1. I’m publishing early today, in the hope that some of you get chance to attend Geoff Mulgan’s UCL ‘Lunch Hour Lecture’, Shaping Better Public Institutions, at 13:00 UK time today, Tuesday 10^th June. More info and registration here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lunch-hour-lecture-shaping-better-public-institutions-tickets-1364004055849?aff=oddtdtcreator

Our societies are shaped by public institutions – from parliaments to primary schools, regulators to ministries. But there’s a widespread perception that they have stopped evolving. While business and civil society have invented radically different organisational models- from Tiktok to Wikipedia – most public sector institutions look very similar to 30, 50 or 100 years ago. This lecture will diagnose the problem, share examples of more innovative approaches around the world tackling topics like climate change, mental health and AI, and describe how the next generation of institutions could be designed, making the most of ideas from computer science to biology as well as public administration.

2. Not quite (!) such short notice of this free NILE event with the founder of NILE, Dave Allan, and guests talking about 30 years of teacher development, at NILE and beyond at 16:00 UK time tomorrow, Wednesday 11^th June. Sign up here https://nile-elt.zoom.us/meeting/register/7MXSlK31Q_etZCLy6kW3-Q#/registration

3. Thanks to Jaime Saavedra for this one from Microsoft – best read with a pinch of salt, but nonetheless persuasive – From skepticism to success: How AI is helping teachers transform classrooms in Peru by Juan Montes https://news.microsoft.com/source/latam/features/ai/world-bank-peru-teachers-copilot/?lang=en

Marco Antonio Pedraza, a sixth-grade primary school teacher who migrated as a young man from the countryside to bustling Lima, used to spend his own money to purchase specialized teaching materials for the three neurodivergent kids in his class. He had only a vague idea of what AI was and was skeptical about its potential. Then Pedraza was introduced to Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, the AI companion that helps with work tasks. A group of AI experts recently trained him on how to write effective prompts to quickly generate personalized activities for the students just by typing a few traits of each. He was amazed by the results. “It was a revelation,” says Pedraza, an experienced public school teacher with a humble background. “These days, a teacher requires technology to effectively assist the kids.”

4. Cora Yang has just published a very useful guide to the use of AI in coursework on LinkedIn. Here’s the original post https://tinyurl.com/yxsh9xj9 and there’s a home-made PDF attached for those of you who don’t do LinkedIn.

I went through the International Baccalaureate’s “Evaluating 13 scenarios of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in student coursework” document and synthesized it into this “Scale of AI Use.” My goal was to create a simple, visual guide that both teachers and students could use to quickly gauge whether a use of AI is acceptable, needs caution, or is a clear case of academic misconduct. I wanted to create more than just a resource for my own students; I wanted to share it with the wider community. I’m posting it here in the hope that it can support more educators and students as we all learn to navigate this new landscape together.

5. And, finally and expensively, The Experience of Expatriate English Language Teaching by David B. Wilson has just been published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing and costs a whopping £81.99 https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-0364-4603-1 Thanks, then, to Richard Smith for pointing us in the direction of a dozen highly readable free sample pages here (PDF also attached) https://www.cambridgescholars.com/resources/pdfs/978-1-0364-4603-1-sample.pdf#page=19