Dan Bowen and Ray Fleming are experienced education renegades who have worked in many various educational institutions and educational companies across the worl...
This week we get to catch up with Katie Ford of Microsoft Australia, who tells us about the projects that have been happening in AI in Education around Australia, and shares some of the lessons learnt from the projects as well as what she is learning through her own research focus. The examples Katie discusses are: Tasmania Department of Education: Collaborated with Microsoft to enhance their data estate and prepare for AI applications aimed at identifying vulnerable children during COVID, helping to reveal overlooked demographics and improve interventions. University of New South Wales (UNSW): Engaged in multiple initiatives including embedding AI intelligence into complex institutional systems and processes, and developing the Academic Success Monitor to predict and intervene early with students disengaging from education. This proactive outreach is personalised and has shown positive impacts on student success rates. South Australia Department of Education: Pioneered the use of generative AI in classrooms, equipping educators with AI tools to enhance teaching and learning, making it one of the first in the world to adopt such technology at this scale. New South Wales Department of Education: Implemented AI thoughtfully to support educators, focusing on significant time savings and improved experiences in the classroom, with a commitment to reducing teacher workloads by five hours weekly. NSWEduChat Brisbane Catholic Education: Conducted a successful pilot with Microsoft Copilot, saving educators an average of 9.3 hours per week, which led to a wider rollout across the board to boost productivity and support staff well-being. Â Brisbane Catholic Education to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot to 12,500 educators and support staff, in largest rollout for K-12 globally - Microsoft Australia News Centre University of Sydney: Developed Cogniti to enable academics to control generative AI usage within their courses, facilitating the creation and monitoring of AI agents to enhance educational delivery and student monitoring. Torrens University: Used Azure OpenAI to overhaul their Learning Management System, addressing user experience feedback, enhancing accessibility, and saving both cost and labour significantly. Of course, we get diverted off course along the way, with a mention of platypus spotting, and Ray's visceral hatred of automated supermarket tills gets ha mention
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38:30
Reflecting on 2024 and Predicting the Year Ahead
And we're back! After a relaxing summer holiday Down Under (the school year finishes late December and doesn't restart until after the end of January in Australia) we've made it back to the studio to talk again. In this first episode of the 2025 'AI in Education' podcast, hosts Dan Bowen and Ray Fleming reflect on the major events and developments in AI during 2024. They discuss the importance of continuously addressing the adoption gap, the evolution of AI tools, and the pace of change in AI technology, exemplified by recent announcements like Project Stargate and DeepSeq. The episode transitions to predictions for 2025, where they foresee the year being dominated by the rise of AI agents, increased research on AI's efficacy, and the exploration of AI's role in education. They also emphasised the need for ongoing experiments and adaptability in organisations to keep up with rapid advancements.
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31:41
S10 E11 AI Podcast Wrapped for 2024
We look back on the highlights of 2024, and the mass of stories, challenges and inspirations we had throughout the year. And what a year - AI in education has been moving so fast we even invited two digital AI podcasters to take over half the episode. And, worryingly, they did an amazing job - listen for yourself... We're going to take a break over the Australian school holidays, but then we'll be back with at the end of January 2025. If you miss us, then please go and give us a rating or review in Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and that'll encourage us to return with even more energy for 2025! We mention far too many stories and episodes to list them all, but one thing we mentioned a few times are the top five episodes from 2024, which in chronological order are: Assessment and Swiss Cheese - Phill Dawson - Episode 9 of Series 9 https://aipodcast.education/assessment-and-swiss-cheese-phill-dawson-episode-9-of-series-9 From Burnout to Breakthrough: Amanda Bickerstaff on AI's Role in Education https://aipodcast.education/from-burnout-to-breakthrough-amanda-bickerstaff-on-ais-role-in-education Jason Lodge - Guiding Through Assessments https://aipodcast.education/jason-lodge-guiding-through-assessments University of Sydney and the future of assessment https://aipodcast.education/university-of-sydney-and-the-future-of-assessment Is AI the saviour of teaching? Leanne Cameron's perspective on AI across the teaching profession https://aipodcast.education/leanne-camerons-perspective-on-time-saving-for-the-teaching-professionsÂ
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45:54
AI News (and no research!)
A heap of news stories this week means we didn't cover any research at all! AI isn’t a tool, it’s an environment by Josh Thorpe https://wonkhe.com/blogs/ai-isnt-a-tool-its-an-environment/ Australian Senate report into Adoption of AI https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Adopting_Artificial_Intelligence_AI/AdoptingAI/Report Ethan Mollick's course on Coursera: "AI in Education: Leveraging ChatGPT for Teaching" https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-ai-in-education-leveraging-chatgpt-for-teaching I'll also recommend his book - Co-Intelligence - as a great Christmas gift for yourself or a friend Open AI announced Open AI Pro @ $200/m https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-pro/ We like Ethan Mollick's example that showed what it could do - solving this problem and creating a working app in 15 minutes - see here: https://bsky.app/profile/emollick.bsky.social/post/3lcldsn2grk2z  Microsoft Copilot with vision for consumers https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot/blog/2024/12/05/copilot-vision-now-in-preview-a-new-way-to-browse Demo example: https://youtu.be/H3-hHiITH_g Sora released https://openai.com/index/sora-is-here/ ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode finally gets visual context on the 6th day of OpenAI https://www.zdnet.com/article/chatgpts-advanced-voice-mode-finally-gets-visual-context-on-the-6th-day-of-openai/ Apple released iOS 18.2 with integrated AI https://www.zdnet.com/article/ios-18-2-rolls-out-to-iphones-try-these-6-new-ai-features-today/ Google Gemini 2.0 with real time speech and vision https://aistudio.google.com/live We're on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/aiineducation.bsky.social "The Carbon Emissions of Writing and Illustrating Are Lower for AI than for Humans" https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2303/2303.06219.pdf Microsoft's Zero-Water Solution for Data Centre Cooling https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/microsoft-unveils-zero-water-cooling-for-ai-data-centresÂ
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35:34
S10 E9 - TEQSA AI Toolkit
This week's episode discussed the new AI toolkit for generative AI strategies from Australia's Higher Education regulator, TEQSA The full toolkit is available here: https://www.teqsa.gov.au/guides-resources/resources/corporate-publications/gen-ai-strategies-australian-higher-education-emerging-practice During the episode we referenced some of the podcasts when we'd had the chance to interview some of the people from The University of Sydney who were used as case studies in the toolkit, and here's the link to previous podcast episodes that might be helpful to go back to for more depth: The University of Sydney's Cogniti AI bot https://aipodcast.education/the-university-of-sydneys-cogniti-ai-bot The University of Sydney's Two Lane approach to assessment https://aipodcast.education/university-of-sydney-and-the-future-of-assessment We'd also recommend listening to conversations with two leaders on post-AI assessment Jason Lodge at the University of Queensland https://aipodcast.education/jason-lodge-guiding-through-assessments Phill Dawson at the CRADLE centre at Deakin University https://aipodcast.education/website/assessment-and-swiss-cheese-phill-dawson-episode-9-of-series-9Â
Dan Bowen and Ray Fleming are experienced education renegades who have worked in many various educational institutions and educational companies across the world. They talk about Artificial Intelligence in Education - what it is, how it works, and the different ways it is being used. It's not too serious, or too technical, and is intended to be a good conversation.
Please note the views on the podcast are our own or those of our guests, and not of our respective employers (unless we say otherwise at the time!)
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