Mr Hassan Baickdeli, Head of Emerging Technology and Solutions at Lenovo, sat down with Education Matters at EduTECH to share his thoughts on using AI to personalise professional development for educators.
Artificial intelligence, and how it can be applied to education, was the unofficial theme at the two-day EduTECH Australia Congress and Expo in Melbourne in August.
For Mr Hassan Baickdeli, Head of Emerging Technology and Solutions at Lenovo, who was at the event, understanding what AI can deliver for the individual educator – and students and educational institutions – and how data needs to be structured for them to leverage that, is of the upmost importance.
“It’s all about preparing for the promise of AI,” Mr Baickdeli says.
“Our capabilities, including our services and software solutions, are able to assist with that, but we’re also focusing on professional development,” he says.
“We’re giving educators an understanding of how they can leverage artificial intelligence, especially with our key partnerships with organisations like Microsoft and what they’re bringing forward, in terms of Copilot and its capabilities.”
AI, and Microsoft Copilot specifically, is alleviating challenges associated with lesson planning and marking assessments on time.
“AI is driving search and capability for educators to inform themselves of new ways of finding information. Newer technology such as Neural Processing Units, NPUs, really enhance that from an on-device perspective as well, instead of polling back to the cloud,” Mr Baickdeli says.
“As a technology provider, where we’re focusing our strengths and striving to provide differentiation to schools and educational institutions is how they prepare for AI, and where different elements of AI make sense for them.”
Lenovo’s booth at EduTECH was designed around preparing for the promise of AI, professional development for educators, and preparation for the real world, including how to support students to put their best foot forward outside of education. Lenovo’s booth also showcased its high-end solutions in the professional workstation space and the esports arena, including grass roots esports inside schools.
Beyond its traditional range of solutions, partnered with its one-to-one programs for educators and students, Mr Baickdeli says Lenovo is focused on where it is taking tech’s capabilities off the back of what its customers need, such as tailored lesson plans.
“Leveraging elements of Microsoft Copilot and searching not only what’s available on their own stack but going out to the web and getting examples of what might be relevant for a specific module for a specific lesson, is key,” he says.
“It’s no longer a web search – it’s a Copilot search, whether that be on Microsoft Edge, or whether they’ve got Copilot as part of their Microsoft 365 license. It’s something they can leverage the web for, or something they can search internally for. So, for example, if there are any educators at that school or institution who might have had a subject that they’ve created a lesson plan for that’s been relevant, they can search that, and it’s all structured in a way where it presents both searches from the web and from their own internal infrastructure as well.”
Microsoft Copilot is not only a tool for educators; Mr Baickdeli also uses it. He leverages it as part of Microsoft Teams, using it to search what’s on his own Lenovo network infrastructure and provide him information that he has access to and that’s been authorised for his user profile, plus run a web search as well, essentially conducting a two-pronged search.
Mr Baickdeli says, for Lenovo, AI in education is focused on the educator.
“AI at this stage is more for the educator and we’re focusing on assisting educators in how to leverage it. Just like VR [virtual reality] when it first came out, it was not recommended for kids under the age of 13. AI is unchartered territory. Everybody is talking about it. It’s a big buzz, just like people 15 years ago were talking about Cloud and the promise that came with Cloud – now it’s standard, everybody’s got it,” Mr Baickdeli says.
“It’s about understanding where AI is going to make a difference for the educator. No two schools are the same, let alone two classrooms, so it’s about understanding the majority of the capability that would come with a profile of an educator, and then making everything accessible and available at their fingertips.”
Visiting schools and meeting with teachers as part of his solutions-based role, Mr Baickdeli says he’s seeing a paradigm shift with traditional ways of teaching and learning transforming to digital ways of teaching and learning.
“With AI comes a whole lot of capability and enablement that could ‘talk’ to assisting educators, providing independent curated learning journeys for students through those educators, around security inside school campuses,” he says.
“When you say ‘AI’, it talks to so many different things, and I think that’s where schools are at the moment – they’re trying to understand how it’s going to make a difference for them, and at what part of their organisation, not necessarily the educator or the student but the broad spectrum beyond.”
Mr Baickdeli says schools are coming to grips with understanding how AI is going to make a positive impact. With something as powerful as AI, school leaders want to do their due diligence to ensure that they’ve taken the time to understand its capabilities. Due diligence is par for the course for Mr Baickdeli.
“I leverage artificial intelligence on a daily basis – I use it to provide guidance on particular things that I’m unfamiliar with. If I’m learning about a new piece of technology or new processes with regards to implementation of technology, I ask it for guidance. For example, I ask AI what would be some considerations when implementing x,y,z, and then it provides me with prompts, and I go and do my due diligence. I still do my research, but it provides me a guide,” he says.
Mr Baickdeli is also piloting Microsoft Copilot as part of his role as Head of Emerging Technology and Solutions.
“I don’t need to write meeting notes anymore. When I’m hosting a Microsoft Teams meetings with people from all different parts of the globe, I hit the record and transcribe button five minutes before the end of my meeting. It provides comprehensive meeting notes and follow-up action items assigned to people on the call. That’s where it makes my life easier,” he says.
But will AI make educators lives easier? Mr Baickdeli believes so, despite teachers’ varied age demographic, different levels of digital literacy, and traditional ways of teaching and learning.
“My advice to any educator out there – and I’ve worked with multiple schools and implemented different kinds of technologies within schools – is have a go. Don’t be afraid to at least try it out, because it’s here, it’s becoming mainstream. To at least gain an understanding of whether it’s going to benefit you or not is the first step,” he says.
“My personal view is that in 12 months’ time, with the Neural Processing Units that are coming out on Windows-enabled PCs, there’s going to be a whole lot more capability because at the moment, AI polls back to the Cloud to do all its computing, whereas with NPUs, it’s going to be able to do a whole lot more on the device, which will provide the user with faster responses, better levels of security, more customisation and so forth.
“I think that’s going to be really compelling because it will start to learn ‘you’ and provide more responses that are relevant for ‘you’. It’ll start to cater and curate content for ‘you’. I’m genuinely excited for it, because it’ll be more personalised and more customised to what matters to me as an individual.”
Combined with Microsoft learning, security, and IT management solutions, Lenovo’s innovative technology is shaping the future of education. The Lenovo 13w Yoga Gen 2, powered by Windows 11 Pro, supports instructors and administrators across every hybrid learning environment. Upgradable memory and storage options easily adapt to increased workloads, providing faster connectivity for virtual lessons and peer collaboration. Windows 11 makes it easier for everyone.
