One of us should join the AI Working Group’. Sure, I’ll do it. I’d never opened Chat GPT in my life. As far as I knew, Gemini was a star sign. Soon after this I found myself in a Big Education INSET session, learning how AI can make images for my descriptive Literacy lessons and how it can also tell me what to make for dinner by taking a photo of the contents of my fridge (which I am yet to try). The next PPA session became exciting, with new tools to test and workload to be reduced. I then later found myself offering to write the first blog post (and my first blog) for the AI Working Group after our second Rethinking Schools meeting. The question that was first asked by a colleague about the blog was ‘Why don’t you just let AI write it for you?’ So you can read on and decide who wrote this: Helen or AI?

I joined the AI working group with minimal knowledge of AI and was immediately assured that this was a group for anyone. Any level of AI experience and any role within education were welcome. The two year project has three goals:

1 – Develop school leader and teacher capacity across the UK, so that they are better able to support students with critical AI Literacy skills, as an integral component of a Head, Heart and Hand education.

2 – Develop students across the UK with critical AI Literacy skills, as an integral component of a Head, Heart, and Hand education.

3 – Advocate for a future government that values AI Literacy in the context of a Head, Heart, and Hand education for students.

Being a primary educator, I opted for goal two, with a focus on building a curriculum for primary aged children in Year 5 and 6. The curriculum will be composed of eight lessons. The generation of children in education right now are going to face AI on a daily basis, whether intentional or not, and it is important that they understand and can navigate this powerful tool with confidence and knowledge. Teachers have landed the responsibility to navigate it and educate themselves as well as children, or to learn alongside each other.

As a starting point, a survey was sent out to gauge the knowledge and interests of Year 5 and 6 children, and the results were very interesting. A strong theme which ran throughout responses was that AI is a ‘robot’ and pupils are not sure whether it will tell the truth. The responses showed open minds and a range of experience with using it.

As a millennial who went through education writing essays without any aid of technology and visited actual libraries to source information, I was sceptical yet also amazed (and still am) by the tasks AI could make simpler and also do at such a fast pace. With ever changing and ever evolving AI, it is important for the group to stay relevant and up to speed. Just today I read how AI has cracked a superbug problem in 2 days that took scientists years, proving why some superbugs are immune to antibiotics. AI is speeding up tasks at many levels and it is good to navigate this new tool with new allies from the working group, from the UK to Dubai.

The Working Groups are at the beginning of the designing stage in terms of developing a curriculum for different audiences: leaders, teachers and pupils. The primary curriculum group are excited to beworking alongside Lyfta to include an immersive storytelling element. A first draft of the lessons are in the making before they are trialled by the different audiences. I am excited for both the process and eventual final outcome of the curriculum being rolled out across the UK, and all of the learning and inevitable advances to happen along the way.

Do email [email protected] if you would like to take part in this exciting AI project.