Hey {{ first_name | human }},
Summer feels like it’s over already with the amount of rain we have had. Let’s hope it picks up soon!
In the meantime, I am trying something new with ‘AI Concepts Every Teacher Should Know’. Head to the bottom to find out everything about neural networks, the ‘brain’ behind GenAI.
TL;DR: The 60 Second briefing
🚨Break pedals: An Anthropic cofounder has called for AI researchers to put the ‘break pedals’ on AI advances.
🧪AI Vaccination: UK Scientists have used AI to aid in the development of a universal vaccine that targets a ‘family’ rather than an individual strain.
🚨AI T PPG: The UK Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, has announced that pupils in receipt of Pupil Premium Grant will be provided with an AI Tutor.
📚 AI+education news
🚨 AI Tutors for Pupil Premium > What it is: During a speech at London Tech Week, Kier Starmer announced that his government will be rolling out AI tutors for those pupils in receipt of the Pupil Premium Grant in an effort to ‘close the attainment gap’.
Why this matters: Despite no clear evidence that AI tutoring will close the attainment gap, it signals the government’s direction. Regardless of your personal views, it’s likely that pupils in your school will use this technology. Therefore, you must understand it and ensure pupils can access it.
Do this next: There’s little detail on the implementation of the announced AI tutor. While it’s tempting to wait for more information, use this time to research the AI tutor market, understand its technical requirements, and ensure any products meet the DfE product safety expectations. You can download a free copy below.
🌍 Wider AI updates
⚡️ NotebookLM updates > What it is: First, NotebookLM now runs on Gemini 3.5. Google says this should improve the quality of its responses, particularly when working across larger or more complex sets of sources.
Second, source discovery is now built in. Instead of only uploading documents, users can ask a research question and NotebookLM can help find relevant sources from the web through Google Search. That matters because it reduces the blank-page problem at the start of research.
Third, NotebookLM can now create more output formats. Google says it can generate PDFs, documents, spreadsheets, CSVs, JSON, Excel files, PowerPoint files, images, and charts or visualisations. That shifts the tool from “summarise this” towards “help me build a resource from this”.
These are only available to Google AI Ultra Subscribers.
🧪AI designs a vaccine > What it is: Researchers at Cambridge have tested a machine-learning-designed “universal” coronavirus vaccine in a small phase one trial. The idea is to design vaccines around features shared across a whole virus family, rather than chasing one strain at a time. Early results suggest the vaccine is safe and can trigger immune responses, but larger trials are still needed.
Why it matters: There is often a debate around whether AI merely regurgitates existing knowledge and is not truly capable of extending our world knowledge or that AI will accelerate our knowledge of the world. Despite the reservation people may have about AI technology, it is clear that AI can be used to accelerate our knowledge of the world.
Do this next: If you are talking to pupils about AI and the implications of this technology, ensure that you are being balanced by explaining the new discoveries that are happening as a result of AI.
🚨AI needs a ‘break pedal’ > What it is: Anthropic co-founder, Jack Clark, raises concerns about the rapid advancement of AI. Clark emphasizes the need for a "brake pedal" to slow down AI development and prevent unintended consequences. He also highlights the importance of developing regulations to ensure AI systems are developed and deployed responsibly.
Why it matters: When a cofounder of a company that creates one of the most popular frontier GenAI models issues such a warning, it is likely to be worth listening to.
🎯AI concepts every teacher should know: 1. Neural networks
A neural network is a layered system that learns patterns from data. Information enters through an input layer, passes through hidden layers, and exits through an output layer as a prediction, classification, or generated response.
The connections between layers have weights that control the influence of one part of the network on another. Training involves adjusting these weights until the model improves at producing the desired output. This simple idea becomes powerful at scale. Modern AI systems can contain billions of learned parameters, though exact figures for many frontier models are not publicly confirmed.
For teachers, the key point is that AI doesn’t ‘know’ in the way a pupil does. It has learned statistical patterns from large amounts of data and uses those patterns to produce likely outputs. That’s why it can be fluent, useful, and wrong at the same time. A neural network is not a mind; it’s a pattern-learning system at enormous scale.
‘Till next week.
Mr A 🦾
Help a colleague save time by sharing this newsletter; distributing these ideas helps a friend get home on time and keeps our energy focused on what matters most: great teaching.
Safety & Privacy Notice
The tools and workflows mentioned are intended for professional productivity and educational enhancement. Users must ensure that any AI implementation remains compliant with their local data protection regulations and institutional safeguarding policies.
Data Privacy: Do not enter personally identifiable information (PII), sensitive student records, or confidential institutional data into public AI models.
Verification Required: AI-generated content can be inaccurate, biased, or out of date. Always maintain a "human-in-the-loop" approach by reviewing and fact-checking all outputs before use.
Professional Judgement: These suggestions do not substitute for formal legal, clinical, or safeguarding advice. Final responsibility for accuracy and appropriateness remains with the professional user.
