EduGPT hackathon with Partnership VO Delflanden

Today we had a wonderful and intensive hackathon with the Samenwerkingsverband VO Delflanden focused on EduGPT, AI Companions, and the support of potential school refusers. Several schools have already been using EduGPT for some time, and a hackathon is a great way to exchange previous experiences, to design (further) together, to test, make improvements, and reflect from practical experience.

Together with teachers, coaches, and mentors, we worked on feedback, coaching, AI literacy, differentiation, guided learning, and making learning processes visible. Not from the perspective of “AI as an answer machine”, but from the question of how technology can support human contact, guidance, and professional judgement.

One of the components that received a lot of valuable feedback was the new Alerts & Signalling functionality within EduGPT. We demonstrated live how signals from interactions can be made visible within a safe educational context, always with a human-in-the-loop approach. The discussions about this were open, critical, and extremely valuable. The combination of enthusiasm and professional caution helps us to further develop technology that supports teachers and mentors.

In addition, existing AI Companions were improved today, new companions were designed, and prompt sets were refined. The various teams tested scenarios, shared use-cases, and provided each other with new insights.

It was wonderful to see how quickly knowledge sharing emerges when people experiment together with a shared mission.

It was also remarkable to see how many concrete ideas emerged for further development. Think of the further expansion of the signalling dashboard, enhancement of memory functionalities, AI Companions linked together for differentiation, LMS integrations, and so on.

It was not only about building, but also about how to test responsibly and how to make guidance visible. Also, how to substantiate why something works.

I also had the opportunity to raffle off my book "The Art of Living (Together) with AI": https://lnkd.in/eWQpThAZ.

Many thanks to everyone who participated today, gave feedback, and actively contributed. And of course, huge thanks to the team at CivAI for all the hard work behind the scenes. Also, a big thank you to our brand new CivAI Certified Trainers who joined us today: Rianne Kous, Marien Zonnenberg✔ and Alexander Dijk.

In addition, every participating school/organisation will be assigned its own CivAI Certified Trainer for further support, sparring, and ongoing development towards the next academic year.

In the coming school year, we will continue to research this approach, use-cases, and effects together with the field. We will also make a broader call for this at a later stage.

Once again, thank you all 🙏 Also for the perfect organisation EJay van Baaren and Judith Barendse.