Craig Barton interviews guests from the wonderful world of education about their approaches to teaching, educational research and more. All show notes, resources and videos here: https://www.mrbartonmaths.com/blog/
Kris Boulton returns for the AI in Education mini-series. He shares how Claude has become fully woven into his daily work, gives a candid first-hand account of his visit to Alpha School in New York, and digs into where AI now sits for creating high-quality maths resources — and where it still falls short. Access the show notes here: podcast.mrbartonmaths.com/224-ai-in-education-with-kris-boulton
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Episode details
Kris Boulton returns for the AI in Education mini-series. He shares how Claude has become fully woven into his daily work, gives a candid first-hand account of his visit to Alpha School in New York, and digs into where AI now sits for creating high-quality maths resources — and where it still falls short.
Talking points
- Kris’s update on Unstoppable Learning, the company he co-founded with Naveen Rizvi, and its mission to make failure in mathematics obsolete
- How AI — particularly Claude’s Opus 4.7 and the Cowork feature — has become fully integrated into Kris’s daily life, from triaging emails and running his to-do list to teaching himself to code
- A detailed, on-the-ground account of his visit to Alpha School in New York: what surprised him, what’s working, and what isn’t
- The “two hours of academics, free afternoons” model, and the clean distinction between substantive knowledge (what we know) and disciplinary knowledge (how we come to know it)
- Why there are no teachers at Alpha School — only “guides” who never help with academic questions — and what that means for the profession
- The controversial practice of paying students, and whether extrinsic rewards really do undermine intrinsic motivation
- Reconciling the headache–aspirin approach and inquiry with Kris’s atomisation philosophy and his “never ask a question they don’t already know the answer to” rule — and why it all comes down to stages
- Where AI currently sits for resource creation: excellent at generating practice task sets, but still unreliable at sequencing and identifying categorical atom types
- Kris’s new “Unstoppable Arithmetic” programme, and how Claude made it possible to build at scale in days rather than months
- Practical advice for teachers weighing up building by hand vs. downloading vs. using AI — and whether the top models are worth the cost
Video:
Links from Kris:
- Kris’ Substack – Unstoppable Learning
- Unstoppable Learning website (unstoppablelearning.co.uk)
New stuff I have been working on:
- My Tips for Teachers Guides to… series
- My updated mrbartonmnaths website
My usual plugs
- You can help support the podcast (and get an interactive transcript of this episode) via my Patreon page at patreon.com/mrbartonmaths
- If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the show, then please visit this page
- You can sign up for my free Tips for Teachers newsletter and my free Eedi newsletter
- My online courses are here: craigbarton.podia.com
- My books are “Tips for Teachers“, “Reflect, Expect, Check, Explain”, “How I wish I’d taught maths”, and my Tips for Teachers Guide to… series.