AI Workshops with Zero Gravity

Berkhamsted recently welcomed Zero Gravity to pilot a new AI tutor with our Year 10s and Year 12s. This platform, which uses Socratic teaching techniques to help pupils consolidate knowledge, address misconceptions and revise, currently offers digital tutoring in Science and Maths, with humanities subjects expected to be introduced in September.

The Zero Gravity tutor offers a powerful alternative to those who use ChatGPT or CoPilot when studying as it is fully aligned with the exam board specifications. The platform actively encourages pupils to reach solutions themselves and will never just give the answer away. This ensures that pupils are experiencing the cognitive friction needed to learn; that same cognitive friction which is lost when AI generates entire answers for pupils or instantly gives away the answers. With the further ability to toggle questions to your current and predicted grade, and the tutor designed to work exclusively off of exam board specifications, the bot also offers a personalised experience to the pupils who use it, ensuring that pupils are stretched just the right amount to succeed.

Pupils can log into the platform, practice different types of questions and be coached to find answers much like in a class. Or, they can take pictures of questions they’re struggling with, and work through a solution alongside the AI. Of course, this is still no replacement for real teaching, but it offers our pupils fantastic opportunities to grow outside of the classroom. We’re very excited that we are one of five schools to launch this pilot and that we will be working with Zero Gravity on further platform developments. This gives our pupils opportunities to try tech that is not readily available anywhere else and to develop their learning.

With AI development at the forefront of our approach for the future, we hope to continually trial new education technologies and software, helping every pupil to feel supported and confident in their use of technology.