Chris Colley: 0:13

Welcome back everyone to another episode of Shift Ed podcast. We are been having some great conversations lately and today I am holding no punches. I have Gabriel Rashid in from Argentina, who is the director and the co-founder of the Learner Space and also the Global School, which are two amazing projects, what we'll get into and he's also an author, a lecturer, speaker, writer you name it ed tech. Gabriel has his hands in somewhere in there, which is great. So, gabriel, thanks so much for joining me today.

Gabriel Rshaid: 0:54

Thanks for having me A great pleasure. Thanks for the invitation.

Chris Colley: 0:57

Yeah, no, this has been great. I'm really happy to have you on, because I've been doing a bit of deep diving around what you do and how you've been doing it, and it's really fascinating. I want to talk about your global school for sure. Before we start, though, Gabriel, I'd love to just kind of touch base on what have been some of your, like, big moments in your career that have kind of brought you to where you are today With you know you're with the global school and the learner space and the AI. You seem to be like really into it. We actually some colleagues joined one of your webinars when you were looking at the chatbot creation. What were some of those tipping points for you in your career that that have brought you here today with us?

Gabriel Rshaid: 1:48

That's. That's a really interesting question. I never really thought about that in that way.

Gabriel Rshaid: 1:59

Teacher, you know, dotting the I's and crossing the T's and doing what needed to be done and trying to prepare my students for the various requirements of the different schools that I worked at. And then I kind of progressed almost naturally into intermediate leadership positions. Then, like many people I had, without really knowing what I was getting myself into, I had an opportunity to go into leadership in terms of becoming first the head of a sector at the school and then an overall head. And then, of course, my perspective shifted because the responsibility changed and at some point in the first school that I was the head of, I started realizing that things were not as they seemed and that, having gained a little bit of perspective, what I was really called to do or what I really wanted to dedicate my life to was trying to bring forth change in education. I guess there's a period in every one of our professions when we realize that it's not just about being a good performer and complying with what the expectations are, but rather trying to change things as they are.

Gabriel Rshaid: 3:25

And that happened to me, I would say, a couple of years into my first headship of a school, when I realized that maybe the road ahead was not to do better but to do differently. And because I've always had a passion for technology Ed tech was the natural field into which I channeled my energies and I always saw it as a catalyst for educational change. And now that AI came, it's like wow, they handed me a blank check. I believe that, beyond all the ethical implications and the doubts and the risks that are truly there, it has the potential to truly revolutionize learning. That's why I jumped wholeheartedly into trying to utilize AI for improving schools.

Chris Colley: 4:18

I don't know if that's a good answer, but that's what comes up. No, totally, totally. You know, and it kind of leads me to this first question with you, gabriel, when we had ed tech that first started coming in, we had one-on-one programs, we had iPads in schools, we had smart boards like all of this tech flew into schools. Why did it have so little effect, in your opinion, that it seems like our educational system is such a slow changing creature and you would think at a tipping point like that, when all of this tech was starting to come in, that there would be a shift, that would naturally happen, and it seemed to not occur. Do you have any reflections on that?

Gabriel Rshaid: 5:00

Yeah, that's something that I've thought about long and hard, and I think it has to do with that we were never able to reconstruct a narrative that changed our sense of purpose as teachers, in that, as you mentioned, chris, we've always used these tools to enhance teaching when they were really apt for enhancing learning and changing.

Gabriel Rshaid: 5:23

You know, we always talk about teaching and learning. The locus of that should be a lot more shifted towards learning than teaching, and I've always had these conversations with my colleagues and other people who are into this, and I've always said you know what we always say we need to change the role of the teachers, we need to be more facilitators, step aside, et cetera. What we truly need to do is to rekindle our sense of purpose. If we always think of ourselves as the ones who are essential to facilitate learning and indispensable to give learning, and we derive meaning from that, we're never going to use technology to truly outsource the learning into the students, which is what we should have done. So I think it has to do with that we were never able to create a new narrative about the evolution of the role of educators and call people in with a renewed sense of purpose.

Chris Colley: 6:22

Interesting and do you find now, with the introduction of AI I mean it's still very new for most teachers I saw a survey recently where half or more than half the population of a teacher surveyed is just still very in the dark about AI. It's been around since 2022, kind of like starting to pick up speed. Do you think AI has the possibility to change the way we practice education?

Gabriel Rshaid: 6:50

Yeah, absolutely, I think. I mean, of course there are deep philosophical discussions and issues and arguments whether you know, is it a good thing? Would it impact society positively? Even as much as a technophile as I am, I see the inherent risks in terms of job losses and how many of the automated processes will be outsourced to an AI, et cetera. I see that I, even you know. I don't think it will dehumanize us, but that's a different discussion. But even if you transcend all of that, you can say you know you might not agree with that.

Gabriel Rshaid: 7:24

Ai may be beneficial to the world. Just use it to do what you're doing and doing it better. If you're into project-based learning, you can create better projects. If you are into mathematics, teaching mathematics, you can connect mathematics with real life with great ease. If you're teaching elementary school, you can role-play historical characters and have your students interact with the AI and trying to see what the outcome of history would have been. If you're in elementary, in kindergarten, you can again create fictional characters that allow children to kind of extend their imagination. There are infinite things that we can do better without changing anything of what we do. I hope anything of what we do. I hope we change what we do. I hope we change our practice. That's badly needed. But even if we disregard the deeper philosophical discussion, just use AI to do what you're doing better. That has a potential to vastly improve teaching and learning.

Chris Colley: 8:19

Absolutely, I totally agree with you. I think too, as a teacher assistant you know kind of what you're alluding to is that it does save us time, which we could focus more on the kids and their development and those conversations and that participation, that active participation, I guess. What do you think the main hang-up is right now about AI? I know teachers really kind of have this idea that it will cause kids to cheat more or plagiarize more or hand in stuff that's not authentically theirs. How would teachers have to adjust to AI so that they don't have to worry about that, Because it tends to be a preoccupation of the negative stuff, whereas they're not seeing all this great, amazing positive stuff that can happen out of it? How do we start shifting that mindset a little bit?

Gabriel Rshaid: 9:12

Yeah, again, objectively, it's become a development. Yong Sa, who's a friend of mine, a very well-known author. He says he calls these evolutionary hangovers. Like we can't possibly adapt to a change of this magnitude which radically disrupts and brings into question 99% of what we do in schools. A technological disruption occurred almost from one day to another that allowed students to complete again an overwhelming majority of all school assignments without having to learn. That's a harsh reality. Nothing we say or do, no narrative, nothing that we can do will overcome the fact that, again, almost everything that is asked for students to do in school can be done by an AI. So we need to first accept that that, no matter what we do, the kind of transformation that we need is so profound that it can't happen overnight, and this has far surpassed our capacity to adapt in terms of ourselves as a collective of educators. Clearly, the road ahead would be for again, this kind of catches us at a time in which education is at a crossroads in terms of defining its own self, of identity. We were talking about the individual sense of purpose. You know what is education about. So it doesn't find us in a good spot in terms of renewing our perspective, because we are a transition generation that is moving from standardized assessment, international examinations, fixed standard, et cetera, to multiple intelligences, student-centered learning, understanding that not all kids learn the same, et cetera. And this is like the perfect storm to brew up all that that was in the mix and that we didn't make a lot of sense of. Clearly, the road ahead is we need to discern, at each age level and for each of the subjects, how to use AI to extend cognitive development and not hinder it. The real risk is not cheating Everybody says, academic integrity, which is a fancy way of saying that students are cheating. The real risk is that over-reliance on AI at a cognitive developmental phase may hinder cognitive development.

Gabriel Rshaid: 11:23

I'll give you an example which is one that you always use to cite as a clear example. Like in the last year of school, whatever it is, the senior year in the US, or 12th grade or whatever you call it, in different systems in the world, we teach mathematics and we teach calculus. Calculus is kind of the epitome of the abstract development of mental skills for students and it helps you develop certain patterns of logical reasoning and abstract thinking. So when you're faced with a problem where you have to read the problem, comprehend, construct a mathematical model, assign an equation and then solve that equation to an integral or derivative. It is kind of the highest expression of abstract thinking and mathematical modeling you can have in school. That's why we teach it Now.

Gabriel Rshaid: 12:12

In the old days, before AI, you were faced with a problem and you're like, oh, I don't know this, okay, I'll go take a walk, take a cup of coffee, come back and read it and eventually, through an iterative process of mental breakdown, you gradually form those neural connections that allow you to do that. Now you can talk to chat GPT. You're going to say, oh, this is too hard. Chat GPT is going to explain it to you and you're going to have the illusion that you developed the skill, which you didn't. So that's the real risk. How do we establish, on the one hand, the risks of over-reliance? By mapping out cognitive development and contrasting it with the developmental phase. And instead of that, how can we extend that cognitively so that AI, for example, can be used for mathematical model? I'll give you just a very quick example.

Gabriel Rshaid: 13:00

Down here in Argentina in 2023, we had a presidential election with a runoff. There were two candidates who had the majority of votes and we had what they call a ballotage, a runoff in the second round. So the leading candidate had something like eight or nine points over the second candidate and everybody said, oh, he's going to win because he almost had the number of votes that they needed for winning in the first round. With a group of students in the senior classical school we run a mathematical simulation through, in this case Chachapiti, where we modeled optimistic and pessimistic scenarios of how the other candidates' votes would be assigned to the leading two candidates based on their ideological preferences. So we said okay.

Gabriel Rshaid: 13:38

For example, a candidate that was very close philosophically to one candidate, we said okay, pessimistic is 60%, optimistic is 90%, because they were very, very similar. So we ran through all of those scenarios and we knew that the candidate who had ranked second in the election was going to win. There was no way that the other candidate could win. In no scenario could the other candidate win. I was saying to my friend hey, this guy's going to win. And they said, oh no, you know, he lost the first round. I said, listen, we ran it through the mathematical scenarios and there is no way that he's going to lose. And that happened.

Gabriel Rshaid: 14:14

So that's an example of where by constructing a model and thinking out, you know, having the AI run a simulation, which you cannot do, and running through all these scenarios, the students there were able to extend their cognitive development.

Chris Colley: 14:26

That's so cool. I love that and like what a real life experience, right, like something that they might do again down the road. You know it's like it's concrete, yet you're struggling kind of with the models to see. Is this hypothesis going to see through? You know?

Chris Colley: 14:44

You said something also, gabriel, that I really liked is that AI can take care of a lot of the stuff that we do in traditional schools Like so we're teaching traditionally content exams, you know, very summative, yet AI tools now are at the verge of replacing all of that stuff. Yet we're still heading in that. So let's bring it to your school, because I just find it so fascinating. So, in the global school, how do you leverage AI with your teachers so that you're shifting that practice away from something that a machine is going to eventually do way better? Yet kids are still, you know, becoming learners and seeing learning as a lifetime feat or something they're going to be doing their whole lives feat, or something they're going to be doing their whole lives? How do you lead your teachers in that direction, away from this kind of, you know, rote industrial model that we've just been, we've had for so many decades?

Gabriel Rshaid: 15:53

Yeah, to start with, let me say that we're not getting it perfect, obviously.

Chris Colley: 15:57

We're doing our best, no.

Gabriel Rshaid: 15:59

We were like our school. The advantage of starting we started our school seven years ago, so the advantages of starting a new school is that you can do things right from the beginning and you don't have to straighten them out, as we tell people here. We didn't invent anything. Why don't you think of a school that fosters autonomous learning, global projects, project-based learning, creativity, technology, critical thinking, et cetera? We're just doing what needs to be done. This is not innovation. This is what should be done, so we don't have such an emphasis on sit-down, closed-book, written tests or any of the more traditional forms of learning and assessment, which helps us in this case. Helps us in this case. The sudden advent of AI is not such a major disruptor for us, because our teaching and learning is Sorry. It's more attuned to the introduction of AI. What we do with the teachers is we try to map out different projects to get the teachers excited. To start with, let me say we openly talk about AI. So we talk to our students about AI and we tell them listen, if you use, there are certain skills that you need to learn. Obviously, there's more emphasis on this as for middle school onwards, but even in upper elementary, like in fourth, fifth and sixth grade. We talk to them about AI and we say, hey, don't use it for this, we're going to use it for something else. If we talk openly about it, we kind of demystify the whole thing and we take away a lot of the secrecy that is associated with AI and the surreptitious use to solve school assignments. We the secrecy that is associated with AI and the surreptitious use to solve school assignments we don't place such a heavy emphasis on the numeric grades and on the results, which, again, is what I tell people all the time is you have to avoid high pressure situations, especially in the high school. So if you have a kid who has to comply with your internal assessment, has a test tomorrow, has to do a report and has to do a couple of other and it's 2 am, they will use AI. They will use AI Because you know time management avoid high-pressure situations.

Gabriel Rshaid: 18:03

But going back to what I was saying, we are trying to create again projects that are cool for teachers. We are trying to use now we're starting to use the advanced voice and camera avatars for elementary. Like we have a tablet and we say our teachers are creating like special characters for their classes. They're studying history. They say, okay, you need to act like a certain historical figure and our kids are going to interview you.

Gabriel Rshaid: 18:34

And, for example, we did a project last year where there's an episode in Art and History when one of the founding fathers came back from his exile in Europe and he stayed in Uruguay and he said, no, this is a mess, I'm going to go back to Europe. And he went back to Europe. He didn't disembark in Buenos Aires to try to fix the situation. So we said, okay, your assignment is to convince this historical figure that, instead of going back to Europe because the Buenos Aires is a mess, you have to convince him to stay. And then we have to think of what the outcome would have been. So their presentation they had to create a presentation to say, hey, instead of jumping ship and going back to Europe, you have to stay here, and this is the reason why your influence could be so good, et cetera. We're trying to do that. Of course, we don't always get it right, but we're trying to use AI in ways that are exciting and interesting.

Chris Colley: 19:19

Right right. And how do you lead teachers into that unknown? Because teachers are very they like helping, they like supporting students, they like planning so that things are thought out and like, with this massive change that's happening, how can, how do you lead those that are hesitant to jump in, like, what are your leadership structures that support those kind of reluctant teachers?

Gabriel Rshaid: 19:52

yeah, to be honest with you you know, I'm I'm a big advocate, so people know me and, uh, they kind of don't have an option here, so yeah it's, it's not on, but but when, when I work with leaders in schools, I tell them you have to model, you have to be a model, you have to play yourself, you have to be, you know, model the what what they call confident uncertainty, like, yeah, this, yeah, this is fun, this is exciting, let's play around, use it in your meetings, like, do the cool stuff, show them how you know the camera can interact with them and that they can summarize their meetings they can, you know, use it and play around with it. And I think the only way to start with some teachers. You're never going to reach Some people. You know, no matter what you do, you're never going to reach them because they're. Unfortunately, some people are past the point where they want to learn anymore, and that doesn't only apply to AI, so I wouldn't. I always tell them don't waste your efforts on those who have already given up, unfortunately, and who are ensconced in their ego construction of being the sage on stage. They might have value.

Gabriel Rshaid: 20:57

Schools can be diverse environments. Let them do what they do, but in all other respects I would say model a playful behavior, be excited about it, play around with it. Even I always tell them listen, even if it doesn't have a direct link to what you do in school. Show them the cool stuff, create a video, create a fun video. Uh, you know, do voice cloning. Uh, you know, that kind of thing, I think. I think that's the way to lead the way yeah, no, I love it.

Chris Colley: 21:27

I love it, it's, it's, it's really. I love that idea and your like, when you're um, in your motto, that you have play, discover, create, learn. Play is your first word, which I love, but I'm surprised at how little play these generations Gen Z example do. Um, it seems like plays is being forgotten as our kids are growing up and stuff. What, what do you mean by play like in your, in your motto of your school, and what do you hope that that play looks like in your school?

Gabriel Rshaid: 22:07

Having fun. As simple as that. Like we need. We need to what I was just saying we need to it's. It's like Picasso once said that it took him a lifetime to draw like a 10 year old. And I think we need to take heart of that and say we, the adults, the older kids, we need to have fun while we learn. Like we, it's it's. It can be a serious business and fun at the same time. It doesn't have to be solemn. For us, play is having fun, being excited about learning, and we want to share in that. We do a lot of open classes. We bring families in. We can't wait to let people know about what we're doing. It's about being excited, yeah.

Chris Colley: 22:44

Yeah, it is exciting, like your school seems exciting, like I was browsing through the website and it just looks so fun, like it's flexible seating and there's like different areas all over the place and projects happening. It's like there's this vibrancy going on. Gabriel, what skills are you hoping to instill in your students at, you know, at the global school? What are the key skills that you find that they're going to need in such? You know, we've always here like we're teaching kids for an unknown future, right, so we're, we're giving them, hopefully, skills, but the content, I mean, like you said, I mean they can find that stuff if they need it, but the skills is where I find that we're missing the boat, um, and getting kids ready for the things they're going to have to do. So, in your opinion, in your school, what are those skills that are paramount that you need to have the kids having before they leave the school?

Gabriel Rshaid: 23:41

Yeah, for us it's a missing C. You know, they always say creativity, critical thinking, et cetera, the four C's. The missing C is confidence.

Gabriel Rshaid: 23:50

I think they need to be confident, and that's not an accidental outcome of school being confident in your abilities, in your capacity to unlearn and relearn.

Gabriel Rshaid: 24:02

We work hard for that and a lot of times getting there is more about what we don't do than what we do In terms of building up our students' confidence that they can do anything that they set their minds and their hearts to do. So that's one we believe a lot in presenting their ideas, in communicating, especially orally, so we try as much as we can to have our students defend their ideas and go out to the world and do stuff. We've had students that have done leadership, like a leadership day in a company here last year in the outside world, reproducing what they do at school, and again, it's about so yeah, basically, I would say that it's nurturing self-confident learners, making sure that we don't impact their self esteem or that we impact it as less as possible, and that we, I would say, lifelong learning is is is about the tools, for sure, and we try to do that, but it's also about the motivation. I think that the motivation is an important part yeah, well, I love the confidence.

Chris Colley: 25:12

Um'm going to add that C also to those four other Cs because I totally agree. I think if you don't have that, the others aren't as effective, they're meaningless.

Gabriel Rshaid: 25:22

Yeah, they're meaningless.

Chris Colley: 25:23

Totally totally. So, Gabriel to kind of bring things to a close again. Thanks so much for hopping on here and sharing some of your thoughts. Where do you see this going? Where's education headed to? I asked that last question in 2035. Like, if you had a crystal ball, what do you?

Gabriel Rshaid: 25:46

where do you think we're headed with all of this? Yeah, to be honest, I don't know. I can tell you where I think it could be headed. I've always been a chess player. I I enjoy chess. I've played chess my entire life and chess is a is a, even though it's a kind of very reductive comparison to learning. It's a. It's a good way to think of what the future may look like, because, uh, in chess I'd say for the last 15 years, uh, the, the, the chess software that I have in my phone can beat the world champion.

Gabriel Rshaid: 26:12

So all of us chess players have had our egos chopped down for many years and knowing that you know the computer will beat us, and we live in a world where we know that we are not the smartest species that plays chess. Computers are a lot better than us. So what happened? In retrospect that goes all the way back to 1994, when Kasper was beaten by Deep Blue, etc. So what's the state of affairs right now? More people than ever are playing chess. It's become a super popular game.

Gabriel Rshaid: 26:44

The level of the current generation of grandmasters is the best in history. They would, hands down, beat any historical player because they're playing a lot better, measured by objective standards, than any of the grandmasters of the past. Um, when I used to play tournaments when I was a lot younger, you used to play games that lasted five or six hours. Now the main form of competition is blitz, meaning that the whole game lasts 10 minutes, because it's a lot more fun, more exciting and you can cheat. You don't have time to cheat. You don't have time to use a computer and cheat because the game is so fast. And if you ask the players how they've become so good, they said that they. Now chess has two sides to it. One is the kind of holistic appreciation of pattern, recognition of a position. After playing a lot. You see a position and you intuitively know what the best move is, even without having to calculate a sequence. And there's also an analytical side to it, which is calculating a sequence of moves to see the outcomes. Now the current generation of players they mostly say that they've developed a deep intuition through repetitive practice that allows them to know what the best move is without even having to calculate analytically the sequence of moves that would lead to an outcome.

Gabriel Rshaid: 27:57

How did they achieve this? How do we all learn? And when I was again, when I was in school, I had books. I learned from books and we reproduced. Now we all play with our software and 99 times out of 100, we get destroyed by the computer. You always play one or two levels below the computer, so the computer beats you all the time. Do I get discouraged? Not at all. So that's learning from mistakes. Yep, big time, which we don't do in schools. I am not discouraged by learning from mistakes.

Gabriel Rshaid: 28:27

Assessment is not the sit-down written test that it used to be, the six-hour game. Now it's in real time, it's situational and the repetitive practice has developed deep intuition. So how do I see this evolving? Hopefully, if we had immersive video games that teach you stuff, if we truly capitalize on the promise of adaptive learning to learn from mistakes and not be hindered by it, if we evolve assessment from the conventional on how to go. You know, we go out and here's a situation that you have to solve and you have to solve it in a limited amount of time and you have to demonstrate that deep intuition and learning through solving a real-time situation, and that's the outcome of school. So I see that Now, whether that will happen or not, education has proven impervious to most of the forces that have shaped the outside world. So who knows?

Chris Colley: 29:16

I love your metaphor, though. That's so good and it makes a lot of sense. Well, I'm going to think about that. I mean, you've shared so many thoughts here, gabriel. It's going to take me some time to weed through them all, but I really do appreciate you taking some time and sharing these. It's been really fascinating kind of getting to know you a little bit preparing for this, but this conversation has been so cool, so thank you very much.

Gabriel Rshaid: 29:40

I'm very, very grateful for the opportunity Amazing.

Chris Colley: 29:43

Well, you take care and we'll talk soon. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you.