Sligo EdTech 2024
ATU Sligo Campus was the venue for the 2024 Ilta EdTech conference on the theme “EdTech Horizons: Preparing for Tomorrow’s Learning Landscape”.
It has been a few years since it was in Sligo and it was great to visit the town and campus again, meeting with technologists from around Ireland.
AI-everything everywhere all at once
As with many conferences recently, there were a growing number of sessions, including keynotes which touched on AI, or were all about AI.
Some interesting points and questions made included:
- The need to consider both student and staff perspectives.
- AI is easy to use, and is here to stay, so any lack of clear guidelines on usage causes confusion and frustration.
- Equity and integrity being called into question.
- Are outdated assessment types in need of radical update?
- Are students’ knowledge and skills development in jeopardy?
- How do students show academic integrity in their preparation and work?
- AI is changing how we work, our workflows and helping automate tasks.
- Time to integrate AI tools and concepts into the curriculum.
- Potential for monetization and reuse by third-parties.
- Is GenAI the new calculator in exams? Something we will look back at and wonder what the fuss was about?
A core point made by the excellent Day 2 keynote by Ignatia de Waard, on Strategic improvising with AI, was that we must accept the reality that AI content generation is being used, and move on to how to teach and learn with AI with understanding, ethics, moderation, and awareness of GDPR compliance.
Some AI related resources shared by keynote and other presenters.
- The AI Pedagogy Project – metaLAB (at) Harvard
- The Learning with AI initiative from the University of Maine (umaine.edu)
- AI x Education | Johnny Chang | Substack
- Toolkit for the Ethical Use of GenAI in Learning and Teaching – National Resource Hub (teachingandlearning.ie)
- NAIN publishes new GenAI Guidelines for Educators | Quality and Qualifications Ireland (qqi.ie)
- Guidelines-for-Academic-Teams-GenAI-Assessments-IADT-Approved.pdf
Brickfield Sponsoring
Brickfield Education Labs were delighted to again sponsor the annual EdTech conference organised by ILTA.
Our co-founders Karen Holland and Gavin Henrick attended, taking part in a panel and also delivering a workshop on building accessibility awareness among staff and students.