AI and the Future of Education

4 June 2025 • Education, Technology, AI, Bryan Alexander, collaboration, Helen Beetham, Ian O'Byrne, Karen Louise Smith, Laura Hilliger, UNESCO

Update: I’ve added the recording of the session below.

The black and white image shows a high shot of the tops of a city scene. At eye level are the tops of the tall buildings on either side of the street, in the middle of the image, it tunnels down to the road below. The street is fairly empty, but cascading down from the sky are pixels which look like a QR code pattern – almost like these represent the clouds.

A couple of months ago, I invited a few people I know to collaborate on submitting ‘think pieces’ towards a UNESCO call entitled AI and the Future of Education: Disruptions, Dilemmas and Directions. Tomorrow, we’re running a roundtable session to discuss what we produced.

The session is ‘sold out’ with a decent number of people on the waitlist. There will be a recording, which I will share here afterwards.

The gestation of our pieces involved not only time alone thinking and writing, but also time discussing our ideas and giving feedback on each others’ work.

I’m thankful to the group for giving up their time to write such thoughtful pieces, and for giving feedback on my own piece:

At the time of writing, we haven’t heard back as to whether any of our writing has been selected to feature on the UNESCO Ideas Lab site. But, either way, it’s already been a valuable experience and I look forward to tomorrow’s roundtable.