Nordic digital pullback

Get ready for Bett, the digital pullback in Scandinavia, a round up of digital news plus how do you LOL in different languages and using AI to make easy timelines

Jan 12, 2024

What’s been happening

Going to Bett? On Wednesday 24 January, Sarah and colleagues Peter Lillington from Camden Learning/Education Development Trust and Katy Turner from Hitherfield primary school will be presenting at the BETT Show from 11.15am to 11.45M in the Teaching & Learning theatre.

We’ll be drawing on Co-Learn; a project with primary and secondary and vocational teachers in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, the UK and the Netherlands, which explored blended learning pedagogy and approaches since the pandemic. In the talk we’ll explore blended learning theory and pedagogy in the age of AI

Not going to Bett? Sarah joined a great lineup of guests on The ‘almost’ Bett Show created by @Bett_show and @NetSupportGroup, where she discussed blended learning pedagogy and practice in European primary and secondary schools ahead of @Bett_show 2024.

In the talk and the preview we give lots of practical examples of the ways primary teachers are using digital technology to support learning. We also look at when, where and how learning happens in physical and digital spaces, in classrooms and real world contexts and the personalised learning paths students can take.

In the project we drew on a variety of blended learning definitions including the Christensen Institute’s, which describes how a student learns at least in part through online learning with some element of student control over “place, path and pace”. We also looked at blending more than one approach to learning, such as school site + distance learning, digital + non digital tools, online + offline, AI and non AI supported. Katy, one of the British teachers involved in the project, found that observing practice in other countries influenced her school’s practice. From the work she’d seen in Denmark she trialled a more personalised independent approach to learning using a digital portfolio with children working independently from different spaces in the school.

Nordic trends

Keeping with the theme of North European digital learning; Sarah met up with Swedish educators from the Co-Learn project in Norrköping, Sweden, this week to talk about AI literacy frameworks and guidance for teachers and students, the student wellbeing and attendance crisis and digital learning in the context of politics, markets and society.

In October we covered the Swedish Ministry of education digital pullback and how politicians in many countries are changing digitisation policies to a less tech-based approach. In this week's Nordic Edtech newsletter, Jonathan Viner picks up on the topic, noting that the Norwegian prime minister says the government will take action next year to change education in schools, get the books back and reduce screen use. "Less screen and more school" was also the big takeaway from the Danish Agency for Education and Quality’s recommendations to reduce digital distraction at the country's high schools, vocational training and FGU institutions.

But, Professor Emeritus Lars Qvortrup of Aarhus University saysthe situation is not quite so black and white – both analogue and digital tools are needed, although each has its pros and cons. Our view is that whatever the proportion of the digital and non digital blend in schools, the rise of AI makes it imperative that children and young people have better critical information literacy skills than ever in 2024 and beyond.

AI roundup

AI literacy MOOC
King’s College London has produced, with FutureLearn, a self-access, self-study MOOC on generative AI in education and how it could transform teaching, learning and assessment. It’s aimed at academic and professional services staff and students and it’s free until 24 January so you’ll need to get your skates on! Read more about it from its creator in this WonkHE article.

A ‘crazy update’

The latest version of AI image creator Midjourney introduces an “insane level of detail” but the fundamental controversy around the AI being trained using human-made artwork scraped from the web remains unresolved. Ars Technica investigates.

AI and Ethics
Last month Helen Beetham (who has a very thoughtful substack with critical takes on technology and education, imperfect offerings) gave the keynote address to the Association for Learning Technologies (ALT) winter summit on AI and ethics and you can now download the text of her talk plus slides. She also recommends Lorna Campbell’s summary of her talk and suggests reading Campbell on generative AI ethics.

Signs and portents
Another of our favourite AI-themed newsletters is the thought-provoking Ethan Mollick’s One Useful Thing and in the latest edition he reflects on what changes we can expect from AI. He offers a timely reminder of Amara’s Law: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run”, noting that social change is slower than technological change. However, he also shows how AI is already impacting work and ‘altering truth’.

AI and creativity
Following our edition on AI and creativity last year, sound artist Benbrick takes a look at the impact of AI-generated music, examining the questions it raises about ethics, transparency, and human creativity (podcast and script).

Meanwhile, in his intriguing defence of AI hallucinations in Wired, Steven Levy argues that AI’s confabulations can, in fact, be a valuable prompt for creativity.

Quick links

Really fun exploration from Rest of World of how different languages laugh online (because laughter is universal but LOL is not…)
If you were given a Google Street View image of anywhere on Earth, could you identify the location? Give Geoguessr a go and find out…
Why AI is a disaster for the climate (we covered this last month)
The first UK-wide hybrid school opens this year
Almost half of British teenagers say they ‘feel addicted to social media’, according to the Millennium Cohort study
Join Newswise in-person at the Guardian offices on 5 February for interactive sessions and research findings on news literacy in the primary classroom

We’re listening to, reading, watching…

A pre-print of Capraro et al’s The impact of generative AI on socioeconomic inequalities and policy making (thanks to Michelle Cannon from UCL IOE for sharing this)
Via Ethan Mollick, a paper looking at political sycophancy in LLMs and how they may give different answers if you seem less educated to the AI