Le futur c’est maintenant: c’est VR-AI
A thousand years ago, so legend had it, Cnut showed his subjects that royal power could not turn back the tide. We have since learned to use tidal power to our advantage. A thousand years on, as the most powerful transformation in history hits humanity, educators need to use the tidal power of technology to their students’ advantage. For Bangladesh, its smart vision can be realised by smart people led by smart educators
Stretching across hundreds of thousands of years, the story of human progress is a tale of competing forces: the forward march of civilisation set against backward retrenchment. Light versus dark.
The primary driver of social evolution has been the use, development and control of technology through energy, information and economic organisation. Just as coal, culture and capitalism made the early industrial nations, the use, development and control of space are advancing the frontiers of late capitalism. Back on planet earth, we grapple with issues of equity, ecology and employment in the face of profound changes in technology.
In periods of light, ideas are exchanged openly and protectively, knowledge moves forward exponentially, with new discoveries and inventions. Nothing feels better than living in an age of light as technology spurs a quest for civilisation. In periods of dark, depression, disaster and decline set in, as barriers are built, cultures clash and scapegoats are sought. Nothing feels worse than living in an age of darkness as primal instincts spur an inward need to protect and survive. Age-old preoccupations with disease, famine and war no longer have fatalistic explanations: the future is in our hands.
Culture and Society
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Raymond Williams saw culture in the ideas and meanings of art, behaviour and learning. Connected rather than coterminous, culture represents group ideas and beliefs, whereas society comprises people who share such ideas and beliefs (source: Culture and Society, Williams R, 1958).
Culture is also an expression of human progress, representing ages of enlightenment in great works of art, science and literature and ages of darkness in works that show fight or flight. Launched eighty years ago, in the depths of world war, the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs had a beautifully simple idea: if castaway on a desert island, which music, book and luxury would you wish to have with you? Eighty years on, different people with different works for different times. Great ideas are sometimes born out of necessity and often live beyond their first function. As an escape from the ravages of war, famine or disease, taking oneself away from it all might seem an attractive prospect. Eight pieces of music that evoke meaning at different times in your life; the one work of literature that might be your wise companion; and the luxury, that could be your source of ongoing optimism in the face of island solitude. It's fight through flight.
Culture is our expression of learning, though competition and collaboration: through isolation and individualism. There is no geography to culture and there is no better example of this than the story of the periodic table. Through its many iterations across continents and centuries, it is a tale inspired by mythical notions of a philosopher's stone – from the Midas-like ability to turn base metals into gold, to the more noble pursuit of understanding and organising the elements of life. For Sam Kean, it is an apex of scientific achievement, built on human adventure, betrayal and obsession (Source: The Disappearing Spoon, Kean S, 2010).
Culture and technology
Technology shapes the way we live: the way we communicate, create and collaborate with the world around us. For education, the immersive uses of virtual reality and artificial intelligence offer amazing opportunities for students, where the antecedents of culture are meeting their descendants.
For example, virtual reality technology is taking student understanding of the periodic table into new dimensions of space and time. Virtual classrooms offer students group interactions with atoms, orbitals and the table of elements; enabling them to assemble the known elements, seeing how they are structured and shaped across atomic energy levels. Haileybury Bhaluka is the first school in the region to bring these immersive student experiences as part of its teaching of science fundamentals. It will leverage its influence to ensure that other schools benefit from its creative drive. For Bangladesh students, the future is now: c'est VR-AI.
Framing the Future with AI
For Bangladesh, AI poses threats to employment as machine learning spreads across traditional industries. It poses ethical questions of bias in recruitment, training and business funding. It presents data-safety issues for access and misuse of personal information, whilst at corporate level it makes cybersecurity a greater challenge. With garbage in, you get garbage out, as corrupt input results in gross errors. Deep fake content has the scope to derail democracy, undermine civil society and harm people.
Without regulation and governance, on an international scale, such threats present frightening realities: humans are losing control to machines and a world worried about climate change should be as concerned about the exponential increase in energy consumption that AI now needs. AI is a greater force for good. For Bangladesh, healthcare could be transformed through improved diagnostics and treatment and in education it offers profound potentialities. With ethical principles and robust regulation best practices can reduce risks and build benefits.
Benefits for Bangladesh
Moving from the abstract to the actual, we focus on what we can do now. Advances in AI can enhance learner equity, teacher pedagogy and student ways of learning. So long as the right supports are in place, four key pillars are notable:
1. AI-powered adaptive learning tools can help track learners' progress and pinpoint where learners need help and where they excel. By supporting teachers in providing greater personalised teaching and learning, AI allows learners to work with more autonomy and engagement. By equipping classrooms with social robots, teachers can draw on them as tutors, peers or instructors. By providing real time feedback on class management, teachers are able improve what and how they teach.
2. AI-enabled tech supports inclusivity and equity. AI-based accessibility tools using techniques such as speech-to-text and auto-captioning can serve visually- or hearing-impaired learners to better participate in classroom activities. Other learning conditions, such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and dysgraphia, can be detected sooner and addressed with a mix of technology and human interventions.
3. AI-tooled educators needs trained educators to make the right choices: in selecting the right tools and in knowing how to use them. Key benefits include a greater focus on teaching and a greater ability to get tech to do routine administration, freeing up teacher time for instructional design and delivery.
4. AI-supported communities serve individual learners and educators, technology can help build professional learning communities and make learning more collaborative. Technology can build communities in which teachers share their resources and practices and collaborate on professional growth and practice. System leaders can develop and share best practice around curriculum design, policy, and pedagogy.
California's Consumer Electronics Show 2024 has shown some exciting developments this week, with A1 software education and, more broadly, AI embedded devices. For schools across the world, key issues of ambition, affordability and application play out.
AI in Haileybury
Haileybury Bhaluka, the first outstanding school in Bangladesh, has built a progressive, future-focused school which prepares students for futures they may face, by developing key skills of critical thinking, creativity and collaboration. Its future-facing curriculum includes teaching of artificial intelligence. No other school in the region has done this.
AI offers the promise of personalised learning for students, in analysing learner progress and pinpointing next steps with clinical accuracy. AI offers intelligent tutoring, giving learners in-class support, real time. AI can assess a greater quantity of student learning and assessments at lightning speed. In China, it is being piloted to track student behaviour and look for patterns of engagement, altering teaching as necessary.
AI helps teachers create teaching resources to a high standard. In specific subjects, such as languages, AI translation tools help create teacher resources and support language learning – helping students with pronunciation and grammar and in conducting conversations in the target language. AI supports data analysis, scheduling and timetabling, generates performance data. Schools are now using i-STEAM virtual labs and simulations in science and engineering. For the creative arts, AI offers rich immersive experience through virtual and augmented realities. There is so much more: chatbots to answer student queries and to keep in touch with parents and carers.
A Haileybury Intelligence
In recognising the transformative power of AI in the hands of a skilled teacher, Haileybury Bhaluka is now recruiting AI specialists. In its meticulous international search for the right educators, Haileybury expects that the teacher must be able to teach students about AI and its various applications, must have expertise in AI technologies, programming languages, and data analysis, and must be able to equip them with knowledge and skills to understand, create, and apply AI systems.
With its visionary approach to education, it has formed unique partnerships with MIT and Harvard in related areas. Planning is well underway to bring MIT educators to its Bhaluka campus for two days of design-based activities and it has recently promoted its collaboration with Harvard on its secondary student summer school. In addition, all teachers will be Havard certified.
Haileybury is taking Einstein's cue by bending time and making the future happen now.
Simon O'Grady is the Founding Headmaster of Haileybury Bhaluka. An alumnus of the London School of Economics, he is an experienced principal, having led four outstanding schools on different continents. He is changing the landscape of education in Bangladesh.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.
