We are delighted to have hosted the Google for Education Summit on the 24th of November. Our school opened its doors to welcome a cohort of the country’s leading minds in education who raised awareness of the educational Google tools and opportunities available.

The event included a series of training workshops for teachers on new features and functionalities of Google’s tools for education. Through interactive workshop sessions, teachers were able to explore the new features on their own devices and learn new strategies to help streamline their workload.

Our teachers, Nancy Carmichael, Fabiana Pereira, Paul Candler, and Tharina Candler, led engaging workshops and learning sessions during the event sharing insights on how ISA integrates technology into our educational practices.

Nick Little, ISA’s Head of School, shared his thoughts on the event, “It was a privilege to host the Google Education Summit to hear from the inspirational and knowledgeable panel of experts on the latest digital technologies including the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education.

“ISA continues to embrace changing technology to ensure our teaching methods evolve for the 21st century to allow every student to leave school as prepared as possible to succeed.”

The keynote speaker, Bukky Yusaf, kicked off the event with an informative presentation on the increasing role of AI in Education, providing insights into the use of artificial intelligence as a teaching and learning tool. She reminded us that AI is not a new concept. The first AI program was developed in 1951 and nowadays we interact daily with artificial intelligence technologies like Alexa and Siri.

For the education sector, she highlighted the issue of alleviating teacher concerns to the use of AI in the classroom. During her presentation, Bukky assured us that it’s imperative to embrace AI training and to experiment with its functionalities, explore capabilities, and foster confidence in the existing tech landscape.

The benefits of AI implementation in schools are immense, encompassing timesaving, feedback creation, student support, health and wellbeing enhancement, motivational learning, and encouraging student ownership of their learning journey. That incorporation, however, requires alignment with a digital strategy, aligned with the school's business and performance plan.

Ultimately, the goal is to cultivate AI-savvy students by improving data search and browsing, enhancing data and content evaluation, and promoting meaningful usage.

Gayle Veitch, ISA Director of IT, commented, “AI has the potential to transform and add value across the education sector in terms of reducing teachers’ workloads and streamlining processes.

“The Google Education Summit provided ISA staff and educators from across Scotland with a valuable opportunity to learn about the latest research and developments in the new era of digital learning.”

We are delighted that the event was well attended not only by ISA staff but also by teachers in local schools - working collaboratively to support the wider community. This allowed us to not only improve our internal teaching processes, but to also share peer to peer knowledge on lesson preparation.

At ISA, we see the value and importance of keeping pace with the latest educational tools and techniques to support our students now and in the future.