Future Learning Design Podcast

This is the first part of a 4-part series exploring the ways in which artificial intelligence is impacting the lives of teachers and young people around the world, through the lens of Anthropic’s recently announced partnerships. In this episode, I talked with Þórdís Jóna Sigurðardóttir, the Director of the Directorate of Education and School Services in Iceland who is exploring the implications of AI for teachers' workload and working conditions, in partnership with Anthropic, Google and the Icelandic Teachers’ Union (KI). I was struck by how  significant the learning focus of this pilot was, with a genuine openness to be both careful and curious in exploring the implications of AI in a country with diverse learning needs, and contrasting school contexts, both urban and very rural, in a historically very decentralised system. 
Þórdís Jóna is Director of the Directorate of Education and School Services. The Directorate of Education and School Services, active since April 2024 and taking over from the previous Directorate of Educations, plays a key role in promoting the education system in Iceland and implementing the government’s education policy. Þórdís Jóna holds a BA in Political Science and an MA in Sociology from the University of Iceland, an MBA from Vlerick Business School, and a leadership and policy implementation program from Harvard Business School.
Links:
https://island.is/s/midstod-menntunar-og-skolathjonustu
https://www.csee-etuce.org/en/item/4428:icelands-ai-pilot-in-education-what-it-really-means-for-teachershttps://island.is/en/o/directorate-of-education-and-school-services/news/a-turning-point-in-icelandic-schooling 
https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-and-iceland-announce-one-of-the-world-s-first-national-ai-education-pilots

This is the second part episode in this mini-series looking into the ways in which artificial intelligence is impacting the lives of teachers and young people around the world, through the lens of recently announced partnerships with Anthropic. 
In this conversation, I explored with Karishma Galani the way that Pratham Education Foundation, one of the largest NGOs in India, is integrating AI capabilities and platforms into its work reaching millions of underserved young people with quality education. They announced a partnership with Anthropic just over a month ago, but that is growing from much deeper roots in the vision of Pratham’s co-founder, Madhav Chavan, that you will hear Karishma talk about.
Karishma is the Co-Lead of PraDigi Innovation Centre at Pratham International. She leads a lot of the digital innovation and AI work at Pratham, building on her long career in tech startups, research & development and venture capital. Karishma founded a deeptech company developing educational assessment powered by machine learning out of Singapore and London and she has been an active researcher at the MIT Media Lab. Karishma is also an author of two books, 'Maker Minds' and 'Making A Shift: Social Entrepreneurship in Schools'
https://www.anthropic.com/news/bengaluru-office-partnerships-across-india

This is the third episode in this 4-part series exploring the ways in which artificial intelligence is impacting the lives of teachers and young people around the world, through the lens of recently announced partnerships with Anthropic. In this episode, I explored Teach for All’s thoughtful approach to these big questions with Global Head of AI and Edtech, Stephen Jull. How is collective leadership in Teach for All’s 63 country contexts enhanced and extended by the creative use of free frontier AI models (and really dynamic WhatsApp communities!)? And how are they holding critical questions of equity, access and data sovereignty as they build communities of educators across the globe as co-architects of AI pedagogies and of the models themselves.
Stephen is the Global Head of AI and Educational Technology at Teach For All. Following an early career teaching in remote communities of Canada’s far north, Stephen earned his PhD at the University of Cambridge as a Commonwealth Trust Scholar and has spent over 15 years building teams and strategic partnerships to deliver educational technology innovations at scale. Stephen was a co-founder of GeoGebra, one of the world's leading provider of dynamic math education software. And he has supported many young entrepreneurs and high-impact, high-growth startups and scaleups in roles such as as Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School and Entrepreneur in Residence with Founders at Cambridge Enterprise.

This is the first part of a 4-part series exploring the ways in which AI tools are impacting the lives of teachers and young people around the world. In this episode, I talked with Kavi Ramburn and Stefan Coetzee from ALX Africa about their amazing work bringing professional foundational competencies programmes to young people across Africa through in-person hubs and online course offerings. They have recently announced a big partnership with Anthropic and the Government of Rwanda, so I was keen to talk with them about how this will boost their mission in introducing “Chidi,” an AI-powered learning companion built to scaffold critical thinking and problem-solving about and with AI, to learners and educators across Africa and beyond.
Kavi is Vice President of Learning at ALX Africa. He has an extensive background in learning, research and sustainable development economics, and advocacy for social impact across many sectors.
Stefan is AI Innovation Lead at ALX Africa spearheading AI product research and early life cycle product development. He has a huge depth of knowledge as a data scientist, content developer and educator.
From the presse release from ALX Africa:
“Funding and Partnership 
Anthropic will cover LLM/API-related costs to support the deployment of Chidi and Claude access.

ALX will contribute the training, delivery, and implementation infrastructure, ensuring smooth rollout and educator enablement.

The Government of Rwanda—through the Ministries of Education and ICT—will provide policy guidance, institutional support, and access to schools, but will not bear any financial commitments under this partnership.“

More info:https://www.linkedin.com/in/kavi-ramburn-57212475/ 
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/designing-learning-millions-vision-kavi-ramburn-alxafrica-7vrvf/ 
https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-rwanda-mou
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/rwanda-signs-mou-with-us-ai-company-anthropic-across-health-education-public-sectors/3832953
https://www.devex.com/news/is-anthropic-building-rwanda-s-ai-future-or-its-dependence-111946

https://www.edtechinnovationhub.com/news/anthropic-rwanda-and-alx-roll-out-chidi-ai-learning-companion-across-africa

This week on the podcast we’re time travelling with the fabulous Professor Keri Facer. How we think about the future or futures makes a difference to the decisions we make in schools today, and Keri has been asking critically important questions about educational futures, pasts and presents for the last 20 years, that are still as important today as they were when she published her brilliant 2011 book ‘Learning Futures: Education, Technology and Social Change’.
Prof. Keri Facer is Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol, UK where she leads the British Academy ‘Times of a Just Transition’ Programme, which brings together scholars from 6 continents and 14 disciplines, to explore how temporal assumptions, frames and processes structure the possibility of just transitions. She is also Co-investigator on the ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures, where she works on the implications of mixed reality tools for collective imagination. Keri is also Professor of Public Education at Black Mountains College, led by recent podcast guest, Ben Rawlence: https://www.goodimpactlabs.com/podcast/ben-rawlence.
Keri was previously Zennström Professor in Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University, expert advisory group member of UNESCO’s Futures of Education Commission and Research Director at Futurelab. Keri is collaborating with the poverty charity, the Joseph Rowntree foundation, on their ‘imagination infrastructure’ programme and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Futures. Keri is also a co-Investigator of Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures: https://tesf.network/ 
In 2026, she is consolidating this work in three landmark publications: 
Chronoberg: a handbook of creative methods for temporal imagination (with Johannes Stripple); 

‘Time & Possibility: A Field Guide’ (with Harriet Hand); and 

Temporal Justice, a Special Issue for the Journal of Global Social Challenges. 

Keri’s books include ‘Learning Futures: Education, Technology and Social Change’ and ‘Working with Time in Qualitative Research’. She is joint Editor-in-Chief of the Journal ‘Futures’ and she edits the Routledge Book Series on ‘Futures and Anticipation’ with Prof Johan Siebers.
Keri’s personal website: https://kerifacer.wordpress.com/ 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/keri-facer-2a11b62/
https://www.temporalimagination.org/
https://www.conversationsociety.org/home
https://www.jrf.org.uk/imagination-infrastructures/educating-the-ecological-imagination-the-work-of-black-mountains
https://www.routledge.com/Learning-Futures-Education-Technology-and-Social-Change/Facer/p/book/9780415581431