Technology with Purpose: Finding the Right Balance in Education

By Damian Doyle, Head of Educational Technology and Digital Wellbeing - Secondary Campus

I was recently a speaker at BETT Asia (an international educational technology conference held here in KL). Sharing the stage with some fascinating researchers and academics led to some great conversations. These conversations with people in similar roles from across the region helped me to reflect on what we do and why we do things the way we do when it comes to technology use in our school.

The first reflection is that our school approach to technology is the correct one. One size does not fit all. We do need to engage with technology, because that is the world we are living in, but our attitude to technology is that it should always be based on pedagogy first.

We look at whether technology could help to improve learning outcomes, reduce teacher workload (allowing teachers to spend more time with their students) and give another avenue for students to express their learning. Technology is never implemented for the sake of adding new “shiny things”, despite all the hype and FOMO (fear of missing out) surrounding technology at this time.

We also recognise the individuality of students and staff. Some staff may be very adept at teaching with technology, it fits the way they teach, and some staff may excel at using more “analogue” methods. Our students are no different and they benefit from mixed approaches in a world which is increasingly digital. No targets for the use of technology are imposed on our teachers.

In an age of increasing pressure to work with AI, we are taking a more cautious approach with regard to how we engage with it. Just as social media was released onto an unprepared world, meaning that researchers and law makers are only now starting to understand the implications and effects that social media has on society, AI (the use of Large Language Models) is still at an early stage. We know that it can be very useful for some tasks, but we also recognise that there is a risk of cognitive offloading and cognitive deskilling if we don’t use it purposefully. When it comes to our children, the Silicon Valley mantra of “move fast and break things” is exactly where we don’t want to be.

Over the past month, we have been running bespoke AI literacy lessons for all year groups at the secondary school. We have looked into AI bias, hallucinations, ethical considerations, the effects that engaging with AI can have on us, and lots more… I’ve had the pleasure of delivering half of the lessons myself. What has been heartening is hearing so many students in the upper school talking about how they use AI as another voice to explain things that they find difficult to understand and to test and challenge them with questions - rather than just asking for answers.

In our lessons, we have focussed on the importance of the “human in the loop”. Whilst AI can be very useful, we, as humans, are responsible for critically analysing and checking what AI tells us. We had some great discussions about the risks of anthropomorphism when using AI. Our students were encouraged to refrain from speaking to AI models as if they are human. There is a chance that we subconsciously start to treat AI models as if they are people. When this happens there is a greater risk that we will start to feel as if we are building a meaningful relationship, which could lead us to trust the AI outputs more and question them less.

With many students approaching their (I)GCSEs and A Levels in the coming year or two, we investigated where our exam boards stand on the use of AI in assessed work and exams. Most of our students already had a good notion of what the exam boards would think of as “acceptable use”. The key messages which came out were: “If in doubt, always check with your teacher” and “Don’t claim AI output as your own work”.

Interesting conversations were had around the subject of human versus AI in terms of outputs and creativity.

We need to be aware of the power of using our authentic voices - as AI becomes more widespread, our authentic voices are likely to become ever more valuable when separating ourselves from the crowd.

We have discussed this in relation to personal statements and job applications with Years 12 and 13. We also reviewed what UCAS (University and Colleges Admissions Service) has to say about submitting AI created personal statements and applications.

Sometimes it’s good to take a step back so that we can see the bigger picture. Alice Smith is great at supporting its staff so that we can stay up to date with current trends and developments in education. I am looking forward to attending (and speaking at) more conferences, sharing and learning more ideas and building more connections in the region in order to help keep our school in the right place in the way that we engage with technology (in the “Goldilocks zone”).