Listened to: Learning Conversations Artificial Intelligence with Ollie Bray | Education Scotland podcast

This is the first Education Scotland podcast episode I’ve listened to. Solid food for thought. I’ve not developed any really solid ideas around AI in education but this helped me think of some questions. Ollie compared the uptake and development to AI to other technologies:

So the take up rate of generative AI, like ChatGTP, has been far quicker than people signing up to Facebook, you know, people adopting the internet, people getting a television, people getting radio, etc.

There was discussion of some ways that AI is already being used in schools including what Ollie described as lots of schools doing really, really good work around the ethics of AI.

I wonder what aspects of ethics are being discussed? The one I’ve thought of most is already out of the stable. All the material scraped by AI before we got a chance to choose. I’m not particularly worried about anything I put online being gobbled up by AI, but I imagine it would be more of concern for artists and writers who earn a living from content?

I think we also need to consider the ethics of all application & services we use in education. Especially when application make educational design decisions or have unethical behaviour1.

An interesting point was around developing AI to recreate traditional methods of education, but arguably in more efficient way. Ollie thinks that is probably missing how do we use the technology to do things that were unimaginable before?

I’ve read a bit about using AI in schools for report writing, analysing pupil data and the like and seen a few educational AI startups offering that sort of service. Most of the teachers I’ve talked to, like myself, have used it in a very basic way, cutting down some time in making a quiz or other classroom resources. We are just using ChartGPT, Copilot. etc in as fairly simplistic way.

The podcast talked about the need to update the Scottish Government’s technologies for learning strategy mentioning that it would take 10 years to bring this to publication. I can see a bit of a mismatch with the speed that technology is developing, especially AI. Can we plan that far ahead?

I used the AI application Aiko to generate the transcript to get the quotes.

  1. Thinking about X/Twitter, see Can democracy survive now the world’s richest man has it in his sights? | George Monbiot | The Guardian should we be using X with learners or at all given Mr Musk’s reinstatement of horrors & obliging censorship of government critics? ↩︎

Listened: Meeting Point by Louis MacNeice – A Friend to Imtiaz Dharker.

I was sitting at a table with a boy I just met and he casually said: ‘Time was away and somewhere else. The waiter did not come, the clock forgot them.’ And it just stopped me dead because I wasn’t especially interested in this boy, but for a few seconds I fell in love with him because he said those lines.

Poems as Friends is a lovely idea.

Bookmarked 📻 Turning radio into podcasts by Max Bruges.

As more and more BBC programmes vanish from open podcast platforms and into Sounds, the app feels increasingly like an attempt to build a content silo that is utterly unbecoming of a national broadcaster.

I listen to a few BBC radio programs in Castro while commuting. Quite a few radio programmes are only available in the Sounds app. I don’t like switching apps and do like the ability to queue things in Castro. I am wondering if this might help along with Castro’s side-loading feature which uses iCloud?

I read a lot of negative stuff about chatGPT. Dave Winer seems upbeat. Even though he mentions that a lot of programmers will lose work, he is positive about chatGPT. There are a couple of laugh out loud moments and lots of ideas to chew on, even if you are not a programmer. An enjoyable listen.

Listened #1 - How it got its name and if I ruled the world from podcasts.apple.com()
Join us, Richard, Elaine and Chris, our brand new podcast and our first ever episode, as we share our desert island apps, our favourite iOS features,  our best bit of recent CPD and why we should  rule the world! Before, we answer the big question, which is and will always be... How is learning be…

I was delighted to hear my name mention on this new educational podcast coming from a trio of Glasgow teachers. A life time ago I used to work beside Richard. Very much iPad focused but lots applicable elsewhere. I’ve subbed and look forward to hearing more episodes. There was some discussion about pupils as leaders of learning and I hope this might be a theme I can find out more about.

Hearing from very Apple focused teachers will be interesting for me. Although I’ve been Mac for all of my technical life and 1–2–1 iPads in my class for a good few years my tech interests/obsessions are not iPad centred so this should be CPD for me. Apple pencils seem to be transformative in Glasgow, I’ve never even picked one up.

The podcast is of a reasonable length and is split up nicly into sections, one of which was the teams favourite iOS thing. I’d agree with AirDrop, which I’ve hammered in class for the last 8 years. Unfortunately it has stopped working for us in school at the moment, not sure why?

It is nice to hear some Scottish educators voices. There was mention of podcasting in one of the presenter’s classrooms. I am looking forward to listening to that too. I still find it puzzling that podcasting does not happen more often with learners. It has amazing potential. The fact you don’t need much in the way of hardware and in Scotland Glow Blogs can provide the hosting for free for pupils make it to me compelling.

Nice name & logo.

N.B. the link is to apple podcasts, I can’t find a generic page.

Listened Michael Camilleri from Really Specific Stories
Join host and podcast studies researcher Martin Feld as he delves into stories of tech-podcast production and fandom, featuring creators and their listeners.

Listened: Really Specific Stories – Michael Camilleri, I continue to really enjoy this podcast. A podcast about podcasting and podcast listening.

Wonderfully it discusses the culture of podcasting rather than the type of mic you need. Michael‘s episode was very interesting his views on podcasting and the web had me nodding a lot.

I grabbed this wee snippet when I arrived in the car park at school the other day using Castro’s ability to snip a bit from a podcast (I am presuming such a short extract, for review, breaks no copyright).

There is a lot more to listen too, the idea of blogging, podcasting and writing html as a something done by ordinary folk, and the idea that the openness of the format invite participation certainly rings true for me.

There is quite a lot of blogging about blogging, maybe we need more podcasting about listening to podcasts & podcasting.

Uh, you know, you could imagine a history of podcasting, that evolved more just like a digital version of radio, and didn’t have this, this idea of a feed. And there are services out there, I think, trying to get back to a more controlled, like not, not a feed-based system,

I’ve been really enjoying dipping into Really Specific Stories which is about the creative practice of RSS-based tech podcasting. So far a lot of the episodes I’ve listened to have been from duel point of views as listeners & producers. I’ve found the ‘listener’ views particularly compelling.

I’ve not managed to post any notes about the episodes I’ve listened to but I’am delighted that they come with full transcripts. I mostly listen to podcasts while driving, ideas pop into my head and vanish. The transcripts let me go back and skim to be reminded.

I didn’t really need to skim this episode except to grab a quote. Daniel’s passionate arguments for RSS and publishing in the open came across very strongly. I both enjoyed and agreed with it all.

Although Really Specific Stories is about tech podcasting I think anyone with an interest in podcasting would enjoy it. I’ve listened to several episodes now and will continue to follow it.

Listened Episode 7: Heather Burns from anchor.fm
In this episode, Konstantinos and Jillian speak with Heather Burns about the Online Safety Bill in the United Kingdom. The Bill, which has been promoted as the one to make the UK the safest place to be online, has received significant criticism about the way it undermines human rights as well as important security protocols. Heather elaborates on these issues as well as why she believes the Online Safety Bill is the UK’s "Internet Brexit" moment, why she has called the bill the "Nick Clegg law" and what she believes the future of the UK will be after the passage of the Bill.

Heather has written extensively on her blog about the UK Online safety bill discussed here. Interesting indeed. Good Glaswegian joke & ends with passionate encouragement of the open web. Very much enjoyed this as I ease back into podcast listening while commuting.