Jeremy Hedges
Jeremy Hedges is a serial founder and the CEO of Forward Education. He started his first company in 3D printing education, InkSmith, in Kitchener in 2016 with a $30K seed grant and has since bootstrapped his businesses to more than $100M in revenue. In March 2020 he pivoted InkSmith into The Canadian Shield, which grew rapidly to become one of Canada's largest PPE manufacturers supplying more than 10 million face shields to the federal government and donating a face shield to every teacher in the country.
Today Jeremy leads Forward Education, whose coding and robotics kits, curriculum, and AI literacy tools reach more than 1,200 school districts and over a million students in 30+ countries. He is a frequent speaker on computer science and AI education, including at micro:bit Live and CSTA.
Second Day Oct 29
Option 2: Forward Edu/ InkSmith
Topic: AI as a Creative Tool: Hands-On with micro:bit and Canadian-Built MicroChat
Room: TBD
Session description
MicroChat turns AI into a creative design tool for the micro:bit. Students use it to bring their own ideas to life on real hardware, learn through inquiry as they test and refine what they build, and develop the skills they will need to make the most of AI in their careers. Most Canadian school boards already own micro:bits. MicroChat, built in Canada, unlocks their creative potential inside a safe sandbox of coding apps that never touches the wider internet and keeps student data sovereign and safe.
This session is for system and school leaders who want to get hands-on and see for themselves what students can create when AI is used as a powerful design tool rather than a shortcut. At the end of the activities, Jeremy Hedges will close with a presentation on Forward's MicroChat AI grants for boards and schools. Bring a laptop to take part in the activities.