Mr Vullo – Alternative Education

  • Example of Using a Local LLM in Schools: Empowering New Teaching Assistants with Instant Pupil Data Insights

    Onboarding a new Teaching Assistant (TA) often involves a time-consuming handover of crucial pupil data, which is often scattered across various paper and digital files. This prototype demonstrates how a local Large Language Model (LLM) can instantly summarise a pupil’s background, including behaviour and exclusion reports, by processing secure, internal documents. Crucially, every piece of…

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  • Local LLM vs. Cloud LLM: Key Differences & Guide for Schools

    This blog discussing the difference between a local LLM and a cloud LLM. What is a Local LLM? A local LLM is different to a cloud LLM. The main, and most obvious difference is that a local LLM is created and stored locally on a single computer. This ensures that the local LLM is private…

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  • How to use Google Gems in Education: A Step-by-Step Guide

    Following on from my previous post about building a local Large Language Model (LLM) to help assess and document pupil Social, Emotional, and Mental Health (SEMH) needs—which you can read all about here—I’ve had a rather fascinating afternoon yesterday playing around with Google Gemini. I’ve been creating a few custom AI agents, or ‘Gems,’ and I…

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  • Why Ray Dalio’s AI Clone validates my approach to SEMH support (and highlights a public sector problem)

    For the last few moths I have been exploring building a local LLM specifically trained on data from pupils with additional SEMH needs and also SEMH frameworks and approaches. Yesterday I read an article from Ray Dalio discussing building an AI Clone of himself that is trained on his 40 years experience in finance. I…

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  • Reflections on a Half Term Exploring the Use of AI in Education

    The main thing I have learnt this half term is that AI is a tool and should be treated as such. To harness its massive power, you need to be clear on the desired outcome and be able to effectively articulate that in a prompt. Your ability to effectively write prompts for AI will be the…

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  • A Thought Experiment: Building Organisational Memory in Schools with Local LLMs

    This is a an idea I’ve been thinking about in using local LLMs in schools as part of an approach to using AI in education. Schools and trusts invest huge amounts of time, energy, and money in training and developing staff. But often, much of that professional learning fades over time — buried in slide…

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  • Using AI to create a custom reading book for a pupil that is 7 years old but has a reading age of a 4/5 year old

    I am excited by this! I just quickly used Google Gemini to create the attached, using the below prompt. I think this is a game changer in using AI in schools and can help any child, of any age, with any interested irrelevant of their reading age. Here is the prompt so you can have…

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  • AI & Robots are awesome…but so are cardboard boxes!

    By blending innovative technology with hands-on projects, we can provide a well-rounded educational experience that caters to the diverse needs of our learners. Ultimately, it’s about striking a balance between the digital and the physical, ensuring that every child has the opportunity to thrive.

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  • How Schools Can Use AI Beyond Just Making Picture, Video and Lesson Plan using “GenAI”

    Artificial Intelligence (AI) in schools isn’t just about creating content. It’s about predicting, supporting, optimising, and empowering — giving teachers more time, students more opportunity, and schools more efficiency.

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  • Embracing AI in Education

    This week, I have continued to think about the role of AI in schools, and I’ve noticed a growing awareness of generative AI—particularly in creating images and documents. However, it’s evident that the deeper application of AI for data analysis, especially qualitative data, remains less familiar to many teachers and educational leaders. While there’s a…

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  • Bridging Policy and Practice: A Local LLM for SEMH in Schools 

    In the Department for Education’s Areas of Research Interest report, AI is presented not as a silver bullet but as a tool with powerful promise — one that must be deployed with care, equity, and rigorous evaluation. My project to build a local LLM at my SEMH provision is very much in step with that…

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  • Building a Local LLM for Schools: A Privacy-Focused Guide to assess and document pupils’ SEMH needs and progress 

    At the SEMH provision I run, I been working on creating practical tools to help staff capture daily observations of children’s social, emotional, and mental health (SEMH) progress in a structured way. The aim is to ensure that day-to-day insights can feed into AI systems to generate weekly reports, 24-week (end of placement) progress reviews…

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