EdTechnical

In this episode of EdTechnical, our podcast hosts Libby and Owen welcome back John Roberts, CEO and co-founder of Oak National Academy, to discuss the results of a new randomised controlled trial of Aila, Oak’s AI lesson assistant. Funded by the Education Endowment Foundation and independently evaluated by the National Foundation for Educational Research, the trial followed 464 primary teachers across 108 schools in England through a term of everyday lesson planning. It asked a simple question: can Aila save teachers time without any loss in the quality of the resources they produce?Teachers using Aila saved an average of 49 minutes a week, with no difference in the quality of their resources. The entire saving came from just 7% of lessons. This points to a narrow but valuable use case of Aila in planning lessons from scratch, a task that is especially time consuming for early career teachers. John reflects on what this means for Oak’s product strategy and why rigorous evidence struggles to keep pace with the technology it measures. What’s the right balance between saving teachers time and supporting their professional development?BioJohn Roberts is co-founder of Oak National Academy, the UK government-backed provider of free, open licence teaching resources. He previously led the product and engineering team behind Aila, the UK’s first publicly funded generative AI tool for public use, built to support teachers with lesson planning. Before Oak, John worked as a teacher and senior leader in the North West of England and set up companies and charities, including Teach Your Monster. He is now Oak’s Interim Chief Executive.LinksProject page and evaluation report by the Education Endowment Foundation: Lesson planning using AI lesson assistant, Aila – Teacher Choices trialOak National Academy’s blog on the trial resultsTry AilaJoin us on social media: BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)Listen to all episodes of EdTechnical here: https://boldscience.org/podcasts/edtechnical/Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter: https://bold.expert/newsletterStay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning: https://bold.expertCredits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design; Pia Schmoeckel for content production. 

Alyssa Van Camp, EdTechnical’s research lead, joins Owen Henkel to explore whether generative AI boosts homework while weakening exam performance. They discuss evidence from 27,000 Chinese students, the study’s methodological limits, and why some students avoid the apparent learning penalty. The conversation also examines productive struggle, AI design, homework equity, and how assignments and assessments may need to evolve.

Joanna Cannon, a Walton Family Foundation senior fellow with a PhD in developmental psychology, studies how AI is reshaping K–12 education. She explores why teacher adoption is hard to measure, the caveats behind reported time savings, and emerging norms for appropriate use. The conversation also examines AI grading, bias, privacy, human connection, and whether automation could weaken durable skills.

Rene Kizilcec, a Cornell professor studying responsible learning technology; Bryan Richardson, a Gates Foundation education funder; Maya Bialik, QuestionWell founder and former science teacher; and Kevin McKee, a Google DeepMind research scientist, explore AI’s next chapter in education. They discuss open infrastructure, misconception detection, controllable tutoring systems, reading-level steering, classroom evaluations, and why the future may depend on choosing where AI belongs.

In this episode of EdTechnical, Libby and Owen speak with Rebecca Winthrop, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she directs the Center for Universal Education. Rebecca and her team recently ran a ‘pre-mortem’ on generative AI in education: rather than waiting years for the evidence to settle, they conducted a yearlong study on the risks it poses to students, and what we can do now to prevent them while making the most of the benefits.Drawing on focus groups, a thorough review of studies, and a forecasting panel, the report paints a striking picture: as things stand, the risks of generative AI for children's learning and development outweigh the benefits. Rebecca explains the risks are foundational, undermining the trust, independent thinking, and resilience that children need in order to benefit from AI. A key distinction runs through the conversation: risks tend to come from wide AI use, where children have open-ended, unscaffolded conversations with tools not designed for them, while benefits come from narrow, intentional use integrated into teaching with vetted content.BioRebecca Winthrop is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of its Center for Universal Education, where she leads the Brookings Global Task Force on AI in Education. She advises governments, policymakers and international institutions on education and previously led education work for displaced and conflict-affected communities. She is a co-author of the report A New Direction for Students in an AI World: Prosper, Prepare, Protect.LinksResearch Report by the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education:A New Direction for Students in an AI World: Prosper, Prepare, ProtectBrookings Institution Center for Universal Education: https://www.brookings.edu/topics/education-2/Join us on social media: BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)Listen to all episodes of EdTechnical here: https://boldscience.org/podcasts/edtechnical/Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter: https://bold.expert/newsletterStay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning: https://bold.expertCredits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design; Pia Schmoeckel for content production. 

Libby is on maternity leave, so Hermione Thompson steps in to guest co-host this episode alongside Owen. Hermione is AI and EdTech lead at Purposeful Ventures and previously advised on education policy inside the UK Prime Minister’s Office at 10 Downing Street.Owen and Hermione sit down with Minister Olivia Bailey, the UK Department for Education minister responsible for AI in schools, for a conversation on where AI in education is headed. Bailey believes government should actively shape this space rather than sit back. Through the government's AI Tutoring Tools Pioneer Programme, up to eight companies will be selected to co-design curriculum-aligned AI tutoring tools directly with schools. Trials start this summer, and a national rollout is targeted for 2027, potentially reaching 450,000 disadvantaged pupils a year. Bailey says these coming tools are fundamentally different from a generic chatbot that gives children the answers without engagement or challenge. She explains how they are thinking about the tension between personalized AI and managing a classroom of 30 kids who need to study the same topic. The government's approach is to test and learn different approaches to see how children get the learning benefits normally associated with a real-life personal tutor.BioOlivia Bailey is a junior minister at the UK Department for Education, responsible for early years, school food, and digital/AI policy. Before Parliament, she worked in public policy for the Labour Party, advised Keir Starmer as Leader of the Opposition, and worked across think tanks and public opinion research. She now leads the department's AI Tutoring Tools Pioneer Programme and its AI safety standards for schools.LinksDfE announcement: Edtech and AI companies invited to help build safe AI tutoring tools https://www.gov.uk/government/news/edtech-and-ai-companies-invited-to-help-build-safe-ai-tutoring-tools-for-disadvantaged-pupils⁠Programme detail via AI.gov.uk: AI Infrastructure for Education https://ai.gov.uk/our-work/education/ Schools Week coverage, including union reaction: DfE invites bids from AI tutoring pilot partners https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-invites-bids-from-ai-tutoring-pilot-partners/ Join us on social media: BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)Listen to all episodes of EdTechnical here: https://boldscience.org/podcasts/edtechnical/Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter: https://bold.expert/newsletterStay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning: https://bold.expertCredits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design; Pia Schmoeckel for content production. 

This season EdTech founder Libby Hills and AI researcher Owen Henkel continue to speak with leading researchers, practitioners and educators on the EdTechnical podcast series about the cutting edge of AI in education. They will break down complex AI concepts into non-technical insights to better understand what the research says and help educators sift the useful insights from the AI hype.In the first episode of a new season of EdTechnical, Libby and Owen speak with Sam Gilbert, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. Sam is one of the leading researchers studying ‘cognitive offloading’, the use of tools and technologies to support thinking and memory.Are tools like ChatGPT making us cognitively weaker?  Humans have been offloading  for thousands of years in ever-advancing ways: supporting memory through written notes, calculators, GPS, and large language models. There is a difference between losing specific information we've offloaded and losing underlying cognitive abilities. The distinction matters for thinking about AI's impact on learning and education. “We need to build up foundational abilities, and then offloading is very useful after we’ve acquired them”, Sam says.Sam GilbertSam Gilbert is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London (UCL), where he leads the Metacognition and Executive Functions Group. His research focuses on memory, cognitive control, metacognition, and cognitive offloading. He is widely recognised for his work on how people use external tools and technologies to support thinking and memory.LinksCognitive Offloading (Risko & Gilbert, 2016): Cognitive Offloading - PubMed UCL Metacognition & Executive Functions Group: Metacognition & Executive Functions | UCL Faculty of Brain SciencesJoin us on social media: BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)Listen to all episodes of EdTechnical here: https://boldscience.org/podcasts/edtechnical/Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter: https://bold.expert/newsletterStay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning: https://bold.expertCredits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design; Pia Schmoeckel for content production. 

In this EdTechnical short, Libby and Owen unpack ‘AI agents’ and what they mean for education. Agents are large language models connected to tools and workflows that are allowed to take actions like searching, summarising, and completing multi-step tasks. Recent progress comes from the combination of stronger models and better systems for connecting agents to external tools, enabling more complex and autonomous outputs.Applying agents to education brings a tension between flexibility and reliability. Agentic systems can be useful for teachers, who operate across varied contexts and need adaptable support. For students, especially in structured learning, too much flexibility can reduce clarity and introduce inconsistency.This matters because effective learning depends on structure and progression. The value of agents in education depends on how well they are applied to the specific task and learning goal.Links:OpenClaw & Moltbook: The viral story of AI agents building their own Reddit-like social network https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/30/openclaws-ai-assistants-are-now-building-their-own-social-network/ Claude Research Mode: Anthropic's explainer on deep research https://www.anthropic.com/news/research Join us on social media: BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)Listen to all episodes of EdTechnical here: https://boldscience.org/podcasts/edtechnical/Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter: https://bold.expert/newsletterStay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning: https://bold.expertCredits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design; Pia Schmoeckel for content production. 

At this year's SXSW EDU, Owen joined a panel on what it takes to make voice AI for assessment work in classrooms.In this live recording of the session, the panelists untangle how voice AI works, and what testing this technology with kindergartners looks like in rural Georgia. They explain why the distinction between capturing what a student said versus what they meant matters enormously for literacy assessment and why questions of privacy, equity and model bias are not afterthoughts but design requirements.Where does voice AI genuinely open up new possibilities in education, and where is the evidence still thin? The other panelists were Patti Ura, Director of Learning Technology Research at Digital Promise, Amelia Kelly, VP of Data Science at Curriculum Associates and former CTO of Soapbox Labs, and Kristen Hoff, Head of Measurement at Curriculum Associates.Links:Soapbox Labs, now part of Curriculum Associates Digital Promise OpenAI Whisper, the open source speech-to-text modelJoin us on social media: BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)Listen to all episodes of EdTechnical here: https://boldscience.org/podcasts/edtechnical/Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter: https://bold.expert/newsletterStay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning: https://bold.expertCredits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design; Pia Schmoeckel for content production. 

In this EdTechnical short, Libby and Owen test a conversational plush toy to understand more about AI-powered toys designed for young children. Recent research from Cambridge shows that preschool-aged children can form rapid emotional connections with social robots like these, even when the responses from the robot are inconsistent.Children’s experiences with AI toys are shaped by voice and real-time interaction. Could highly responsive, frictionless AI systems in toys influence children’s expectations of human relationships?Libby and Owen discuss the difference between shared, supervised play and extended solo interaction with the toy, which may be less advisable. As the technology continues to improve, the key challenge becomes how these tools are introduced and used in early childhood environments.Links:BBC Article: AI toys for children misread emotions and respond inappropriately, researchers warnCambridge study on AI toys in early childhoodAI chatbots and the “empathy gap” in childrenJoin us on social media: BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)Listen to all episodes of EdTechnical here: https://boldscience.org/podcasts/edtechnical/Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter: https://bold.expert/newsletterStay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning: https://bold.expertCredits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design; Pia Schmoeckel for content production.