The IB has spoken on AI. Now what? w/ Clara Hawking

What does it mean to live in a world that is being increasingly engineered by and moderated by AI driven technologies? Hey everybody, welcome to an episode of IB Unplugged, coming to you live from the IB Global Conference here in Lyon, France. Yeah. So today we have a really exciting episode. We're meeting with Clara Hawking, which many of you have heard our episodes with her before.

And now she stepped into this new role as the head of AI at the IB. And we want to talk about we have the AI principles, and now we want to say, now what? What do we do with them? How does it turn into this toolkit that we can actually bring back to our schools and make real change? Yeah. So what you're about to listen to is a live recording in front of an audience here at the global conference as well.

But yeah, we're really unpacking those questions like, what can schools really do now? And if you've listened to our previous episodes, you know that Clara is compassionate, knowledgeable and knows what she's doing when it comes to the AI and IB. So we're really excited that you're here. We really hope you enjoy this special episode coming to you live from Lyon, France.

So welcome back to the show now live. So obviously this is our third conversation. And we were just talking a moment ago about how wonderful it's been to see it kind of progress each time. And really the conversation around AI, as you've said multiple times, continues to progress. So it's cool that we get to have you here on the show again.

However, the last time we were speaking with you, you were not working within the IB and now you are working in the IB. I'm interested which learner profile attribute have you had to lean on the most now that you're with the IB? Yeah, I love that question. For me, I think it's a tie between risk taking and curiosity.

I have leaned in more, I think, on my willingness to inquire and be curious about what happens internally. What are people thinking? How are they working with technology? What are the concerns, bottlenecks that they're running into? What are the opportunities that they have seen that they feel are not being heard?

And also for the greater ecosystem, I think inquiring into that has been a big part of the learner profile that I have leaned into the most. Nice. I have a warm up question for you. I think I see it a lot if working with edtech, that they assume that I just like tech everything, and it's not always true.

What's a piece of technology you either reject or refuse to use AI or not? Yeah. I don't have any technology in my bedroom at all. And, I've taught myself to wake up without an alarm clock for that reason. So it is a completely analog room. And I did that because I realized that some years ago, I was starting to have trouble with my sleep, and I was starting to feel uneasy in the morning hours.

And what I realized had happened was that I had one of those old school alarm clocks that plugged into the wall, and it had broken. So I started using my phone as an alarm clock. And what happened when I started using my phone as an alarm clock is that when I turned over to turn the phone off, I saw notifications, and so I checked them real quick.

And then after I was done checking emails real quick because I realized there was a need for me to respond. And then slippery slope. And then real quick turns into an hour. And before I got out of bed to say good morning to my own children. I had already been around the world on social media. So I said enough of that.

And I took the television out. I took the phone out, I took computers out and banned it from my bedroom. And I restored my sleep, and I restored my ability to wake up in the morning and say good morning to myself, say good morning to my family, and ground myself in my life before I joined the rest of the world.

Yeah, yeah. Let's continue to help everybody get to know you a little bit. I know you studied in Stockholm. Is there a Swedish habit or tradition that you would happily bring to everywhere, every workplace? There are two, actually. We asked for one Clara. So then if I can only pick one, (I'm just kidding) it is the Swedish fika.

The Swedish fika was a very, very difficult for me to adopt when I first arrived in Sweden because I had come from the US, where you run 100,000 miles an hour and that's not fast enough. I'm sorry. What's fika? So Swedish fika is having a coffee, having a coffee in the morning together as colleagues.

It is having coffee together after lunch. And it is having another coffee together in the afternoon. And that fika time is used to share each other's feelings, concerns, thoughts, just being, breathing, taking time to reflect. And it was driving me absolutely crazy when I was going to Sweden. I'm like, can we just go to work and get this done?

But I really learned to lean in to those moments of being with my colleagues, being with other people. You have Swedish fika whether you are in a business meeting at a corporation, whether you're in a school, when you meet with, with families. And, now I really appreciate that Swedish way of stepping back and taking time to just be together and recognize each others as human beings first and then get to work afterwards.

It actually sounds really impactful that we could all be doing in schools as well. You know, when I think about it, we're also run into the next thing, doing the next thing right away and don't really take the time to check in. And yet so many times you talk to any educator and they say, well, it's about the relationships.

What about our relationships with colleagues as well? So I appreciate that. And you've done a lot of studying in your time. You've studied theology, computer science, philosophy. What do you see sneaking up, maybe especially in this new role and really kind of coming into play with the way that you're thinking?

Yeah. So what I shared in my master's studies, both in theology and in computer science and philosophy, was that I focused really in on doing research on systems approaches. How do systems work in the different context of what it means to be a human being, but philosophy is the one that sneaks in all the time.

Not sneaking, it's quite loud, actually. And I think part of that was that my approach to my studies, to philosophy, was that I wasn't studying just in theory, it was practical philosophy. So the real question was how do we move this from theoretical systems thinking into applying it in the real world?

And I see that coming back to me very much now. I think we're much more in a humanities language and social science moment, than we're in a technology moment. This is a being human moment. And so that I lean very heavily into my philosophical thinking. So let's get into the first segment here. You know, we're talking about the IB has spoken on AI.

What did schools say back kind of the first thing. And I know the last time we spoke, you were helping to really shape the principles of AI use in schools. Now your IB's head of AI. What's changed? What's the view look like now that you're kind of on the inside of the IB? Yeah. The very first thing that I heard very loudly was it's about time.

It's about time. We really need help. We really need help, and we want to be part of the solutions. So we've gotten warmly welcomed by all parties, all different roles in our ecosystem, for the opportunity to co-create solutions together. There's an enormous need for guidance, for resources, for things that work.

and for some consistency, something to rely on, as we move forward in this work together. And I think the big shift has been that the IB has recognized that not only is there a need for IB leadership, but there's a need for us to open up pathways for us to create solutions together. And the co-creation approach is really landing very strongly.

And it has created a feedback loop where we're able to see almost in real time what our community is thinking, what they want from us, what is happening on the front line, in the classroom, in the leadership offices, in the parent community, in the youth communities. And we can use that work to inform how we design solutions for the community.

Can I lean into that just a little bit? Because even just chatting with some people, I know some people in the IB or teachers would just say, can you just tell us what it is? I'm not sure we want to collaborate. Just tell me what I can and cannot do and let me just work with it. Can you lean in a little bit more on why that collaboration piece has been the choice of the IB here?

So the IB provides support around a curriculum, provides curriculum and everything that belongs in that ecosystem. But our schools are independent, and we want our schools to be able to reflect their local identity. We deal with schools that are in many hundreds of jurisdictions, and are subject to many different types of technology related regulation, but also regulation around child safety and well-being.

We have districts that have certain policies that they are required to attend to. So coming out with red lines or specific, here's precisely what we want you to do, is not likely to successfully land in our community because it's not everybody who can do that. For us it's important to think about equity first and thinking about designing solutions that can work for everyone.

So we can make recommendations. And we are, in fact, working on exploring what recommendations we can make. One of the ones we're hearing a lot about is ages. How old should children be when they're working with different types of technology. And we are looking also at the reality that some jurisdictions will soon have age related obligations.

Some governments are working on setting boundaries for exposure. Some are already having some boundaries in place. And so we are preparing that work. But we want to be evidence based. We want to be research based, not hype based. So it takes a little time to identify exactly where the best recommendations are and where that special point in learning begins to change when technology enters a child's life.

Yeah. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. And I'm wondering, as you've been doing these co-creation sessions, is there anything that what do you feel it's been the biggest shift or kind of biggest mindset change for the way that you've been approaching this, based on what you've been hearing from the community in these sessions?

So I think one of the things I educators have told us that has actually already caused a strategic shift for us, has been that educators were very clear that there's an AI literate educator, but that kind of means two things. one hand, it says the adult in the room, the professional person, the person whose career is to be an IB educator.

And how do I use AI in my career to further my career, to develop my skills, to become an AI literate professional. And then there is another pathway that is, how do I teach students? How do I learn the skills that I need as an educator to teach the students the things they need? How do I get the professional learning, where the IB workshops that I need as an educator to be in the classroom setting with the students?

And those two pathways are something that we heard very early on. We continue to hear. And we've already made a shift in our thinking in terms of creating support for both of those, both for professional learning and for the curriculum part of the work as well. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Because I know the initial principles were find after the March draft. And then, of course, you know, we saw yesterday in the opening, you know, the Denver session, a lot more collaboration that went on there. What did you hear from educators that you felt really changed your thinking about the way that you were approaching the AI principals?

I think the thing we heard the loudest was a sense of frustration, a sense of feeling kind of burned out, a sense of we've just become AI police and a sense of disconnect from their own role as an educator, because it has been sort of sidetracked by this AI story. So one of the things we're really working on is rearticulating what AI literacy is for all of us, and taken away the big tech story about AI literacy being something about rushing into using tools, learning how to prompt, learning how to build prompt libraries and maybe some vibe coding and maybe some early agency to what does it mean to live in a world that is being increasingly engineered by and moderated by AI driven technologies?

Because AI isn't just in the classroom. It's not just in our workflow. It's not just something we're catching when students are handing in summative work or formative work. It's being used in our healthcare systems. It's being used in decision making around social services, allocation of funds for education, in every aspect of human life.

And so AI literacy isn’t just about a tools moment. It's about an infrastructure moment. And in order to capture that and move from the space where we are now, that frustrating, anxiety inducing space to how do we build it in? We're really taking a holistic approach, which means that we're going to see components of that building to every part of the IB experience, ultimately.

I so appreciate you bringing that up, actually. I've often said AI seems to be influencing every part of my life, but when I say that statement, I'm really kind of thinking about just me, without recognizing, of course, the infrastructure everywhere else around me. So when we're talking to AI literacy, as you've mentioned, it goes far beyond assignments.

It goes far beyond the actual curriculum in the learning here. It's how are we preparing everybody for an AI driven, well, AI world, I guess. I appreciate you mentioned that. We have a question from Ron here. Thank you, Ron. How do you weigh different sources and voices on the topic of AI and how at the IB are you feeling about the seemingly lack of rigorous academic evidence of the current landscape?

Oh, that's a tough question, Ron. So we've collected a lot of evidence already, and we're going to continue to collect evidence from our community. We are weighing all voices equally. We feel that we all have equal value. So we are hearing from everyone, from tech companies to our students to our educators to school leaders, and even from inside of the IB and the different departments as well.

We have not yet captured our parent voices. We think that there is an enormous need for our parents to come in and get their voices heard and capture their voices as well. But I think our first priority is our students. Our students are in the center. What matters to them, how they experience being inside of a digital ecosystem, being inside of their education, being inside of learning, whether that learning is in the classroom or at home, or with their friends after school.

They are our point of center. and so anything that leads towards supporting them and supporting education for human flourishing and for them to flourish, that is where we're leaning in. I mean, it really does feel like we kind of have to be sprinting here. I mean, just in an academic sense, you know, to do proper research and to share about that takes time that we don't necessarily have.

I mean, in the opening presentation yesterday, it was we're not responding quick enough. Right? So I must say I do appreciate, just in our conversations before, I know there's such an urgency to protect young people as well. Help them be safe. Yeah? Let's make sure we're creating a safe landscape for them.

And so I really appreciate that, you know, again, we've mentioned IB’s at our AI principles. And I think that's useful for schools. But now we've rolled out into the toolkit. And so I want to lean into this section now. So what the toolkits actually going to be giving schools and how we can be using that quite well?

I know it started off as a set of sort of draft tools that the community tested, ranked, played around with a bit. What will the school actually get its hands on and what can you share about timing of that? We are running fast. I wear sneakers every day at work. So this is the exception, not the rule.

Although I can run fast in heels as well, like everybody else here. In case any of those hard questions coming in. Exactly, exactly. But we are working very fast. And we have made it clear across the internal teams that we need to deliver where we can't keep talking about this. We've got to get help out to the school.

One of the very first things that we're working on has to do with both cleaning our own house and helping everybody else clean their houses. We got to do a little housekeeping first, and that has to do with governance, it has to do with safety, it has to do with risk management, and it has to do with policy.

And that is also what we have heard most from the schools that have organized priorities, from everyone in our co-creation sessions that have organized priorities. They have said we need to get the governance and policies right. That's where we build the foundation. And we are working very hard on releasing where we're actually hoping to release already in December, the first materials, but otherwise it will be shortly following December the first materials to support schools in that housekeeping work.

And I can say for transparency, we're doing the same housekeeping. We face the same situation that schools do. We have inconsistent use of AI. We don't know who's using AI and who's not. We have lots of pilots in the air, and some of them are on airplanes, and some of them are in helicopters. And we don't know how much fuel are on these machines, or whether they're planning to land.

We're also aligning with regulations. So the global jurisdictions are different, but we are going with the strictest interpretation of AI regulation, to ensure that we have our boundaries set for what we are willing to do. And we're also leaning back into our commitments to sustainability. We've made commitments, but AI has sort of landed, and now we're taking inventory to ensure that the way we use AI, the way we promote AI, and the way we teach about AI aligns with our commitments to our planetary flourishing as well.

And we are finding that we have not been successful in that, as I think many others have as well. And so we are going to have to make some changes there as well in our decision pathways to make sure that we are aligning. And many of those learnings that we are doing now internally is part of what we're also building into the toolkit, along with the needs that we're hearing from our community.

We need policies to be alive. We need governance, and we need help with figuring all of that out. Yeah. I think that a lot of people probably appreciate the vulnerability of saying, we're figuring this out to at the IB and knowing that even if they set a policy at one point, it's a good idea to revisit and say, like, does this actually align with our vision and our purpose of what we're trying to do, especially with sustainability?

So I think that a lot of schools probably appreciate that. And on that, I think that different IB schools are dealing with a really wide range of resources and where they're at right now. And, there's very different levels of AI readiness amongst all these schools. Is there any intentionality in the way that the toolkits being designed to be able to support all of these different types of situations for these different schools?

Yeah, there is and there is a very much an intention to support AI literacy as something that we can equitably achieve across our global community, across all of our different economic situations and across the different regulatory and our different missions and visions as well, priorities that we have.

And one of the things that is leading that work is the intention to help support schools in understanding that AI literacy is not the big tech story. It is not a tools or toy or technology moment. It is a learning moment and that you can learn to be powerfully AI literate, even in a completely analog environment.

You don't have to have fancy technology in order to learn AI literacy. So one of the things we're looking at already now is we've put a work group together to work on AI literacy resources and building AI literacy into curriculum for PYP. PYP is, I think, our most fragile group. They are the ones that are most vulnerable to the unfortunate sides of technology.

So we've got to do that very carefully. But even if they were never touching technology, their lives are very much driven by AI infrastructure. And there are many things that they can learn inside of that space. They can also learn systems thinking. They can learn about data. They can learn about bias.

They can learn about hallucinations. They can learn about how to tell the difference between truth and false, which is becoming increasingly difficult in this AI driven world and deepfake generated realities. Truth is under pressure. So there are lots of entry points that we haven't really explored yet.

While that is sad, we're also making sure that we're creating meaningful resources for schools that are already very much on the front foot with technology, that are building agents, that are building tools, that are building applications, and we want to help them as well. and getting in on the right areas, and also really think about what curriculum looks like in the future and what assessment looks like in the future as well.

One of the things I really appreciate about what you just said is you don't have to have the AI tool to become AI literate. And one of the things I love about the conferences, and I'm sure many of you have had this experience as well as you get to chat with really cool people, really smart individuals out here.

I was having a conversation with somebody named Phil yesterday. And we were talking about how AI literacy, in many ways, kind of just comes down to the ATL’s, or you could even make an argument that a Theory of Knowledge course is going to make you AI literate. Do you have any comments about that? Do you feel like that's actually what we should be leaning into more instead of worrying?

Like we need to put computers in front of everybody and get them to work with agents and their own sort of thing. Is it more actually we build up these skills, these approach to learning, the IB learner profile attribute, and that is going to lead to AI literacy. That is a wonderful question. And I really appreciate it, because I think that, I had a similar conversation with an educator yesterday after one of the co-creation sessions, and she was saying exactly the same thing, like, can we get something to hold on to instead of continuing to creating all this new stuff?

Isn't there anything that's consistent? And I think our IB learner profile, I think ATL skills and I think theory of knowledge, and many other components in the core, in the PYP, the MYP and the DP and the CP, much of what's in that core work is seeing there are all things that we can hold on to. I, for example, have been working recently on developing with the team in The Hague, some connections around AI literacy to how do we build that into IB learner profiles.

So what part of the IB learner profile lends itself exceptionally well to also developing AI literacy and how can we lean in. So rather than building a whole new framework, that we have to learn and that we have to adopt, I think that we can interpret what we already have, and I think it lends itself exceptionally well.

It was one of the reasons why I actually decided that I wanted to join the IB. There were many reasons, but this was one of them is that I think we already have what we need to succeed with driving into a future that is driven by artificial intelligence, quantum simulations, enhanced encryptions, and soon quantum computing.

We can do this because we have the IB learner profile. We can do that because we have the ATL skills. And if we lean into what we already know, what we already have, I think that we have a real opportunity to go through this journey together and succeed. Excellent. Yeah. No, I think that's great. And I think that was also one piece that I was really taking away from the keynote yesterday of really being able to say, like, if you suddenly have documentation and policies that don't connect to what you already have, it's much easier for it to become other and different, where if you say, no, we're going to keep focusing on the learner profile, we're going to keep focusing on the ATLs, but now we're going to evolve our

AI governance and our AI policies to really be intertwined with that. I think that that's probably setting schools up for more success of actual implementation. Yeah. We've got a question from an audience member I want to address. It's also from somebody named Phil. I'm not sure if it's the same person as I was talking about, but from Phil, what are we learning about the concerns of educators who feel uneasy about AI?

And what are we doing to bridge the gap between advanced users and those who feel concerned? Yep, I hear it a lot. I hear a lot about burnout. I hear a lot about concerns that educators are leaving the profession because this was sort of the tipping point. I can't take any more, enough. A few years ago, I heard a lot about will we really be replaced by robots?

You know, is a machine going to take our classroom? What I would say is that I hear a lot from young people, a lot. And I'm really glad. I'm grateful for what they are teaching me. And what they are teaching me is that they want an adult human being in the classroom with them. And so what I do when I hear frustrated teachers saying, I'm just about ready to leave, is I say, lean in.

You know, lean into the human part. Don't worry about the technology right now. Lean into your relationship with those students. Lean into what you already know. You are an expert. You are an educated person. You are professional. You know better than big tech. You know better than the news. You know what's happening inside of your classroom.

Lean into that. And I think that I resist a little bit the temptation to say that some educators are more advanced with AI than others. I think that there are educators that have chosen not to engage with AI, because they haven't felt that it had pedagogical value in their classroom, so they have chosen not to engage with that technology in their classroom, or they have chosen not to engage with the technology because they felt unsafe, or they felt that their students weren't going to be safe inside of that technology.

And I think that's okay. I think that's a way to be AI literate. I think it's a way to say this is my part of the journey right now. And this is what I am figuring out, while other educators are exploring, some are very advanced. I can't believe some of the conversations I have with educators and schools out there that are doing just unbelievable things, like they could go straight to Silicon Valley today, I think with their students and help train advanced models.

And that is also okay. It's a different part of the AI journey, but I think we're all needing to head in the same direction. And that's the message we need to get clear for a whole community. Let's get there together. And how we're going to get there together it's going to look different for everyone.

Yeah, I love the idea of lean into what you're doing. You know best. You know your context best. It sounded like, you know, have a fika chat with a person, build into those relationships. I really appreciate you saying that. Sorry. Yeah. No, I do too, and I think that there's a huge difference between choosing not to do something with intentionality and burying your head in the sand.

And I think there's a lot of teachers who are choosing not to engage with certain technologies and tools with really good reasons to not do that, and that should be respected a lot more. It's that's not the teacher just pretending like AI doesn't exist. It's no, I know it exists. I know what's possible, but I'm still choosing.

These are my moments that I'm going to stay offline. These are the moments I want to go online and that intentionality is literacy, as you said. So I really appreciate that. Yeah. We have a lot of.. This is a going off of where we thought we were going, but to no surprise, we have a lot of questions coming in about assessment.

So I was wondering if we have Lisa, for example, she was asking, how do you think that assessment needs to change or not change in the age of AI if we are trying to assess learning? Yeah, it's an interesting question. And it's a challenging question. I think that there are a couple of things to consider when it comes to assessment.

I think on one hand we have immediate, I would almost call it a crisis, because our educators are experiencing it as a crisis. Educators are finding it very difficult to, in good faith, sign the record saying, I believe this is the student's own authentic work and sending it off for moderation, because they are not entirely sure that it is.

They find it very difficult to be assessment police. It's impacting their relationship with students. There are so many stories of enormously unpleasant conversations, both where students are getting caught cheating, and how that conversation takes place where students are getting caught cheating but didn't, in fact cheat.

But maybe it was caught cheating by an AI checker, or by some lapse in communication. There are students who are getting caught cheating who did submit authentic work, their own work, who are having to dumb down their work, in order to slip through the new police regimen. And it's a mess. It's a hot mess.

And we need immediate solutions to that. So that is something that is sort of a red hot area that we are working on solutions, advice that we can give to schools as soon as humanly possible, that can help them through that. But there's another part of assessment that is a deeper question, almost a TOK question, to what extent is assessment reflecting student learning in the age of AI?

And we have work to do together in thinking about whether we need different types of assessment going forward. We have loved many of the assessment formats that we've had, but there is a very good possibility that is not meaningful assessment, that is not meaningfully revealing student learning in the years going forward.

And I do expect that we will see new assessment pathways. We haven't invented them yet or discovered them yet. We're discovering. But I do think that is unrealistic to expect in the long run that assessment will look the way in 20 years or even ten years, as it looks today. And that is both for formative and summative assessment.

I think maybe we have undervalued formative assessment to some extent. A lot of magic happens there. But unfortunately, many students also prefer to go to formative assessment to hand in their AI driven work just to get it over with. But I think that there's a lot of magic happening there that we can lean into.

And we're seeing in early research coming out from countries that have leaned in heavily to using generative AI in education, that they are seeing a huge surge in formative assessment and a huge drop in summative assessment. And I think there's something there we need to capture. Yeah. And I expect that we have to work together on solving that going forward.

It's such a difficult space. I must imagine, you know, because when I think of many of our assessment strategies now, yes, they're vulnerable to AI. And you must be asking that question, you know, to what extent are these still valid assessment procedures when we know that there's this ability of AI, like the take home essay, does that still exist in this space?

You know? But recently and we've had the chance to speak with Matt Glanville, the IB’s head of assessment, many times and just understanding the deep work that goes into creating a good piece of assessment and something that's, usable for everybody. There's a big, big amount of work that goes into this too.

And I think I could reflect the concerns of educators in the room as an educator myself, there's this urgency of like, well, but fix it now, fix it now. And just in order for us to do this right, it's going to take us, unfortunately, just a bit longer than AI is progressing. That's a tension I just think is getting stronger.

And I think difficult too, to process. I guess I'm just trying to empathize. I think that's got to be incredibly challenging. We've got another question here from an audience member, from Thomas. AI offers an easy way, but learning requires hard work. What structure of education will prevent kids from choosing the easier way?

The IB Learner Profile. I think the IB Learner profile requires students to lean in, and I think that they are recognizing that we are hearing that back from through the Youth council, some of the data and surveying they're collecting from our generation global students, they want to engage with friction.

They want to learn hard things. They are concerned that AI is making things easy for them. It was fun for a while, but now they feel disconnected from their learning, from themselves, from their teachers. And so they want to be part of that. And I think the IB learner profile is exactly what gives us that opportunity to go in and have those reconnections, around who we are.

Because there is no question that AI can make things easy. There's no question that we are seeing cognitive offloading both for us, the grown ups in the room and for our students. And there is no question that we're also seeing d-skilling. The young people that are coming into workflow now are using AI for a lot of things that us that are a generation or two ahead of them are very good at, and we haven't even taken inventory of the opportunity cost.

What are we losing here? And so I think that we need to work with our students on solving that. And I think we have the framework to do that through the IB learner profile. I think the IB learner profile also really helps approach it with in terms of AI and ethics as well. And I know that this is a conversation we've talked a lot about.

And then on your own, you've, in all your free time, have decided to write a book about, which I know is coming out. Is it this week? This weekend. You've had a big week. So it's the early stages of labor. So yeah. So it's available for preorder now but going to print soon. So I'm very very excited. Yeah.

So I mean besides you know, having nothing better to do, what made you decide to write this book? I felt that the work that I was doing wasn't helping enough schools, frankly. I felt sort of quite tired of hearing Big Tech owning the conversation about education. I felt that education needed to tell Big Tech what education is.

And I have been in a lot of meeting with some of the big companies, and both behind the scenes and on stage. And they have a vision of what will drive their technology into schools, but they haven't invited in educators, they haven't invited in students, they haven't invited in our parents to be part of that strategy and those conversations.

And I also saw that technology has made its way into schools in areas where regulation either is already existing or already coming, and that a lot of schools were actually not compliant with sort of their base obligations, but having no idea that they weren't complying. So I felt that there was a longer conversation that needed to be had about how did we get here?

What was the story of digitalization, what really happened in the last 20 years? And then what are we looking at now? What is beyond the hype? What is reality facing schools today? And then how do we get out of that space with real tools, with real things that really has been tested in other schools and really works?

And what is the future look like? How can we avoid getting back into this grid that we have found ourselves in? And I wanted to make that available to the global community. Yeah, it's actually an excellent transition. We've got time for just a couple more questions here. But what you're leading into now is like, what can we actually be doing?

And when I think about every educator that's in the room right now, we're kind of wondering, okay, what do we do now? What's, you know, and that's kind of the title of recession the IB spoke. And what are we going to do now? Let's say if a school can only focus one or maybe three priority areas this year, how would a school decide which one to really move on?

My recommendation is to go home and find out what the digital blueprint is in your school, and not to tech stack, but the experience that the student has inside of your school in that digital space. The experience that your educators have, that your school leaders have, that your administrative teams have, that your well-being and safeguarding teams have, and so on, run a full audit of how technology is being used, how long, what type of technology, how it's impacting students if decisions are being made through technology, and how those decisions are being made, both because it prepares you for the regulatory recommendations, sorry, the regulatory obligations that you have, but also because you need to know what's happening in your classroom.

How long is every single student on devices every day? If they’re are half an hour or maybe only 15 minutes in each classroom at the end of a school day, that adds up to several hours. Are you understanding exactly what that means for the student? How much homework is being assigned in the digital space?

How long are they are on devices when they get home just with schoolwork? And how are the teachers really being affected? What does the teacher reality look like with all these new technologies? What skills are we losing? What skills do we need? And that's going to look really different for every single school.

But the time to do that work is is right now, because you can't make meaningful decisions about going into the future if you don't know what's inside of your own ecosystem. So take the time. Do the qualitative surveys, do the conversations, figure out what is everything like here and then I guess almost like a grounded theory approach.

What sort of comes out as our key thing we have to do now. As a last question, we're going to start doing our workshops really soon, and we're going to be breaking out and talking about policy and governance, AI literacy or student AI councils. Is there one question you would hope that people would be able to answer?

You don't need to give the answer, but would you give some questions that you would hope people would be able to bring answers to? I really like that you formed it that way, because I think a good policy is actually driven in questions. It's not a one stop shop, it's a continuous work. I would encourage you to think of your AI policies a little bit, like you think about your well-being policies.

Those are constant work and they're never really perfect. Even the best well-being policy in the best function in school that has all the structures in place for well-being and safeguarding still have incidents that are difficult to deal with and that require response, requires remediation and requires learning so that we can do better next time.

I would encourage you to build those characteristics into your AI policy, because the AI we have today is still relatively primitive. It will be much more advanced. And the way that AI impacts decision making will become much more complex and much more opaque. So drive the policy into a system of continuous revision, continuous asking questions.

Hard questions. Have pathways for incidents, remediation and learning. Going forward, I would recommend to put that into some of the policy work. As for the AI Council and particularly AI use Council, I would really recommend, it has been a phenomenal experience to have youth in the room. They are very insightful, but they're also teaching us things about their reality and what I think first and foremost, I have learned from the young people again and again and again, is that what I think is their reality is not how they experience it.

And unless I talk to them, we just don't learn that. And I would encourage you to get closer to the young people at your school through putting together a youth council. Give them a real seat at the table and make them part of the solutions. Make them part of your decision framework. Clara, I count myself so fortunate to have gotten the chance to know you over the last three episodes that we've done with IB Unplugged and I genuinely am so excited that you were in this space, because you've mentioned AI as a crisis that we are experiencing And I’m thinking, as an educator, It's absolutely the case where you just feel like I'm a little bit floundering here and I kind of need to know what to do next.

And when I think of you, so knowledgeable, you're so compassionate about making sure that we're doing the right things. I'm glad you're in this space. But I also recognize it's incredibly complex. But I think you're the right person for it. And I'm really glad that we're moving in these directions. And just with that, thank you for taking the time to chat with us here.

I know you're super busy at the conference now, doing all sorts of things, but for taking the time to chat with us here, as Courtney just mentioned, we're going to move into an action space of like taking action in our room. So don't leave. Stick around. You're going to get some really, really good stuff here.

But can I just say massive thank you to you, Clara, for taking the time with us. Thank you. I love talking with Clara. Me too. That's why we've done it three times. She's the only person who's been on the show for three times. And you can see why. She's somebody who's super knowledgeable, who's really compassionate, who really understands the context, I think, of what many schools are going through and why, when we're talking about trying to implement AI governance, AI policy, AI like ideas here in education, she's got a whole, like, the whole picture together.

And I think that's really important. Exactly. No, her context comes in so clear that she's been in the schools. She's been working with the IB for a long time, in the IB, in the classrooms, and is really taking that extremely human approach. I think a couple things that stood out to me were one, when she was being quite vulnerable about the IB’s figuring this out too, like we don't have this nailed either.

And I like that she was talking about we thought we had a policy, but then we realized it didn't actually line up with our vision of sustainability, and now we're revisiting it. And so all of the things that she's suggesting you're doing in a school they’re walking the walk to with everyone, figuring that out.

Yeah. And I genuinely appreciate that collaboration piece, not the sense of just like, here's the governance that you all have to adhere to, even though I think there's plenty of voices out there right now that would say, like, just tell us what we have to do. But I appreciate that they recognize the different contexts of different places that people are working and their entry points and how they're actually dealing with there.

So I do appreciate it. And I think when I think of people like Clara, at the IB, I feel more confident about where we're going as a whole organization, as an educator in those schools. I feel like here's somebody who cares a lot, here's somebody who is knowledgeable, and I'm in good hands. Exactly. No, I think we started this season with an episode with Clara talking about the principles.

Now it feels like we really did get those answers of now what. And it feels like, yeah, we're in good hands and we're in a good next stage of this process of figuring that out. Yeah, definitely. We hope you enjoyed the episode and it's been great here meeting a lot of you as well. So thanks for joining in and see you next time.

IB Unplugged is a Kognity podcast for IBDP educators, helping you teach with more confidence, creativity, and joy. This podcast is hosted by Courtney Marline and John Patton and produced by Katilina Gaffney, edited by Damir Zvekanov and supported by Karla Cetina. If you have a topic or question for us to explore, please reach out on kognity.com/ibunplugged.

See you next time.

The IB has spoken on AI. Now what? w/ Clara Hawking

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