In brief:
- AI’s Role in Education: AI can enhance education but cannot replace traditional learning. Students need foundational knowledge to use AI effectively, and it should be seen as supplementary rather than a shortcut.
- Digital Literacy and AI Literacy: The school is fostering AI literacy through workshops, AI Ambassadors, and real-world simulations. The goal is to prepare students with the skills needed to navigate AI while ensuring online safety and data privacy.
- Oracy and AI: Strong communication (oracy) skills are being emphasised alongside AI learning, as both are critical for future interactions in a technologically advanced world.
- AI in the Classroom: Teachers are using AI to streamline tasks, personalised learning experiences, and support individual students, enhancing both teaching efficiency and student learning outcomes.
- Parental Guidance: Parents are encouraged to foster open communication, be curious about AI’s educational benefits, and use AI alongside their children to support their learning experience.
- Preparing for the Future: Berkhamsted is pioneering AI integration in education, aiming to equip students with the skills for future human-AI collaboration, providing a competitive advantage in the evolving job market.
Introduction
It is not surprising that there are several concerns about AI’s impact on our children’s lives and education, not to mention how this will shape the skills that they will need to develop to thrive in the future. This is something that we are incredibly mindful of here at Berkhamsted and why we hosted a parent event ‘Guidance for Parents on AI and Oracy in a Changing World’. This was a fantastic evening where we had multiple mini talks to share our experience and expertise on the positive impact that AI can have on our children’s lives, how to guard against the potential disadvantages of AI, and to empower parents in supporting their children in a world that may look very different from the one we were educated in:
Why does it matter:
It’s important to recognise that the learning process of AI raises significant questions for educators and parents alike. As both, I find myself reflecting on a key question: ‘What do we want our children to become?’ This underscores the importance of not only what we teach our children but also what we teach AI, as both play crucial roles in shaping the future.
So, the first bit of good news, parents and teachers will not be replaced by robots or ChatGPT! And one of the reasons for this is the ‘novice-to-expert’ dilemma. As seen here, various innovations such as the written word, the calculator and spell checker, have not diminished our human need for learning. Similarly, just like when Google was first invented, and people assumed ‘they’ll just Google it?’, teachers weren’t made redundant. This is because AI (and Google) needs to be used by those who already have a certain level of understanding in the topic that they are using it for. They cannot be a novice.
Students who try to use it as a shortcut will not really learn anything and will inevitably get caught out, as they won’t have the base knowledge to use it or to spot when it is wrong. This tells us that humans still need to learn in traditional ways and the reasons why are rooted in Cognitive Science. AI cannot be a shortcut to our human learning, but something supplementary; it is a tool which, when used well, can enhance our education and increase our productivity.
We saw with COVID the different impact that online learning had on different areas of the UK alone, pre-2020 we never would’ve thought that ‘wifi poverty’ was a ‘thing’ whereas now we need to not only think about this but also the impact of AI Literacy. We know there is a correlation between literacy rates and GDP, therefore we know that literacy impacts economic success. This is bound to be true of AI literacy and it is why we are taking an approach which is ambitious and innovative whilst also being educational and protective. We are aiming to give our pupils an advantage in their technological skills, understanding and awareness.
We are acutely aware of the importance of promoting strong oracy skills against a backdrop of what is a rapidly changing landscape when it comes to the evolution we are seeing in the world of AI. So, we as teachers are steering your children towards talk and Chat in the form of Chat GPT and other such AI-powered platforms. As we believe that a focus on both Oracy and AI simultaneously is mutually beneficial. In a technologically advanced world, clear communication, critical thinking, and collaborative skills are going to be even more necessary in both human and AI interactions. After all, it is now conceivable that universities will use viva-style examinations to assess students in the future.
What we are doing
Enhance Digital Literacy Programs
This is why we are ensuring that staff are embracing educational technologies that are rooted in educational research and embracing EdTech that supports more adaptive teaching approaches.
For students, we are running AI workshops and a Digital Retreat which focus on teaching our students to be critical consumers; the potential risks of AI, including AI-generated content, data privacy, and online safety. We also have an AI simulated interview experience as part of our Sixth Form prefect recruitment process to give students exposure to real-world application processes. Moreover, we run an AI Ambassadors leadership scheme, students who are developing digital literacy themselves and then sharing this with their peers.
Implement AI Safety Education:
As AI can gather extensive information and data, parents are understandably concerned about the potential misuse of this. As the algorithms used by AI, especially in social media, can potentially expose children to unsuitable content. Ensuring students are safeguarded from misinformation and inappropriate material is crucial.
This is why we have quite possibly the most diligent compliance officer in the country. So formidable that he has helped several companies in the last few months become compliant. This is allowing us to work with leading EdTech companies to ensure that our students have the richest education. As a school we are in our second year of Yondr Pouches to ensure that school is a setting for education and not social media. Furthermore, our filtering and monitoring software doesn’t stop at 16:20.
Many parents fear that excessive interaction with AI could hinder their children’s social skills and emotional development. We are aware of this, and our aim is to teach the students to use AI skilfully so that they can study as effectively as possible, so that they DO have time for extra-curricular activities and face-to-face socialisation. It’s another reason why the Yondr pouches at school are excellent at safeguarding students, and why we would advocate for having downstairs charging stations in your homes.
In lessons
As a school, we want to be committing more time to where we can add value as a teacher; we should be trying to shrink the time spent on tasks that don’t benefit the students and should try to spend more time on the tasks that do.
Here are a few tangible examples of how our teachers are using AI to enhance their lessons, spend more time with students and promote important skills. Here is one from Mrs Chatwin’s recent Year 9 class who are learning about medieval Africa as a precursor to our studies on the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The use of the following prompt on an AI-powered platform allowed for asynchronous, personalised conversations between every student and the AI-simulated Emperor, Mansa Musa.
Crucially, following this use of AI, the class engaged in a rich discussion about what they as visitors to the Mali Empire had found out about the culture, the religion, the trade and much more. That discussion allowed for the fostering of oracy skills as contributions were shared and interrogated by peers.
Using it as a tool to produce better adaptive resources and reducing time spent creating resources without reducing quality. Instead of a reflection task being surface level due to time constraints in planning, we can provide resources which give breadth and purpose in developing understanding. Instead of having to use whatever version ‘best fits’, we can specify exactly what a student needs and build for that.
The time saved ended up being used when a student came in during that lunchtime to ask for help, a more satisfying use of time for certain.
Furthermore, AI can help identify student needs; mainly through streamlining the data analysis. It can help ensure that simple mark books become wider reaching resources allowing teachers to spot trends and offer directed support.
Another source of potential expertise in the classroom, is using AI to support individual students as a tutor. For example, when reviewing an in-class test, we’ve all had that situation where one student was the only one who needed to be walked through a specific question. For the benefit of the other 14 students, we should move on, but for the benefit of the 1 student we need to ensure they understood where they had gone wrong and help the progress from this. For that 1 student, an AI teaching assistant can be invaluable.
Instead of trying to decipher a vague mark scheme, they had a full worked solution with explanation steps along the way. At the end, they were able to be responsible for their learning and request a similar question to the one they got wrong. Not only has the student now understood where they went wrong, but they are able to act on it and build resilience in the process.
What students are doing
Not surprisingly, AI is a hot topic for our students. At Berkhamsted we run a super curricular course on AI in Year 12, our students can apply and become AI Ambassadors. In these sessions, our ambassadors cover multiple topics, such as; What is Al? The Ethics of Al, Regulation of Al, Power to solve real-world problems, Al in your everyday life, as well as applying AI to their A Level subjects. They talked about how it was great with knowledge and calculation-based enquiries like maths homework, but wasn’t great with emotional questions. We talked about centaurs, half human half AI problem solvers but how this needs to be regulated. Students then experimented with prompts like making ChatGPT a mentor, tutor or student for example. The school funded ChatGPT 4 for its AI Ambassadors, with this subscription, you can create your own personalised GPTs.
One example, our student gave it over 300 pages of physics questions and answers, the specification and definitions. Then coached it to say the right thing. So if you, a user asked it for some questions on a specific topic, it would give you 3 questions in ascending difficult from the question pack and 3 made up ones based on what it had been given already. If you needed help it would coach you through each step and tell you that physics is a tough subject and its okay to get things wrong. Students even encouraged it to crack an atrocious physics pun from time to time. This supported students to get questions for revision, re-explain tough topics, and to summarise what was upcoming in the course as a bit of pre reading. Beyond this, our AI Ambassadors also surveyed staff to find out their usage (if any) with their students, to plan out a guide to teach staff and pupils about AI and how to maximise its potential.
What parents can do
First, make time for talk at home. Be inquisitive about the types of tasks they are engaging in as part of their home learning and look for opportunities to talk further about their experiences at school more generally. What does it look and feel like when they are at their best? How do they manage the feeling of being out of their comfort zone and in their stretch zone? Coaching questions such as these are a great way to start fostering that open channel of communication with your children.
Second, avoid villainising AI. Not only is this likely to be a futile endeavour, it’s also the case that you would be in danger of disregarding the truly transformative potential it has, if used well, to unlock learning, and indeed, a learning experience that is personalised and adaptive.
Linked to this, my third piece of advice is to be curious with your children and really encourage them to fully explore the learning opportunities AI can bring. Here on the screen, you can see several different AI ‘modes’. These are all modes we explored with students last year, where we used prompt craft to generate distinctly different learning experiences to meet different learning needs.
Fourth, I would strongly encourage you to meet your children where they are and use AI alongside them. In this clip, you will see I gave Chat GPT the following prompt:
I am a parent who would like to test my Year 12 daughter on her AQA A-Level politics revision on the subtopic of the Electoral College. Provide me with ten quiz questions that get harder in difficulty for me to test her knowledge retention and recall. Also provide me with the answers and a very brief explanation for my own reference.
Conclusions:
It is important to remember that AI isn’t going anywhere, the world of education and work are looking very different for our students, which is why it is our responsibility to prepare them for this. Students will need to establish a well-informed integration of human and AI efforts. This human-AI collaboration, will be one of Centaurs and Cyborgs. Centaurs and Cyborgs represent two distinct models of human-AI collaboration that differentiate by how they interact with the AI. Both are effective, and both will give our students the competitive advantage as they enter the world of work. At Berkhamsted, we’re not just embracing AI; we’re pioneering its transformative potential. Our commitment to safely integrating AI into education is a bold step towards shaping a brighter, more innovative future. Berkhamsted is not just adapting to the future but shaping and defining it.
With special thanks to:
- Anna Chatwin, Deputy Head: Teaching, Learning and Innovation – ‘Why Oracy matters in an AI world? What you can do as a parent to help?’
- Tom Peachey, AI Ambassador and Student – ‘Producing your own AI Tutor. A student perspective.’
- Gareth Loh, Teacher of Maths and Deputy Head of House – ‘Using AI for the classroom? A teacher perspective’
- Mo Tanweer, Academic Associate at Cambridge University, University Consultant for Berkhamsted, and Lecturer on AI – ‘Employability in the world of AI – insights from industry’
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