“What appealed to me as a teacher about NOLAI was the bridge between research and practice. In my work at Snijders child centre – a school that works with Natural Learning and a lot of its own lesson design – I already think a lot about how technology can be used in a targeted way. As the “IT guy” in our team, I support colleagues in the use of tablets, apps and creative applications such as film and media. It is a fun puzzle: how do you use technology in a way that really adds something to the learning process?
Teacher in residence Bram speaking
“A colleague at Lucas Onderwijs pointed out the vacancy for teacher in residence (TIR) at NOLAI. I have been a primary school teacher for many years and I have a passion for technology, but up until that point I had never heard of NOLAI. When I looked into the vacancy, I immediately thought: this is for me. I have now been involved with NOLAI as a TIR for a whole school year, and it has greatly broadened my view on AI in education.
Learning to read technically
“As TIR, I am involved in the ASR project, a co-creation project that uses Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) to support reading development. The aim is to develop an adaptive application to practice technical reading. The complexity of such a co-creation project surprised me. To train the speech recognition, spoken language from pupils must be recorded. Speech recognition sounds easy, but training a well-functioning algorithm takes many hundreds of hours of audio material, spread across dialects and ages. At first, you think: we’ll do this in no time. But the deeper you get into it, the more you see how complex it really is.”
AI in primary education
“My role at NOLAI has made me more aware of how AI is already manifesting itself at primary schools. Whereas I initially thought primary education was still “safe” from AI hypes, I soon noticed that even children from years 7 and 8 are familiar with tools like ChatGPT. You hope that a child will write a text themselves, but sometimes you read something that makes you think: this isn’t you. This is an algorithm. This makes it essential for teachers in primary education to become AI-aware. Not to use everything right away, but to understand what’s going on.”
I see the dilemma: the scientific approach takes time, while practice is changing rapidly. I see how quickly AI is developing and how teachers are faced with questions right now
The balancing act between science and practice
“I greatly appreciate the care with which research is conducted at NOLAI. There is room for nuance. At the same time, I also see the dilemma: the scientific approach takes time, while practice is changing rapidly. I see how quickly AI is developing and how teachers are faced with questions right now. At first, I thought: why is everything going so slowly? Finding the balance between careful research and the rapid developments in practice is sometimes difficult. But that is precisely why it is important for us as education professionals to be involved, to bridge the gap between the classroom and the lab.
Mini-society
“For the future, I believe that AI won’t replace my profession, but it can enrich it. Education is more than just the transfer of knowledge; a large part of my profession is about socialisation. You create a mini-society in your classroom. The classroom is all about relationships and social interaction: learning, talking and growing together – that is the core of it, in my opinion. AI can provide support, but the heart of education remains human contact.”
Contact information
- Organizational unit
- National Education Lab AI (NOLAI)
- Theme
- Artificial intelligence (AI)