EdTechnical

In this short, Libby and Owen discuss a hot-off-the-press study that is one of the first to test how ChatGPT impacts the time science teachers spend on lesson preparation . The TLDR is that teachers who used ChatGPT, with  a guide, spent 31% less time preparing lessons - that’s 25.3 minutes per week on average. This very promising result points to the potential for ChatGPT and similar generative A...

This episode is the second in our three-part mini-series with Google, where we find out how one of the world’s largest tech companies developed a family of large language models specifically for education, called LearnLM. This instalment focuses on the technical and conceptual groundwork behind LearnLM. Libby and Owen speak to three expert guests from across Google, including DeepMind, who are hea...

In this episode, Owen and Libby chat about AI tutoring with guests, Ben Kornell, Managing Partner at Common Sense Growth Fund, and Alex Sarlin, a veteran in the edtech industry. Both co-founded Edtech Insiders, a leading newsletter and podcast covering the growing Edtech industry.  Ben and Alex differentiate between AI-powered search and true AI tutoring, and discuss trends like AI-enhanced human...

This episode is the first of a three part mini-series with Google. There is a lot of interest in how big tech companies are engaging in AI and education and what their future plans are - in this mini-series, hear the latest directly from Google.  The genesis of this mini-series was a short Ed-Technical episode from earlier this year. Libby and Owen discussed a paper Google released about the work...

This episode, Owen and Libby speak to Ryan Baker, a leading expert in using big data to study  learners and learning interactions with educational software. Ryan is a Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, and is Director of the Penn Center for Learning Analytics.  Ryan provides an overview of educational data mining (otherwise known as EDM) and explains h...

In this short episode, Libby and Owen discuss OpenAI’s new model for advanced reasoning, o1. They talk about its new capabilities and strengths, and what they think about its significance for education after an initial play around. They talk through the benefits of ‘think aloud’ versus ‘think before you speak’ approaches in education, and how this relates to o1.  Links: OpenAI’s announcement about...

In this episode, Libby and Owen are joined by Craig Barton, Head of Education at Eedi and host of the Mr Barton Maths and Tips for Teachers podcasts, along with Simon Woodhead, Director of Research at Eedi. Together, they explore the world of  educational misconceptions—what they are, why they matter and how AI and data science can help tackle them.  Links:  Craig Barton biography  Simon Woodhead...

In this short, Libby and Owen discuss recent research from Anthropic looking at sycophancy – the tendency to agree with users – in large language models (LLMs), and key research from educational psychology about how important feedback is for learning. Libby and Owen connect the two papers and explore why sycophancy is especially a problem when it comes to using LLMs for educational purposes.  Link...

In this short, Libby and Owen discuss automated lesson planning tools (after Owen stops talking about his Tim Walz crush). There’s now a growing number of lesson planning tools out there for teachers who are using AI: Khanmigo, Magic School, Diffit and Oak National Academy (who will soon release a lesson planning tool) to name a few. Libby and Owen cover what some of the automated tools do and wha...

In this short, Libby and Owen discuss a recent paper that has generated interest and discussion called ‘Generative AI Can Harm Learning’. The paper presents the findings from a thought-provoking study of nearly 1,000 students in Turkey. The study tested the effects of giving students access to two different versions of GPT-4 while studying math: one was essentially ChatGPT and the other was a vers...

This episode, Owen and Libby speak to Carmen Strigel, Senior Director of Education Technology at RTI, a non-profit global research organisation. Carmen has been the driving force behind a number of successful EdTech products built and used in low resource settings. Carmen tells Owen and Libby about Tangerine, data collection software used in more than 60 countries, and Loquat, a machine learning t...

In our second short episode of the season, Owen and Libby chat about the recently released results of a US poll (conducted on behalf of Walton Family Foundation and Renaissance Philanthropy) looking at the views of teachers, parents, and students on AI chatbots. There were some surprising findings: more than 8 in 10 participants think technology in education has had a positive impact, and parents...

In this episode of Ed-Technical, Owen and Libby speak with Becky Allen, co-founder of Teacher Tapp, a survey tool that polls a representative sample of teachers about what's happening in their schools, classrooms, and lives at the end of every school day. The conversation covers a range of topics related to AI and education, including how teachers are currently using large language models, th...

In the second episode of season two Owen and Libby speak to Alyssa Van Camp, Head of Research at EdTech start-up TeachFX. TeachFX is an app for teachers that uses voice AI (a combination of automated speech recognition and natural language processing) to analyse classroom talk and then provide automated feedback to teachers.  Owen and Libby talk to Alyssa about the challenges with transcribing and...

In the first short episode of season two, Owen and Libby share their warm takes on two big releases from OpenAI and Google. They reflect on the OpenAI demo video of Sal Khan’s (Khan Academy’s founder) son using their latest model (GPT-4o) as a maths tutor, and Google’s paper describing how they trained and evaluated a fine-tuned version of Gemini for educational purposes. Share your takes on these...

This season Libby Hills from the Jacobs Foundation and AI researcher Owen Henkel continue to speak with leading researchers, practitioners and educators on the Ed-Technical podcast series about the cutting edge of AI in education. They will break down complex AI concepts into non-technical insights to better understand what the research says and help educators sift the useful insights from the AI...

In this final episode of season 1 Owen and Libby pull out highlights from each episode. They reflect on some of the common themes, and their lingering questions after season 1. They ask, if a model’s not perfect, how good does it have to be before it stops being useful at all? And they share their appreciation for their many guests who are ex-teachers. Owen also shares his personal wish for more a...

This week we're doing our third short episode - a chat between Libby and Owen about the more speculative or out-there EdTech ideas they could get behind (or not). Listen to find out who’s into calculators and who’s into roboteachers…… Join us on social media:  BOLD (@BOLD_insights) , Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel) Listen to all episodes of EdTechnical here: https:/...

Introduction: Join two former teachers - Libby Hills from the Jacobs Foundation and AI researcher Owen Henkel - for the Ed-Technical podcast series about AI in education. Each episode, Libby and Owen will ask experts to help educators sift the useful insights from the AI hype. They’ll be asking questions like - how does this actually help students and teachers? What do we actually know about this...

This week we're doing our second short episode - a behind the scenes chat about a recent paper of Owen’s that has been generating some interest online. In the paper Owen and his co-authors present the impact of an AI tutor (Rori) on maths performance of around 1,000 students.  Listen in for a summary of the study, what they found (TL;DR - the results are very promising!) and some probing (but...

In the seventh episode of this series, Libby and Owen talk to six EdTech investors about their views on AI in education. Guests join from Rethink Education, Educapital, Achieve Partners, Sparkmind, Brighteye Ventures and Reach Capital for a two part episode. In this first part, investors tell us what opportunities they see for AI potentially improving the student learning experience.  Join to hear...

This week, we're trying something a bit different and doing a short episode. The gloves come off as Libby and Owen engage in a lively debate about the "hallucinations" in large language models (e.g. unexpected and hard to explain errors) and their impact on building educational products. They spar on the nuances of model hallucinations, discussing the various forms and potential con...

In the sixth episode of this series, Libby and Owen talk to Matt Glanville, Director of Assessment at the International Baccalaureate (IB). The IB works with over 5,000 schools worldwide in 160 countries to offer a range of curriculum programmes and qualifications. Early last year they shared their progressive stance on AI – rather than banning AI tools to try to prevent cheating, they recognize t...

Introduction: Join two former teachers - Libby Hills from the Jacobs Foundation and AI researcher Owen Henkel - for the Ed-Technical podcast series about AI in education. Each episode, Libby and Owen will ask experts to help educators sift the useful insights from the AI hype. They’ll be asking questions like - how does this actually help students and teachers? What do we actually know about this...

In the fourth episode of this series, Libby and Owen talk to John Roberts, co-founder and Director of Product and Engineering at Oak National Academy. Oak was originally created as an online classroom in 2020 as a rapid response to the coronavirus outbreak. They have delivered over 150 million lessons in their online classroom. They have now become a new national body supporting curriculum and pro...