Voice AI is having a moment in education. As schools grapple with declining literacy scores and stretched teaching resources, voice-enabled tools have the potential to help. But what's already working in real classrooms, and what challenges remain?

In this episode, Libby and Owen speak with Kristen Huff from Curriculum Associates and Amelia Kelly from SoapBox Labs about the emerging field of voice AI for literacy support and assessment. Together they explore how automatic speech recognition technology helps teachers identify reading challenges earlier, provide more frequent assessments, and give students personalized feedback on their oral reading.

They discuss the practical realities of developing and implementing voice AI in education, from navigating noisy classroom environments to building teacher trust in AI-generated assessments.

Links:

• Ed-Technical episode with TeachFX about voice AI and teacher feedback
• Ed-Technical episode with Professor Peter Foltz about voice AI
• Ed-Technical episode with Dr Carmen Strigel about use of voice technology for teacher feedback in low resource settings

Guest biographies

• Kristen Huff, MEd, EdD, currently serves as the Head of Measurement at Curriculum Associates, where she works with a team of assessment designers, psychometricians, and researchers in the development of online assessments integrated with personalized learning and teacher-led instruction. Kristen has deep expertise in k-12 large scale assessment, and has presented and published consistently in educational measurement conferences and publications for over 25 years.
• Amelia Kelly, PhD, is an AI engineer and pioneer in voice technology with more than 15 years of experience in speech recognition and natural language understanding. She is a Fulbright Scholar and Eisenhower Fellow, holding a PhD and master’s in linguistics and speech technology. Amelia currently serves as chief technology officer of SoapBox Labs and vice president of data science at Curriculum Associates, where she leads the development of child-specific speech-recognition technologies.

Join us on social media:

• BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)
• Listen to all episodes of Ed-Technical 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

In this episode, Libby and Owen talk to Sanna Järvelä and Inge Molenaar, two of the world’s leading scholars on self‑regulated learning (SRL).

Together they cover SRL 101: what self-regulated learning is and why it is a valuable skill. Self-regulated learning is students setting their own goals and then monitoring their learning to achieve those goals. Self-regulation can come more naturally in informal learning settings like sports, but it can be harder to monitor your learning and know if you're on track in school.

Sanna and Inge explain how technology can help to address this, and make the learning process more visible. AI systems offer valuable opportunities for better understanding and measuring of self-regulated learning, but need to be carefully designed. We want AI to be a coach not a crutch: AI systems need to reinforce self-regulated learning, not encourage students to offload it.

They also touch on the increasingly important question about how we self-regulate our own use of AI. When do I need to proofread this, when do I use autocomplete, and when do I turn AI off?

Guest biographies and links

• Sanna Järvelä is Professor of Learning Sciences & Educational Technology at the University of Oulu, Finland, where she leads the LET research unit. She is co-Director of CELLA, the Center for Learning and Living with AI supported by the Jacobs Foundation.
• Inge Molenaar is Professor of Education & Artificial Intelligence at Radboud University and founding Director of the Dutch National Education Lab AI (NOLAI). She is co-Director of CELLA the Center for Learning and Living with AI alongside Sanna.

Join us on social media:

• BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)
• Listen to all episodes of Ed-Technical 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

This week Owen and Libby reflect on two recent EdTech conferences in the US: SXSW Edu in March and ASUGSV in April. They discuss how much things have shifted for US education over this short time period, and three themes that stood out to them both: AI literacy, transformation versus efficiency, and the disruptive potential of AI for education.

Join us on social media:

• BOLD (@BOLD_insights), Libby Hills (@Libbylhhills) and Owen Henkel (@owen_henkel)
• Listen to all episodes of Ed-Technical 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