00:03.47

Sean Strathy

Hi everyone, this is Sean Strathy, and welcome back to another exciting edition of the Tech and EdTech Podcast, where we discuss technology that powers education and improves learning for all. In today's episode, we're going to be exploring something that goes beyond tools and platforms, and it gets to a more fundamental question. What does AI mean for education, for teachers, for learners, and for knowledge itself? Our guest today, Stephen Jull, works across education systems globally and brings a perspective that is as philosophical as it is practical. Welcome to the show, Stephen.

00:36.50

Stephen Jull

Hey, thanks, Sean. Nice to be here.

00:39.19

Sean Strathy

So Stephen, before we get going, you're currently serving as the global head of AI and EdTech for Teach for All. But I'm a little curious about your backstory. It's my understanding you've worn many hats - academic, founder, CEO, advisor, VC - but you have a foundation in the classroom in Northern Canada. Can you give us a little glimpse into your professional journey?

01:02.83

Stephen Jull

Yeah, thanks. I was like, I think the fastest and probably most accurate representation of my career headlines, I think I've ever heard, Sean. So that's brilliant. When you go into this profession, you don't go into the profession with a sort of complicated roadmap ahead of you that might include any of those nouns that you just set out there. But yeah, it it began, in earnest, like many of us who go into teaching with a view to wanting to contribute to our communities, feel like there's something that we can we can bring to the conversation and without being too earnest, change the world,to do something that can make a difference. So I looked at a number of different ways of thinking about you pursuing that, vision, which is that… to that idea that I was hoping to pursue with my with my career and my life, and education seemed like the place that would be the right place to do that. There's a bit of a journey that led me to education, and maybe I'll touch on that briefly here, and then I'll stop, and we can talk a little bit more about some of those other moving parts.

02:34.79

Sean Strathy

Sure.

02:37.70

Stephen Jull   

But I think it's worth, mentioning like there's a point, in your journey to decide to become an educator where, you have to take a view as to whether you pursue that domain that you've been contemplating all your life or what have you or that, say your parents are considering, or your friends are pursuing. So it's a complex landscape. And for me, I ended up taking a summer job as we do when we're in university, et cetera, and I ended up working in a job which I hadn't planned on doing that was working in the wilderness in Northern Ontario, working with young offenders. There was a specialist program run by the then Ministry of Social Services in Ontario, and the premise behind it was very much like the Outward Bound model that's very well known in the US, and that is like giving people, and in this case, young kids from Toronto, an opportunity to explore alternative stories by having experiences that they may not have had otherwise. And that happened to be in the wilderness of Northern Ontario. And it was a real eye opener for me, Sean, insofar as, like both did I get the opportunity to, spend my summer canoeing, whitewater rafting, climbing, all of those things that were a big part of my out-of-school life and social life. But I also got to do that with people that were exploring something completely new and different to them. And I think it was for me, watching that change that overcame every single one of these young people, where suddenly the world became a different place; a place that was worthy of exploring, that challenged them, that presented them with all kinds of barriers to completing these challenges that were ahead of them. And that really was the inspiration behind why I thought education could be a place where the most dramatic change can happen in people's lives. And it was just fascinating to watch that happen. Kind of which then eventually took me to the northern wilds of the Yukon Territory later on, after I got my teacher qualification.

05:10.65

Sean Strathy   

That's amazing. Coming back to today, though, can you tell us a little bit about your role at Teach for All and what you're seeing across education systems when it comes to AI? That's a pretty loaded question. Maybe start with the first half on your role at Teach for All.

05:27.90

Stephen Jull   

Yeah, so um again, this long circuitous journey to get to this point to work with Wendy Kopp, who founded Teach for America over 30 years ago, then Teach for All about 18 years ago. Teach for All is one of those incredible organizations that has stood the test of time, around, its ideas and its vision and values. So it's a… It's a real rare thing in the world to meet a founder like Wendy Kopp that has conceived of an idea, implemented it, and it's weathered, many headwinds and managed to iterate and transform itself so that it could deliver across what is now 63 network partners across 60-plus countries across the world. So it's a really unique organization, a global organization of educators with a singular vision about creating an opportunity for some who may not have otherwise, come into the field of education, very much like the story that I was telling you about how I, sort of, came into education. It creates an opportunity for those who might not otherwise have considered this as a career opportunity to join a movement in which they place themselves in proximity to some of the most challenging questions and problems facing their communities and society, and do that work as an educator for a fellowship or a period of two years. I mean, after that time, once completing the fellowship, those educators, those teachers can go on and pursue other things, of course, as lots of educators do. But interestingly, most of the fellows that graduate and become alumni stay in either social impact and education going forward. So it's, for context, it's a really unique organization where you've got 60-plus countries with educators moving through a program. All sharing the same vision and values about putting themselves in close proximity to the issues that matter in their communities and trying their best to contribute. And so that's really the context. And I joined just almost a year ago, so June last year, and that was with a view to working with Wendy around bringing, what is, the most profound change in education since education was founded. Like really, so there really hasn't been anything that's comparable in terms of a sea change to this whole sector and the whole,knowledge economy that we're operating in. And so this opportunity to contribute to the transformation of this organization, or really, like the bringing together, facing the challenge of AI, through this global organization, was an opportunity that I just feel incredibly privileged to be a part of at this point in my career.

08:16.77

Sean Strathy   

That is fantastic. I think that, I know plenty of alumni from your organization that have gone on to work in other educational companies, became local teachers here in New York and New Jersey. And I'm always amazed at the perspective that they bring an upbeat can-do attitude to every challenge that they come across, after they do their time with your organization. So I think that's a true testament to what you guys do with the teachers, let alone what you do with the students. And coming back to, you know you mentioned that this is the most profound change in education since the dawn of education, which, that's a big statement. What are you seeing across different education systems when it comes to AI? What's the high-level view globally that you're seeing?

09:19.54

Stephen Jull   

Yeah, that's a really great question. And this is something that's front of mind for everyone. Here we are in spring 2026. 12 months ago, the conversation was completely different. And 12 months before that, it was also just very nascent. But certainly today, April 2026, there's not a single educator in the world anywhere at any level who is not thinking about this technology, either using it on a daily basis or contemplating how they're going to either mitigate the risk and maximize the opportunity both for their own, teaching and learning, but also how their students might be using this technology. So, there's a lot there we could dig into, Sean, but the general landscape is we're all in it together. It's one of those really unique moments too, where on a global basis, there's something happening in a system change in education in which every single country, every single teacher is paying attention to the same questions. And, to be honest, at this point, there is no single right answer yet. I think there's some interesting ways of approaching that opportunity, that problem, however you want to frame that. That I think is probably the way I would frame it, Sean, is that we are all thinking about this problem, and that in itself is unique, and it probably has never happened before either.

 10:49.43

Sean Strathy  

I think the speed of change, as well as what's different about this revolution compared to previous ones. I come back to the analogies of previous forms of transformation, right? Everybody always goes back to the printing press. I wasn't around during the printing press invention, but the dawn of the internet and the digitization of educational systems and processes that took years and years to refine and implement and there were early adopters and, late adopters and, the common bell curve that a lot of edtech companies used 15 years ago to talk about where adoption sat of their digital systems. But this is all happening within like months. Like Gen AI really hit the public lexicon just a few years ago, and it's impacting everybody around the globe. And that's just... it gives me pause and makes me agree with what you're saying about how this is just totally different than anything in the past.

11:56.72

Stephen Jull   

Yeah, no, that's 100% true. And it's, I think 12 months ago, I think it was not easier to be, bullish about the opportunity and quite excited about it. Who wouldn't be excited about open access to knowledge for every single person in the world, wherever they happen to be, and with the opportunity to innovate and create from that knowledge history? And that's, kind of, a remarkable thing, right? And I'm still very, very excited about that. But I think, you know, what you and I are both alluding to here is like, the problem is like, it's not that this, I mean, this is general purpose technology, which is probably, you know, the single other greatest technology on par with this is probably fire. You know, like, in fact, recently here, Sean, I should say, UK, they were doing a dig, an archaeological dig, where I think they were discovering or claiming to have discovered the first location of human-created fire. You know, at least, you know, on this side of the ocean. And I think that's  fascinating. But I think you've touched on the thing too that is the most troubling. And, I know in this conversation, we'll get past the big concerns and maybe on to some of the big potentials. But speed is a problem for us, that's for sure. Because humans generally are cautious by history, by our experience. And that's particularly true when it comes to young people, parents, children, and teachers in schools. They're rightly cautious about change. And so that's a real, real dilemma. If we were talking about banking, I think we were probably having a different conversation. Same dilemmas but our way of thinking about the existential issues would be framed differently. But when it comes to humans and particularly young people, caution requires a pace that is perhaps not at the pace of change that we're seeing right now, so that presents us a serious problem for us, I think, as educators.

14:11.03

Sean Strathy   

You just used the term a moment ago, general-purpose technology, describing AI. And you've said, I think in the past, that it takes the shape of the person using it. What does that mean practically for education systems, teachers, students? You can take that in any one of those three directions, really. But what do you think it means practically for us?

14:33.76

Stephen Jull   

Yeah. So this, thanks for mentioning that. It's a great question and something I'm thinking about, and the great thing about this technology is that since we're all thinking about it, every time I encounter someone who's also discussing or exploring these questions as are you, really all we're doing is level setting as to where we are on that journey and what are the front-of-mind topics. But for me right now, it's this idea that as a general-purpose technology, it really does just take the shape of the person that picks it up. I think that both works in metaphor as well as, in terms of real practicalities. And it also presents a lesson. The practicality part is that it enables, me sitting here in Cambridge, UK, to work with the tools in a way that are meaningful in the context of, let's say, my household. I'm not a practicing educator in schools right now, but I am with my own kids. So I'm able to like use those foundation models, which I mean GPT, Claude, Gemini, whatever your flavor, in a way that's contextually relevant to my specific kids' learning needs in my house. And so that, I think is really powerful. You know, and so sitting somewhere else in the world in a different context, I could use the tools to do something different in a different context, in a different pace, in a different way. And I think that's incredibly powerful and important. And this leads to another part of like this idea of these, the foundation models as being contextually relevant to the person that uses them. There's two things that I think about in that framing that makes… that's particularly important for educators and teachers, is that in order to use these tools effectively, you really have to do something that educators, master teachers, inherently understand, and that is, you have to know who you are. And by that, I don't just mean euphemistically, just recognizing simplistically, kind of, who you are in the world. But you really have to understand what your motivators are. What you're trying to achieve. I'm speaking about this in terms of, like, as an educator, as somebody who's thinking about the teaching-learning process and pedagogy, you have to understand who you are in the landscape of what you're trying to achieve as an educator.

 16:51.29

Stephen Jull  

And also within the context of the content knowledge that you're trying to explore. So whether it's math or geography or learning a new language, whatever happens to be, or even just exploring, big questions. Without having those foundational elements in place as a person who's using this tool, that's where the risks really start to emerge because it doesn't allow you to make informed decisions or informed critical analyses about how you use this incredibly powerful tool. So, there's a couple of things about that. You know, like yes, this tool reflects, you know, each individual's use. You let a hundred flowers bloom, kind of, metaphor. It's different use cases, whoever picks it up. But also the effectiveness of how that tool gets used is deeply contingent upon that person's, I'll just maybe even use the word readiness to use that technology. And the readiness comes back to that first part I was talking about around understanding who you are in the world in relation to what you're trying to achieve and learn, and also that you have, the canon of knowledge, or at least the foundation to the canon of knowledge that you're trying to explore to allow you to make discerning questions or ask discerning questions of this technology. Otherwise, it will have the potential to learn you, you know, as opposed to the other way around. And we don't want that to happen.

18:11.32

Sean Strathy   

Yeah. I mean, just on a general personal experience level, I, you know, cause obviously I use ChatGPT, I use Claude, I use, you know, various tools, whether I'm doing it for my professional work or my personal life. And sometimes when I try to switch which model I'm talking to, it doesn't give me the perspective, the feedback, or anything that I'm really looking for. And this is kind of funny. I use one model for all the coaching that I do for baseball here in New Jersey. And it has a very congenial tone. When I try to do work within that model, professional stuff, it's spitting back stuff at me like, “Hey, bro”. And I'm like, no, no, no. This is the wrong version of myself. And I'm not identifying with it where I am exactly, I think, is what you're trying to say too.

19:05.83

Stephen Jull   

Yeah. And there's a level of consciousness on how to use the tool and not let the tool adapt to you.

19:08.09

Stephen Jull   

Yeah

19:13.85

Sean Strathy   

Did I, kind of, get that?

19:15.77

Stephen Jull   

Yeah, you know, that's really interesting, Sean. You're just, kind of, like spanning my, kind of, thoughts here because, yeah, you're right. We actually apply these tools. We are, kind of, not just a single person in the world. That's what you're kind of saying. There's not that… there's more depth to each of us than one moment in time and how we apply these tools. That's actually a really brilliant, kind of, addition. I love that, that, yeah because you're as ah as a baseball coach you're definitely like working a different vibe than  when you're doing English Lit and what have you, you know, or even like the expanding that  you're getting up on stage and about to present a keynote on a specific topic or what have you there's different voices isn't there and that's actually quite fascinating I like that idea a lot. Yeah.

 19:57.72

Sean Strathy  

Yeah. And so coming um to our next question, you work with a wide swath of people across the world. And what is the biggest mistake you see education systems making when they're implementing AI?

20:18.23

Stephen Jull   

Yeah, okay. So for context too, like we, and so there I'll get to the, I have a view on what could be some of the biggest potential mistakes with this tool. And I'm sort of touched on them a little bit already with some of the questions that we've covered here. But I should say that it's still so early in terms of how schools, educators, and parents are acclimatizing to this new paradigm. That we're in that point where the mistakes are small. So we we can see this in the way people are talking about the risks to learning, the risks to authenticity, in terms of homework being submitted, etcetera, from students. There's these, what feel like, I think right now, like let's just say like two, three years from now, Sean, when we look back at this time, spring 2026, we're going to think, whoa, those questions that you were asking or struggling with at the moment, Sean, those weren't the real problems, you know. Like we're well past that, where I think this might seem… I think we're moving so fast that these problems are going to seem naive at the time. But I think so cutting right to the point here, I think the biggest mistake would be that there is one way to deliver this, okay? And I think the other like, and let's not talk in terms of a mistake, but I think the way of like mitigating against the risk of going in a direction that may not lead to an optimal, inclusive, equitable, accountable, safe implementation of AI is to do a top-down. Like, this is what we're going to do. This is the model we're going to use. Here's the edtech that we're going to use that uses AI. Now let's all just do that. I think if we do it that way, Sean, I think we're just doing old edtech. You know, and I think this technology is so incredibly new and so untested that to implement an AI strategy, the way that we used to implement rollouts of new edtech pre-AI would be a massive mistake. So maybe that's the way you've actually forced me into, like a way of conceptualizing this. Let's not replicate… let's not use that same procurement-deployment-professional development cycle that we used pre-AI. I think that would be a massive mistake. So what we're thinking about at Teach for All, across our network partners, is we have this incredible advantage of having a diversity of ways of thinking and knowing, education systems, of curricula, pedagogies. The list is long, and how we think about teaching and learning across this global network is that we're out there like on a big exploration and listening tour with our network. And the thing that we're hearing and what we're seeing is that teachers are interested in exploring all the models, unwrapped models. Models are, the foundation models, again, the Claudes, the ChatGPTs, the Geminis, et cetera. Some of the edge models that are coming out right now are being explored, too, by some of our network. And those very conversations that they're having and how they're exploring them are getting shared across our network. And that is informing this next phase of potential  if I had to define it, and it will be at some point, some kind of implementation strategy that's coherent, sustainable, and that allows us to do this effectively. So I think I, sort of, touched on the biggest potential mistake and the biggest opportunity I think lies in that, let's just frame it as trusting educators within the paradigm of supported guidance by the systems that run schools to explore these tools responsibly so that we can begin to understand what are the effective implementations, how can we use this differently in different contexts, by different subjects, by different ages, of course. So I think that I think is the direction that would go, Sean. It's like I think we're in the exploration phase right now.

 24:32.36

Sean Strathy  

I think, based on what you're saying, I have two conflicting thoughts in my head. One, I hear you on, we don't know what's going to happen in the next 12 months. Like you said, we could be… we could have this conversation next year and look back and say the predicaments that we identified were silly. Like, we've moved past those so quickly. At the same time, and so you want people to continue to explore and try things out because we don't necessarily know where it could go. And we're only going to find out by people experimenting. At the same time, we've seen general technologies like cell phones, social media. If you wanted to consider those general technologies, but just widely available consumer technologies do a lot of harm on students as well. And I think that there's the concern about AI doing, uh, causing more harm than good in the educational setting, if not rolled out strategically and thoughtfully. So what would your thoughts be around like healthy student use of AI? What does that look like? And can we put guardrails up today that can at least allow for that innovation to happen and that experimentation while keeping kids safe?

 25:54.42

Stephen Jull  

Yeah, it's really good framing. And short answer is, and then I'll give a slightly, kind of, you triggering some thoughts here for me as well too, is short answer is yes to can we and should we put in guardrails to support student exploration of this technology alongside teacher exploration. Most of what I'm thinking about, Sean, too, of course, at Teach for All, is we work directly with teachers, and how this gets deployed within classrooms is another layer of that question. So yeah, 100%, I'm a big fan of guardrails. But what that looks like in terms like the now define guardrail, define who's setting the guardrail, what are the parameters around that, that gets into that domain of like where the constraints lie and who are the decision makers around those constraints. And my default would be towards the educator side of things because as an educator myself, as a teacher, I generally trust teachers. I don't think I've ever met a teacherin my life,  notwithstanding the rare few, of course, that doesn't have the best interests of their students in mind and in heart as well as their parents and their community. So that's a universal across this profession, and so we're really fortunate to have that incredible group of people out there in every single country, highly motivated by these same core principles. And so, I think teachers are going to do us a service by allowing them to be deeply involved in this. And that comes back to that previous question is like, I think this is a time for exploration by educators to explore how these tools might be safely and both pedagogically, effectively used in classrooms as well as in terms of some of those, safety and health issues that you're alluding to around social media. But before I do that, I think the concerns, the parallel concern between social media and AI are quite separate, actually. But let's remember that social media was never intended for education, and it sort of found its way into the vernacular, onto phones, and then worked its way down into younger and younger people. And that, sort of, happened without us really paying attention as a society. The advantage is that we've gone through those hard lessons of social media with young people that we're now eyes wide open on big and powerful changes in society, and I would argue again that frontier labs are building a technology that is not on par with what social media was designed to do. These are two different purposes of these technologies. But perhaps this period of learning from the impacts of social media and its implications for society, and how we communicate with each other, where we spend our time, as I say to my kids sometimes, a cheap lesson before the real potential issues arise. And so, maybe we can learn some lessons there, Sean, and make sure that we pay close attention to this technology that is really designed for us to understand the future of learning, and creativity, and innovation going forward, where social media was never  intended for those purposes, of course.

29:54.74

Sean Strathy   

Yeah, I think there's concern, rightly so, by users of the foundational models that these big tech companies will slip into the same business model as the social media companies, gathering information about their users and selling it for advertisers. And so, I think we are more eyes wide open now than we were ten years ago on that type of fact, fifteen years ago. Yeah. But yeah, I think, there's definitely guardrails. I hear you on the teacher, trusting the teachers. Couldn't agree with you more. I mean, nobody goes into teaching for,fame and fortune. Everybody who chooses the profession chooses it because they care strongly about their students and the community in which they serve. So coming to the teachers, again, what do you think are two or three teacher skills that will become more valuable in a post-AI classroom?

30:57.75

Stephen Jull   

Well, I think one of the great things that teachers have always brought to the table is creativity. And I, sort of, use, like exploring this idea that, if the future belongs to creatives and teachers are naturally creative, and the future belongs to teachers, you know, and that's a little bit didactic, I know. But, I think that yeah, as a general purpose technology, when you're trying to problem solve, and you're working in the knowledge economy and also the creative economy. And teaching is a creative exercise every single day. So not only are you dealing with complex content, and that's true of early years education all the way through, of course, higher ed, just a different way of framing ideas.

34:34.62

Sean Strathy   

So, Stephen, we've built education systems around this idea of knowledge scarcity. And I thought about that question hard before saying it, but I still think it holds true. The internet changed it to an extent, AI challenges it way further, and it raises some hard questions. What happens to the value of knowledge when every student has near instant access to explanations, examples, and synthesis of ideas?

35:00.41

Stephen Jull   

Yeah, it's a great question, Sean. Yeah, and, sort of, education's always been in the business of knowledge, of course. And when we think about the knowledge economy and the existential risk to that economy, but we actually aren't often in the news and media reports, thinking about educators in schools. I mean, that usually goes back to all of those jobs out there that are like living in the knowledge economy, of whether that's from lawyers to accountants to administrators, etc. We often think about the knowledge economy in that landscape. But in fact, educators are operating in the knowledge economy every single day. And that's really is the core purpose of what schools have always been about. I was talking about this recently with some colleagues, and that is like, when you strip back, that this idea of like, if the transaction between, or the education, let's work on a run on this in this regard. If we think about schools as holding an education contract with learners. So you come to school, you've got your educator there, your teachers there, and they're there to support you on your learning journey. Now, if the teacher is no longer a gatekeeper of that knowledge, and you can access that knowledge from anywhere, from home, and perhaps even breadth of knowledge beyond what your teacher can provide, what's left? I think that what's left is the part that educators have always prided themselves on over the years, is that it's not education and teaching is not necessarily this contractual arrangement around imparting knowledge. We've often seen it that way. Go to school, get knowledge, do your homework, you revise for your exams, sit your exams, and so the loop continues. And maybe what we're doing is we're heading towards, you know, a period where educators will revert to the pedagogical, the understanding, the nuanced way of understanding how each of those learners can accelerate in their own knowledge exploration. And I think that's perhaps the, the next, like frontier for education is moving beyond the knowledge economy that education's been involved with for all those years, and more to the pedagogical and learner support engagement that's naturally inclined towards education and a huge part of what educators do and value every single day.

37:24.17

Sean Strathy   

I think you hit upon why I had a hard  why I thought so long about the question, because this idea that the agreement is that the holders of knowledge are going to impart the knowledge onto the learner, and the learner is going to go on with the benefit of having that knowledge now to get a job, whatever. That really hasn't been the case for a long time. And maybe we just, as educators and people in education, need to do a better job of promoting what modern pedagogy is really all about. I,  there's this... you touched upon like almost a Socratic method of teaching, right? Just guiding the learners on their own learning journey for them to achieve their goals, not necessarily this transactional transfer of knowledge. And obviously, that's as old as time, but I feel like AI, and especially not knowing what the future is going to hold, places so much more value on those teachers who are able to help those students learn how to learn, number one, but also, even in the absorption of information, make the neurological connections almost like working a muscle so that the next problem that they face, which is going to be different, it's not going to be the same problems we're facing today. They have those synapses firing in a way that they can then solve those problems in the future. And um yeah, I don't know where exactly I was going with that, but just as you were talking, this is what was ringing in my head.

38:59.46

Stephen Jull   

No, it's really great, actually, because, again, not being in the classroom every single day, even though I sit on board at a school here and try to stay as close as I possibly can, and I work with educators worldwide, when you're not like right in a classroom and watching that learning happen, six to eight hours a day, hundred plus, young learners every day, kids coming in and out of your classroom where you really, kind of, see this happen. I mean, the places where I see it are at, at the kitchen table here for homework and my kids struggling with various topics, writing for exams, et cetera. And you can start to see like the little thin edge of the wedge of the change happening around this knowledge economy boundary and what kids value in when they go to school. And so here's a kind of, a real example,  of course, in education, we encounter many amazing teachers, right? And sometimes we encounter teachers, who are either teaching out of subject because a school may lack that specialist, or what have you. And there can sometimes be gaps. Like if I said that generously, there can be gaps in both curriculum and content expertise, and the ability to allow all learners in a classroom to be able to access that content, particularly in some of those building, STEM-based subjects, where if you miss a learning block along the way, it can present some real issues. I mean, one of the things I'm seeing in my own kids here at the kitchen table is that their anxiety level has come down significantly around this dilemma of like, I missed something, or I feel like I didn't understand what my teacher was talking about today. I don't really hear that as often, actually. It's one of the biggest changes I think I've seen from my own kids in their learning is that what they recognize is that it's not a problem for them if they missed some element of both the knowledge transfer or the logical understanding, or even perhaps even the implementation of those two things in a novel way because they recognize that, at least in our household they're able to access that guidance either from their parents, of course, we're deeply involved, the relational side of this, we should talk about this at some point too, is incredibly important. But, I would say that one of the greatest like outcomes from this is that I think I'm seeing, and I wonder if this is universal, actually, and kids feeling a little less anxiety or concern about missing those moments in class because they know that they can have it explained in a different way, in a different language, at a different pace, until they find that moment. And I think that's deeply interesting and probably a great relief to educators, I would say, as well, too.

 41:38.90

Sean Strathy  

Yeah, I think I want to ask you a couple of more questions. I've been holding you for quite a while here, but there's a couple of important points that I want to get your thoughts on. One, we're dancing around a little bit of this question where, students are using AI. It's an inevitable fact, right, that students are going to use AI. It's ubiquitous across our spectrum here. What is the risk of outsourced thinking? So, or where does that lie? Like, how do we avoid that risk or mitigate that risk of students just outsourcing their thinking to AI during their educational journey and actually making those connections that we were talking about before?

42:31.03

Stephen Jull   

I think it comes back to your point, about social media, some of the mistakes we made there and continue to make is that it's such a passive  like social media is completely passive. It's really consumer-based, or you consume, these things that are completely unrelated and don't support you on a personal journey, really, in any meaningful way. Initially, but I shouldn't be too hard on social media. There was probably a time in earnest where I think we all felt quite hopeful about being connected to friends and family around the world, and it still provides some of that service. So, moving towards this idea like of outsourced thinking directly, and whether or not that's  going to be a problem, or whether we're seeing that, I think you're right that it's something that's front of mind because we don't really know yet. I think both in terms of how students are working, in a pedagogical framing in classrooms at home with their homework. I'm not even going to get into the neuroscience of it because that's well outside of my scope. Yeah. And so, but I'm sure there's going to be studies that are going to help us understand this. But I think just from an educator side of things where we have tools that are moderated by educators, coming back to the start of our conversation, you understand the benefit and utility, how we can use these tools responsibly thinking about  those core principles of understanding your applied canon of knowledge how you think about things, the hermeneutics or your own logic, the ways of thinking, of knowing, of working with technology and and ideas. I think by doing that, these tools will allow us to, like think deeper, and I think more broadly, test our ideas. But that will come through, again, responsible use of the tools. And this comes back to that most important point, which is like having teachers in the center of this conversation, working with these tools to mitigate the risk and maximize the opportunity. Educators, I think, are going to put us in a strong position to ensure that we can reduce the risk of shifting the responsibility of learning, outsourcing it, as we say, to some AI model.

 45:23.38

Sean Strathy  

This leads into my next question, that I well, really, two questions. In the near term, how is AI going to impact assessment approaches? But also, what does this mean for edtech and the way that edtech companies build products today in an AI world, which I think our audience is most keenly focused on? But you just said something that, I don't think I'm seeing in the market today, which is this very much still instructor-led or instructor-oversight, instructor-guided use of AI. The way that AI is implemented a lot of times today in educational technology products is that it's a standalone separate feature, right? That the student is interacting with on their own, with an AI model that AI model might be trained based on the content. It might learn about the student, might help them individualize their instruction. But what it's lacking, and I haven't thought about this too much, is that instructor oversight and that teacher oversight. So, I'm sure that blends together my questions too, which wasn't a great way of asking you a question, but, what are you thinking about when it comes to AI in assessment and AI in edtech products?

 46:51.22

Stephen Jull  

You know, Thanks to that. And there are two really big and separate ideas. And I'll start with AI and edtech. One of the thesis that  we're exploring here at Teach for All is this idea that AI  foundation models, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, et cetera, present this opportunity for educators to begin to develop the kinds of tools or implementations that they might otherwise have had to have purchased or had built for them somewhere else in an ed tech product. Now that could be like, let's look at the simplest, not simple in terms of unimportant, but actually simplest in terms of like technically feasible. Let's look at just changing, the reading level of a piece of text. Let's say it's… we're in, the topic of geography and in a classic, any typical classroom anywhere in the world, not everyone in that classroom, whether it's thirty or hundred students in that class are reading at exactly the same level and requiring exactly the same amount of time and do the exact same like amount of time to be able to do that work. Right off the shelf, these foundation models can support teachers to explore the possibility of differentiating that lesson. And I think that's brillian. So the framing here is that we're shifting potentially from a dependency on third-party providers around ed tech to create the solutions that educators need today, depending on what the needs are identified in their class and their context, using these foundation models right off the shelf. And I think that's a really interesting space, and it really lines up with how educators think about their roles, both as creatives and as responsible pedagogues, that they can now differentiate, adapt, create tools and assets that they otherwise might not have been able to do because they didn't have either the technology or the tools to be able to implement this. So I think that's step one, is I think there's a real shift from dependency on ed tech to an agency of educators to be able to do these adaptive ways of learning with these tools that were otherwise required by a third party. In terms of like AI and assessment, it's also, it's both a similar question, but also different because it's, the problem here is if we're using AI to support our work, whether that's creating a lesson plan for students to be working from, and that's the teacher side of things, whether you're creating utility for students to do an end of unit exam and practice at home,  whether it's some, sort of, artifact that you've created as an educator, or whether it's a student using AI to support their learning at home while they're  advancing. Going back to my earlier comment about filling the gaps at home, like where there's a reduced anxiety, I think, by students who know that they can access both the knowledge and the logic of what it is they're learning through these tools. So what happens when  you remove those tools? Like, let's say AI disappeared tomorrow. Well, first of all, that's sort of, just like an idea.

50:07.26

Stephen Jull   

But where it really happens, and you and I both know where this is going, is like at the moment of assessment, right? So I'm not talking about like homework because homework is a serious tool. There's a real dilemma for teachers right now at homework.But when it comes to actual assessment, like we're talking about the summative assessment moments, I think we're going to see pretty rapidly, and educators are the best positioned to be able to do this too on a week-by-week, month-by-month basis, is to be able to understand whether they're seeing different patterns in terms of assessment outcomes of individual students that they know really, really well and have known for years in their school and across the spectrum of their classroom and school. So I think there's a ton of interesting data and insights that are going to come out and probably are coming out already across schools around the direction of travel, of assessment outcomes, summative assessment outcomes by topic. And that's an area I think, Sean, we really need to pay a ton of attention to. And at the same time, as we look at those outcomes, we should probably be in parallel, of course, looking at what are the things that those teachers and schools are doing that are providing presumably better outcomes. And if the outcomes are sort of, not heading in the right direction, then also looking at those really carefully and closely and making sure that we can adapt and adjust. And I think that's how I would look at this, is like really a part of that, sort of, constant iterative agile environment. And I think teachers are up for it. And it's just a matter of like schools and school administrators feeling like they've got the capacity and trust, I suppose, of their boards to be able to go ahead and try these things out.

52:12.22

Sean Strathy   

Well, I think we would all be good educators to focus on outcomes, as we started the conversation, I think, on outcomes. And we're kind of, coming to the conclusion focused on outcomes as well. So I think that's a great point to start to wrap up. I have two lightning questions for you. Just a little bit of fun here. What's the most overused phrase in AI and education right now?

52:40.34

Stephen Jull   

Oh, okay. Actually, I was just talking about this with a friend of mine, just last week. This is going to be like semi-controversial. So Sean, so there's context to it, but human-in-the-loop. I hear human-in-the-loop like all the time, right? So, I'm a bit worried. I mean, I know what that term means. I 100% back the term, but it's certainly overused. And anytime a term gets overused, we know what happens then. So I think we need to be really careful about making sure we understand what human-in-the-loop actually means. So there's my first on that one.

 53:12.47

Sean Strathy  

Hot take. No, that's great. And then what's one thing that the future that you feel optimistic about with the future of learning and everything that's changing in the environment with AI right now? What's your most optimistic thoughts?

53:29.46

Stephen Jull   

I just I love this idea that again, notwithstanding barriers to device, data digital access, this idea that, just about any learner anywhere in the world can have access to the same knowledge. I think it's just truly amazing. Like that is just unbelievably universally, important, I think. And so long as we can continue to make sure that moves in the right direction and that everyone has access to this, this new way of understanding and having access to global knowledge, I think that's just a brilliant change for the world.

54:06.16

Sean Strathy   

Well, that's a great plug to wrap up on because Magic EdTech's tagline is digital learning for everyone. And we absolutely agree with that. Stephen, just before we wrap, is there any place that our listeners can find your work and stay connected with what you're doing at Teach for All?

54:25.11

Stephen Jull   

Yeah, drop by teachforall.org anytime, and you can get a sense of the amazing people that comprise this network ofeducators across our global network. I would actually encourage people to reach out. We're always happy to engage with teachers and educators, everyone who's interested in the education ecosystem worldwide. So definitely find me there, Sean, and there's lots of great stuff that we can share and amazing colleagues to be introduced to.

54:55.60

Sean Strathy   

Well, Stephen, this was a great conversation. Thank you so much for your time today.

54:59.45

Stephen Jull   

Thanks, Sean. Great fun.