Meta Llama 4 decision pack for schools
July 24, 2025
Meta’s Llama models have made “open” AI feel within reach for schools, but the practical decision is rarely about hype. It is about governance, safeguarding, data protection, and whether your team can operate a model safely over time. This decision pack helps school leaders choose between adopting a vendor-hosted Llama 4 service, commissioning a managed private instance, self-hosting, or waiting. It includes minimum-data patterns, total cost of ownership factors, classroom-safe use cases, a clear decision matrix against proprietary models, and a “Llama 4 watch” checklist if Llama 4 has not launched yet.
EU AI Act Meets LGR22: What Swedish Schools Must Know
July 15, 2025
Swedish schools are increasingly using AI for planning, feedback, communication and administration, yet the EU AI Act reframes parts of “education AI” as potentially high-risk. This does not mean schools must stop innovating. It means they must show that AI use supports LGR22’s fundamental values: democracy, human rights and ethics. This guide translates the EU AI Act into day-to-day school practice, focusing on transparency, human oversight and data minimisation. You’ll get a vendor checklist, a lightweight documentation pack, and a 30‑day plan for calm compliance.
Accessibility Tech: Mid-2025 Consolidation Guide
July 14, 2025
Mid-2025 has brought plenty of accessibility headlines, but the bigger win for schools is consolidation: standardising what you already have across Apple, Google, Microsoft and ChromeOS. This guide focuses on what has genuinely changed since early 2025, the “default settings” worth adopting, and the AI features that help in practice (plus the ones that quietly mislead). You’ll find repeatable classroom routines, procurement questions to prevent an inclusion lottery, and a refreshed minimum viable inclusion stack designed for mixed-device schools.
WWDC AI: What Schools Do Next Week
June 3, 2025
Apple’s WWDC AI announcements sound exciting, but schools need a calm, practical translation. This briefing turns release-day headlines into three concrete decisions: what genuinely changes for managed Apple fleets, which classroom-facing capabilities are worth prioritising (especially accessibility and on-device features), and what to test and communicate next week without triggering risky roll-outs. Use it to align IT, safeguarding and teaching teams on sensible defaults, evidence to collect, and questions to put to Apple and your MDM provider.
End-of-Year AI Audit: Evidence Pack
May 29, 2025
An end-of-year AI audit helps schools move from scattered pilots to clear, defensible decisions. This guide shows how to produce an “evidence pack” for governors and SLT: a simple register of every AI trial, a keep/stop/scale decision for each, and the minimum evidence needed to justify it. You’ll also leave with a summer-ready action plan, with owners, timelines, procurement steps and policy updates. The aim is to protect staff time, improve pupil outcomes, and tighten safeguarding and data protection without slowing innovation.
Minimum viable inclusion stack: SEND tech update
April 14, 2025
This term-ready update brings together what’s genuinely new (and useful) in built-in accessibility across Google, Microsoft, Apple and Chromebooks, then adds a practical layer: a “minimum viable inclusion stack” you can standardise across classrooms. You’ll also find ten low-effort AI micro-routines that scaffold learning without replacing it, plus guidance on making assistive tech and AI work together rather than clash. Finally, there’s a SEND-specific procurement and safeguarding checklist, and a simple two-week pilot plan with staff briefing points and a one-page parent/carer note.
Claude 4 / 3.5 Opus: claims-to-classroom protocol
March 3, 2025
New flagship AI launches arrive with bold claims: better reasoning, richer multimodal support, safer behaviour, and more “agentic” features that act on your behalf. For schools, the question is not whether the benchmarks look impressive, but whether the model is reliable, privacy-safe, and assessment-responsible in everyday teacher workflows. This article offers a practical “claims-to-classroom” evaluation protocol you can run in 90 minutes with no pupil data, plus evidence thresholds and checklists to decide whether to adopt, pilot, or park Claude’s next flagship.
AI Assistant Showdown 2025: Teacher Triage
February 13, 2025
Teachers don’t need another “which AI is best?” list. What you need is a safe, repeatable workflow for the tasks that actually fill your week—planning, differentiation, feedback, safeguarding checks, citations, parent messages and admin. This classroom “triage” guide compares ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini by showing the minimum-data way to use each, a prompt pattern that reliably produces usable output, and the hand-off point where professional judgement must take over. It includes a printable decision tree and copy-and-adapt prompts with built-in human checks.
February Half-Term CPD: AI Courses & Credentials
February 12, 2025
Half-term is a rare chance to build AI confidence without the weekly rush, but not all “AI for teachers” courses carry the same weight in appraisal or CPD logs. This buyer’s guide helps you choose credentials that stand up to scrutiny by focusing on evidence of learning, classroom transfer, and policy safety. You’ll find a practical selection rubric, three choose-one pathways (beginner, classroom practice, leadership), and a curated shortlist with proof of learning and caveats. There’s also a time-boxed five-day plan and a one-page outcomes checklist you can submit as CPD evidence.
DeepSeek R1: A School-Focused Briefing
January 10, 2025
DeepSeek R1 is the first widely available “reasoning model” with open weights that schools could realistically self-host or buy into. This briefing explains what makes reasoning models different from normal chatbots, why DeepSeek R1 matters for teaching and assessment, and how its open weights reshape decisions about data protection, sovereignty and vendor lock-in. Aimed at senior leaders, IT leads and assessment coordinators, it offers practical examples, risk considerations and concrete questions to ask vendors in 2025.
AI Tools Refresh for 2025
January 7, 2025
2023–24 was the year many schools experimented wildly with AI tools. 2025 needs to be different: less novelty, more consolidation and safety. This pragmatic guide helps you map the fast‑moving AI landscape onto real school workflows, decide what to keep, what to switch, and what to quietly drop, and build a smaller, more sustainable AI stack that staff and students can actually master.
Black Friday EdTech Deals 2024
November 25, 2024
Black Friday and Cyber Monday can feel overwhelming for schools, with AI and EdTech discounts shouting for attention. This guide helps you cut through the noise and focus on a small set of AI subscriptions and tools that are genuinely worth paying for in 2024. We look at data protection, long-term value, and how well tools fit into existing school workflows, rather than chasing novelty features or risky “lifetime” offers. Use it as a pragmatic buyer’s guide to decide what to upgrade, what to trial, and what to ignore this year.
Llama 3 and school budgets
July 10, 2024
Meta’s release of Llama 3, an open‑source AI model, is being hailed as a turning point for education. But for school and college leaders, the real question is not “Is this exciting?” but “Does this change our budget, risk, and data‑protection picture?” This pragmatic buyer’s guide explains what Llama 3 actually means for schools, compares total cost of ownership with closed models like GPT‑4 and Claude, and sets out realistic hosting, privacy and procurement options. It focuses on practical decision‑making rather than hype, so you can plan the next 1–3 years of AI adoption with confidence.