Author: Olive Halsall
This Christmas, I finally made time to read Sal Khan’s “Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionise Education (& Why That’s A Good Thing)” [1]. Sal is iconic in the realm of all things innovative education and has inspired me profoundly in my career. He’s the Founder of Khan Academy (& Khanmigo, Schoolhouse.world) and from what I’ve absorbed from his Ted Talks, seems like a humble, down to earth bloke you’d have a laugh in the pub with.
Brave New Words advocates for the total absorption of AI in education; as a parent himself, Sal empathises with concerns towards harmful bias, online safety and excessive screen time. As an edupreneur, he reflects on the irrefutable value AI brings to modern education practices. Think worldwide accessibility, fairer university admissions, flipped classrooms that actually enhance human interactions, personalised learning and support for parents to engage with their children’s progress.
This falls serendipitously in the same week as the UK government released their AI Opportunities Action Plan [2]; although no real depth has been explored, it acknowledges that “skills like creativity, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence are still absolutely vital” to thrive in an AI-driven world. Ultimately, we need to cultivate a new mindset. A mindset of lifelong learning, adaptability, social skills and creativity – all that makes us human. It is an exciting time for education ventures to plug this gap.
With AI doing the heavy lifting, we have an incredible opportunity to enhance authentic, offline and human offline interactions in our classrooms. Authentic, human interactions like, say, Private Joke ®, the card game I invented in 2023 which strengthens language learning through creativity and laughter.
I’ve aligned some of my favourtie quotes from Sal’s book with my own reflections on just how valuable those offline interactions can be and why they are absolutely necessary to cultivate 21st century learners who are resilient, communicate well, and are able to think outside the box. These varied reflections come from my own experience tutoring Chinese students, piloting the offline version of Private Joke ® in schools, and some of my academic education research.
Afterall, the most valuable human skill is not necessarily reading, but the ability to read between the lines.
How can deeply-embedded AI in education cultivate adaptable, kind and well-rounded citizens of tomorrow?
“Schooling is also about building human connection through friendships, shared adventures, and mutual support.” / “If kids could get microlessons in the form of on-demand video, at their own time and pace, class time could be used for Socratic dialogue, collaborative assignments, and supported student work.”
When you think of “a school”, what comes to mind? The schooling you experienced is going to be unrecognizable from that of your children … and that’s a good thing. My first lesson in social skills was aged 7, standing on the corner of the playground crying my eyes out with bloody knuckles having been walloped by a game of conkers by the kids in the year above. What did I learn? To make bigger, heavier conkers and instead of playing (badly), swap them for my favourite biscuits, like a sort of mini mafia madame. Ahh, the good old days.
The vast majority of my transformative school memories are emotional, humorous, and deeply sentimental. The organic, spontaneous way in which humans interact with one another cannot and should not be lost on us. Yes it would have been less painful to play conkers through a screen, but would that have pushed me to think creatively to solve real-world problems? Probably not.
One of the most memorable pilots I did for Private Joke ® was with a digital-only school; they’d transitioned during the pandemic swapping crumbling textbooks for sleek laptops, and much to the despair of certain teachers, had remained so. When it comes to language-learning, AI can provide incredibly enriching environments. Marking had been made easier, resources were easily-accessed, and the digital transformation was facilitating a more personalised approach to language learning.
But supplementing this with offline materials is essential to create authentic, human experiences. The teachers spoke of how their students, “lit up” at physically playing with the letter tiles and chatting to one another. After all, the true fun of language learning lies in traveling, making global friendships, and the messy, human awkwardness of mistaking one word for another, or literally translating an idiom that just doesn’t quite hit the spot, erupting the audience into fits of giggles.
Will AI destroy or enhance human creativity?
“Our creativity gains value when we are exposed to the creativity of others. We become more creative when we brainstorm with other creative people … a generative AI world will only accelerate this process.”
Contrary to popular fears, creativity is not finite. It is a muscle that can be strengthened. During the Private Joke ® pilots, teachers were finding that those who were struggling to invent words were (sneakily) using Chat GPT. Initially I thought this was harmful, that students could become over-dependent on AI when they felt stuck, and miss out on the creative, communicative process of word innovation. But they were only using it to get from 0-10, with 11-100 being supported by their teacher and peers. Bingo!
Creativity is something the UK government has been attesting is essential to become 21st century-ready, and yet as a skill, it is so misunderstood. The difficulty in quantifying and assessing creativity acts as a barrier. When inventing words in Private Joke ®, it was typically the word that just sounded the funniest to the group. There was a certain nuance that Chat GPT couldn’t capture when inventing words for funny, human experiences: the subtlety of a flickering smile, an old joke between two peers, how one word just sounds funnier than another, or the way two words in different languages just align beautifully.
Sal advocates for AI as a tool to free up time for more creative and critical thinking activities. Private Joke ® exemplifies what such creative endeavors can look like when technology steps aside, reinforcing his vision of education as a balance between structured (AI-supported) and unstructured (human-driven) learning. It’s a fine balance, but wholly possible with some fine-tuning.
What should we be assessing to ensure the next generation of learners are ready for the challenges of the 21st century?
“By measuring skills long thought to be immeasurable, such as communication, creativity and curiosity, it will naturally motivate the system to care a lot more about developing the whole person.”
Technology can measure traditional education metrics, but what about empathy, collaboration, and humour? If we want to cultivate adaptable, emotionally intelligent citizens, we need assessments that prioritise these traits. The potential for games like Private Joke® lies in their ability to foster these skills by encouraging students to interpret body language, adapt to group dynamics, and navigate social nuances – all vital in a world where human connection is a competitive advantage.
In my research at Cambridge, I looked at how bilingual poetry can help native Chinese students to foster both an English and Chinese language identity. I’d seen that many of my students were shrugging off their “Chineseness” and instead adopting almost crudely British accents and mannerisms. And yet China has such an incredibly illustrious heritage. Why did my students feel like they had to be one or the other? The poetry was a way to nurture their identities and celebrate both. You could never “assess” such a profound collection of poems, but you could, for example, assess for participation, peer reviews, and language quality.
Sal envisions a future where AI supports structured learning, allowing more time for unstructured, human-centered exploration such as poetry and offline games. He talks a lot about the “educated bravery” that is needed for this to happen – educators who aren’t afraid to shake things up, flip their classrooms, and break away from traditional conventions. If his vision materialises, education will not only prepare learners for a 21st century workforce, but also for a life rich with creativity, connection, and compassion. I personally am very excited for this outcome.
Linky Links:
Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionise Education (& Why That’s A Good Thing) by Sal Khan. Buy it on Amazon here https://www.amazon.com/Brave-New-Words-Revolutionize-Education/dp/059365695
AI Opportunities Action Plan: government response https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-opportunities-action-plan-government-response/ai-opportunities-action-plan-government-response
England is blue and China is red: a case study of two Chinese adolescents’ expression of linguistic identity through the construction of English as a second language (ESL) poetry https://cerj.educ.cam.ac.uk/archive/v8_2021/
Olive Halsall 
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