EdTechnical

Epizode

• Should We Be Embracing Cognitive Offloading? 18.06.2026 43min

  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...
• AI That Acts: What “Agents” Mean for Classrooms 07.05.2026 16min

  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 rel...
• Voice AI Is Listening. But Is It Actually Hearing? (Recorded Live at SXSW EDU 2026) 23.04.2026 26min

  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 desi...
• A Teddy Bear That Talks Back? 26.03.2026 12min

  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 e...
• AI broke take-home assignments. Can it fix them too? 12.03.2026 33min

  In this episode of EdTechnical, Libby and Owen speak with Panos Ipeirotis, Professor at NYU Stern School of Business, about his experiment using AI to run oral exams in university courses. As generative AI makes it easier for students to outsource written assignments, educators are asking whether traditional take-home assessments still measure real understanding. Panos introduced AI-mediated oral assessments after noticing a mismatch between high-quality written submissions and weak classroom...
• Why AI Can't Automate Just the "Boring" Parts of Teaching 26.02.2026 13min

  In this EdTechnical Short, Libby and Owen explore how AI might reshape teaching through the lens of the “weakest link” theory from economics. They discuss the possibility of full job replacement, partial task automation, and productivity gains for teachers. Automation often shifts the composition of work rather than eliminating roles, as with bank tellers and radiologists. In schools, planning, grading, diagnosing student understanding, classroom management, and relationship-building ar...
• Are Roboteachers Coming? (Probably Not) 12.02.2026 35min

  In this episode of EdTechnical, Libby and Owen speak with Kristyn Sommer, a developmental psychologist and child robot interaction researcher. Together, they explore how young children learn through imitation, why physical presence matters for learning, and what the so-called robot deficit reveals about engagement, psychological safety, and learning outcomes. Kristyn explains where robots can support learning, where they fall short, and why many assumptions about roboteachers are far ahead of...
• Adding It Up: Dan Meyer on Math, Tech & AI Scepticism 11.12.2025 36min

  In this episode of EdTechnical, Libby and Owen sit down with Dan Meyer: math educator, EdTech innovator, and self-proclaimed “token AI sceptic”. Dan’s rare mix of classroom experience and product design insight gives him a unique perspective on how technology intersects with real classrooms. He shares what the classroom teaches him about student engagement, the challenges teachers face, and why motivation is deeply social - which EdTech can overlook. They dig into how AI can support creativit...
• How Revolutionary is Alpha School? 26.11.2025 16min

  In this episode of EdTechnical, Libby and Owen look at Alpha School, a model that started as a micro-school in Austin, Texas, and is now expanding. At its core, Alpha condenses academic learning into a morning block where students work largely independently using software, supported by guides rather than traditional teachers. Afternoons are reserved for enrichment and life skills. Libby and Owen discuss the appeal of this approach , the evidence behind mastery-based learning, and the big ques...
• Back to the Future: Two Years on with Daisy Christodoulou 13.11.2025 32min

  In this episode Libby and Owen are joined by Daisy Christodoulou MBE, EdTechnical’s very first guest from two years ago. Daisy is Director of Education at No More Marking and a leading voice in assessment. Daisy, Owen and Libby reflect over what’s changed in the two years since that first episode, including Daisy’s own views about the opportunities for AI use in assessment. Daisy shares what her team has learned through their recent experiments with AI work, including how falling model costs ...
• Guardrails and Growth: California’s AI Safety Push 30.10.2025 15min

  Millions of students now study with AI chatbots. There are growing concerns about what happens when vulnerable teens form emotional bonds with AI. Tragic teen deaths have sparked intense debate about how to protect young people from AI systems that blur the line between tool and companion. California just drew the first regulatory lines—but they're messy and educational AI is caught in the middle. In this short episode, Libby and Owen discuss the trade-off between building guardrails for safe...
• Is social media really destroying teen mental health? 16.10.2025 38min

  In this episode of EdTechnical, Libby and Owen speak with Candice Odgers, a psychologist and researcher studying how online experiences influence children's mental health. They revisit the debate around social media and teen wellbeing, questioning the claims that social media use has caused rising rates of depression and anxiety. Candice calls for a more careful reading of the evidence and cautions against rushing into restrictive policies that may have unintended consequences or divert...
• Why AI Detectors Don't Work for Education 02.10.2025 18min

  In this episode of Ed-Technical, Libby and Owen explore why traditional AI detection tools are struggling in academic settings. As students adopt increasingly sophisticated methods to evade AI detection - like paraphrasing tools, hybrid writing, and sequential model use - detection accuracy drops and false positives rise. Libby and Owen look at the research showing why reliable detection with automated tools is so difficult, including why watermarking and statistical analysis often fail in re...
• Rewiring the Brain: Reading, AI and the Science of Literacy 18.09.2025 37min

  In this first episode of EdTechnical Season 3, Libby and Owen speak with Dr. Jason Yeatman from Stanford University about how the brain learns to read, the power of better assessment, and a broader look at how AI is beginning to reshape our relationship with reading itself. They touch on the science behind reading as a learned skill, the surprising overlap between visual and auditory processing, and the challenges schools face in teaching it well. ROAR (Rapid Online Assessment of Reading), a ...
• Assessment in Education: To AI or Not to AI? 14.08.2025 37min

  In this episode of EdTechnical, Libby and Owen speak with assessment expert Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor at UCL Institute of Education, about how formative assessment and AI are reshaping classroom practice. Dylan brings decades of experience in educational research and teacher development to a timely conversation about what works, what doesn’t, and what’s next for assessment. They cover: Why formative assessment remains underused despite its proven impact How AI is resha...
• Is ChatGPT Rotting Your Brain? 17.07.2025 15min

  In this short, Libby and Owen digest a recent MIT study attracting a lot of attention, ‘Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing’. The study looked at how using tools like ChatGPT for writing essays affects people's brains and writing abilities compared to using search engines or just their own thinking. Is there a potential trade-off between making writing easier in the short term, but harming cognitive abilities and learning over tim...
• Finding Their Voice: Voice AI for Literacy Support 17.06.2025 33min

  Voice AI is having a moment in education. As schools grapple with declining literacy scores and stretched teaching resources, voice-enabled tools have the potential to help. But what's already working in real classrooms, and what challenges remain? In this episode, Libby and Owen speak with Kristen Huff from Curriculum Associates and Amelia Kelly from SoapBox Labs about the emerging field of voice AI for literacy support and assessment. Together they explore how automatic speech recognition t...
• Coach or Crutch?: Using AI to hone self regulation (not outsource it) 06.05.2025 30min

  In this episode, Libby and Owen talk to Sanna Järvelä and Inge Molenaar, two of the world’s leading scholars on self‑regulated learning (SRL). Together they cover SRL 101: what self-regulated learning is and why it is a valuable skill. Self-regulated learning is students setting their own goals and then monitoring their learning to achieve those goals. Self-regulation can come more naturally in informal learning settings like sports, but it can be harder to monitor your learning and kno...
• A1 sauce for all: Reflections from SXSW and ASUGSV 22.04.2025 14min

  This week Owen and Libby reflect on two recent EdTech conferences in the US: SXSW Edu in March and ASUGSV in April. They discuss how much things have shifted for US education over this short time period, and three themes that stood out to them both: AI literacy, transformation versus efficiency, and the disruptive potential of AI for education. Join us on social media: BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)Listen to all episodes of EdTec...
• Mimicry versus meaning: why context is important for AI tools 26.03.2025 22min

  Another live Ed-Technical episode! In this short, Owen does a deep dive on AI and discourse analysis (the study of how meaning is constructed through language) with three experts. The conversation explores the intersection between AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), and the study of discourse. This is a topical conversation as LLM capabilities continue to evolve. LLMs have mastered sentence level communication. However we know less about their ability to be useful over the co...