Beyond Chatbots

Hi everyone,

I've been in Melbourne for the past few days at an Australian Principals Federation meeting and the in-person launch of Practical AI Strategies 2 at the Amba Press Community Day. The book launch was introduced by the amazing Anam Javed, who also offered some spicy questions about the future of AI in and outside of education. I wasn't expecting to cover philosophy, economics, and politics on a Saturday morning but when you're talking about AI you have to roll with it!

I've also been having great conversations with school leaders about the near future of artificial intelligence and how we move beyond chatbots, in and outside our classrooms. Of course, that's very difficult when all of our policies are written about technologies that have changed significantly in the last few years. As one school leader I was talking to recently put it, it's like the technology is a rocket ship and we're still talking about 1986 Toyota Corollas...

In this week's blog post, I explore those ideas further and talk more about why we need to move beyond chatbots, both in our policies and in our practice.

New deepfake course from the Cyber Safety Project

I'm really excited to announce that there is a new course on deepfakes and synthetic media available now on the Practical AI Strategies website. The short course has been put together by the team at Cyber Safety Project. I know many of you will have worked with CSP over the years on cyber safety, security, cyberbullying, and wellbeing.

The course is a fantastic introduction to the topic of deepfakes and how we manage the risks in schools and support the young people that we work with as they encounter these troubling technologies. Check it out now on the Practical AI Strategies site.

Next week, I'll continue the Beyond Chatbots series and look at what we're doing to come to terms with frontier AI models, AI agents, and the more sophisticated large language model based technologies that are out there.

Cheers,

Leon

P.S. If you are an AI leader in a school, I want to hear from you. Whether it's a named position, like Head of AI, or something you've inherited into your existing portfolio (whether you've been given any time release or not), I'd love to hear what kind of support you will need in 2027. I'm planning a brand new cohort for AI leaders, with more news coming soon. Reply to this email to get in touch!

​​​