Stay upright!

What I want to explore in this blog is the position of the teacher within digital education. In my blog on Digital Natives, I recognised that the teacher’s position is a precarious one; teachers are all too often teetering on a digital paddleboard in the face of a swell of constant change and advances.

I will openly declare that I know very little about automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education, other than the technology that I learnt to use as a Director of Studies. Schools in Kenya are, by circumstance, often technologically behind schools in the ‘Developed World’ (a phrase I don’t like; there are lots of examples of Kenya being far more developed than the UK – a discussion for another time… ). 5 years ago, we still used hand-written registers for attendance. We sent parents photocopied letters and teachers input grades into a centralized excel spreadsheet; you can imagine the constant confusion as some colleagues inadvertently created new copies. We rapidly adopted a panoply of new technological programmes and educational platforms to help our academic administration, thereby freeing up our teachers and arguably reducing their workload. Some of the more luddite of my colleagues would perhaps argue otherwise, as they made heavy weather of learning the new systems.

In addition to adopting new administrative systems, we also started to move away from traditional books and invested in laptops for students and bought into Firefly https://fireflylearning.com/; an intuitive and teacher-friendly learning platform that we populated with our own resources and manipulated to suit how we delivered the curriculum. Firefly is a fine example of the statement in the ‘Manifesto for Teaching Online’ that the “development of automation technologies in teaching should not be developed for teachers but by teachers” (Bayne et al (2020) “Manifesto for Teaching Online” p.74). This premise is at the very heart of the design of Firefly.

“Key to this rationale (diminishing the mundane tasks that consume a teacher’s time) is the idea that a more authentic mode of teaching can be achieved once teachers are liberated from such burdens, with technological developments.” (Bayne et al (2020) “Manifesto for Teaching Online” p.76). Century https://www.century.tech/, an intelligent intervention tool developed to support teaching is another prime example of this attempt at liberation.

In my opinion, the key to automation in education fully working is the absolute engagement of the teacher in developing and adopting the latest technology. Does this imply that teachers need more specialised training in digital education? I will consider this implication in more detail  in my third and final blog.

It should go without saying that an excellent teacher has excellent subject knowledge. It goes further than that, in my opinion. I believe that at the heart of excellent teaching is a teacher who remembers to empathise with the student. An excellent teacher can change tack at the drop of a hat and react intuitively to the needs of the student. An excellent teacher will react to a situation and direct the student to the next level of learning. We must ensure that AI and automation does not detract from this vital aspect of education. Will this be possible? Squirrel Ai suggests it might be….http://squirrelai.com/

As the Manifesto declares, “one might seek to surface ways of bringing automation and pedagogy together to productive and playful relationships that develop teachers’ and students’ critical understanding of digital education.” Automation in education is here to stay, but the teachers must take control to align the automation to enhance creative, intuitive and innovative teaching.

This brings me onto my third blog in reaction to the Manifesto for Teaching Online. I will consider the premise that online teaching must not be downgraded to facilitation.

2. Automation Need Not Impoverish Education / Emma Morton / An introduction to digital environments for learning (2020/2021)[SEM2] by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0