TheFlippedScientist

Some conferences leave you with a notebook full of ideas. Others leave you with new friendships, new questions and an alarming number of photos of mountains that all seemed completely necessary at the time. ASEF ClassNet19 in Innsbruck somehow managed all three, and looking back, I think that combination captures what made the experience so valuable. This year’s theme, Future-Ready Teaching: Human Agency in the Age of AI , could hardly have been more closely aligned with the questions I have been wrestling with in my own teaching in Aotearoa New Zealand. As AI becomes increasingly capable and increasingly present in classrooms, I keep returning to one deceptively simple question: how do we use these tools to expand what students can do without quietly removing the thinking, judgement and decision-making that make the learning genuinely theirs? ClassNet19 helped me explore that question alongside teachers from across Asia and Europe, and perhaps more importantly, it reminded me that thi...

A few days ago, I arrived in Melbourne for the Google Innovator Academy with a project, a rough idea of what the next three days might involve, and probably more confidence in my solution than was entirely justified. That confidence didn't survive very long. The #MEL26 Google for Education Innovator Academy was three days of design thinking, prototyping, pitching, feedback, conversations, Post-it notes, not quite enough sleep and a surprisingly persistent supply of pavlova and flat whites. Somewhere amongst all of that, I became a Google Certified Innovator, which still feels slightly odd to say. I am very grateful for it, but I am also aware that collecting another badge does not suddenly make anyone more innovative. If anything, the experience reminded me how often innovation starts with admitting you may have misunderstood the problem. Teachers are usually very good at solving things quickly as it is part of the job. Give us a timetable clash, an absent colleague, an HDMI cable ...