Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.

This week on the podcast I speak again to Dr. Siobhán Keenan Fitzgerald whose book Listen: How Child and Student Voice Can Change the World has just been published by Routledge. Among the topics we discussed are:

Among the topics were discussed were:

• Connecting to a network of Changemaker schools
• Getting interested in outdoor education inspired by a colleague who did Forest school training.
• Travelling as part of the Erasmus+ programme.
• Learning about peer mediation and the Student Council in Donabate Educate Together National School.
• The process of becoming recognised as a changemaker school.
• Studying for a doctorate on public speaking in primary school (focusing on self-efficacy and vocabulary development). She used the work of Albert Bandura.
• The paucity of research on public speaking in primary schools.
• The connection between children expressing their voices and public speaking
• Children have opportunities to practise public speaking in team sports settings, in church and in school-related events (e.g. science fair).
• How teachers already recognise student voice in their classrooms (e.g. taking children’s interests and likes into account, in discussions, circle-time activities, rotating class-captain roles, and in choosing pedagogies to promote learning).
• How Siobhán’s school developed the role of play leader, that rotates weekly. Play leaders keep an eye out for younger children, to bring out equipment at break times and ensure it is distributed fairly, push younger children on the swings, and helping children sort out issues themselves without involving adults.
• That which is most personal is most universal – why storytelling is a form of public speaking.
• Matthew Dicks and his ideas of “homework for life” and how this might help children find their personal voice.
• Limits on children expressing their voice.
• Creating a safe space for children speaking in public and involving students in co-creating the rules around it.
• Who the book Listen: How child and student voice can change the world is written for.
• How those who get to speak publicly tend to be the privileged in society
• Shy or reluctant speakers may need additional scaffolding to be encouraged to speak in public. This may include children with speech and language delays or difficulties, children with other additional needs and children for whom English is not their first language.
• What she learned from writing the book: finding two extra hours in each day between 6 and 8 a.m.
• Teachers who want to write a book: If not you, then who? If not now, then when? Reach out!
• The Comfort Crisis, a book by Michael Easter was mentioned.
• She mentioned podcasts she likes including The Rethinking Education podcast by James Mannion; The Teach Middle East podcast with Christina Morris; and the Lead the Way podcast with Ann Byrne was mentioned.
• School 21 in London
• Her YouTube Channel.

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.

On this week's podcast my guest is Perry Share, who is Head of Student Success at Atlantic Technological University. Among the topics we discuss are:

• The impact of taking a module with Hilary Tovey on rural sociology and a module with Brian Torode and Barbara Bradby on language, discourse and French theory.
• Perry’s belief that artificial intelligence is a catalyst that helps us better understand and question contemporary practices around teaching, learning and assessment.
• Artificial intelligence forces us to ask questions like "What does it mean to assess students?" "How can we teach in ways that are engaging and productive for students?"
• In education, the arts and the humanities, we take text as a representation of what is in students’ heads and tend to make assumptions about the knowledge, understanding or learning held by the student. The foundation is taken out of this when we don’t know where the text comes from.
• Problems are outlined with the take-home assignment, oral assessments and standard written exams but the “unsolvable” problems may constitute a productive space for educators.
• The likes of ChatGPT can be used effectively in fields where you have knowledge. An area of concern in higher education is in relation to fields where people are just beginning to acquire knowledge and understanding. In addition, artificial intelligence threatens opportunities to learn on internships in professional placements.
• Perhaps the role of “learned” knowledge becomes increasingly important for novices in a field whereas in recent years the importance of critical thinking has been lauded.
• It is likely that resources will need to shift from activities we currently value to new – yet-to-be-determined – resources at secondary and higher education levels.
• What prompt engineering is.
• Ethan Mollick’s book Co-Intelligence.
• Examples of good and not-so-good prompts.
• How Perry is using ChatGPT in his own work: summarising large documents; combining documents; Brainstorming; Outlining a proposed structure of a document or presentation. It has been used for computer programming and other tasks.
• Data protection implications may need to be considered in relation to some uses.
• In the future it may be used to grade and provide feedback for public exams.
• Various kinds of data on the results would be available almost immediately.
• Decline in language learning in many countries due to the dominance of English and due to the availability of translation tools.
• The days of the academic essay may be numbered.
• Simulations may be a future direction of assessment in professional settings but these too are not without complications.
• Can we avoid interacting with artificial intelligence?
• Impact on equity in education.
• If students can teach themselves, where does that leave the teacher? There is a job of imagination for teachers to start thinking about how they will work alongside artificial intelligence.
• The impact of artificial intelligence on what (and who) we can trust.
• People Perry respects on the topic of artificial intelligence: Anna Mills, a lecturer in academic writing in the United States; Charles Knight who works for Advance HE; Maha Bali at the America University of Cairo on critical artificial intelligence (environmental, commercial and ethical impacts).
• The purpose of school.
• Daryl Nation
• Raewyn Connell’s book The Good University.

Perry's own expanding list of resources on artificial intelligence is available here.