From Classroom to Impact: How Dawn Knight Uses AI to Help Students Thrive

[Music] So good morning and welcome to the AI Education. I said good morning there actually Ray but actually we've got a guest today who's dialed in this evening all the way in the UK. So where are you just? So just one in Ray. I'm down you just said dialing in what are you from the 1970s? Did you not dial in anymore? Did you know of a dial phone? So today's guest Ray is a bit isn't she's one of my ex-teach and colleagues. Don't night from the UK. Don's a green lead. You're the green lead sustainability advisor as well as lead sign support assistant and episode in your high school in Surrey in the UK. A Duke of Edinburgh ward manager, assessor of Duke of Edinburgh stuff and actually an amazing human. So welcome to the pod don't thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited about this so no problem at all. No no Ray in the UK just to give you a bit of context to your listeners in the UK. Epsom in your life is a part of a multi academy trust. So she's worked with another podcast guest of ours who was one of their leads at the bone education trust which Chris Goodall. So yes, Chris Goodall was the man that talked about giving kids transores to juggle. Didn't he? Yes. Why does that not surprise me? No dawn reviewer background for the listeners. This is obviously one of your main focuses is around students of special education needs right. So what was your current role and what things you're doing at the minute generally in your role not even to do with AI. Right. So I work in a unit which is for deaf children within a senior school and we're all mainstream. Most of their lessons if not all of their lessons are talked in the classroom and I'm there to assist and make sure they can access the curriculum. And then to help any other student in the classroom that requires it be it top end bottom end or somewhere in the middle. So yeah, basically. First of all, is it so I did what you come around to the kind of AI you kind of narrative in that particular role then what kind of inspired you around there. I have to say if you work with somebody who's passionate that rubs off and that was Chris for me. He like yourself Dan loves computers wanted to inspire lots of people within school along the front that technology could really benefit us. He was ahead of the game with teams before covid and so our school just went straight online. And I suppose I could see a need for me personally my role and AI and teams met those needs. So it's how I was able to use it to save time to then create more differentiated work for my students which meant I have more time with them to have fun in the learning process, which I think is important. It's an interesting flipping of that conversation because what you're talking about is here's this technology that could be applied to students with differentiated needs whereas in the past. I've often felt that there was a technology specifically for those students that then became useful for other people. It's a bit like captions on TV captions on TV were originally for deaf people but now captions on TV are for everybody like in my household whenever I get up and make a cup of tea because the kettle is noisy. We switched captions on for the two minutes that the kettle is boiling. And I think it's become a mainstream use. I see people watching TV on the bus with the captions on thank goodness and headphones in sometimes. So I suppose that's more polite isn't it now in society that you're quiet when you do things and people don't want to not be able to watch their phone or. I wish I had the courage for the people that don't switch on captions and they put them on the phone. So anyway, so this it's interesting because you're what you're saying is Chris introduced you to a technology that you then thought had application for your students rather not just my students or students. I helped a friend of mine is a little boy he phoned me up and said I really don't know how to do this piece of work and he had to watch a video and he had to come up with what was being said and answer certain questions that said we'll just shut the captions on. And then stop it as you go watch it a bit stop it make notes you've got all the spelling mostly if the captions have been put in before it's played rather than on live. You know it's great to your spelling it'll help you making notes yeah I just find my daughter's dyslexic she uses it for that is great for deaf kids it's great for any child that wants to spell correctly because the captions obviously I'll spell correctly. So yeah, I think it's a win win for everybody definitely. That's interesting one is when you talk to teams there a lot of the kind of technologies I suppose which I said one people think of Jenny I they thinking about like a chat you to eat cool pilot things like that but with people doing sign language and those captioning and transcriptions a lot of that AI which is useful for you as well is embedded in tools that are kind of every day use right like say teams if they didn't a team meeting they can get those transcriptions. Yeah absolutely and it's brilliant I have my transcriptions are mine all the time I'm sad that I actually have an honest one because I'm using a different I've linked my personal email to my school email and I'm using teams through that which I didn't know I knew I could do that. So well done on that for Microsoft allowing you to do to. So every day is a school day even for adults you know this isn't just for children it's for any age group that can use this AI for anything in life. This was specifically for the deaf side to it or for the students you support in there can you in like the lesson some examples of what actually would be useful. I want to start earlier than that so then you just thrown in the phrase deaf students so just expand our picture a little bit more because I suspect that people hearing that phrase would have a perspective but what what do you think about when you're thinking about students that are deaf or harder hearing. I want every child that I'm with in school even out school but in school in my role to have the access that they need that works for them. So irrespective of whether you're deaf or whether you've got other learning needs like English as an other language. I don't like injustice I want everybody to have the same opportunity and we don't all learn the same way. The good thing about AI is that you can differentiate within that and get it to assist you at your level now that might be you've got a really low reading age some of my students irrespective of whether they're deaf or not have a really low reading age so you can ask AI to generate some of those tools in a simple form. But I also have I work with one child that requires that yet in the same classroom and working with another child that requires it to be differentiated up the scale so it's a much harder reading age maybe age 16 17 and yet they're only 14 15 so you know it works both ends of the spectrum. Yeah so specifically done pick that kind of site then so when you're looking at specifically supporting deaf students because I remember when I was teaching in the same school as you you and several colleagues would be in the class with me and while I'm talking interpreting doing sign language to support those students so what kind of ways of you know switch to your kind of approach with that using JN AI. The role has changed actually since you and I work together the students I currently have on necessarily BSL users so that's British language users so the capacity I have now at the moment for this cohort of students is more like note taker form and then pre and post teaching so for me what I might be able to do is we might have a video come on quite often in geography that will happen. So I get saying all year nimes and I'll download the transcript through AI and then I would generate work that I can do after the lesson to check that they've understood it or sometimes if I know what their video is before the lesson I can do it before the lesson give them a transcript and then at the end they can highlight the key bits of information that they felt were new to them or something they feel that they really needed to know or even to answer questions that I could generate from that as well. So I can write for me I can create differentiated work I can create transcripts I can then do word fills from those transcripts you know there's lots of different things once you've got that key information that you can then generate through AI to meet that students need that's really really beneficial. So that is a special two. Does it save you a lot of time genuine? because a lot of people kind of say, "Teachers are burnt out and everybody's stressed," which is true. But then we always fill out time in with other stuff. Do you feel you're doing more? I think if you're going to generate a piece of work, it depends how you use AI. So for me, now I find the moment, I quite often will use it as a checklist, and it's knowing how to use your prompts as well to ensure you get an outcome that you've asked for. So you've kind of got to be a little bit wise how you use it. As a, for instance, when I started general on the green work, I said, "Right, I'm going to set up an eco-friendly club for my students in school. What type of areas must I cover to ensure I have a good healthy club?" And it generated lots of information for me, and I went, "Trying to wait." Yeah, I've done that, maybe not in that remit, but yes, I can tick that box. Oh, yes, I've considered that also. Oh, I haven't really considered that in the same way. Maybe I need to think about that side. So as long as you put in balanced information, it will give you balanced information back. So for me, that's useful as well. I use it as a checklist of, "I can generate work through it for the students as well when I'm pre-imposed to teach him, which is really useful as well." You've done it in your day job, but you've done it your second day job with every single club, but that sounds amazing. The sustainability work you've done, and the duke of Edinburgh things. So I suppose it saves you time when you plan in the duke of Edinburgh stuff as well, and the sustainability things. For me, I'm doing more with the sustainability now. I ran the duke of Edinburgh for two years, and then just self-decovid I decided to withdraw from that to invest in other things. So now I'm not doing the duke of Edinburgh, but I am doing all the green work. So as a trust, we're really blessed actually, that they picked up on a sustainability side of things within the trust. And so for the last two years, we've had a green week, so a whole week based on green topics. And then a couple of weeks after that, we've had a big green conference up in London, which has been amazing. And so the first year, I took 12 of my students up, and a couple of members of staff. Last year, it was six of our students up and a member of staff, because now all the schools in the trust are included, and we've got to be like, well, I think last at 27, 28 schools, so it's quite a big thing. And it's amazing. And it's just sustainability, but in terms of AI, when you're doing that or not, there's more, as it got to that stage yet, where you're talking about the AI sustainable data centres and water usage and things, or is it not? Well, I kind of want to have some of my shoulders. I kind of got like my nice green hat here, which is Laura Schubert, and then my AI hat here, which is sort of sucking the water out. So I don't know. It's kind of like opposite poles, if you like. But they one, it's difficult to sum up, I suppose. For me, I've seen investment in both, and both have helped me. So I suppose one with the other, it goes handy and handy. I was like, dinner table, my daughter sat down and she was like, she did a dance, she was like, really? It's a bar state. And she said, so you didn't tell me that data set is always AI I am using is now like killing the planet. I had a big discussion with her about data centres and sustainability. And then Tom, my son, was sitting the other side of the dinner table with cool pilot on his phone and he was asking me really odd questions. I feel like we've filled by parliament at the dinner table. But that's an interesting discussion to have with your sustainability crew, I suppose. But then don't you think that's a really good thing. So if you understand that, then you only apply it when you need to. So for me, like, just asking it for a checklist gives me that opportunity that I've put my footprint on it. I've created like my own little carbon footprint in what I'm doing. And then I've gone, just help me out, just give me the load down, let's check it. Or I might just do one piece of work and say, right, quickly differentiate that into different levels for me. And then I don't just use it for my students, I'll go away and then encourage other people to use it. We share good practice at school as well, which is brilliant, which then also saves more time. And within our sense side of things in school, again, we might cross paths with different students in the classroom and we use it for them as well. So and once you've generated it once, I file it and I reuse it. So it's not as if I'm doing it for each student, you know, do it once, differentiate it in the ages and then reuse it again. Have you looked at the agency at all of this and like at Gentika AI, yeah, or where you've got some specific version of your AI that can support individual students? Or is that something that's coming along the horizon? House. I don't know. I'll be really honest and I hope for all the people that are listening there, because they can relate to this. How I started off with computers, because I'm quite old. I was told, don't break it, you know, so I've always been very cautious. So I only know like the basics, however, the basics have really worked for me in the role that I have. And I encourage other people when I'm with them, I say, well, have you considered using AI? How about you try this out or you try that out? So I'm afraid I don't know all the technical stuff and and what what you're suggesting. I haven't processed that project. That's good. I think that's a reality like for everybody, you know, I think sometimes everybody thinks that we're in this bubble where everybody's like using the stuff in this like way, which is like really complex, but more and more stupid, it's really hitting the classrooms directly and it doesn't have to be fancier agents, right? Let me take that. I apologize Dawn for down there because last year he said last year was the age of AI agents and it wasn't. And so this year he's asking everybody about AI agents. He's determined to make this year the year of AI agents. But let me just go back on something that you both just talked about that I found interesting. Dan asked the question of have you saved time and you then gave this long list of ways that you use it to save time. And it reminded me of some research I read a couple of weeks ago about business uses. What they're finding is people that are using AI are busier rather than having free time because there's all these things that they can now do that they couldn't do before. I mean, exactly in this last weekend I had one laptop I was developing an app with a bit of vibe coding on another one I was doing some video editing and on another one I was doing some materials for learning and I step back and thought my goodness each of these three things would have been a week's worth of work in the past. And now I'm doing all three of them together. So it sounded to me from that long list of things that you talked about that you're using AI for. You're not doing the worker three people rather than just one. Maybe but then does that not offer me more time to then have for the students in any way. For me it's all positive. It's not a yeah I might save time there and it means I can go on and do other things but that just means that I'm more efficient when I come into the classroom and I can help more students and if I can encourage them in a way that increases their grades so you know they come out with higher exam grades happy days I'm all for that you know. So I've got a bit of a picture about how you're using it and it seems like one of the great unlocks is transcripts. How about students? How are they using AI? Some of them will use it just to check the answers to their homework and and I feel like that's quite sad because they've missed the mark somewhat. It's there is a help not there to do the work for you and some are like what are their parents might be a little bit anti it because they don't really know. Beyond that I'm not really too sure because I don't necessarily see how they would use it outside of school. It's an interesting question isn't it is that are we aware of how students are using it because yeah we see the most obvious things but we're maybe not aware of how young people are using it in their life outside of school. We see the bit that they're using the obvious bits that they're using in school but we had a series last year where we talked to a bunch of students and it was just fascinating how they were using it but they could all have to self-learn. Like yeah do you feel they have an obligation to help students under some day I'm more? We have an obligation in all regards about making every student well-rounded so that they become a good person in society. I know it sounds maybe a little bit lame to some people but that's how I view it at school. I feel that I feel like they're all my children and I want them to do as well as they can and to come out feeling that they've had support they've been listened to and they've listened to me that's important but going back to your question about how they used it I've encouraged them to use it in different subjects sometimes they've created images which you wouldn't think you could. You've put things into an image that you just wouldn't believe you could do and then others have used it for storyboards, comparison tables, literacy low downs on books which is brilliant if you've read the book but you can't remember the and outs and then to generate a loaddown on each of the characters and maybe how they are linked within different key words to a story. As long as you've read it yourself that you can go back through and check what AI has generated because obviously it's a learning tool and it is still learning. I did do one where it crossed over to the characters but lucky enough because I've read the book I could say no that's not right and I do think we need to teach children that as well. You need to understand yourself and the work it gives you back what is generated you need to be able to read through it and say yeah that's right or oh no that's not quite right and some of that's in the prompts we use to ask it as well so for instance I put in a prompt asking it at honeypot sites and I got all this jargon come out about cyber honeypot sites and I was like one has to be clear I was talking about geographical ones like stone hinges the honeypot site it draws people in and you get money from it not like a cyber one I mean I don't know what the cyber ones are but I just know that wasn't what I was after so we do have responsibility of teaching a student that if you do use it you've got to read through it you've got to decipher it you can't have plagiarism you've got to put it into your own words but sometimes it can give you an understanding where because we all learn differently even as adults schools every day whether you're in school or you know no it might be that it generates work and it puts it into a format that you can understand more easily so you can grasp a concept one of the things as well that's intrigued me as that conversation has gone on there is I don't know where the UK is on mobile phones for example but I'm thinking you know in Australia we've got a big mobile phone ban in schools that is and we've got this big social media ban this in place at the minute and try to bring back childhood I suppose or whatever they want to do there but from a inclusive technology point of view I can't think of anything better if I was a deaf student for example and I have my mobile phone next to me in my classroom listening to the teacher summarising stuff and translating or even asking questions as I go I from a special education needs point of I can't think of anything better what is the position of the school on that in the UK at the minute or even specifically maybe not just the UK but just absolutely new. Yeah currently the government has asked us not to have phones in school there's different ways you can manage it so as a trust what we've done is we've said no you can't have your mobile phones out at all however for my deaf students they do have their phones out because they're linked to something called Rogeron and they are able to mute the teacher all through their mobile phone which is on their on their desk. Our year sevens currently all have iPads and our year 12s have iPads that they work on during the lessons and I think it's next year the rest of the year groups get them as well so then our students were going to have the app so Rogeron on their iPad. What does that do? It basically cuts out background noise it sits on the speaker's chest here and it reverberates from the sound when they're speaking and it goes straight into like Bluetooth straight into whether it's cochlear implants or hearing aids and it just cuts out that background noise you can have different levels you can set it for most of the students there's very little background noise so they access more of what's being said by the teacher particularly if the teacher turns round and looks at the board which is all good deaf or where practice and it's still talking it means the student can still hear what's being said because obviously they can't read their lips or facial expressions or body languages you know they can't see that they can't access that so other things and that's why going back to the transcripts it's so good because it's really difficult to watch a film read subtitles understand what's going on and make notes it's not an impossible four deaf students and some of the lowering students as well they're just not able to do that so that's where the transcript printing became a big thing for me because it enabled me to do so much more with it I found it to be very student centric through differentiation send me subject specific age wise as well if you're reading levels not very good you can have a really complex piece of text and you can put it into more simple forms so you can grasp easily what's being said you can create bespoke scaffolding for students they can create their own sentence starters for a story let's say they can be inspired that's what it's about it's about encouraging you to see more than you can see or think more than you can think I find it really fascinating because some of those examples I think about it and I know that I use AI for exactly the same thing I'll use the phrase ELI 16 with an academic paper which is oh my goodness this is very dense academic language expanded to me like I'm 16 so I do exactly the same thing and and the other thing you know thinking we've talked about transcripts a huge number of times we use AI to create transcripts of the podcast but then it means we created a notebook LM with all the transcripts from the last four series and it means you can go in and have an interesting conversation over nine hours of listening to get down to a particular topic or whatever so it allows me to go deeper and it's exactly the same technology I'm I don't have any of those challenges of your students but I'm using exactly the same things for in many ways the same scenarios it's really interesting you could put it all into AI and then download all of those transcripts different aspects of them and then say right create create for me a comparison table and it's like that you know you just go beyond and beyond and beyond it's the opposite of the same much so training wise right you at the point the end of supporting normally supporting students across the school you've got your different groups you've got the students in you the deaf kind of and and Cure New Paramount areas how does the training actually you talk to the beginning about Chris you know if you're a school and you kind of need to disseminate this house at training work what's work well what would you tips be to get people on this journey of utilizing it effectively for me it was about realising it met a need the same with teams really I started creating locked I don't know what the terminology is like locked channels within a team it has a little padlock has it got a specific yeah private private channels yeah those I created those I didn't know well I still didn't know what they were called and I was using those within D.V. and I was talking to other people in D.V. they were like well we don't do that in teams I said but it's so wonderful it offers you so much you can have teams within teams and it's the same with AI I realised it met a need for me within my role and the two ladies I was working with at the time weren't so keen on using a computer let's say and I was showing them and saying well try this give this a go and and then that stems on to all the other TAs I was asked to actually teach them and it's more about prompts it's learning how to use it to get the best out of it but it's still your learning as much as AI is learning with those prompts too so then I trained up a load of TAs and encouraged them to do so teaching the systems right sorry yes okay I could invest in yeah and then that went on to other things where I realised I was using it with another area as we had they call them the Hong Kongers a lot of people have come from Hong Kong to live over here and that's the turn they like to be called by and they came into school and then I was showing them how we were using it and then obviously the Department of Education came in as well and we were asked to show them too it's been beneficial people are talking about it because it does help so the Department of Education popped in just just popped into the skill yeah and I had a chat with them too in fact I can't remember the man's name now which is a shame but he basically said so you have to be educated to use AI then and I was like well yes you have to read what you know what it's created and that I gave the situation with the honey pot science that she was a bit embarrassing but there we go I learned through that and let's hope everybody else does the Department when you were a bet show a 2026 this year the right honorable Bridget Phillips and Secretary of State for Education also calls you out for the work you're doing with AI was anything specific around that I think it was the fact that I've been at my school for 19 years in September and and the fact that we're maybe slightly ahead of the game because of Chris's outlook he's encouraged us to be quite forward thinking as the school let us address which is amazing and I love that side of it the government want to invest 23 million pounds into Ed Tech Test Bed for a pilot program for all schools so we all have the opportunity to be forward thinking it was linked to that really that how some schools were using it and we were I suppose the school that were forward were advanced I suppose yeah yeah so I'm going to tell you what I've got this conversation is if I'm an AI person often in education we talk about differentiation and personalization you've just unlocked for me that if there is somebody in my school that is dealing with specific groups of students they might have used AI in ways that are going to benefit all students because some of the examples you've talked about, I think benefit everybody. So I'm going to go and look for that person and if there are things I can learn from them that I can apply to all students, that's great. Equally, if they haven't got a Chris in their school to encourage you to be smiling. Everyone needs a Chris. They might be unaware of what is going to make possible. So therefore, I'm the AI person and the enthusiasm of the school. There's another person in the school that I can help that's going to really provide some breakthroughs for students and then potentially on for everybody else as well. It's fascinating to see because I've been in education technology for over 40 years. I've not been in education, but I remember whenever special needs or whatever came up as a particular reference, it always felt it was this exclusionary thing that you were as somebody that wasn't an expert in it, really cautious to say anything in case you said the wrong thing. But this whole conversation has been quite relaxed in the sense of I can now see that the technology that is going to be able to impact students with differentiated needs is exactly the same technology it's going to be with impact to other students and that there are loads of different ways of using it. I shouldn't be afraid of talking about it and understanding the value that it can bring. Absolutely. And I think slowly, slowly, you know, start with a little bit working out for yourself. Did it, how did it benefit you? Did you ask it the right words? Were you putting the right problems? Okay, how could you change it up? It's a bit like having a conversation with a person. You can't have the same conversation with every person. You have to change it and tweak it to make it work for you. And I know that teachers use AI totally different to me. They might end up getting papers marked, seeing whether it's gaps, using it to see, okay, nobody could get formats on question two. Right, we now need to go to a prior question two in different ways. Or even just attendance, things like that. You know, so in that regard, it's hugely beneficial in different ways. Yeah. Which encourages inclusion. And that's what I'm all for. He's inclusion. So yeah, really. It's amazing. And you know, we said this. I did a lecture with University, recently, about like inclusive kind of design, where, you know, when you design things on everybody, or design things for individual cases, then it can kind of help everybody. You know, if you design an ATM at the lower height for disabled people or people in wheelchairs, it can help older people as well. And there's multiple things in that area. And I suppose the Xbox tagline, and maybe we should call this episode is when we all play, we all win, because I think that's the good thing about AI and this type of technology is to support everybody along the moon and journey. Yeah. And I still really quite encourage actually, but it's conversation. I feel like my mom's 87. And I feel like I'm going to go away and I'm going to get her to do something. Just almost like a little, come on, then, Mom, can you do this? You know, because she can. She doesn't know it. She's got a smartphone. She can. And you know, I think that's a first for a lot of people, they have this sold up and they're like, Oh, I can't do that. I can't do that. But actually, when you break it down, some people don't even realize they're using it already anyway. So that's exactly right. It worked for you. You know, yeah. Because my mom's in the UK and she's on her own there and we got on an Alexa, like a lot of last couple of years or whatever. And she talks to it, you know, as conversations with us like an AI, okay, Mike Nobby is kind of complex yet as maybe a cool pilot or a Gemini or whatever. She's talking to it as a companion, they support us. It doesn't matter what you do, our eyes was getting more information after these things are supporting you with life. Not only learning this kind of use for all right. Yeah. Absolutely. What do you mean? What do you mean take away being then for somebody listening in to this podcast, maybe teaching special education needs or somebody new to this thinking everybody's running ahead and it's very complicated. What will you kind of mean? Like pieces of advice be for us as a trust we've been advised, which I'm sure you're like, it's used co-pilot because it has a really good GDPR and in a school we have to be really careful not to put in our students names. So we don't personalise it in that way, we personalise it maybe more to their need. We need to make sure that we keep our students safe in using it. So we teach them how to use it correctly. That it's an aid, it doesn't do the work for them so that we still become intelligent through our use of it. That's a bit as I suggested you mention that because I think that's a cure to the element is one of those difficulties when you talk about innovative technology, it's moving really quickly, is teachers are grabbing everything at the minute that I suppose are in direction of how you're going to do this innovatively, it's supportively more safely as important. Yeah, I'm just doing good practice as well. Sorry, sharing good practice. You know, if one person sees something that really works in school, sharing the other people in school, sharing with other schools within the trust because then you know everybody wins, it's a win-win that she said earlier. Yeah, fabulous. Thank you, Dawn, that's been a really, really relaxed conversation in which I have learnt a lot about ways that it can potentially support different students. So that's fabulous. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's been wonderful. Thanks. [Music]