Sep 19, 2023
In this episode Dr Nick Jackson, expert educator and leader of student agency globally discusses his thoughts on AI, assessment and Leeds United.
Some links from todays chat
Dr Nicks Bio:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickjac?originalSubdomain=au
Ai and Violin analogy:
Nick Cave's- Into my Arms-
https://open.spotify.com/track/407ltk0BtcZI8kgu0HH4Yj?si=cb0d08856e854529
Check out where Leeds are in the Championship:
Championship Table - Football - BBC Sport
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TRANSCRIPT For this episode of The AI in Education Podcast
Series: 6
Episode: 3
This transcript was auto-generated. If you spot any important errors, do feel free to email the podcast hosts for corrections.
Welcome to the AI education podcast. I suppos this is the space
where I get to talk to great minds of education around artificial
intelligence and its impact on the classroom. And today we've got
Aussie legend and one of my longtime education PLN mates, Dr. Nick
Jackson. And he's a school executive expert teacher. AI guru and I
think for me one of the best advocates for student agency and
education globally I'd say and leads United fan. Before the podcast
we started talking about uh leads quite a bit that it was a game on
the weekend. Um so thanks Nick for joining us at the start of
school week. I know it's really early for you over there in
Adelaide but um how you doing mate?
I'm doing fine. I um I'm a bit tired after staying up to watch um
the mighty lead United. Well they're not so mighty anymore but
there we Yeah, they are. They're always going to be mighty leads.
One of the best and and a couple of Welsh players in there. So, so
I've kind of got a got a year in there as well. So, how have you
been m you're doing a lot on AI recently. Um, can you just explain
to me your current thoughts and I know things are moving really
quickly and I know this is like a really open-ended question. What
are your current thoughts on AI and Edu?
Uh, I think that's a very difficult question to answer because what
my current thoughts are um keeps getting a reality check all the
time. So when you're involved as as some people are heavily
involved in the whole AI and education space, you sort of get this
idea that things are happening around you to a lot of people and
then suddenly you get these reality checks when you go off and do a
workshop or you do a presentation or you're talking to somebody be
that in education or in industry or in the community and you
realize that like there's actually not a significant number of
people um with the same mindset as you, asking the same questions
or doing the same stuff or playing, experimenting, whichever way
you look at this, whether it's the discourse, the debate, the
actual activities that are going on, you realize that the there
are, you know, to try and quantify to try and understand how many
people are doing this is actually quite difficult. So, so I I
constantly play between spaces of going, "Oh, oh, yeah,
everybody's, you know, and things And then suddenly we're back to
oh well actually no there's a lot of people who who've never even
signed on to chat GPT or never don't even know what Bing chat is or
have never been to Google Bad or anything like that
and and so there's those people there and then there's these people
who might have had a little play and then don't really understand
the significance or have not had the time how whatever that
sentence means. And then and then there's people who who who are
doing the the core things sort of like saving themselves time um in
their workflow whether that be education or not but have not are
not moving on from there or not concerning themselves with the the
next big thing and and rightly so in a lot of ways because trying
to get hold of what is the next big thing is a challenge in itself
you know
yeah that's that's that's so true and I and I do I do resonate with
that a lot with that echo chamber thing I think about Elon Musk
quite a bit well not generally about him but but the way that he's
in his own world and and viously the people that I follow around AI
and education like yourself,
you know, often now my feed is is an echo chamber of everybody
doing amazing stuff with AI and then I go into a school and some
some uh schools are doing pockets of excellence for some teachers,
but there's a lot of people who are not doing anything or don't
even care about anything. Exactly like you said. So, so I do worry
about that myself. I think you're spot on.
Yeah. And even the even I think the social media platforms that
people are sharing their practice on is really desperate at the
moment because there's a lot of people still hanging on to Twitter
because they've been used or sorry X now or whatever we're supposed
to um that are hanging on to that space or or um are still in those
Facebook groups. I mean if if you seen the Facebook group there's
thousands of people in it and most of those people are going how do
you sign on to chat GPT? I'm like where you know what are these
people doing? Where are they? You know I'm like but you know and
these are worldwide sort of groups but clearly uh I sit now largely
within LinkedIn and that's where I see this fertile community but
LinkedIn is not a comfortable space for educators it's not it's
still full of marketing speak the business type things it's still
full of a lot of people trying to sell their wares and those kinds
of things and that doesn't sit comfortable with educators and
rightly so you have to in a way like you're saying is like your
feed is constantly filled with these people but that's because the
algorithms working for you, isn't it? At the beginning, you would
have to develop that and that that's not a comfortable space. And
as much as I encourage people to come to LinkedIn,
people people don't feel that comfortable there, it's definitely
not educators in a in in a large proportion. So, it's quite
interesting to watch that happen. Um, and I think a lot of people
are floundering around waiting for the next big thing in in social
media and trends began. Some people jump to that, but I don't know
that kind of a bit of a strange.
Yeah, there's no hashtags and things. It's got to find
anything.
Yeah, it's a bit of a soft start, isn't it? Is it going to go
anywhere? So, I think that doesn't help right now either, in terms
of that sharing. And I do think as going back to the original
point, Dan, is that what are people supposed to be looking at?
That's a big question. You know, it's not defined, is it? Even the
word AI is not defined. Agi is not defined. And and I think that
sense of unease, that sense of unknown, and the fact that you know,
um, many times before we've had these false doms and then you've
got people like myself going, "No, this isn't a false dorm and this
is going to completely change everything." I think that in itself
uh has a variety of effects on people, some of which are not that
positive. You know, it creates this whole it sort of atmosphere of
oo maybe I shouldn't go there, maybe I shouldn't. And then the
whole banning thing and the plagiarism thing and all these you get
this real very very sort of spooky sort of um environment for some
people or you know the sense of the unknown I think you know
yeah that's so true um such a good insight there because well you
know in terms of your school the yourself and what are you doing
with the school and how you how are you managing staff and and
doing PD in your own school and other schools I've seen you you
know around on the road quite a bit as well what what are you doing
to manage that you know what kind of things you doing with the
teachers
well I think it's really Um it'd be really interesting or it's
really interesting for to me for me to share the insight of this
school because where we sit at the moment is actually quite a
challenge as well in respect of we've gone at we've gone at this uh
you know all guns blazing. We've been embracing this on a staff
level and on a student level as well but that creates its own
issues as well. It's not it doesn't make it comfortable or more
comfortable. It creates its own problems. So what I mean by that is
from the start of the year We've never banned this. We've um had PD
from the beginning. My role has focused a lot on this. I've run PD
sessions from the beginning. We have staff faculties who have their
own chat GPT account. We look at different uh tools. We've
developed programs, resources, um the course that I developed um
all the staff have done. We're now building a student course with
students involved in that. Um yeah, so very forward faces. We've
run workshops and invited the schools in um and and you know and
train them and upskilled them.
But as I say that doesn't mean to say that that makes it easier for
us because in a recent PD just at the beginning of uh of last week
um I ran a session on differentiation where my provocation was that
differentiation now can be considered no longer the teacher's
responsibility because AI tools allow students to take their own
personalized route
um like their own personalized approach to learning. So is it now
the teacher's job to differentiate the lesson or if you provide the
tools and you provide the understanding around the use of the tools
can the students not differentiate for themselves?
That's a really good point, doesn't it? Yeah.
So I mean it's it's a big provocation but I mean arguably if if if
we do this in the appropriate way it's it's got some merits to it.
So the as I say there well why does why is that why is that
difficult? because that's challenging to people, isn't it? I'm
starting to challenge people's practice there, but also in
constructing that session that I did, it was only a 20-minute
session as part of um focusing on special needs and those kinds of
things um in PD. And um when constructing that session, the the
question was, you know, like um how can AI be used to differentiate
um teaching and learning? And typically, you would do that by
probably using a chatbot to construct differentiated versions of a
lesson. But I didn't approach it like that. I to I turned it
completely on its head and went and went with this provocation over
here.
So in a way that would work for some teachers who are confident,
but it wouldn't work for some teachers who were lacking confidence,
you know. So I'm taking a big step there. So we've got to
understand that even though we've approached this head on, we've
still got teachers in this school who are not confident with the
technology, who are not devoting as much time as some of the others
who still cons who who still consider you know um some more
traditional practices than some more forward thinking practices who
are still teaching within assessments where they're required to do
an exam and they're required to do revision. So just because you
want to move things forward a thousand kilometers an hour there's
some people who are still back here who still working on a horse
and car and that's the nature of technology integration. It's not
changed. this is, you know, just because AI's come along, you still
got the same issues that um any technology integration brings to
you. So, I think it's important to understand and recognize that
despite the fact you may be in a forward thinking school, you're
still facing some of the same issues.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. There's a couple things I'd like to unpack
with you there because I think the where you leading globally and
you you know obviously it's a passion of yours and I've been
following your work for years and years and years around student
agency. You mentioned there about the student side of it. How how
have you managed to like what have you done with students to kind
of bring you know as a parent I've talked to my kids about chat
GBT? I've watched them do stuff in chat GBT. I've watched teacher
feedback as well around them using chat GBT and not and getting
caught and getting in trouble for cheating and and and I've seen
some amazing stuff that my kids have done which is which has kind
of helped them engage with their learning. But what where have you
approached it from a students point of view? What what are you
doing with your courses for students?
Um, I'd like to tell you we have some uh comprehensive, you know,
mapped out plan. We don't I don't think anybody has that. Some
people might be developing that, but you know, this thing has moved
so fast and came on us so suddenly that, you know, it's it's as
much reactive as it is proactive. And when it's proactive, it's
definitely not proactive in this substantially planned out and um,
you know, tried and tested approach. It's it's working on the fly,
is Isn't it? So you know we have in year 7 u we've done a lot
within digital technologies as a subject because I lead that. So
that's given me the chance to influence that program. So we've done
a whole sort of immersion and exposure around AI what it means some
of the tools around let's have a play with this and let's use AI to
come up with um ideas to solve problems in in a design thinking
approach. So we've done that. Then I've just started this semester
uh the idea of using um chat bots to um to program or to understand
computational thinking because if you dissect uh computational
thinking into its elements that's exactly what chat bots do they've
got pattern recognition they there's decomposition within there
it's about algorithms you know and so on and so forth so um using
that uh idea and I'm I've I've only just started teaching that this
semester so we've got that going on and then I started a digital
leader group being new to the school student digital leaders that's
what my PhD is about so I started that program but as I say been
new to the school that's only in its early stages and um yeah and
that has to fit in with everything else in a very busy school so
those students um have helped with some workshops they're currently
helping to create this student program so like the course I have
for teachers this is going to be a course that every student within
the school except year 12 who will have just about left by then so
by the the end of this term all students will have to sit this
course in like their mentor time you know in sort of pastoral time
um and that will teach them the basics around um AI some
understanding but it will be about responsible use ethical use and
how to it'll be upskilling them how to prompt basically because
our mindset is if we upskill our students to prompt better then the
issue of plagiarism begins to change over to responsible use better
use better referencing arguably could mean that they can cheat more
sophisticated in a more sophisticated way, but then we get into
this whole question of what is cheating. So, give you an idea of
what students are doing. We're also uh just about to this term
we're going to run a parents and community session where students
are going to be involved in that. We're bringing parents um to give
them an idea of how they can use the AI technologies primarily chat
bots in their own um workplace, you know, and it'll also give an
idea of of the power of this technology. So, it's opening minds up.
It's sharing and getting students involved. But despite all this, I
could walk into any lesson and indeed I I had these experiences
last week and there's still a significant number of students going,
I don't touch this technology or fearing the touching of this
technology or of unsure of where to go with their technology. So,
despite all this work, we've still got mixed messages out there. So
Nick, we've talked a lot about AI and you've been doing heaps on
this and we talked about student agency and stuff, but one of the
big things is assessment. Some people think this is going to be a
technology that's going to support us with assessment and I know
we've talked about this for quite some time with my kids um and and
we've talked about the you know you you did a post on LinkedIn I
think the other day as well about you know assessment. What are
your thoughts on on AI and assessment? Well, it definitely creates
a lot of upheaval especially in the short-term period. So, even
today I was sat um stood talking with a teacher who was um talking
about turn it in and talking about plagiarism checkers as an
English teacher and and looking at a piece of work which was which
was way above the standard that the student would typically
produce. And what do you do about that? And it's okay talking about
plagiarism checkers don't work. Um and if you're a positivist about
AI as I am, you still got that reality that teachers are in this
situation where they're having to deal with numbers of students who
are inappropriately, irresponsibly using AI perhaps purposefully,
perhaps unintentionally uh all that gray area that we talk about
and it creates an extra workload for that teacher. That's the
reality of what's happening right now with teachers who are setting
work and then getting student students to hand in that work,
especially when it's in written format. And yeah, they have to be
more diligent in the way they look at that work. They have to then
try and assess that work and go, hm, this doesn't seem quite right.
And then what do I do about that? Then you might have to have a
conversation with the student. You might have to go back and get
them to redo it. That's all extra workload, isn't it? So that's a
reality. It is a reality. I don't deny that for a second.
But fundamentally, we need to get to a point where we address those
issues. So, how do we address those issues? So, number one, we've
got to look at assessment redesign because by redesigning
assessments, we can make them um deal with some of the issues we've
talked about though uh there in terms of um how AI can be easily
used in an irresponsible way or in a nonappropriate way to um to to
plagiarize an assignment or to go somewhere over the edge in
irresponsible use because there is gray area between plagiarism and
non-plagiarism and everything in between.
So yeah, assessment redesign to begin with. Then there's also the
skilling up. So when I say skilling up, I'm talking about the
skilling up of students. So you've got to make students more
knowledgeable and more skillful in the way they use AI. Now the
argument against that from some people is, well, hang on, what are
you talking about? You're going to make them better at
plagiarizing.
Yeah. Now we got to be careful with this word plagiarizing because
what does that actually mean? And we could spend was talking about
that. But the point of the matter is is you've got to decide within
your context, within your school. I believe and we believe in our
school and we've decided this that we are going to invest in
upskilling our students, giving them more knowledge on what is
acceptable and what is not, what is responsible, what's
irresponsible. These are the gray areas where you need to be
consulting with your teacher in that class, different context in
the class and you need to un understand what when you go too far
and That comes down to values, doesn't it? So, you've got to
instill those values in students of going when you're not learning
anything from this, that is plagiarism. When you're reducing your
learning from this,
that begins to be plagiarism and all that gray area in between. And
are we going to get this totally right? No. But we're going to get
it more right than not doing it. And that's what we believe at the
moment. So, it leaves assessment in this sort of quandry, doesn't
it? At the moment, it really does.
And you could and you could sort of understand in a way, although I
in no way support this is people's default mechanism is go well I'm
going to go back to a written exam. Yeah. But if you go down with
that every time someone gets knocked down by a car then you're
going to take cars off the road at you and go back to a horse and
car and then every time a horse knocks somebody over you're going
to get rid of kill all the horses. You know where where does this
end? You know you know
it's so so it's so true, isn't it? You're absolutely right. And I
think um yeah it and always people struggle to change things in
education. because the system's too big. But I think individual
educators like yourself who influential and have amazing impact and
I'm looking at the thoughtfulness that you put on this entire AI
debate across Australia and globally. You know, it's it's
absolutely phenomenal the discourse is happening and the teachers
that are taking it forward and do you think that we losing some
people along the way here?
Yeah, that's an interesting one and I do wonder about those things,
you know, because It just continue to shock me when I get outside
of my bubble that I'm in. And I know it's a bubble. It's an echo
chamber. And I go out there and there's still people who are
nowhere near touching this thing. There's still some people who
touched it at the beginning going, "Oh, not for me." There's still
people who are going, "Oh, no, that won't have any effect at all.
Lady card." Yeah, there's all these different things going on. And
what could I put a figure on how many people are invested in this?
I still think it's nowhere near a minority. In fact, I still think
it's a minority. Maybe 30% of teachers around the world are
actively using AI. 30%, you know, less way way less than 30% are
teaching kids um to use AI. I believe it's well, you know,
significantly less than that. And we're talking just in senior
school here. So, if that's if that's the case, then, you know, the
picture is is startling in in a way, isn't it, as to the realities
of what's going on, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I read a good quote actually the other day
when they were talking about people are going to use those tools. I
forget who did the quote originally you know about you know it's
it's about that teachers who are going to use technology oh really
ruining this quote but it was sort of like teachers who use
technology are going to perform better than those that don't you
know in in their classroom essentially and it was I was reading a
quote today from Steven Reed one of my Microsoft colleagues
actually he does a lot of games bing from Scotland there and he he
he'd come across a quote from Donald Thompson. He's a LinkedIn
engineer and he was talking about generative models. Um, sometimes
they being perceived as tools like a wrench or a hammer, whereas we
should be thinking of them in terms of like a orchestra and a
violin. And the fact is that you could give a violin to anybody and
or any instrument I suppose, but he he used a violin and it was a
case of you know some teachers might use that violin and get some
chords out of it. Some might be able to do really well and you know
perform a mass the piece on that violin just the usage the depth of
usage of some of these tools and I've seen that a lot in in my
friends and family as well where they don't know how to prompt they
don't know how to use those tools and there's a lot of teachers out
there that might not know any depth to that they look at it like a
search engine and and then they they're not actually having
discourse with the the large language model or anything and then
they kind of don't get anything out of it
um that's my concern I suppose.
Yeah, I really like that. I really I haven't seen that but I really
like that and that I think that goes back to or it resonates with
me in when people start to talk about efficiency. There's no doubt
at all that this has an efficiency angle to it. It makes us more
efficient. It cuts out all this time. But I don't think that's
actually where the beauty of this thing is. I don't think it's
where the power of this thing is. And it's not the thing that
attracts me. Oh yes, of course it makes me more efficient. But
that's lowhanging fruit, isn't it?
The reality is is in this, you know, it's not a blunt instrument
like hammer. It It can be used as a blunt instrument, but it can
also be used as a fantastic way of changing things, of affecting
things, of creating things, of of uh you know, adding to the
richness of something that you're doing or complet or being able to
do something completely new. Like for instance, when I did the
projects with year one at my school and I was able to uh look at
indigenous creatures, bring these to life very very quickly using
AI image generators from their words. So getting their words of
what they thought this mythical beast would look like and then
bring them to life.
Amazing.
Looking in front of their eyes. These year ones were just honestly
the look on their face. It was I can tell you now it was one of the
probably the most precious moment I've had in education to watch
these kids just go
wow.
Yeah. And that some of these were creating the most evil looking
things. Some of them were creating the most weird looking things.
But to them it was like the revelation of the way it unfolds in an
image generator on on Discord, you know,
that's phenomenal because like and that's what blows my mind about
teachers generally the the application like I was in a I was in a
doing a session in a school in New South Wales like a month or so
ago and you know doing the general you know this is what generative
AI is and then the teachers had used it and one lady was talking
about the way she'd re tried to get kids to reverse engineer um an
image that she created in midjourney. So she put some fantastical
prompting, you know, like a unicorn in a bustling Tokyo street at
night with a graffiti style of bank seal like that, you know, this
and then they had to come up. So she was using it to promote their
English language by getting them to write a descriptive sentence
about that image. It was like phenomenal and it blew my mind. Like
you've just blown my mind with that example as well. You're
like,
"So neither neither of them are about efficiency either. Neither of
them are a blank instrument on education. Both of them are highly
sophisticated but using something so simple that's so fast that
that's not just making something that's not about going oh this
makes my life easier that actually goes this is a completely
different dimension of possibilities isn't it and that's really
think I really think that's where the richness is. So I really like
that idea of we shouldn't consider these tools in respect to being
hammers. or the low-level tools. We should consider these in being
highly sophisticated pieces of equipment which you can use in a
very crude way but you can also use them in a highly sophisticated
way as well.
Yeah.
The way you you the way you think about AI, you know, I hope you
know this and I'll say it on this podcast. The way you thinking
about AI and education is extremely impactful and really
thoughtprovoking. Um the the angle that you come out with all of
these things is just is just phenomenal. I I've come across as your
number one fan. It's like a scene from misery. But um the um but
like
I hope it doesn't have the same ending. Now
but but honestly like I really appreciate you jumping on this
podcast today. In terms of people listening in to this, you know,
who are you following at the minute? Who would you suggest for the
teachers listening to this podcast at the minute? Who should they
be following to get insights like you were giving to education. Who
are you key friends in in that area?
I think I mean definitely Darren Coxin just cuz he's an
experimentter with different LLMs. So Darren Coxin is constantly
like playing with his L&Ms. But not just playing with them,
he's then creating examples of what they do in a teaching and
learning context on a daily basis. It's a phenomenal amount of
work. Very very considered approach. Uh highly experienced in
leadership. Ethan Mollik of course because he's there on that
research side of things and he's putting it out on that level.
Then you've got uh I mean and the horrible thing is I'm going to
miss people out which is really horrible. But yeah, definitely
those people. Then you've got uh yeah, you've got Melissa McBride
doing wonderful things in the metaverse and those kinds of things
and pushing the idea of online school and different school modings
and getting us to think differently, you know. So people I mean I
could go on and on and on about different people in different
spaces. I mean, you've got Leon Furs with his whole ethical stuff
and how he approaches writing and things like that, which is really
powerful stuff in that domain.
Um, yeah. Um, I mean, the what what it really is about is just
getting involved more than me naming names. That's the worst. I
think it really is just going, you know, and I'm not saying, "Oh,
come and follow me because I want you to follow me." That's not not
it's not what I want at all. What I think is is just, you know, the
more people get involved richer the the the discussion becomes. You
know, I could tell you there's people that don't really post so
much that doing mega powerful things. For instance, Joe Ray at my
school here. You won't see much from her in LinkedIn, but she's
working in a junior school with year ones to year six having
ethical debates on AI, you know, with you know, it's like
that's phenomenal, isn't it?
It's madness. But, you know, that's what's going on. So, there's
there's so much richness on and offline. But I think the more as
you talked about, the more and more people get involved in in the
discourse that's going on, the better better we're all going to be
because the reality is is that we we can be taken over, not taken
over, that's the wrong word. We can be pressured into what AI wants
us to be or we can shape it and model it how we want it to be. And
I honestly believe that. I I do believe there will come certain
points in life where that's not possible. It will do things we
don't want it to do. But the more we impose what we want from it,
especially in an education context, the more power we're going to
have. And and I know you work for one of those big organizations
with that power. But but I'd like to believe that the more pressure
we put on big organizations like you work for, the the more they're
going to know that actually if we're going to please our customers,
we're going to have to listen to what they say. Whereas, if you
just impose models on people and it's not what they want, then
you're just going to be sitting back and taking the punches, aren't
you? That's the reality.
Yeah. Yeah, that's absolutely right. Yeah.
And AI has the power to completely dominate and take over. So,
we've got to make key decisions as to how we want it in this life
because regardless of who you work for, Dan, or whatever we do in
life.
You want to have some autonomy, don't you? You don't want some
digital bot whatever controlling your life. You want to decide when
to turn it on and off.
There's a great there's a good book that I'm reading at the moment,
2041,
um, which is half fiction, half reality. It's called 2041, an AI
book by K Fui and Chen Quifan. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that
right. If you have a look at that. Yeah,
I'll put it in. I'll put it in the show notes. Yeah.
Yeah. It tells stories about, you know, it's almost like a black
mirror of telling stories. So, the fiction stories and then the
commentary goes with it. So, you start to see these examples
playing out in 2014.
You know, I I I listen to a pod uh not podcast, it's like a YouTube
clip the other day of of a guy that I follow. I've mentioned in the
podcast a few times, a guy called Rick Bato and he bit he um
interviewed uh Beyond from um uh ABBA uh and talked about the way
the AI it was all about AI and music and it was it was released
yesterday or the day before. I'll put that in the show notes as
well. But that was also fascinating as well from a creators point
of view and the way that
um you know similar what you said about the horse and cart thing.
You know currently there's a big push you know in in the studios
and things about AI um doing you know movies and all the movie uh
you know stars kind of
worried about their roles and the like and all of that IP but it's
also the same in the music industry where people are standing up
for that but but again you can keep going backwards and you could
say the people standing up about you know against AI say people
like Sting or whatever it might be you could always say well
actually a composer back in the 1800s would have said he's cheating
by using electronic instruments and editing and you know auto tune
and everything and then you go back further and you when does when
does the music instrument stop, you know? So, um it is
phenomenal.
I there was actually a debate I was in in that the weekend. So, if
you look up Richard Andrews post about what Nick Cave has been
saying how Oh, that's right. Songwriting and I I started to s my
own experiences, you know, in music and and you know, and the
reality is is that you know, one of my favorite songs actually of
all time is by Nick Cave, but it's a very very overproduced song.
It's a ballad, but it's a it's an amazing song, but
there's no way he sounds like that. It's been really, really, you
know, it's been beautifully produced. It's the piano on it is
gorgeous. His voice, but he doesn't sound like that. It's very, you
know, the studio work that's gone into making him sound amazing.
It's haunting is the song.
So, it's called Into My Arms if you've never heard it, but
yeah. Yeah. It's a beautiful song. Yeah. But you listen to that
song, there's no way that he can sing that like that just with a
microphone and The microphone's technology, isn't it? There's no
way you can just So,
so you know, you know, it's as you're saying, where does it start
and stop, you know,
but but you know what, you know, to to to bring this to a close,
what what's really been insightful listening to you today as well
is is year ones, you know, I think like you you you shared some
stories today about year ones utilizing the use of AI and
technology um and and to further their education using those tools.
Um
sometimes for me when STEM was a thing, you know, and everybody was
doing STEM as a thing. Um, it was, you know, I I I I wrote that as
well because I was STEM lead at Microsoft for a while. And, you
know, it's something I really passionate about, still am, but, you
know, STEM was a thing and still is a thing. And and people used to
say to me, you know, I'd go into secondary schools sometimes and
say they'd say, "Oh, I can't use um micro:bits or Adafruit with my
kids in year seven because they don't know coding and we do that in
year nine and I'd always go have you seen what kids are doing in
year four this kid's doing microbit in year three and it used to
always frustrate me so it's good to hear examples
from younger kids cuz I know you know my daughter's in primary
school and she's excited about this technology she's engaging with
it and people don't even realize sometimes
no and you're right I mean I think we underestimate um you know the
power of technology especially with young innoc in young innocent
hands and you know very well about my work with empowering students
just let them free let them you know don't be worried about what
they're going to do and you know let them break it in other words
let them break it that's that's the whole message I always go with
technology like learn from them learn with them because you're not
going to win it's not you're not going to win this race you
know
yeah yeah you're right well thank you Nick really appreciate it
thank you so much for joining uh the the podcast today and sharing
your wisdom on the call. Uh, and uh, good luck to leads next
week.
I'm like, it's only the start of the season and I'm already
like worried about Swansea. Um, but thank you so much again for
joining today. I really appreciate. Keep up the impact. You know,
hopefully you know the impact you're having in the educational
community globally and in Australia. And I'll share any of the
links. You know, look at the show notes if you're listening. Um,
Nick's got some great websites and shares all of his stuff online.
So, I'll put some of those links, but Thank you again.
See you later.
Cheers, man.