Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

This was the debate motion at the LPI conference in London. I was FOR the motion (Henry Stewart was AGAINST) and let me explain... 

1. AI is a gamechanger

AI will change the very nature of work. It may even change what it is to be human. This is a technological revolution as big as the internet and will therefore change what we learn, why we learn and how we learn. The Top Seven companies by market cap all have AI as a core strategy: Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Tencent, Facebook and Alibaba. 

AI is good at narrow, prescribed tasks, it is hopeless at general tasks. This, in my view is why big data and learning analytics projects are less appropriate in learning than more precise, proven uses of AI. There’s a paucity of data in learning and it is often messy, difficult to access and subject to overfitting and other problems when trying to make predictions.
On the other hand, using specific techniques at specific points on the learning journey – engagement, support, delivery and assessment, one can leverage AI to best effect. So here’s five ways this was done in 2018, in real projects, in real organisations, some winning major awards.