Education Series 3: Dan Fitzpatrick The Ai Educator/ AI for Students / Learning to Learn

0:01 Welcome to another episode of Come Together and we're Live. Dan Fitzpatrick, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Yeah, it's great to be with you. And yeah, it's great to see sunny Florida in the background. It's as you can probably tell here, it's it's rainy England. So it's it's nice to partake in in the sunshine virtually. Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's what do you call it this time of year? It's already, it's already, it's already been cold, huh, For a couple of weeks now. Yeah, probably, probably, yeah, about two weeks or so. I was, I was working in Kazakhstan last week and that, that was a lot colder.

0:50 So I'm, I'm actually happy to be back in this. This. It feels a bit feels warmer, but it's it's a type of weather where we can put the the fire on in the house. Yeah. And so I love that because, I mean, it feels really cozy. Yeah. That's right, That's right. What are you doing, Kazakhstan? I was I was keynote in the conference on on AI. So I was but it but doing lots of things. So I, that was why I was there. But I got to, I had meetings with their, their government about, about artificial intelligence and got to meet some of the amazing innovation that some of their students are doing. So two guys, in fact, I wrote a Forbes Article 2 days ago on this, but I met two students, I think they were, they were about 14 or 15 years old.

1:39 And they'd created a virtual reality science lab that would recreate any type of scenario in terms of absolutely phenomenal. And they've integrated an artificial intelligence tutor to talk the, they're using an AI voice to talk the students through what to do and how to do it. Phenomenal created by the students themselves. So I was kind of wanted to help them out to try and get attention on them for that project. Really. So it's yeah, some some amazed. It's not. I don't know about you guys in the States, but we don't really hear about those, those countries like Kazakhstan and Mongolia, like we, we just don't hear about them that much in the news.

2:27 So you, I mean, some of the names of the countries around there I just didn't even know existed. And but actually they're some of those, some of those cities are really advanced and they, they've got a lot of oil money. So they they can they can do some really cool things. So yeah, it was a pleasure to go somewhere completely different. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We, I, I, I, I've been, I've been noticing more and more. And actually there's, I've been focusing also on my podcast about learning more about other places because as an American, we think that, you know, America takes up 95% of the world. And then like, you know, maybe like 5% of the world goes to like, you know, China and Europe and like, that's it, you know, as far as like we're concerned.

3:10 And it's a shame because there's so much that other places have to offer and there's so much to learn from different styles. And you know, we know that our systems are not necessarily perfect, you know, and that's actually why, you know, I've even reached out to begin with because I, you know, so you, you, you really, and I'm sure, please correct me, but you specialize in the combination of education and implementation of AI into education, Is that correct? Yeah, so I, I, I suppose I spend a lot of my time writing. So I write books on on AI and education. I write for Forbes and then the the kind of the other half of my time I spend with schools, with, with governments, with universities and some businesses as well, like mainly Ed tech businesses, but helping them to upskill, but then also to strategically integrate and to and to strategically stop because we can get into this, I guess.

4:09 But I'm, I'm a big believer that education, especially education systems around the world have been on borrowed time for a long, for a long time anyway. AI is just exasperating that. And so I, I, I see a big part of my work is helping schools and governments actually not just deal with AI, but CAI is the catalyst for more holes for, for bigger change of those systems. Overhauling an old system it feels like. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so I actually teach high school part time. I've been doing it in my 4th, my 4th year doing it.

4:52 And, and I, I, one of the reasons why I wanted to start teaching to begin with was because I know that there's a lot of not great teachers out there. And I, and I know that the, at least in the states, the incentive structure and the social incentive structure, financial and social do not really lend themselves to encouraging great, charismatic or fun teachers. You know, a lot of times and even the set, the set the, and we could talk about this, the actual setting of the classroom, you know, to have lines of desks and have 14, you know, 13 to 18 year olds sit for seven hours and be told that they're bad or wrong or stupid. If they, you know, if they're, if they can't do that for that period of time.

5:36 And I don't even know that they're necessarily supposed to, you know, And so I wanted to be able to kind of be able to help. And and if, if I could have, you know, if I have a positive impact on even, you know, 15 students at a time, 20 students at a time, then I know it goes a long way even for my own life, you know, having having hopefully, you know, having had some good teachers in the past. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's interesting because I think I sometimes think we've we've engineered a system that and actually there's some parallels here with the AI really. So we've engineered a system that to try and be as efficient as possible. And I think one of the first rules of efficiency is control. How do you control the situation? So the first thing we do and I, I'm not sure about you, Efrain, but when I was when I was trained to be a teacher, because I was, I was a high school teacher too. The first thing they teach you is how to control the class, how to, and it makes sense because you've got thirty teenagers in front of you.

6:36 If you can't control them, then you can't do anything with them. But I think there's some, there's some kind of weird paradox there where actually we're, we're saying that, well, in order to do schooling, first of all, we must take control of, of the students. And I think there's an inherent fault with that, that. And, and I think it's just, it's, it's a symptom of a system that is mass produced. So and I, and I, I'm, I'm, I'm quite generous saying 30 students in the class in the UK, sometimes we can have 3540 students in a class. No, my teacher, yeah, because of teachers shortages. Shortages.

7:20 Yeah, absolutely. And so of course you need to control, but as soon as you start controlling you, you kind of squash curiosity, you squash student LED learning and then and then you follow things through and you go right, well, what's the most efficient way to get through that hour? You put the you put the tables in rows. You have the teacher stood at the front. You and I feel like we've just really, really made a system that that is efficient at getting to success, but success defined by the system, which I don't think is necessarily what true success should be. So yeah, it kind of makes sense in a way how we've done it, but I just think the system isn't entirely relevant now. And yeah, I think I think we've got, we're going to have to do something new and there's going to have to be a lot more options and variety, which I think we're starting to see as well. We're starting to see these, these new experimental schools pop up in places on on in the UK, the fastest growing school at the moment is an online school. So on.

8:30 I know in the States you guys have had online schools for a while now, but they're, they're quite new here in the UK. So I, I, I, I'm optimistic, but I, I do fear for the system sometimes and that it, that it's not going to be able to cope with the, the democratization of, of so much ability that that AI brings to us and our students. Yeah, Yeah, that's a great, that's a great way of putting it. One of the things that I've think that I personally observed, I think or that you know, anecdotally at least, is that is that my students and students in general are kind of taught to be cogs and to understand that they have a good place and apart.

9:13 And like almost like to be a cookie cutter and creativity and like your own taking your own way of doing things is not encouraged. And not only, and probably again, for the reasons that we talked about, you have 30 students. It's very hard to let for one teacher to pay different attention in an hour to 30 different students, right? And that's kind of what the issue, one of the issues stems from. But I think that in the world that will, and perhaps you can clarify your thoughts on some of this too. But I think in the world of AI in the future, the I think that generalized knowledge and like, like for to have a lot of knowledge, a little bit of knowledge in a lot of different areas. And then to learn how to use AI like a companion to help you dive deeper into whatever direction and whatever rabbit hole you want to go down or whatever skill you want to learn to advance would be a far more effective system for someone growing up in the world today.

10:05 Because a lot of jobs that we're training people for now are going to be irrelevant. You know, I mean, we're teaching people how to work in factories still when we have everything is being robotic, you know, or you're teaching, you know, people how to be doctors when AI, you know, does X amount, you know, diagnosis X amount more successfully than you know, human doctors do. And we haven't and we kind of just like clinging to this like familiar notion. And I think part of the reason why is because education is so deep rooted in society. We don't really know how to how to, how to gauge someone without that, right. So you have an, if you have an employee that you're looking for that you know, how, how you know whether you want to hire them or not. A lot of what you look at is how they did in school, how they do in college, how they get, how they do in their grades, you know, and but a lot of that, what they picked up in that doesn't necessarily correspond to the type of responsibilities they'll need in a modern day workforce, you know? Yeah.

11:00 And it's crazy, isn't it, because we at some point in time, we went into an exam hall and we, we did, we did an exam and now we carry that grade with us for the rest of our lives. We got to carry that ABCDEF for the rest of our lives. And, and it's, it's a reflection on, on a, on a tiny moment in our lives where we could have been, we could have had a bad night the night before. We could have just been having a really crap year. We could have. And then all of a sudden that labels us for the rest of our lives. And I think, I think it's just not first of all, I don't think it's a fairway to, to, to define success when it comes to education.

11:46 And I think, I think touching on some of the what you just said as well, like kind of what do we learn? What, what should we learn in education? And I think we've, the way education, I feel like has been created over the last few 100 years is that we're almost, we want to give everyone the knowledge of, of the world. So it's like, right, let's teach them everything there is to know about geography, everything there is to know about history, everything about biology up up to a certain degree, up to a certain level. But I kind of think we keep adding to that. So like in the UK about 10 years ago, a bit longer, actually 15 years ago, kind of a whole third was added onto the curriculum. And, and therefore it, it kind of coming back to what we said earlier, it the teachers and the school systems don't have any choice but to be try and be as efficient as possible just now just to get through that much content. And it, it kind of cocks back to a, a world where at the school was the, the authority on knowledge did have, wasn't the gatekeeper on, on knowledge.

12:58 But that's, that hasn't been the case for a long time now. And I, I think like you're saying as well, they, if we can teach them how to collaborate with technology to, to be inquisitive, to learn, then we, we, we will soon realise we don't have to teach them everything. We just need to teach them enough to, to, for them to go and enjoy continuing to learn themselves, whether that be with AI, whether it be with Google, whether it be with books, a library, whatever it might be. But I just, I think once you start to do that, you let go of control because you then have to start admitting that, well, students can learn elsewhere.

13:45 It might be even be able to learn better elsewhere. And I think once you start getting into that territory as a school system, you it gets scary. It gets scary. And in fact, I just wrote a piece on LinkedIn this morning saying get called, get out of the way about how we, we need to get out of the way of our students and not think that we know what's best all of the time for them. And we know what they should be learning all of the time. But actually give them the tools to, to get curious, to want to learn. And then just step out the way every, even if it's just one day a week, like step out the way and see what they can do, see what they. But yeah, I think we've, I think AI coming back to AI, I think AI is kind of exposing this a bit more than than we're used to. And I think that's the situation we're in at the moment where now schools are starting to think well and universities as well. I guess how do we lock this down and not let AI ruin what what we've got, the systems we've got where I think we should be thinking the other way around, like how how can we use this as an opportunity to to prepare our students for this world? Do you think it's?

15:05 Just a generational thing, you think it's just like sometimes you have to just kind of let the course of like old school teachers kind of, you know, recycle. And then you have the younger generation that's more because, you know, at a certain point that's kind of what it has to be. And you know, and I think that if institutions hang on too long, then people reject it and go somewhere else. You know, for example, I was even with the podcast space, right? Like there were gatekeepers of information for, you know, decades that, you know, there was systematic distrust, you know, almost on like universal level, I'd say in the last half, you know, half a decade or so since around, you know, 19, 2019-2020 ish. And, and you know, and you can either kind of fight the fact that, you know, that, hey, you know, people are learning a lot or getting a lot of news and information and new understandings and perspectives from podcast, or you can kind of just try to be a gatekeeper and try to hold people back. But I think at a certain point it's going to happen one way or another, you know?

16:01 And so, so the question just kind of becomes like, you know, are you going to be willing to embrace that? You're just going to hang on until you're, you know, until you can't anymore, you know? Yeah, yeah, you kind of, you reminded me of, there's a Planck's quote where you said science advances one funeral at a time. And, and his whole point is you don't get changes to science until the the gatekeepers actually actually die. Yeah, I don't know. I just think I I think I even say this attitude from students sometimes that because it's the only system we know, then of course I think of sometimes I think of course AI is bad for the system.

16:45 Of course it is. It's going to make you, oh, if, if you're, if you, if you want to use it this way, it's going to help you cheat. It's going to help you do some, do some things that are dishonest. It's going to help you like it's bad for the current system. It really is. And if, if all you know is the current system, then of course you're going to want to hold it at arm's length. You might want to ban it. You might want to say this is bad for me, of course it is. But I, I think we need to step, take a step back further than that and go right, what actually is? Could we do the system better here? Could we, could we change what we do and make it a bit better so that actually AI is a part of that and we can collaborate with it. And but I think it's about, it's about true innovation, I think, and something that I don't think education has gone through. Not a very Valentine, yeah?

17:43 Yeah, yeah, I, I think that you hit the nail on the head earlier with also the notion of learning how to learn. You know, anecdotally, again, you know, I'm, I'm Orthodox Jew and, you know, I went to seminary after high school to learn, to spend some time learning about Judaism. And, you know, it's very common, you know, for Orthodox Jews to, to spend some time in a seminary at some point in their lives and just, you know, learn some foundational texts and stuff. And one thing that I, yeah, that I realized was I'm, you know, I'm likely going to go, I'm going to college. I'm going to a college campus somewhere. And I'm going to, you know, there's certain students whose philosophy when it came to this was I want to learn enough to be able to protect me, you know, so I can maintain my values while I'm in another world, right? You know, the world that doesn't necessarily value the same things that I do.

18:32 But, you know, I want to be able to be strong enough. And so I'm going to learn the foundation, you know, and I realized when I was when I was there, I was about 1819 years old, that there's no 1819 years old. There's no way I'm going to learn enough to carry me through the rest of my life. And I realized that the, the value was learning how to continue learning and where to look to keep on learning, you know, and so to not look at this point of my life like this, I'm accumulating X amount of knowledge that I'm going to, that's all I'm going to have forever. And that's when I'm going to draw on this whenever the scenario comes up. Rather, I'm learning to learn how to learn, learn how to think. And so I could keep on building my skills. And I think that teachers are used to being the, the people that tell you how to tell you what you know, you know, as opposed to helping you figure out how to think and how to learn, you know, And so AI is helping us. Hey, you want to, I think the much more important tool to use would be how do I prompt AI properly? How do I, how do I find out whether AI is telling me the truth?

19:30 How do I find sourcing for the information that it's presented to me? So I could find out whether it's real or not. And then I could kind of build my own knowledge and whatever I'm whatever I want to dive into, you know, and if someone is interested in engineering, for example, or history, it's really important to you. But I think that they could, to be able to use AI as a companion tool can help you learn to learn forever, you know, and you never stop. And the amount that you could, the amount that you could create and the amount that you can, you know, accomplish. I mean, with my podcast, for example, I learned, I started integrating AI to help me find guests. I want to talk to people about AI ethics and education. Give me 10 contacts with people that XY and Z in the industry and with the e-mail addresses, please. That's how I found you, right?

20:11 And what it took me for the first six months of my podcast, 20 hours a week takes me 5 now you know, and, and the other and the other 15 hours. I'm so much more productive because I'm dedicating it to things that I can do, the only I can do. The AI is doing what AI needs to do, and I'm doing what I need to do by having these conversations, you know? Yeah, it's, I think you touched on something really important and I was thinking about this last week about, OK, clearly we can outsource some of what we do now to AI, but we need to make decisions about what we outsource and, and what we. And I think that's going to be different for different people like like you yourself doing getting 10 guests for your podcast.

20:58 I think, I think some people, I think some people might be like, oh, well, I, I run a podcast and I want to know, I want to I want to do the research. That's the fun part. That's what I enjoy doing. I want to read someone's book and then think, can I get them on the podcast? Whatever. And then but like you yourself, you, you go, right, Well, actually, I'm going to get AI to help me do some of this research and give me some insights. Somebody in the middle might actually employ somebody who does what that AIAI did for you. And, and I think there's a whole spectrum here. And I think if there's one thing that people love to do at the moment is tell people what AI should be doing for them, what it shouldn't be doing for them.

21:42 And I think we've got to learn this for ourselves. I think especially as adults, maybe we, maybe us, our young people, our children need guidance. But I think as adults, we need to figure this out because like some things I think will just be automated. Like when I get in my car and I, I put the SAT NAV on, it takes me where I need to be. I I don't sit there and lament not having them up skills and to be able to, of course, I don't like it means I can now listen to some amazing podcasts. It means I can focus on chatting with my family in the car.

22:23 It means I can just have some peace and not not and just just do some thinking while I'm driving. Like I, I love that fact that that's been automated and I and I don't miss map skills at all. Not, not in the slightest. And, and so I, I think we've, we've got to be really clever with this and use this in a way that, that is going to benefit us personally. Then I think going back to our children in the education system, I think we've got to give them the, the choice to a certain extent as well and go, right. If this is, this is what AI can do for us, how can we, how can we use this to boost who we are, to boost our, our potential in the world, I guess, and get them to, in a certain extent, figure that out for themselves as well.

23:19 And, and, and I think that that whole like lifelong learning, I'm always telling my, I know before we went live, we were talking about our kids and, and I've got a 5 and a six year old and I, I think I say to them probably on a daily basis, like, you've got to keep learning. You've got to keep like school's not the only place you learn. You've got to, you'll be learning forever. And the people who do do succeed in life are the ones who continue to learn and see life as, as a learning journey. And now we've got a tool that helps us do that pretty much all of the time. And I think that's going to get better and better and better. But yeah, it's, it's, it's a new world that we, we have to try and figure out. But I think we have, I think there's there's going to be a lot more opportunities than there were before. Yeah, So what are some what are some upsides and downsides or some benefits and dangers, especially especially in that education world?

24:19 You know, I mean, I keep on hearing, you know, on one hand, again, we've talked about a lot of benefits. On the other hand, I think that there is something, you know, one of the things I tell also my students like how come this matters? What if this doesn't matter to my life? How come it's not? What if it's not relevant? How come I have to learn this right? A lot of times I'll be like a, it will be but or B, even if it isn't the almost the learning how to the construction of these ideas in your head is really valuable. You know, I'm learning how to create the understand that there's a process or, you know, understand and to learn how to build on complex ideas is really, really important. Do you think that AI would shortchange or could shortchange that, you know, that kind of constructive creative process that our heads have?

25:04 Yeah, 100%. Let me tell you the story of AII interviewed a high schooler for an article I did and a guy in San Diego and we were talking about how how students in high school use AI. And it was interesting because his school from the outside have have ticked every box. So they they have an AI policy. They do, They do professional development with their staff around artificial intelligence. They do AI literacy classes with their students kind of like everything, everything you, you would hope that a forward thinking school would be doing in terms of AI right now they're doing. However, this high school student told me that they are still using AI to do their their homework and to cut corners. And when, when we talked about this, there was it was interesting because there was a couple of things that, that they said.

26:04 And one of the things was that they think that the, that the teachers know they use an AI. But because there are just so many students using AI, the teachers turn a blind eye because if they were to investigate every single instance, they would never go home. They would be working constantly. So teachers are almost being forced to turn a blind eye to this. Secondly, it's very, very easy to manipulate something that you get from AI to make it sound natural and make it sound like it's your own work and, and, and, and to kind of slip through that that net.

26:46 But I think thirdly, the the most revealing thing I found was that he was very honest with me. He just said, look, homework especially is a hurdle that a student has to get through on an evening. So they might come home, they they want to go see their friends, they then have dinner with their family. They want to go on the Xbox and talk to their friends while playing some games for an hour home. 3 bits of homework has to be fitted in to that, to those few hours on an evening. And so that just becomes a hurdle to get over and just like adults, if you've got to get over an admin task, you, you look for shortcuts.

27:29 And so in the in the biggest shortcut at the moment is getting AI to do before you and I. And it really made me think just how much of of the work we give our students is just an admin hurdle to them. There's no and if you like, if you think like, if you like when I was when I was teaching and when I was a student myself, you every lesson is just another every class. You might have four or five classes that day. You're just getting through them. Like you, your brain will is going to engage in it and but you're still thinking right at the end. At the end of the hour, the Bell's going to go. I'm on to the next, next class. It's they're hurdles to get over. And I think, I think now it's that's not a problem with the student, it's a problem with with an outdated system now. And I think we're going to have to start thinking, how do we give our students work to do?

28:30 How do we engage our students in some work that they find meaningful that they actually want to want to complete because we just aren't doing that at the moment. And, and if, if we actually want them to exert some cognitive effort, then we're going to have to get them excited about it. We're going to have to make it relevant. We're going to have to get, get, let them see the meaning of it. We're, we've got so much to do rather than just hear some work, do it. And we've got to make, we've got to make what we're doing actually relevant and meaningful and, and build the curiosity to go with it. So I think, I think absolutely AI kind of going back to the start really of the conversation, I think AI can can be a negative, but I think that's not the fault of the student. I think we just, I think we have to stop being a bit more creative with, with the kind of work we do with them, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that I think you're right. I think if students look at the problem is actually I had this I, you know, I teach because I want to right Teach because I think it's important, it's fun.

29:39 And so I would go for years, right? The first, the first 2 1/2 years that I was teaching, I'd go in and put a lot of effort. And especially, you know, I do the podcast and I have a sales job and I got a family and I have a lot. I'm always running around and I always try to put time to making sure that the classes, if the classes, if the students do not respond, I typically take the blame and say, it's guys. I know that you guys. Yeah, it's a long day. I'm obviously not presenting this in a way that's speaking to you guys. And it's because I could have done more effort, you know, I could have put more effort into this. I'm sorry. If you guys could please work with me just for the rest of the day today. I promise that tomorrow's class is going to be a lot more engaging, you know, and but one thing I realized was, and it was such a crazy realization, it took me so long to realize was I'm there because I want to be. No one there is there because they want to be. They're all there because they have to, you know, and I was and, and so, you know, at a certain point I was able to actually build up a certain amount of trust my students where I said, listen, I think autonomy is really important in your life.

30:34 New schedule, you know, I think that you feel like you have control over the way that you spend at least some of your time is really important. I was like, I will, I will give you if you guys come to me the beginning of the week and tell me, hey, I don't want to come to class this week, but can you give me assignments to do on my own time? You know that I will, I will be responsible about I was like, I have to get to know you guys and you have to show me that it's worth it. But if that's the case, you don't have to come in and sit behind a desk for 45 minutes and you can do what you want with that time as long as you get me the work by XY and Z time or date, you know, and, and to my surprise, all 20 students decided to come back every single day, you know, almost, and you know, every now and then one or two students would come to me and say, hey, today, I need a break today. Can you give me some makeup work to do? But I think once they, once they realized and they felt like this isn't a like this isn't something we have to do. This is something that we could do if we like it. You know, everything kind of changed overnight, you know, and it was really, really cool.

31:27 Do you so are you, are you proponents of homework now that we're talking about, you know, that or you think that projects are probably better or, you know, like longer term creative engaging assignments is probably better or depends for the class or what do you think? Yeah, I. On the homework question, I'm, I'm, I'm not really sure because I think, I think is if I'm looking at it from like a complete democratic point of view, I think homework just widens the gap because not, not every student's home life is the same. Not every student's parents are the same. So what you're essentially when you give homework, you're essentially saying, right, if you come from a family that is motivated and want to help you learn, then you can get a head start here because the family's going to help them. They're going to, they're going to make sure they get the homework done.

32:24 They're going to make sure they see it as important and so on. Whereas a family that doesn't do that, that student's going to be left behind. Interestingly, I also think the same about AI as well. So I, I think I, I've got a friend and I wrote, I wrote about him in my first book, The AI Classroom, about how he really struggled to help his daughter with math work because he just didn't understand it himself. And so he used ChatGPT as, as a bit of a bit of a Co partner with his daughter and they both, they all the both of them learn together with ChatGPT and it really, really boosted her skills and she went on to win an award for math because of it. So I, I think with homework, it's interesting because I think my kids, even if they didn't get homework, I'd probably still work with them on various things. So we, we probably can't close that gap anyway. But yeah, I think, I think we have to look at the we have to put the horse before the cart.

33:32 I think in terms of what we learn and how we learn it, we've kind of set up a system that goes, right, let's learn all of this stuff just in case, right? We're going to learn how rocks form. We're going to learn how to cook a pasta dish. We're going to like, it's literally like some crazy mix of things every single day and we're going to learn it all just in case you might need to learn it at some know it at some point in the future. And let's be real, how many times have you had to know it? Like 1% if that of the things you learnt. Whereas I think if we flip it and go actually let's do something which requires us to learn those skills.

34:17 And I suppose that that does fit into more the project based side of things. But if we go right, how do we, I don't know. Let's yeah, just, I don't know, like I used to when I, when I worked in, in, in secondary schools, I, my other job was also the careers coordinator for the school. And so we looked at like kind of what, what local businesses, what, what issues they were having. So like if there was, if there was a local business that was really having an issue with, I don't know, getting customers to buy their their chips, maybe it's a, it's a chip company and then they're getting customers to buy their chips and they're really struggling.

35:01 They're not as popular as they used as they used to be in the 90s. Sales are going down, right? Let's get some students on that and let's think we'll visit the fact, we'll visit the factory. We'll have a look at, we'll get to understand the business and then we'll go right. Well, what skills are we going to need? Well, we're going to need, we're going to need some financial skills to understand these financial documents. We're going to need some marketing skills. We're going to need some skills on how how humans work with each other. A whole hosting. So I think, yeah, I'm always reminded by a guy called Rob Hoban, who who was the the manager of a school in the Netherlands called Agora. And on the first day that a student starts their school, the first question they ask them is what do you want to do? And then and then, so if a student says, right, I want to, I want to make a skateboard, I'm in the skateboard and I want to make a skateboard.

36:01 Then their whole school is set up so that they, they have a project manager who will, who will help meet with them every day. Say, all right, I think you should probably go and learn about how to bend wood. Let's maybe set you up on a, on a play on a work placement with a, a joiner in the city and you can go there every Wednesday morning. You're probably going to need to know the maths behind the angles of that wood. So we're going to need to, we're going to need to learn that. And then the students, they don't do traditional classes. What they do that their school looks a bit like a Google office. So they do a lot of collaborative work. They do a lot of meetings with people learning from individuals and within groups.

36:45 So they I just think that makes more sense to me because then you're you're learning for a reason. So if we don't learn the first time available to even do. This until now, it was kind of like a hopeless new romantic thought that hey, I would love to, you know, a teacher would love to tell every student what do you want to learn and teach them individually. But a teacher would always respond, I don't have the time or the knowledge set even necessarily or whatever the resources AI is the resources. Now all the teacher has to do is just collaborate with the student, check in on them, make sure that they're, you know, heading down the right path, making sure they're being responsible with their time. But the learning that they're doing then from that they're getting could a lot of it could come from their own homework that they do.

37:31 Yeah, absolutely. And I think that attitude of I'm the teacher, so I'm the authority authoritative voice on this topic. I mean that I don't think that's been the case since YouTube existed. Like because any, any student can now pull up an expert on YouTube that probably knows 10 times more than the teacher. So there's there's just no way that like that. And and and if if the teacher takes the view of well, no YouTube, then you are seriously limiting that student to your role. It would be terrible to do. Imagine if someone told. Me, you can't listen to podcasts while I was in school. I'd be like, well, then I have no idea what I'm going to. I, I, I, I don't know what I'm going to learn. You know, it's crazy.

38:13 I I you limit, you limit the. Ceiling for those students, yeah, to the to the the ceiling of the stuff in that school. And surely we want them to go beyond where we are. Yeah, we hope. You hope. I. One of my to go with that theme and I, you know, I, one of my most successful projects to date has been a film project where my students, well, you know, so for example, we did a Western song, Grateful Dead song, because I'm a big fan of that type of that era of music. And it was an old western about, you know, a couple of Cowboys. We only deal with our cowboy culture. And then, and then I said, OK, now you guys are going to break into groups of five. You're going to write a 5 page movie script and then you guys are going to film the movie and edit it. And then we're going to have a pizza party and watch that, watch everyone's 5 minute, you know, 5 to 7 minute movies together.

39:04 And that general and from that, like English class, as far as I'm concerned, everyone has different skills that they're better at. Some are better at orally communicating, some are better at writing. Some are better at being behind the camera, being behind the scenes, but are very detail oriented. And you're able to actually see it's almost like shaking up a jar with oil in it and watching, you know, as things kind of separate and, and, and come apart, you see which students rise up to which thing that's more their speed. Some students are great leaders and some group students are great orators and actors. And some of them are really passionate. It's what the whole body is. Some of them have emphasized the writing, you know, and then they'll and then, and then you see, as the week goes on, you know, like take, give me a script. You're gonna work on this because as you're speaking, you're gonna realize that people don't talk like, you know, the way that you're used to writing, you know, the way how are you today? No one talks like that.

39:52 Hey, how's it going? Is what you write, you know, and so, and so make these adjustments and you could really, really see that like and, and, and so it's a learning experience for everyone, but everyone kind of gravitates towards what they're good at naturally. And that's when I try to encourage them and they're like, we should do this project again. I said we absolutely should because everyone here is getting this is developed, is honing and sharpening the skills that they're good at and I try to get them to expose themselves to things that are not as good at too. You know, if someone's less comfortable reading a script, hey, why don't you try getting just in one scene, You know, why don't you get a couple of lines in a scene and see if you can, you know, try to get your feet wet with that. But I think that that's, I think that that goes with what you're saying that the whole notion of let's, let's let students decide what their passion and what they and, and everyone kind of has a feeling inside an intuition and a gut feeling as to what speaks to them more.

40:43 We should be trying to isolate what that is and helping people hone that. Yeah, yeah, I think so. And I think from a teacher. Perspective AI can be enormously helpful too, not just from the students, for the teachers. Yeah. And yeah, I just think there's, there's some, there's so many ways we could do this better. There's so many ways we can and I think instead of us go now this is how it should be actually what would happen if we just give parents and students the choice.

41:23 And I think that's what's that's what's starting to happen. I think with with a lot of these schools that are starting to to to exist now and experimental micro schools and online schools and so on that actually I think parents and students are going to have more choice. So if you, if you do, if you're adamant as a parent, no, no, I do want my child to go to a traditional school where they, they have five classes every day. They sit in rows and I think that then amazing. Go for it, do it. But if you're a parent and you're a student who goes, you know what? That's not for me. I, I've probably got ADHD and I can't sit down for five hours a day, but there is a school over here that allows me to do some cool outdoor learning and do lots of social learning.

42:16 Then absolutely amazing. Go for it. So I think, I think it's, there are so many different ways we can do this and not all of them are perfect because it's just the nature of it. Nobody like learning isn't perfect. Learning is messy. It's really messy. Yeah, because if it was easy as just sticking a plug in your head and downloading all the information, then then we would have done it. We would, but it's messy. It's because it because it involves real human life. And I think personally, I think the kind of traditional rose sit down for five hours a day tries to suck the human life out of it so that we can get as close as possible to the plug in the head.

43:04 So but I think actually we're missing the point there. That actually probably the most meaningful learning that comes from the messiness comes from the, the, the, the unpredictable comes from the, the, the lack of control sometimes and the, the hand and over of the control. So, but I, I'm really encouraged that there's, we're starting to see more and more options for education. I do think I am worried that it we could be because I think a lot of these schools you've got to pay for them. And so I think the, the equity piece here for parents who don't have much income, I think that could be quite dangerous going forward in terms of if you've got any disposable income, you could have, you might be able to afford some kind of experimental or some kind of progressive education for your child. Whereas if you haven't, you're just relying on the, on the state education.

44:01 So I do think that could that's that could be problematic. It's always take time. It'll take time to catch. Up, you know, so you're going to be a couple of steps behind, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, I think anything run by a government is is reactive rather than proactive. Yes, I, I think it's just the nature of government. That's how government works. Yeah. So it's. Responsive, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I just that that's the way it is, I think. And so if you want to, if you want to get ahead, then I think you've probably got no option but to find some alternative education or supplement mainstream education, which I know a lot of parents already do anywhere.

44:48 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You. Want to tell me a little bit about your book, the AI classroom, please, and what the process is like writing it and what it's about. Curious. I'm almost curious because I can't well, I can't write long form it's very hard for me. So I'm always curious what the process of writing a a full book is for everyone. Yeah process. Well, the. The number one thing is don't think of it as writing long form. Chunk it down just like we do for our students. Chunk it. So I always think average book 60,000 words. So I think, well, let's say there's 10 chapters, 6000 words per chapter. And then I think well, within each chapter I'm going to put six parts and each part's going to be 1000 words each. So I go right.

45:34 And that could be like the first part would be an introduction to the chapter. The second part could be do's and don'ts around this topics. Next bit could be top advice like you chunk it down and then I, so then I just think, well, every chapter is essentially 6 blogs. So I just have to write 6 blogs and that's otherwise I would go crazy. So I, I, I have to do it like that. But yeah, so, so 2/2/2023 we wrote the AI classroom, which was a very much of its time. Still, I'm still amazed that there's still so many teachers who get in contact with me a lot saying they, they get so much out of that book because I think I think because, and you're probably the same, but because I'm in a bit of an AI bubble, I feel like we've moved on so much from that from two years ago.

46:31 But actually there's a lot of teachers still at square 1 and, and need that introduction. And then early this year I released infinite education, which is, is more the, the strategic side. So it's, it's for school leaders and anybody who wants to be a school leader. So it's essentially the first half of the book is why do we need to, to think of strategy in a new way in education? And then the second-half of the book is essentially how do you do, how do you strategize? And it's very practical. And so, yeah, I kind of wanted to do like, like, you know, like you see those, you see the business books, like the strategy business books. I kind of wanted to do one of them. But specifically for school leaders of how, how can we move forward in this new world.

47:21 So yeah. And, and I, I, so I, I say to teachers by the AI classroom, if you want help school leaders, if you're looking to change education than that infinite education. But yeah, I, and I've also got for the last two years, I bring a book out every summer, which is quite a short book, but which is essentially a compilation of different essays from people. And I edit it. So we've just released that, which is called the the Educators AI Guide 2026, which has, yes, it's, it's really good actually, you know, like many, because probably because I didn't write it, I just edited it.

48:08 But it's the first section is just we, we surveyed hundreds and hundreds of teachers about what, what tools, what AI tools are they finding the most useful? And so the first section is all about that. It's all, it's all teacher voice. The second section is, is all around 7 case studies from 7 different schools who are integrating AI. And then the last section is kind of essays on the ethical questions. So there's one on sustainability, one on data privacy, one on strategy and so on. So, yeah, so if you want kind of an up to date, how do I get started with AI, that A-Z type book, then then that, that book is great.

48:58 But yeah, I, yeah, I suppose it's just it comes back to that thing, doesn't it? It's great that satisfaction of producing something and, and, and I often think of the book as it's something that can go much further than I ever can. Now I'm quite lucky, I get to travel quite a bit of the world doing this work, but the book goes so much further than I could. Like I get emails and messages from people all over the world saying how much the books are helping them. And it's, it's amazing to be able to to produce something that that can do that really. So it also helps, but it also helps keep the work going as well. On a really practical level is because people discover you and, and ask you for further help.

49:47 So yeah, it's a it's it, it keeps me. I suppose it's one of the reasons why I write for Forbes every week as well. And I, I do a podcast every day, like a 10 minute podcast. Awesome, thank you. It, it the whole point of it is to keep me on my toes because like, as you'll know, like this, this field is moving so fast. So I, I almost need to back myself into a corner to force myself to stay up to date with it. Sure, sure. Yeah. So I I've now got mechanisms where I like the podcast, like articles where I've got no choice but but to research constantly. Yeah, which is which it works at the moment. I haven't had a haven't had a nervous breakdown just yet. That's good.

50:36 But yeah, if it goes any faster maybe, but hopefully it's it, it stays at this speed also this kind of stuff that you're. Doing, I believe, at least the writing and the podcasting. All this is our muscles in our heads that we we have to keep growing and keeping them strong. Just the same way you have to be physically healthy writing all the time, talking all the time, expressing ideas and being clear all the time and elaborating and, you know, making sure that you're understood. These are all muscles that need to be worked on all the time, you know, And it's one thing that was Thomas is like English is so important because it's relevant to anything that you do. You know, like you want to be a lawyer, you want to be a businessman, you want to be a doctor, you want to be a husband, you want to be a dad, you want to be a good a good brother, a good friend.

51:24 Learn how to express yourself because miscommunication is probably 95% of everyone's issues, you know, and I think you saw right there. And even just for the idea process, like if you're having to think about something meaningfully every single day and or, and produce a bit of content every single day. Now, 9 out of 10 of them might be, might might be just average. In fact, they will be average. But one out of 10 of them might be a LinkedIn post or a blog or a podcast that goes a bit viral. Maybe one out of 50, maybe one out of 100. But the more you do in it that you're increasing the frequency of that, that one that that does really well. So therefore you learn, you learn actually, actually that's, but that's the type of thing I should maybe be looking at and exploring more.

52:17 And if you're into business, because if everybody needs money, like that's how we survive. So if you want to monetize what you're doing, then it really helps because you get to think, well, actually that's the kind of content people resonate with. So maybe I'll focus on that a bit more and, or, or that's the big type of content that feels more authentic to myself. So maybe I should focus on that more. So it's yeah. But if you just did one bit of content every month, you wouldn't you, it would take you decades to get there, whereas somebody who's doing it every day would get there in just a just a year or so. So I, I do think whether it's for business, whether it's just to have a presence on social media, whether you want to write a book, you've got to be putting stuff out there constantly. And it's the real feedback you get from other human beings that that helps you craft and helps you. I used to before I was a teacher. I did stand up comedy for a couple of years. No way.

53:18 Yeah. I loved that. Yeah. Well, I loved. It, but I was, I started training to be a teacher and it started to clash. So I, I, I give it up in the end. But I, I one of the things that people used to say in the stand up comedy circuit is that you only practice when you're on stage. So because you can't practice stand up comedy in front of a mirror like you, like you could have the funniest joke in the world, but you don't, you don't know. You could have the worst joke in the world, but you don't know. You've literally got to be in front of people to practice. And when you start to stand up comedy, you get 5 minutes slots. Yeah. So if you're doing 5 minutes once a week, you're going to learn at a much slower pace than somebody who's doing 5 minutes every night.

54:07 Yeah, even three days a week. Yeah, yeah. So. So the whole idea when you're starting out with stand up comedy is you want to be on stage as much as possible. Like so people move to a busy city and move to New York where you're from. They because because there's so many comedy clothes, that means they can get more and more stage time and therefore they can learn faster and get more successful faster. And I think, I think that lesson applies to everything and, and, and very much applies professionally as well in, in, in how we come up with our ideas, how we keep ourselves fresh, how we, how we learn from, from our surroundings.

54:49 So yeah, it's, but the great thing is with social media, you can, you can do this. You just have to get, you just have to get rid of the inhibition. A feeling that says if I post this, will I look silly? Like little bit loud never hurts. It never hurts. Pint again. I needed my first open mic. I needed a pint again just to ask the guy to sign me up a shot just before I went on stage. You know, I was like my. Yeah, I played a little bit too. Yeah, I do, I do. It's hard the. Truth I wanted to start writing stand up because I think it's fun. I think it's really clever and, and it requires real sophistication and, and wit and intelligence. But I'm just, I have, I think also it's just. Craft.

55:35 It's like because they said, you know, if you, if you write, the first of a time is art. Yeah. But the first? Time you ever get up? You might write, I don't know, let's say 10 jokes within 5 minutes. Maybe one of those jokes work. And so the next time you go up, you write 9 new jokes and keep that joke in and then maybe and then maybe one more works. And then if so, if you do that 10 times and on average you're getting a new joke work which which is quite a high rate of. Jokes within 10. Ten goes in 10, 10 open night, open mic nights, you've got a 5 minute routine and that's like within a year you could have a full half hour you could have a full hour and that's that's that's how comedy works You, you it's a craft and you've just got to see what what sticks, what doesn't stick. But I think imagine if we took that and allowed our students to work like that.

56:38 Yeah, if we, if we give them some, if we, let's say a project bit of work and we went, you know what, like amazing piece of work, but only about 5% of it is, is good. Why don't we, why do, why don't you hold on to that? And then let's try and build another 5% that's good. And another. I don't, I assume through a bad rating. I don't. Let them throw it out again. There's something in there that you're going to want to use again another time. So like even if you never want to use 95% of that again, like you just said, there's going to be a couple of good lines, a couple of good descriptions. Like, you know, just like, you know, I felt a shudder and I'm like good, keep that. You know, like I heard the sound of brass breaking, like excellent. That's like very visual.

57:21 Throw the rest of it away, you know, just keep that for now, you know. Great. Yeah, absolutely. And a bit like. In stand up as well, you might you might tell a joke and it doesn't go down well, but you might still go away a thing. And actually, I think there's something in that I just need to, maybe the timing needs to be different or the, the punch line needs to be a bit sharper. And so you, you craft it a bit more and you try it out again. And, and, and I just think, imagine, imagine that's how we approach learning with our with our students and, and almost taught them that as a craft, that that's how you get good at something rather than just memorise as much as possible and then go into an exam hall and try and regurgitate it. It's like we actually taught them how to craft and how to get good at anything.

58:08 And then therefore, no matter what they want to do, they have now got the core ethic of what it takes to get good at anything, absolutely anything. We just don't teach. We just don't teach that. And I think it comes back to something you said very early on that I don't think a lot of teachers have that experience to be able to pass on themselves and not, I am a teacher, I've got family who are teachers, I've got friends who are teachers. So this isn't a slight on teachers, but I just think we don't, it's just, it's just not something that I think a lot of people know. So yeah, yeah, we've got a, we've got a long way to go. We do.

58:57 We do. There's before I leave you because I appreciate your time and we got an hour slot before before we call this. It is really such a pleasure. It's so nice. Thank you again. What what is what is what is some kind of easy implementable and practical advice that you can kind of it's universally useful. You think that you'd recommend leaving off with that anyone can have? In terms of artificial intelligence and in terms of either education or. Artificial intelligence that you think that anyone listening would be like, you know, this is a really easy, quick step that you could take to really just make a big difference. I, yeah, I mean, first of all, it's been amazing to be with you as well. I, I love doing podcasts because and, and I know we had conversations beforehand where you were said, you said, do you want me to send you over some questions and things like that?

59:45 And I said, no, it's OK because I, I love, I love it when we can just, I don't know what's going to come out my mouth. I don't know what's going to come out your mouth. And we just actually have a conversation because it helps me clarify my thoughts as well. But I suppose I'll try and do this really quickly. So I'm a big fan of it. There's an innovation model called the three box solution to innovation. And I mention this in all my books. Box 1 is 3 boxes. Box 1 is all about. What are we currently doing, what are we currently good at? And you can apply that to a business, to a school. It's the systems, it's the procedures, it's the success metrics it and we can innovate, we can get more efficient, we can maybe get by with it with less budget, whatever that might be.

1:00:29 But it's our performance engine, it's our day-to-day. But there's also two other boxes that in that to jump to the third box. The third box is about creating the future because if we just carry on in box 1 then it might become irrelevant after a while. Think, Think blockbusters. Think Kodak. These companies had amazing performance engine businesses but still failed because they didn't create the future. The middle boxes. What can we give up that might have worked in box 1 but does not does no longer work in box 3. It's a scary box. Yeah, 100. Percent, 100%. And this is the, this is the main framework I use when I do innovation with schools and with government. But I suppose my, the one thing I want to say is I also use it with my personal life, with my, with me. So I always, I always think to myself, right, what am I working on right now?

1:01:29 What takes up the majority of my time? What am I good at? What's the systems I have in place at home, my personal life, maybe my work life. And then I think, what else could I be doing for the future? Could I, could I get up every half an hour early every morning and, and learn a new skill that that could become something I move into in the in the future? Is a could I be looking at another way to make money for my business? Could I be looking at another career? Could I be making connections with people who are in in the realm that I would eventually want to be in myself?

1:02:12 So I think I think always be thinking right, even if things are going really well, always be curious as to what else could I be doing to get to the next, next stage. My when I was a teacher, one of one of the leaders once said to me, she, she asked me in for a meeting and she said, what's you're out? What's you're out and and I I want, I said to her because I didn't want to appear that I wanted to get out because I wanted I was really enjoying my job. I was like, I don't have an out. This is I'm committed to the school. And she said no. She said every good leader has an out because if if you come in one day and you've been laid off, you've been made redundant. If you come in one day and you realise you need more money and this job isn't doing it for you, what something could happen out of your control.

1:03:10 So watch you out. What were you going to do? So always be working on something that you can transition, transition to. So it's something that I always keep trying to keep in my in my, the dynamic of my life. And I think, I think it's really good, really good advice that I was given and that I think and really helps. And it, and it links back to what we've said before, doesn't it, about lifelong learning. It's because that's essentially what we're talking about. It's how do you continue to learn so that you can keep moving in life, you can keep progressing and I think people will find that. Curiosity is also a muscle, you know that the more that you practice being curious or how does that work or what else can I do, you'll find that you come, you come to better solutions and better and, and and more creative answers.

1:03:57 The more the more that you time that you spend doing, you know, working on that train of thought for sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I find for me, I find the thing that ignites curiosity the most is, is when I hang around with people who are, are kind of doing better than I am. And that that really makes me think like how, because I'm always surprised by just how normal everybody is. It doesn't matter if you're like an Uber airless celebrity, a billionaire and you get into a room with somebody, everyone's just a normal person who who was, there's not much difference between US.

1:04:39 And that always really fascinates me because then I think what it does for me first of all is it thinks I start to think, well, if they can do that, surely I can do it because they're not very different to me. And then that makes me really curious to start thinking, well, how do they do it? How, how do they do it? And I think even just associating yourself with somebody who's a bit out of your circle, like can do so much for you can really can ignite, ignite so much. Beautiful, beautiful Dan. Thank you so much for the time. This is such a pleasure. Maybe we'll do this again, especially working this sounds like this has been a ton of fun and I'm sure we have a lot more we can talk about, but for now, this is such a pleasure. Thanks so much for your time and I really appreciate this. Thanks Efrain.

1:05:22 Cheers, thank you so much. Take care and have a good day. Bye bye.