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- Getting started
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- How do I sign up for Aila?
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- You can sign up to access Aila and our other AI experiments{" "}
- here.
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- How much does it cost to use Aila?
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- As with all of Oak's resources, Aila is completely free to
- use. There are some fair use limits that we have applied that you
- may reach if your use appears to be excessive.
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- What are the system requirements for using Aila?
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- We aim to make our resources as accessible as possible. Aila will
- be available to any teacher with access to a laptop or computer
- and the Internet. We currently don't support mobile usage.
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- What is a beta product?
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- Aila is in the beta phase, and we are still actively testing and
- developing Aila. This phase helps identify issues by allowing
- teachers to use the Aila in real-life conditions. Aila is not
- perfect, and will make some mistakes!{" "}
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- Your feedback is essential
- {" "}
- to refine and improve Aila.
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- Is there a tutorial or guide available to help me get started?
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- Aila provides helpful tips and prompts for getting started. If you
- need additional support, you can take a look at our{" "}
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- help
- {" "}
- section, or contact us.
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- Features and functionality
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- What features does Aila offer?
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- Aila offers a range of features to help teachers create
- high-quality lesson plans and resources. It is designed to ensure
- that lesson plans meet national curriculum standards. You can edit
- your lesson plan using Aila, quickly generating downloadable
- lesson plans, editable slide decks, and starter and exit quizzes.
- You may also choose to adapt or add to the resources after
- download.
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- Can I customise lessons?
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- Yes! Aila is designed to guide you through the process of
- co-creating a lesson. The more you specify to Aila, the better
- your lesson will be. You can ask Aila to adapt the lesson to suit
- your geographical context, the reading age of students in your
- class, or any other additional needs your pupils may have. The
- materials you produce with Aila are also fully editable.
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- What are the advantages of using Aila?
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- Aila has been based upon Oak's{" "}
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- curriculum principles
- {" "}
- Aila is designed to take you through the process that an expert
- teacher would use to plan a lesson; starting with your lesson
- outcome and breaking that down into manageable chunks of learning,
- our learning cycles.
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- It encourages you to think about the prior knowledge that students
- will require for the lesson, the vocabulary that will need to be
- explicitly taught during the lesson, the key knowledge that you
- want pupils to take from the lesson and the common misconceptions
- or errors that pupils make in this topic.
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- Our learning cycles are designed to ensure clear explanations - we
- provide image and slide text suggestions to allow for dual coding,
- we've ensured slide design minimises extraneous cognitive
- load for students and built-in regular checks for understanding
- tasks followed by lots of practice for students.
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- The process is designed to be flexible. You can tweak and change
- the lesson as it is being created to suit the needs of your
- pupils, as you know them best! The beauty of Aila is that it
- won't produce your generic off-the-shelf lesson; it will help
- you craft a lesson that is accessible and appropriate for your
- students.
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- Aila uses a technique called retrieval augmented generation (RAG)
- to incorporate the high-quality Oak content, which has been
- carefully and expertly created by real-life teachers and
- quality-checked by subject experts. This should improve the
- accuracy of the lessons being produced. Aila has been designed for
- UK teachers so you are less likely to see Americanisms and the
- content will be more closely aligned with the English national
- curriculum.
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- Why has Oak created Aila when other AI assistants are already
- available?
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- Aila draws on existing Oak content, which has been carefully and
- expertly created by real-life teachers and quality-checked by
- subject experts. Aila has been designed around the Oak{" "}
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- curriculum principles
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- , which are national curriculum aligned and geared towards UK
- users. With Aila, you're less likely to see Americanisms, and
- the content will align much more closely with the requirements of
- teachers in England.
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- What are the limitations of Aila's features?
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- We know that images are really important to support explanations
- and Aila doesn't currently produce images or diagrams. Image
- production is a feature that will come with a future iteration of
- Aila, but to help teachers with this aspect of lesson design, we
- currently provide an 'image suggestion' to help you find
- an appropriate image with Google.
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- We are aware that complex concepts may require more than one slide
- to support their explanation. We are developing this feature but
- think this is the part of a lesson that will need the most
- development from a teacher after export.
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- Large Language Models are not as good at producing high-quality
- content for some subjects and this is a limitation of Aila. We
- know that the output isn't as good in certain subjects yet,
- in particular STEM subjects and modern foreign languages. We are
- actively working to improve these subjects.
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- Why does Aila only output in Oak format?
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- When designing Aila, we wanted pedagogical rigour to be at its
- core. Oak's lesson design is underpinned by research in
- learning and cognitive science, which has formed the structure of
- the lessons that Aila produces. All outputs are fully editable, so
- you can update them to your preferred formats.
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- Why is there only one type of questioning in the quizzes?
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- Multiple-choice questions are a really effective way of quickly
- assessing pupils' mastery of content, but they take a really
- long time to write, so we have included lots to save you time.
- After export, you can edit these to remove the options and make
- them short answer questions or even add additional question types
- to your slides.
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- Aila is still very much in development and we're aiming to
- add more question types in future.
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- Support and assistance
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- Is support available if I encounter any issues or have questions?
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- Yes, we provide comprehensive support to assist with any issues or
- questions users may have. You can contact us via{" "}
- email.
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- Can I provide feedback or suggest improvements for Aila?
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- Yes, please do! We love to hear how users are finding our
- resources and how we can improve them. Submit your{" "}
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- feedback or suggestions{" "}
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- Are there resources available for troubleshooting common problems?
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- The more feedback we receive from users, the more we can identify
- common problems and provide troubleshooting tips.
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- Accessibility
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- Are there features in place to support diverse learners and
- educators?
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- We want as many people as possible to be able to use Aila. You
- should be able to; change colours, contrast levels, and fonts;
- read and use most of the website while zoomed in up to 400%;
- navigate most of the website using just a keyboard; navigate most
- of the website using speech recognition software; listen to most
- of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent
- versions of JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver). View our{" "}
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- full accessibility statement
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- Can lesson plans be adapted for students with SEND?
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- Of course! You can prompt Aila to factor in your pupils'
- needs when generating your lesson plan. Try asking Aila to produce
- texts of different reading ages, sentence starters, or alternative
- activities to support pupils during the additional materials
- section of the lesson. You are also able to download and edit all
- resources after you have created your lesson.
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- Usage and best practices
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- What are some best practices for maximising the effectiveness of
- Aila?
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- Work with Aila to co-create your lesson. Before you proceed to the
- next steps of co-creating your lesson with Aila, it is important
- to check that you are happy with your lesson outcomes and learning
- cycle outcomes, as this will determine the content for the rest of
- the lesson.
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- If you want the content to be adapted for a specific geographical
- context, reading age or a specific pupil need, tell Aila at the
- start so that that is taken into consideration when designing the
- lesson content.
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- The additional materials section of the lesson is the most
- flexible. If you would like teacher instructions for a practical
- lesson, model answers, essay-style questions, narratives for your
- explanations or texts differentiated by reading age for your
- classes, just ask at the end of the lesson planning process and
- Aila will create these for you.
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- Technical
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- How does Aila work?
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- Aila is built to use Chat GPT4, but we are also evaluating other
- models. We have written a 9,000-word prompt that provides very
- specific guidance on what excellence looks like for each section
- of a lesson.
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- Aila also uses retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to integrate
- the high-quality content of Oak's human-planned lessons into
- the lessons being delivered. This means that the accuracy of the
- content produced should be closely aligned with the needs of
- teachers in England.
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- Updates and enhancements
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- Are there plans for future enhancements or new features?
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- Yes, we strive to constantly improve our resources, taking into
- account feedback from our users - Aila is still very much in
- development. We aim to release future iterations of Aila that
- produce images and diagrams. We are also developing Aila to ensure
- that it has pedagogical rigour for a range of different subjects.
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- Can users suggest features for future updates?
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- Of course, we would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for
- other features that would support your teaching. Please{" "}
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- give us your feedback!
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- How often are updates released for Aila?
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- We're still in the beta phase, which means that whilst
- we're allowing teachers to use it, it's still prone to
- bugs and errors, and is still under constant development.
- We're constantly receiving feedback and aim to improve and
- iterate on an almost daily basis!
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- How will Aila be evaluated?
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- The team at Oak constantly evaluates Aila, and we are designing
- multiple approaches to this. We carry out consistency checks and
- ensure that it follows the instructions we have built into the
- prompt, and evaluate the quality of content being produced.
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- We aim to evaluate several factors, such as Americanisms, cultural
- biases, the appropriateness of the literacy level, checking that
- the learning cycles increase in difficulty, and more.
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- Nonetheless, generative AI will make mistakes, and the outputs
- should be checked carefully.
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- Other concerns
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- Is Oak trying to replace teachers with AI?
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- Absolutely not! At Oak, we share the brilliance of teachers from
- across the country through our resources, and our Aila is no
- different. It is designed to keep teachers in the driving seat,
- with support from AI to reduce their workload.
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- Data privacy and security
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- Is Aila safe to use?
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- Generative AI will make mistakes, and no two outputs are the same.
- With that in mind, it's important to check any AI-generated
- content thoroughly before using it in the classroom. We have put
- in place a number of technical and policy measures to minimise the
- risks that generative AI presents but care should still be taken,
- for example, you must not input personally identifiable
- information into Aila, and this is in breach of the terms and
- conditions of use.
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- Can I have unlimited use?
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- In order to prevent misuse, we've restricted and protected
- the volume of requests that can be made, lessons, and resources
- that can be generated. If you're reaching these limits,
- we'd love to hear from you, and you can{" "}
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- request a higher limit.
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- What ethical measures are you putting in place?
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- Generative AI is a new and cutting-edge technology, and it's
- important that anyone developing AI products actively takes into
- account privacy, security and ethical considerations. We have
- looked into emerging guidance and governance on generative AI,
- including;
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- UNESCO's core principles on{" "}
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- a human-rights centred approach to the Ethics of AI
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+ Getting started
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- US office for Edtech;{" "}
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- Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and
- Learning
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+ Features and functionality
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- UK DfE position on{" "}
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- Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education
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+ Support and assistance
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- Aila is designed to:
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- keep the human in the loop, informing and involving expert
- teachers and educators in the process
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+ Accessibility
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+ Usage and best practices
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- not involve the input of personal information to LLMs
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+ Technical
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- allow us to evaluate cultural biases that may be present in
- the generated content
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+ Updates and enhancements
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- create guardrails around the generative AI to improve
- pedagogical alignment
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+ Other concerns
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- be transparent and explainable to users; we openly share the
- underlying prompts
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+ Data privacy and security
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- Aila
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- Why did you decide to name Oak's AI lesson assistant, Aila?
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- The name is an acronym for 'AI lesson assistant'. We
- wanted the name to have 'AI' in it, as our research
- found that teachers would be more likely to use an AI product if
- it was clear that it was AI-powered and could save them time.
- Further research into the name led to some deeper connections
- which helped to solidify our decision. 'Aila' means
- 'oak tree' in Hebrew, and in Scottish Gaelic, Aila means
- 'from the strong place'. We believe the rigour and
- quality of Aila stems from the strong foundation provided by both
- Oak's strong curriculum principles and the high-quality,
- teacher-generated content that we have been able to integrate into
- the lesson development process.
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- Why did you give it a human name?
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- In Aila's initial testing phases, users reported being unsure
- of how to 'talk' to the assistant. Giving it a name
- humanises the chatbot and encourages more natural conversation.
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