This season EdTech founder Libby Hills and AI researcher Owen Henkel continue to speak with leading researchers, practitioners and educators on the EdTechnical podcast series about the cutting edge of AI in education. They will break down complex AI concepts into non-technical insights to better understand what the research says and help educators sift the useful insights from the AI hype.

In the first episode of a new season of EdTechnical, Libby and Owen speak with Sam Gilbert, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. Sam is one of the leading researchers studying ‘cognitive offloading’, the use of tools and technologies to support thinking and memory.

Are tools like ChatGPT making us cognitively weaker? Humans have been offloading for thousands of years in ever-advancing ways: supporting memory through written notes, calculators, GPS, and large language models. There is a difference between losing specific information we've offloaded and losing underlying cognitive abilities. The distinction matters for thinking about AI's impact on learning and education. “We need to build up foundational abilities, and then offloading is very useful after we’ve acquired them”, Sam says.

Sam Gilbert

Sam Gilbert is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London (UCL), where he leads the Metacognition and Executive Functions Group. His research focuses on memory, cognitive control, metacognition, and cognitive offloading. He is widely recognised for his work on how people use external tools and technologies to support thinking and memory.

Links

Cognitive Offloading (Risko & Gilbert, 2016): Cognitive Offloading - PubMed

UCL Metacognition & Executive Functions Group: Metacognition & Executive Functions | UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences

Join us on social media:

• BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)
• Listen to all episodes of EdTechnical here: https://bold.expert/ed-technical
• Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter: https://bold.expert/newsletter
• Stay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning: https://bold.expert

Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design; Anabel Altenburg for content production.

In this EdTechnical short, Libby and Owen unpack ‘AI agents’ and what they mean for education. Agents are large language models connected to tools and workflows that are allowed to take actions like searching, summarising, and completing multi-step tasks. Recent progress comes from the combination of stronger models and better systems for connecting agents to external tools, enabling more complex and autonomous outputs.

Applying agents to education brings a tension between flexibility and reliability. Agentic systems can be useful for teachers, who operate across varied contexts and need adaptable support. For students, especially in structured learning, too much flexibility can reduce clarity and introduce inconsistency.

This matters because effective learning depends on structure and progression. The value of agents in education depends on how well they are applied to the specific task and learning goal.

Links:

• OpenClaw & Moltbook: The viral story of AI agents building their own Reddit-like social network https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/30/openclaws-ai-assistants-are-now-building-their-own-social-network/
• Claude Research Mode: Anthropic's explainer on deep research https://www.anthropic.com/news/research

Join us on social media:

• BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)
• Listen to all episodes of EdTechnical here: https://bold.expert/ed-technical
• Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter: https://bold.expert/newsletter
• Stay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning: https://bold.expert

Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design; Anabel Altenburg for content production.

At this year's SXSW EDU, Owen joined a panel on what it takes to make voice AI for assessment work in classrooms.

In this live recording of the session, the panelists untangle how voice AI works, and what testing this technology with kindergartners looks like in rural Georgia. They explain why the distinction between capturing what a student said versus what they meant matters enormously for literacy assessment and why questions of privacy, equity and model bias are not afterthoughts but design requirements.

Where does voice AI genuinely open up new possibilities in education, and where is the evidence still thin?

The other panelists were Patti Ura, Director of Learning Technology Research at Digital Promise, Amelia Kelly, VP of Data Science at Curriculum Associates and former CTO of Soapbox Labs, and Kristen Hoff, Head of Measurement at Curriculum Associates.

Links:

• Soapbox Labs, now part of Curriculum Associates
• Digital Promise
• OpenAI Whisper, the open source speech-to-text model

Join us on social media:

• BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)
• Listen to all episodes of EdTechnical here: https://bold.expert/ed-technical
• Subscribe to BOLD’s newsletter: https://bold.expert/newsletter
• Stay up to date with all the latest research on child development and learning: https://bold.expert

Credits: Sarah Myles for production support; Josie Hills for graphic design; Anabel Altenburg for content production.