Foundational Impact

Welcome to Foundational Impact, a podcast series that focuses on education and artificial intelligence from a nonprofit perspective. Hosted by Daniel Emerson, the Executive Director of Good Future Foundation, a non profit whose mission is to equip educators to confidently prepare all students, regardless of their background, to benefit from and succeed in an AI infused world.This podcast series sets out to explore the trials and tribulations of building a non profit from the ground up, while also investigating the changing world of technology in life, learning, and work.

Foundational Impact is a technology podcast hosted by Good Future Foundation, with 39 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Good Future Foundation hosts Foundational Impact, a technology show with 39 episodes published.

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  Episode #38

  Stop buying tools before you’ve answered this

  Jul 21, 202636 minS1

  Our guest in this episode is Dr Fiona Aubrey-Smith, an independent researcher who studies the relationship between pedagogy and digital tools, and the lived experience of students in the classroom. Fiona opens by explaining why identical classroom practices can produce completely different outcomes depending on the belief system behind them. Her example of two teachers greeting students at the classroom door in seemingly the same way, but for very different underlying reasons, shows how policies alone don't determine impact; the intent behind them does. The conversation moves into belonging and dignity, including research showing that struggling students typically ask for help only 1-3 times in a lesson regardless of how much support they need, while confident students almost never ask to be pushed further. Daniel and Fiona discuss the tension between protecting a student's dignity and the value of productive vulnerability. From there, Fiona lays out her framework for introducing technology into schools: start with the purpose of school, define the role of the learner, describe what the learning experience should feel like, define the role of the teacher, and only then decide which tools will help deliver it. Starting with the tool itself, before asking why, is a costly and common mistake. Two school case studies illustrate this in practice. At Haileybury, an embedded one-to-one, on-demand digital provision (available at the point of need rather than simply issued to every student) has freed teachers to rethink classroom layout entirely. At Connect Education Trust, a similar model has extended digital skills and connectivity into the home, empowering families to support learning without needing their own digital capability, coinciding with outstanding inspection outcomes. On generative AI, Fiona shares some thoughtful use cases she sees, such as chaining AI tools to help secondary students revise, and using AI image generation to help primary students with their descriptive writing. She wraps up with a challenge for school leaders. Rather than starting with policies or tools, ask what your school would leave behind if it closed tomorrow, since that gap is where the real human value lies. From there, let AI and digital tools take on the automation and acceleration, so teachers are freed up for the parts of the job only a human can do.

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  Episode #37

  Are Young People Forming Relationships with AI?

  Jun 30, 202631 minS1

  What does AI mean for the way young people relate to each other and to technology itself? That's the focus of the conversation in this episode when Daniel speaks with Jonathan Baggaley, CEO of the PSHE Association and former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. It begins, perhaps unexpectedly, with a Sun Ra poster. Jono uses it to make a point that runs through everything that follows. That is, many of the narratives about AI are being presented as inevitable, and educators have both the right and the responsibility to push back on that. PSHE has been on a long road to statutory recognition in England. Jono maps that journey from the near-miss of the 2010 election wash-up to the introduction of compulsory Relationships, Sex and Health Education in 2019. The results are becoming visible. Between 2022 and last year, the share of young people rating their RSE as good or very good roughly doubled. Yet the subject now faces a technology landscape that changes faster than any curriculum can follow, and it was never designed for that. Much of the conversation focuses on something schools have been slow to address, which is the emotional attachment to AI chatbots. Evidence from a Reddit study found that 60–70% of people who had developed an AI relationship hadn't gone looking for one. They'd simply been chatting. Jono explains this isn't surprising as humans are neurologically primed to anthropomorphise from infancy, attributing intention and agency to moving shapes before they can speak. Even Jono, who understands exactly what large language models are, has caught himself feeling the presence of something in a chatbot conversation. The question is how schools can build resilience to that instinct by giving young people the understanding they need to use them critically. Language, Jono argues, is part of the problem. The word "chatbot" suggests conversation, when what's actually happening is an engagement with a probabilistic automation system. Shifting that framing is one starting point. Another is cross-curricular. Computing can explain the move from rule-based to data-driven AI, citizenship can explore the environmental and geopolitical implications, and PSHE can build on its existing relationships curriculum to examine what young people are and aren't getting from these interactions. The episode sits with a harder question too. Consumer AI is designed for frictionless ease, age verification is often a checkbox, and young people will encounter these tools whether schools introduce them or not. But Jono is clear-eyed about what the evidence shows. When young people genuinely understand what they're dealing with and what they're trading away, they are willing to increase their own friction. None of this requires a new policy or a perfect tool. The conversation is the intervention, and any curriculum that starts with the human already has what it needs.

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  Episode #36

  Education on the Front Line

  Jun 9, 202632 minS1

  What does great education look like when the classroom is a refugee camp? When the teacher is under-resourced, under-supported, and still showing up? We are delighted to welcome Jane Mann, Managing Director of the Partnership for Education and Education Director for International Education at Cambridge University Press and Assessment. Jane leads work spanning 30 countries, including some of the world's most fragile and complex contexts, from refugee camps to conflict zones. And while no two contexts are ever quite the same, she is clear that the fundamentals of great education do not change. Wherever you are in the world, the foundations look the same: a coherent curriculum, meaningful assessment, well-supported teachers, strong leadership, and quality materials. In conversation with Daniel, Jane reflects on the role of technology and the importance of letting context lead. Where it is available and appropriate, technology can be transformative. But it carries real risks too: widening equity gaps and creating new vulnerabilities in settings where a device is a valuable and coveted object. On AI specifically, rather than rushing it into students’ hands, Cambridge's focus is on the adults in the room to empower teachers, streamline curriculum mapping, support lesson planning in under-resourced regions like sub-Saharan Africa, and help governments build policy frameworks. The HP Cambridge EdTech Policy Fellowship extends this work further to facilitate structured cross-national learning and conversations and drive systemic change. Tune in for a conversation that is as expansive in its thinking as it is grounded in the realities of education on the front line.

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  Episode #34

  Philanthropy Filling the AI Education Gap

  May 19, 202630 minS1

  The conversation between Elizabeth Moore and Daniel in this episode provides a window into how the Gates Foundation is navigating the evolving landscape of AI in K-12 education. As Deputy Director with the U.S. K-12 team, Elizabeth explains that the Gates Foundation operates at multiple levels to improve classroom instruction through research, quality standards, and strategic investments. This includes influencing frontier AI labs like OpenAI and Google, developing evaluation frameworks, and creating networks to disseminate evidence-based practices. They choose this approach hoping to help bridge gaps that neither government nor markets adequately address, particularly important as AI development outpaces traditional curriculum cycles. One concerning trend that Elizabeth observes when discussing AI adoption in schools is the well-meaning but counterproductive “no AI” policies that prevent students from developing critical skills for their futures. She, instead, advocates for thoughtful implementation guided by clear educational purposes and robust evaluation of outcomes. The conversation also highlights mathematics as an area with AI potential. Elizabeth describes how AI can support personalised learning by instantly diagnosing specific prerequisite skill gaps and delivering targeted instruction which is a process that traditionally required extensive teacher time and effort. Other suggestions for school leaders that are mentioned by Elizabeth in the episode include: Involve teachers in evaluating AI tools by encouraging them to test the systems' boundaries Align on the specific educational problems AI should solve before implementation Look beyond data security to broader considerations of pedagogical quality Create transparent communication channels with parents about AI's purpose and impact Throughout the discussion, Elizabeth emphasises the need for healthy skepticism about AI-generated data, balanced with recognition of its potential to enhance parent engagement and address learning gaps when implemented with clear purpose and ongoing assessment. Tune in to discover how one of education's most powerful philanthropies is working behind the scenes to ensure AI serves teachers and students, not the other way around.

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  Episode #33

  When Your Students Trusts AI Over You

  May 5, 202627 minS1

  Our guest for this episode is Calvin Eden, the founder of LoudSpeaker who works with students across the UK through high-energy and interactive workshops on topics like resilience, emotional intelligence, and healthy relationships. Calvin meets young people in his everyday work, and seeing AI tools become a growing part of students' social and emotional lives reinforces his belief in the urgent need for schools to strengthen young people's confidence, communication skills, and sense of belonging. One major theme in his conversation with Daniel is the importance of human connection. While AI can be a useful tool in different ways, young people need to practice communication, build relationships with others, and learn to speak about their own vulnerability and ask teachers and parents for help when needed. He warns that if AI becomes a substitute for human interaction, students may become less resilient and more isolated. Their conversation also explores the student voice. Daniel shares Good Future Foundation's belief that students should help shape responsible AI policies in schools. Calvin agrees and describes how his work supports schools to build student voice strategies, run student conferences, and create opportunities for young people to be heard. Calvin also encourages school leaders to create a culture where staff and students connect as people, not just through formal roles. He wraps up the conversation by inviting educators to share stories, talk honestly about challenges and failures, and celebrate what they are proud of with their students to build a school environment where young people feel seen, safe, and valued.

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