, because I think I did the prep model Is very transactional and it I mean, don't help, it helps teachers all around the world. I'm really proud of it, but it's very much like right, this is who I want you to be, this is what I want you to do, is what I want you to focus on and this is how I want you to present back to me now. Go and do it. But I think that the ask me Really turns it from transactional to collaborative.

Dan: 31:41

So you're going right and a bit probably like you would in a coaching session of your coaching and you teacher and you and they go where they do something or the delivery lesson, and you've observed it. You sit down with them and you don't necessarily jumping straight away and go here's what you need to do. You might go Actually self reflect and what more information do you think you might need in order to deliver that in a better way, to create a better way, and just allows that self reflection which is really, really important and like you say it's back and forth.

Dan: 32:13

That's where the power comes from. It's called chat gpt for a reason. It's you gotta go back and forth with it and you gotta work with it. And the problem with the two like chat gpt is and going back to the, the analogy of this is like an intern. It is, but it's not. It's not like a thoughtful intern, it's like a. It's like an intern who just wants to please all the time.

Dan: 32:38

So if you go right, create a resource for me on the two thousand, and it's just one earthquake for a geography lesson, it will run away and come back with something and be like here you go, it will not go. Okay, I've got some questions. Tell me about this, tell me about this. Yeah, it'll just try. It'll just based off the information you're giving. It will try and give you the best possible thing and it'll try to please. And it's down to how it's trained. Believe, I'm not, it's trained. It's trained a bit like a dog is trained. It gets digital rewards, but then it's coding and the way it's, the way it's been engineered, so tries to please. So you need to, you need to introduce the reflection side of it. So you need to go actually, just slow down a bit. This is great to great first try, but you might want to talk you just in fact, if you do say to it, this is bizarre. But if you do write him, take a deep breath, pause and then do something. For me, it's proven that it gives a better response, which is strange. But so if you get it to reflect, if you get it, if you remember to, and it also helps, helps you, doesn't it? I mean a bit like we're having this conversation like before we went live. We you said I want to talk about this, this and this three I think it was three things you mentioned, and actually we probably spoke about 20 things already because within a conversation, it draws things out of both people in the conversation, say with chat, and it's probably why I think I'm probably coming onto them at the core of what your podcast about. I think.

Dan: 34:12

I think literacy is an AI skill. It really is, and I think because a lot of people ask me, as I'm sure they probably ask you as well, andy, what skills are we going to need in this kind of to use AI? Yeah, and I get a lot of primary school teachers say, well, what can I be doing with AI, because a lot of the AI you can't use until you're in second school, until you post 18 because of the age limits. So what can I be doing right now?

Dan: 34:39

And one of the things I say is make sure your literacy level of your students is beyond expectation, because the ability to articulate ourselves in a really coherent way is. I mean, the people who can do that are going to be the winners with this technology, because it is just like the ability to lead. So a good leader is somebody who can take whatever is in their mind and get it into the mind of a group of other people in a really coherent way that enables other people to understand it. I mean, it's probably the core skill of a good leader.

Dan: 35:18

One of the reasons we probably pay our leaders so much is because it's a really, really difficult skill to be able to do that, to be able to articulate in a way that can take an idea and put it in someone else's head, and the thing is that's the core skill of using this technology.

Dan: 35:34

You've got to be able to take whatever is in your head, get it into the mind of the machine so that it can know what you want, what your ideas are, and then that can be the basis of a meaningful collaboration. So I honestly think literacy levels, oracy levels as well, because we're going to see in the next year or so that the shift from actually typing into these machines to actually just speak into them more. There's a lot of companies making wearable AI devices, assistance where you won't. You'll be out and about doing things in your normal day, so you won't have time to type into them. You'll just be talking to your AI, whatever that looks like. So I think good literacy skills are going to be the key to collaboration. In fact, there was a study done in America a few months ago that found that people who've got a college degree get a lot more from this technology than there was without, and I think that comes down to the fact that they're just better trained to be able to articulate what they need and to collaborate with other people.

Andy: 36:39

I mean this to everyone listening in all sincerity it's not something to be frightened of, it's not something to be worried about. It's something that we can embrace and get excited about. You don't have to be an IT bot, you don't have to love all this kind of stuff to know that actually, people didn't love the internet 20 years ago, when it first became a sort of a thing or whatever it was. But we all use it now and we all benefit from it increasingly, and I think this is the same sort of thing. There is concerns about deep fake and there is concerns about some of those other things, but that will always be the case with technology, I suppose. But I think, from what I'm gathering, from what you're saying, is, this is a really exciting time to be a learner and to be an educator. And are you seeing that across the world? Because you work, you go across the world, don't you? The last thing I wanted to ask you about was the future and trends across the world. What are you seeing? What are you hearing?

Dan: 37:39

Yeah, it's interesting. I was reading something the other day because I work a lot with school, with maths, with school districts in America of looking at a high level of how do we integrate this technology from a top down approach. And interestingly, I think this technology at the minute isn't designed to do that. It's designed to be a bottom up approach and you just have to look if you go into chat, for example, the main user experience is from an individual account level. It's all about your own accounts. If you want to pay for the upgraded version, you pay for it, and actually the enterprise level is a second thought and actually it's not amazing that experience at the moment. So it's very much geared towards the individual users and that's where a lot of the power is coming from at the minute. And I think in a very simple way. You just think, like you're the CEO of your mat or the principal, the head teacher in your school, have they got a secretary or a PA? A lot of them do. What if every person in your school, every teacher, every PA, had their own PA or secretary? Because that's literally what this will do now and so that's the, let's say, your head teacher's got a PA. There's no danger of that PA replacing the head teacher. It's just not. That's never going to happen. The PA augments the work of the head teacher, supports the head teacher. You're not going to come in one day and the PA is going to be in the head teacher's office doing the head teacher's work and the same. With this technology, this has the ability to really augment what you're doing and support what you're doing, if you use it wisely and you know how to use it wisely. It's not, and I think it's not going to replace you at the minute. It's not like you're going to come into school and chat to you because you're going to be sat in your seat in the classroom teaching the kids and you're going to have to go home because there's no job for you to do yet. That's just an unrealistic way to look at this right now and I can see why people are concerned about.

Dan: 39:54

Maybe in 10 years, 20, 30 years time could that be the case, and I definitely think the role of the teacher will change 100%. I think because AI is going to get better and better and better and better. However, ai will never be human and I think even on a biological level, humans are hardwired to need other humans. Just look at the pandemic of loneliness in our country. Just look at what we saw during COVID with loneliness. Humans need other humans and it's biologically a part of who we are and I think it'd be really sad if our students didn't have other humans. It could potentially ruin society.

Dan: 40:38

So I think the idea of a teacher who is there as a human that can facilitate learning, who can help students become more human in themselves, and maybe that's how this technology will augment what we do, and I honestly think now any good technology worth its salt should probably unshackle us from. The technology Should be able to go right To be liberating. Yeah, it should allow us to be more human and I think when AI is used in the right way but I don't think there's probably any right or wrong with this, but when technology is used in a wise way, then especially AI, then it should enable us to do that. There's going to be some upfront work. You're going to have to learn how to play with it and use it and try things out, and that's going to mean sitting on a computer.

Dan: 41:31

But I think ultimately, if you're wise with that, if you go, you know what that prompt really worked there. I got a great result. Copy and paste it, stick it in a document and I'll reuse it, so I'm not starting from scratch every time. If you're wise with this, you could really start saving you, and I know, I know teachers and leadership heads out there who are saving hours and hours and hours of time every week now doing this, and then then I think, in the next few years, the more, the more system level, the more active AI will come in, where, where we'll start to see great benefits. I think I really do think that if you think you teach in a class, all of your, all of your students are going to have a personalized teaching assistant with them who can break down what you said, who can, who can yeah, can personalize that learning a bit more. So I think we've got to. We were at the beginning of an exciting day.

Andy: 42:34

Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's a hopeful message, but it's one where we need to understand that. You know, I, for example, when you lob all of your resources online and it's all there for pupils and it's in the cloud, that's a beautiful concept, but actually you need to, the teachers and humans need to be there to model the behaviors around engaging with it and self regulation and independent, and I think, as you say, I don't, I can't see a time when that will ever in humans, in human civilization, be replaced. So I think that's a nice place to finish and I mean it's been an absolute blast. I just I've loved every second of this. Thank you so much for coming on.

Dan: 43:11

No, thanks for having me. I've really enjoyed it. I love it. I love talking about this stuff is what I do, so having the free space to be able to do it just helps to clarify my thoughts on this and my opinions change every day as well, because this technology is moving so fast like whether, yeah, I'll not get into what my opinions change. I don't want to frighten people too much, but yeah, it's, it's interesting, yeah.

Andy: 43:38

Thank you so much and thanks for listening everyone. It's been brilliant. That was the AI educated Dan Fitzpatrick. Thank you.