Halcyon at the IB World Conference

Last week, Farah Ahmed and I attended the IB World Conference 2024 in Budapest (along with our new Director, Jeff Lippman) to represent Halcyon’s Innovation Team and collaborate with educators from IB schools around the world! As part of the conference, I was also invited to lead two workshops - one on how tech and AI can be used to promote International Mindedness, and other about AI and Creativity. I was expertly supported by Farah and her amazing facilitation skills. 

The first workshop on International Mindedness explored the ways that technology is opening up opportunities to connect and collaborate on a global scale, but also recognising that many tools (especially those that use AI) will have bias, and that as educators we need the skills to recognise this. I shared some of the excellent work that my colleague Martyn Steiner has been doing using chatbots and other tools to promote International Mindedness and increase its visibility at Halcyon. We had some fascinating discussions and tested out various tools including virtual reality tours, ChatGPT for creative writing and Metaverse experiences. We also looked at popular digital tools (including social media apps like TikTok and educational tools like Google Earth) and assessed whether we thought they were harmful or beneficial to young people’s understanding of the world. There was some interested debate about TikTok, which some argued opens up young people’s understanding of global events, but also contains a lot of dis/misinformation - another reason that critical thinking is so important in today’s world. 

The second workshop (to 140 educators!) focused on the ways that AI can spark creativity in students and teachers, and highlighted examples from Halcyon such as AI mask design, fashion design, creative writing chatbots and AI video production. We explored ways that AI can act as a ‘creative coach’, helping to prompt creative thinking without giving students the answers or writing/creating things for them. An example of this might be using ChatGPT to help to start a piece of creative writing, as in the example below: 
 

Here, the AI acts as an encouraging coach, helping to break down a task that might seem overwhelming into steps and ask questions to prompt students to use their own creativity and grow their creative confidence.  

As well as leading and attending workshops, we also got to see some inspiring keynotes, and all three were extremely thought-provoking. The first, from Elaine Kasket, explored the significant increase in digital surveillance of young people and the harm this can cause. From CCTV and biometrics in schools to tracking behaviour and sharing every mistake students make with their parents (as happens in some schools with behaviour tracking apps), Elaine argued that we're teaching children we don't trust them and that they're somehow unsafe. Her criticism of behaviour tracking tools particularly chimed with me and reminded me of some of the work of Naomi Fisher. If you ever had your name moved to the ‘red light’ or ‘thundercloud’ in class because you’d fidgeted or not raised your hand to answer a question, you might have experienced some of that sense of public shaming. It’s worrying to think about how children must feel when not only are they ‘shamed’ in front of their peers, but their parents are also getting notifications when they make mistakes. It made me feel very grateful for our wellbeing-focused, restorative approach at Halcyon. 

Charles Fadel talked about AI, what it's capable of, what it's not, and the impact it's having on education, including the knowledge and skills students are likely to need going into a future where they're co-creating and collaborating with AI. He shared some examples of units that he and colleagues have designed at the Centre For Curriculum Redesign, that incorporate project based learning and key skills to thrive in the future. 

Kimberley Wilson closed the conference with a keynote about brain health and nutrition, with an important reminder to look after ourselves as educators as well as our students. I enjoyed seeing half the auditorium reach for their water bottles when she talked about the impact of dehydration! It was an important reminder of the power of what we eat and how active we are in terms of our brain health, and gave me plenty of things to think about. 

One key takeaway from the conference was that as IB educators, we need to raise awareness of the environmental impact of AI, and we’ll be exploring this in more detail over the coming months. Overall, it was a fantastic opportunity to see what other IB schools are doing but also to share some of the wonderful work our teachers do here at Halcyon.