The Digital Society course is now two years old, and students received their first set of results this summer. So I would like to send out a huge congratulations to all of them including my trailblazing six students - well done! (I believe the milestone is important enough for me to trial my new LinkedIn plugin as well hope it works.) However, I just recently checked the IB statistics for numbers entering the Digital Society course and they are a huge disappointment. The last year of ITGS 2275 students took the course (May 2023), and for Digital Society the first cohort 2360 students took the subject (May 2024.)

Only 85 new students, when the course was specifically designed for specialists (e.g. IT and CS teachers) but also non specialist Individuals and Societies teachers to be able to teach? Over this blogpost I will talk a little more about the subject, its brilliance but also some of the problems that I believe can easily be surmounted; so that hopefully some of you in IB schools may make the decision to add Digital Society to your curriculum offering.

Its forerunner ITGS always had its heart in the right place as a course, but its assessments, age and conceptual underpinning was somewhat lacking. The design of the new course and publicity by Joel Adams from the IB was key in making sure the course was different enough to lead to a successful new pathway for many more students.

As zeitgeist would have it, first teaching in 2022 came at just the point that generative AI and ChatGPT3 boisterously announced itself to the world. I remember starting the units of Media and AI, and focusing on 'synthetic digital media' and showing students a number of uses of large language models to their surprise and wonderment. Guess who were the early adopters of AI in my school! I loved my inquiry based formative activity where, unknowingly to them, I placed the coders and the non coders into competing teams and then gave them two lessons to complete a quite complex coding problem in Python (while telling the non-coding team secretly that they could use a LLM to help them.) Guess the astonishment of the coders when the non-coders were declared victors, and then the groans when they realised why.

'Every IB school, in every context - come on start offering Digital Society NOW, you know it is the right thing to do!

The importance of this course in the IB should not be underestimated. It is an option that I believe each student should consider carefully as they choose their Individuals and Societies subject(s), and if necessary persuade the school to run it!

Take image generation, who could believe at the start of the course that I would be able to place in a text prompt and produce a multitude of creative images to enliven this blogpost. But Digital Society is not just about the 'tech' it is about the multitude of ethical and social impacts that arise from almost every context in which technology is used. Around this area a student of DS would immediately consider:

• Power - Intellectual property, who and where does the data come to train this model
• Values and ethics - Creativity, is the use of generative ai image generators a concern for artists and their future employment
• Systems - How biased are these image generators if the datasets underpinning are biased e.g. are students always white
• Expression - is this really art, without 'emotion' or 'feeling' are these images just empty and generic
• Identity - as these image generators get better and better, and are used everywhere how can we judge what is authentic and how does that impact areas such as deepfakes and misinformation

Prompt for Ideogram - "A captivating cinematic photograph of a monochromatic cityscape, with a dedicated student studying diligently at a table. The student's laptop is open, displaying a digital notebook filled with meticulous notes. An AI robot sits attentively beside the student, seemingly engaged in the learning process. The background features bold, eye-catching graffiti that reads "Digital Society is BRILLIANT," blending urban culture with the scene. The atmosphere is a harmonious blend of technology, education, and artistic expression, creating a futuristic yet grounded ambiance."

Note I use Ideogram - as it is one of the only image generators that can truly spell at the moment. A fabulous discussion for DS students to engage in as they unpick the technology behind the 'magic' apart.

So you guessed it. This is a superb course, which is authentic and deals with real world problems and issues and gets students thinking of ways to intervene; and then make a difference in their use of technology alongside understanding its impacts in areas such as politics, business and knowledge. Its is academic, but practical; it is inquiry led (the multimedia video Internal Assessment is excellent) but really tests a student's critical thinking - what is not to like!

Well hear are those surmountable issues and personal thoughts:

So this post is a call to arms for every headteacher to think seriously about adding this course to their curriculum offering, for every student to consider this as a choice and teachers even if you are not a CS/IT teacher to see that this course is simply great fun and inspiring to teach.

'Here is to more than five thousand Digital Society students by 2026!'

Chance discussions are never to be missed in terms of how they can make us reflect on our practice as teachers and leaders. One such morning recently, a member of the senior leadership team popped by my office to discuss how they had been surprised with the focus on professional reading and theory in recent job interviews they had been having. Their perspective was their experience, not recent educational theory or fashionable books were more important to their ability to excel at the role applied for.

I could see their point of view. Especially when they had suggested they had used Tom Bennett as an example of his professional reading in the area of behaviour in UK schools. Someone I had not heard of, but when I checked their philosophy on behaviour, someone on first reading that I was almost diametrically opposed too.

However as an avid professional reader (apologies see the scrolling list on the homepage) I obviously disagree. I professionally read around my great passions in life: education, architecture and technology. Simply because I want to know different perspectives and be able to critically analyse and if necessary change and alter my viewpoints. And this is why, however much I may disagree with Tom Bennett's approach, the reading of some articles and peer reviewed research enabled me to look and reflect, and question. This links to one of my key tenets regarding the educational world we live in as highlighted by the article on TIE The International Educator below -reading and understanding different perspectives is key!

"The problem of not reading..."

"Next time you read a newspaper headline, or a tweet, a post, a statement, especially one that goes “viral”, ask yourself what the source is and who has read the research. The truth might not be as exciting to read as a dazzling affirmative or damning soundbite, but it needs to be respected." - Conrad Hughes

I also teach Theory of Knowledge and Digital Society at IB Level and it does not take too much for us all to agree the necessity for our students to be able to read, analyse and critically evaluate sources in todays misinformation, social media led world.

This however takes me back to Professional Reading for teachers.

"How much should a leader expect teachers to read?" "How much should senior leaders professionally read?"

Well I suppose like many things each school needs teachers and senior leaders that like to professionally read and then support them in the dissemination of the reading to improve learning within the school.

So I would suggest not everyone needs to read quite as much as I do maybe, but every school should have mechanisms in place to enable this reading and current evidence based findings to be shared in a simple and efficient way to all teachers within the school. One such way is the idea of sharing key texts for those interested by the Senior Leadership team, currently "Making Good Progress: The future of Assessment for Learning by Daisy Christodoulou" is doing the rounds at my school. Another is the dissemination of some great professional reading lists - such as Edutopias 2023 best articles end of year list. Number 8 is a gem, especially as an IB educator surrounded by inquiry sceptics who as all of us need to read before they think!

I recently created this online Curriculum Vitae, mainly to simplify my ability to communicate experiences for future career opportunities. But in so doing created a WordPress weblog as you can see - and immediately felt split in whether I should begin to blog and write again as I had done previously.

Don't get me wrong in the past I have been an avid blogger for courses that I have taught in Information Technology in a Global Society (now Digital Society), alongside being involved in Facebook/Twitter accounts on my professional areas of learning. I even tweet regularly on aspects of my coordinator role, my role as TOK teacher etc.

So why so divided?

This then led to a bigger question that presented itself - as my new blog had a crafty and simple feature to link to my LinkedIn account, then I should ensure to publish to LinkedIn as well. In one way I have learnt so much from LinkedIn over the last few years - in fact I would be confident in saying it is where I have learnt most professionally anywhere (and I have also recently completed my National Professional Qualification of Headteaching Certification.)

So I should obviously share my thoughts and ideas. A recent LinkedIn post also made it seem an easy decision from the Corporate Rebels shown below.

"Don't think your article is good enough, publish it anyways." - Corporate Rebels

The argument against, is simple in many ways I find especially the LinkedIn community and educational school accounts as simply a way of self marketing. I know it is obvious, but it does in some ways rankle. I remember a recent colleague whispering to me - 'that teacher tweets all the time, no wonder he is such a poor teacher he has no time to devote to his students.' I disagree, but understand the comment as it is true whatever I or anyone else writes on a weblog, twitter (now X) or through LinkedIn does not validate how good you are as an educator.

So with misgivings equal to my desire to share and publish my ruminations and reflections on education,  you can obviously see what I have decided. Not to publish to begin with!  Thanks to the Corporate Rebels and the Duke of Wellington for leading the way, but I will get there in the end and at least forgive me this is my first post - Rumination No 1!

"Publish and be damned" - Duke of Wellington maybe?