Ed-Technical

Owen Henkel & Libby Hills
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Ed-Technical

Join two former teachers - Libby Hills from the Jacobs Foundation and AI researcher Owen Henkel - for the Ed-Technical podcast series about AI in education. Each episode, Libby and Owen will ask experts to help educators sift the useful insights from the AI hype. They’ll be asking questions like - how does this actually help students and teachers? What do we actually know about this technology, and what’s just speculation? And (importantly!) when we say AI, what are we actually talking about? 

  1. FEB 10

    Is two years of learning possible in six weeks with AI?

    In this short, Owen and Libby discuss a recent World Bank blog post about a study in Nigeria that evaluated the impact of Microsoft Copilot (powered by ChatGPT) on student learning outcomes. In a six-week after school programme, students were supported to use Copilot. The full study hasn’t been published yet but the blog post reports “overwhelmingly positive effects on learning outcomes”. It reports that the learning improvement over the six-week programme was equivalent to nearly two years o...

    9 min

  2. JAN 27

    Babies & AI: what can AI tell us about how babies learn language?

    In this episode, Libby and Owen interview Mike Frank, Professor at Stanford University and leading expert in child development. This episode has a different angle to the others, as it is more about AI as a scientific instrument rather than as a tool for learning. Libby and Owen have a fascinating discussion with Mike about language acquisition and what we can learn about language learning from large language models. Mike explains some of the differences between how large language models devel...

    35 min

  3. JAN 13

    Teachers & ChatGPT: 25.3 extra minutes a week

    In this short, Libby and Owen discuss a hot-off-the-press study that is one of the first to test how ChatGPT impacts the time science teachers spend on lesson preparation. The TLDR is that teachers who used ChatGPT, with a guide, spent 31% less time preparing lessons - that’s 25.3 minutes per week on average. This very promising result points to the potential for ChatGPT and similar generative AI tools to help teachers with their workload. However we encourage you to dig into the summar...

    11 min

  4. 12/16/2024

    How & why did Google build an education specific LLM? (part 2/3)

    This episode is the second in our three-part mini-series with Google, where we find out how one of the world’s largest tech companies developed a family of large language models specifically for education, called LearnLM. This instalment focuses on the technical and conceptual groundwork behind LearnLM. Libby and Owen speak to three expert guests from across Google, including DeepMind, who are heavily involved in developing LearnLM. One of the problems with out-of-the-box large language...

    38 min

  5. 12/02/2024

    AI tutoring part 2: How good can it get?

    In this episode, Owen and Libby chat about AI tutoring with guests, Ben Kornell, Managing Partner at Common Sense Growth Fund, and Alex Sarlin, a veteran in the edtech industry. Both co-founded Edtech Insiders, a leading newsletter and podcast covering the growing Edtech industry. Ben and Alex differentiate between AI-powered search and true AI tutoring, and discuss trends like AI-enhanced human tutors, hybrid models, and fully autonomous AI bots. The conversation highlights the need fo...

    21 min

  6. 11/18/2024

    Inside the black box: How Google is thinking about AI & education (part 1 of 3)

    This episode is the first of a three part mini-series with Google. There is a lot of interest in how big tech companies are engaging in AI and education and what their future plans are - in this mini-series, hear the latest directly from Google. The genesis of this mini-series was a short Ed-Technical episode from earlier this year. Libby and Owen discussed a paper Google released about the work they had done to fine-tune a LLM called LearnLM to make it more useful for education. This w...

    36 min

  7. 10/21/2024

    Big data and algorithmic bias in education: what is it and why does it matter?

    This episode, Owen and Libby speak to Ryan Baker, a leading expert in using big data to study learners and learning interactions with educational software. Ryan is a Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, and is Director of the Penn Center for Learning Analytics. Ryan provides an overview of educational data mining (otherwise known as EDM) and explains how insights from EDM can help improve learner engagement and outcomes. Libby and Owen a...

    25 min

  8. 10/08/2024

    Think aloud or think before you speak?: OpenAI’s new model for advanced reasoning

    In this short episode, Libby and Owen discuss OpenAI’s new model for advanced reasoning, o1. They talk about its new capabilities and strengths, and what they think about its significance for education after an initial play around. They talk through the benefits of ‘think aloud’ versus ‘think before you speak’ approaches in education, and how this relates to o1. Links: OpenAI’s announcement about o1 Join us on social media: BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen...

    11 min
See All (30)

About

Join two former teachers - Libby Hills from the Jacobs Foundation and AI researcher Owen Henkel - for the Ed-Technical podcast series about AI in education. Each episode, Libby and Owen will ask experts to help educators sift the useful insights from the AI hype. They’ll be asking questions like - how does this actually help students and teachers? What do we actually know about this technology, and what’s just speculation? And (importantly!) when we say AI, what are we actually talking about? 

Information

  • Creator
    Owen Henkel & Libby Hills
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodes
    30
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Ed-Technical
  • Show Website
    Ed-Technical

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