Supporting Safe Teacher Exploration of AI and New Technologies

Welcome to our age of AI Series where we're talking about educational leadership in the age of AI we'd like to make sure that we shout out the seagull family endowment and the Robin Hood learning and Technology fund for sponsoring this session and also joining digital promise in hosting this series of webinars we're having a few webinars over the course of the next few week so we hope you join us um but for today's session we're going to go ahead and get started so today we'll specifically be focusing on supporting safe teacher exploration of AI and new technologies so we're really excited for you to join us and we have a few housekeeping notes before we get started so as we go throughout today's session please feel free to add your questions directly into the chat we'll be making note of those and then during our Q&A session later throughout the webinar our panelists will be able to address those now I'm really excited to introduce you to our two facilitators both from digital promise we have Judy Fisco the director of emerging Technologies and learning sciences and we're also joined by be Ruiz who is the senior director of ettech and emerging Technologies I'll go ahead and pass it over to them to lead today's session hi I'm I'm Judy Fusco and I will start us off um facilitating today giving a couple of minutes of background from the emerging emerging Technologies work that we've been doing at digital promise for over the last five seven years when we started thinking about AI in the space of Education um we were kind of lonely because there weren't a lot of people thinking about AI yet five to seven years ago um and we very much started thinking about this space centering humans and as a way for the technology to augment the abilities of humans since then FY um has been and I have been thinking a lot about ethics and equity in the space and we think about it in a very comprehensive way that includes education specific societal specific environmental and human rights impacts in the creation and use of these new systems in chat I'm putting a link to an article that if you haven't read um to think about um AI in a very comprehensive way I highly recommend it um I also want to thank our colleagues on the digital Equity team who are thinking with us and with their schools about digital equity which has led to digital promises vision for AI and education next slide so here um do we have our SL I'm not seeing the slides I guess there we go um we have our vision digital promises vision for AI and education and in the very first line safe Equitable and meaningful Ai and education um and the last bit about wellbeing fulfillment and economic Mobility is very key in all of our thinking um I will let you come back to this slide when when you have more time you will have the slide deck um so next slide this next slide shows some of the projects that we've been engaged in thinking about over the last five to seven years um and they are all linked on the slide deck so you can go explore them and I'm also calling out two important resources that Fati and I developed over the years um that we've been told by many Educators that they are super useful and helpful py created the AI and education Reading Guide focused on promoting equity and accountability in Ai and then um B and I created the glossery of AI terms for educators after we taught a course um to practitioners in a in a PhD program stem stem um stem practitioners and a PhD program thinking about learning so um I I leave those for your exploration afterwards and then next slide we've also been thinking about um AI literacy and B's team released an AI literacy framework um and you can get to a little bit more about it from this slide and we will be having more talk about AI literacy um and a white paper coming out this later this spring so I think that I'm setting our fra I'm done setting our framing we're trying to get to our panel because we have a fabulous panel so um next slide or actually Gabrielle yes before we introduce our panel we're going to quickly introduce the first of our polls in which we would love to hear your thoughts so we're going to share a poll momentarily um and while we do that you will be able to access it if you go to pollev.com slvs and through this poll we would love to hear one word that comes to mind when you think about bringing AI into your learning environment I'm going to go ahead and drop the link into the chat where you can navigate to add your responses and as we do that we'd love to have our panelists introduce themselves well let's go ahead and have our panelists come on camera please and let's start with introductions Scott can you kick it off sure happy to so good afternoon everyone I guess maybe good morning for some on the on the the West Coast my name is Scott muri and I'm the superintendent of Ector County Independent School District we're located in Odessa Texas so the western part um of our state V superintendent for eight years uh prior to that I was a chief academic officer Chief Information officer I worked in a variety of systems but probably most and most importantly was a teacher uh so started my my career u in middle school high school math and science taught for eight years and was a national board certified teacher so it's it's exciting to think about the potential today of AI and how it can mold and shape uh the experiences that our students have with uh incredible teachers happy to be here thank you Wyman can you go next please sure uh Scott a hard act to follow but my name is Wyman cou I am the senior director of stem for Kip New York City Schools uh where I've been working for the past nine years uh prior to my current role I was doing my favorite thing I've ever done which is an elementary school science teacher which I was doing for seven years and prior to that I've worked in the private sector and some Consulting and other things but my work recently has been really involved around integrating computational thinking into all of our elementary school students and our middle school students to build Future Ready literacy um so that students and teachers alike have access to things like artificial intelligence in the future thank you Wyman Kip let's go with you next hello everyone Kip Glazer principal at Mountain View High School in Mountain View California home of Google and the heart of Silicon Valley prior to being a principal here I was also principal in Santa Barbara and before that I was a classroom teacher for over 13 years and I was also a district level Tech coach so I think about AI in terms of how I can support my staff and my students on a day-to-day B basis without exposing them to any unintended harm so nice to be here thank you so much Kip and Sophia can you please introduce yourself hi everybody my name is Sophia Jus I am the associate program manager for con melon University's uh CS Academy which is a free program uh offers free curriculum and um professional development for teachers all over the world uh I am also the author of Applied computational thinking with python which is a book for developers that was published in 2020 and has chapters on artificial intelligence and machine learning and uh we published the second edition um in December of 2023 as you know technology continues to change fairly quickly so we had to update some of that uh and then I'm also a computer science Teachers Association Equity fellow at the moment thank you sopia and to all our panelists I'm really excited to start a conversation with you all I haven't introduced myself yet I am bati R senior director of edtech and emerging Technologies I'm excited to have this conversation with you all and have been keeping an eye on our wordcloud over here uh where you're answering the question what word comes to mind when you think about bringing AI into your learning environment Judy what are you noticing one word that I noticed is opportunity what are you noticing in the word cloud so I thought it was interesting I was watching as it started and the the I believe fourth word up there was double-edged sword and I think that is really important for our conversation today to think about both sides as I put into chat there's a great article if you haven't thought about some of the maybe sharper dangerous sides um I I really want to make sure that we are thinking about AI in a very very thoughtful way and considering all perspectives on it thank you and yes there are lots of words it's it's nice to see the change I liked the word skepticism that was up there and safety uh uncertainty Sophia can you say a little bit about Equity please yeah so one of the things that I uh want everybody to think about when we talk talk about Equity is going Beyond availability um because a lot of the times we think about Equity as it's accessible to everybody or it's available to everybody um and one of the things that AI can help us with is to ensure that there is access access to people who might not have previously had access to certain Technologies but it has to be very um focused and it has to be something that we do do intentionally not just a byproduct accidentally maybe it helps some people it has to go a little bit beyond that available piece and I also wanted to mention really quickly uh I forgot to mention I have been in the classroom for the past 24 years on and off and I was in the classroom from 2012 to 2021 um as a computer science and math teacher as well thank you do any other panelists have anything they'd like to say about this word cloud before we get into our questions for today great all right well thank you Judy for leading us off we are going to jump into the questions I'm going to turn to Scott first Scott can you tell us how you see AI changing the way teachers are teaching how are you seeing the shift start and what are you uh anticipating for the future the um the the first word in the word cloud that caught my attention was the word opportunity and so that that's uh that that was exciting as I think about the opportunity uh that exists uh with AI um I I I want to be uh thoughtful in in kind of how we as Educators think about this opportunity and so I think it first blush we think AI is an opportunity to make life easier it's an opportunity to make things easier and and certainly artificial intelligence can do that in some regards but we will miss an opportunity if that's all we think about at surfice level and so our real opportunity is to think about how artificial intelligence can change our Effectiveness how can AI make us as teachers more effective how can it make us as leaders more effective how can it make us as human beings uh more effective and so uh that's that is one area that I hope uh to that we dive into as Educators and not missing it by simply making things easier to do in the class or in the school or in the system but how can it potentially make us more effective and then how can AI make the impossible possible I I go back to my teaching days and I I I remember sometimes thinking as a teacher I just can't meet the needs of that child or how am I going to meet the needs of this diverse group of Learners or how can I possibly do this and and how you know fast forward to today can AI help our teachers make that impossib ility and sometimes it felt like that a reality um so I think about personalization uh you know specifically we've been trying to personalized learning for many years in in in public education right now um but but truly and we've leveraged AI tools to some degree but truly does AI have the potential is there an opportunity to make the impossibility of meeting individual student needs does it have the opportunity to make that happen I I I say yes look at Blended learning classrooms in in the own my own environment which which I teach or in which I lead in our own school system and see uh possibilities begin to emerge how One Singular teacher can leverage powerful tools to meet the needs of many uh in that teaching environment and so I I think uh it has the potential to make us better quick story I'm at a board meeting recently and uh we're doing a in in our system doing a a pilot project with Stanford University in a virtual Tutoring company and the AI is helping the virtual tutors be themselves become more effective and so these are human beings that are using AI to help their own Effectiveness and after we finish the presentation one of my board members who is also a classroom teacher uh made the comment oh my gosh I see how this tool could make me more effective as a teacher and I was like yes that's exactly the opportunity that we need a leverage AI can make us more effective as Educators at every level thank you Scott I was hoping you would share that concrete example because I've been sharing it with others ever since you shared it with me I think it's great to dig into those concrete examples pip can you also share some concrete examples of how you're seeing AI changing the way teachers teach yeah so uh I agree with Scott on literally every point that he just made and I want to also turn our attention to some of the concerns that have been expressed it will remiss it will be remiss if we don't acknowledge that and I think couple of things that I've been talking about in different context is that when you terms matter so as we Define effectiveness what do we mean by that often times we just want more faster right but that's not necessarily always the best and I think potential for AI is exactly that if we can personalize it if we can slow down and make invisible visible perhaps that is the way we need to do so and taking the time to really think about what tools we're bringing into the classroom is super super important so I imagine a feature of school where if we can actually leverage social emotional learning of the students and developmentally appropriate grouping where a 16-year-old who is ready for say computational advancement or calculus VC doesn't have to leave that classroom with his or her her peers just because he or she is pushed to advance academically and if there is an opportunity I think that is really a great potential for AI to give you example recently I was in a call with a researcher at Northwestern and they developed this discourse analysis tool called blink and where initially they developed the tool as a measurement of leadership quality in conversations slowly it start to transform as a tool for students discourse analysis and now I was able to connect that researcher with a speech pathologist and seeing the potential for how do we support our students with uh learning disabilities and or speech impediment using AI tool to give our student opportunity to be really like cognitively thinking about their own learning so I think personalization as Scott said is an area that we can definitely leverage AI but will need to think about who's deciding which tool and why how we're framing or how we're measuring Effectiveness is super important conversation thank you for those examples Kip there are unforeseen challenges to the integration of AI so I Wyman I'm going to turn it over to you and ask you for specific unforeseen challenges that you've seen with implementations in classrooms or at the school or District level and how are you seeing those addressed or what recommendations might you have for our audience today yeah thanks yeah I really like what um Dr Glazer said earlier about it's not always being first one of our biggest unforeseen challenges honestly is that there is all this noise out there about what AI is and what it is not and most people are making judgments on what AI can do in education um without actually having used much of it themselves right they're using it from secondhand thirdhand stories and you know there is this part of in being in education where there's like the fear of missing out right it's like I need to be first well we actually don't believe that you have to be first you have to do it really well um and a really concrete example is one that's really personal to me um and many of the students that we serve um during the pandemic in remote learning a lot of our families left New York City um to work and move in other lower cost of living areas and many of them worked went to go work in warehouses uh two three years ago now fast forward four years later a lot of those families actually just recently lost their job because of advancements in technology and they're hearing from their teachers and certain people saying hey we need to integrate this new technology because it's the newest best thing ever and those families are then telling their students like actually I don't have my job because of something like this so one of the seing challenges is how do we not only educate students and teachers but also our families and community members so they're partner ERS alongside us along this work so something that we've been really trying to do is involve them in our stakeholder meetings in conversations so that they feel that they have a true sense of where this is going so that they can figure out what is truly the risks the benefits and make those considerations themselves and voice their concerns right I I personally am an early adopter myself and I believe in all the opportunities that SC was talking about what we can do with this technology but I really also believe that this only works if we have everybody involved and we need to learn from our past kind of infusions of edtech and other Technologies and really acknowledge those hard truths so that we really get to that Center word I I screenshotted it because I was like I'm so glad Equity is centered but that's not how it always is centered when many people are motivated by so many different things thank you Wyman yes you bring up really important pieces and at digital promise we're centering equity and our AI literacy work but we're also partnering with the Kor Center to Center Justice because we believe that that's also a very important piece and as you mentioned these Technologies are affecting our community members and those community members including families are turning to schools districts and their teachers uh to learn more about these Technologies and the appropriate uses and integration of them so Sophia I'm going to turn it over to you I know you're also working closely with teachers and would love to hear your thoughts on the unforeseen challenges and how we can address them or what you recommend to teachers as they address them yeah so wman did a I mean I am in agreement with all of your points I meant and one of the things that I do want to add to you is um the Privacy part of AI um using AI if you know like open AI for example limits who can use the information and they limited to 13 and over with parental consent and then 18 and above um but not for under 13 yet there are applications being built on open AI that are open for younger students what kind of information is necessary to be using those AI tools what private what uh personally identifiable information is being shared with these tools um how are we ensuring and and the terms of service and the Privacy policies one of the things that Kip and I have been working on is trying to figure out how to teach people how to read those so that you're not accidentally sharing uh more information than you should for your minor students um but there's also you know the bias training so it isn't just we want to educate everybody right because this is new and even those of us who have worked with AI before this is still new um I don't consider myself an expert it's one of those things where it's like it's always changing there's more to learn there's more to know and so I think that it's important for us to keep in mind that we need to understand um because if you even ask these tools they'll tell you that they're biased so we want to make sure that we're not inflicting harm and so we want to make sure that every teacher has the tools necessary to understand what types of biases are in there uh because one of the other things is that we generally talk about bias in terms of like gender or race but bias has a lot more um to do with the environment where you are uh do you live in a food desert like there are a lot of biases that come into play about the communities that these students are in the opportunities that they are faced with so um and and a lot of these things are not taught at teacher programs uh there are states that limit the amount of training that teachers can get INE Equity so um so we have to be very conscious about these things and make sure that we're including them um because these are challenges if our students have been using these tools and they are implemented without these trainings then the chance for harm and inflicting harm are much greater so we have to be a a lot more careful about what it is that we're using and how we're using them um but there there is a lot of Promise in ensuring that other communities that might not have had access to Technologies in the past um Graphics uh help with for visually impaired students uh is going to be massively helped with AI like there's a lot of things that are going to be great um and I say that going to be great because uh right now I is a work in progress and it has a lot of Errors that's the other thing that I want to say as a challenge um a lot of people talk about hallucinations and hallucinations are not more than errors they're mistakes uh and that's because AI is we talk about it as being artificial intelligence but it's an algorithm um it's not necessarily intelligent uh it just follows the algorithm and gives you information and that information because it is so wide the training data is so wide it can be completely wrong thank you Sophia yes we stay away from the term hallucination even though we're seeing it everywhere in the media because these are just machines and they make errors right and so Kip and I have written about this recently uh Scott can you talk about what you're seeing in terms of unforeseen challenges and how you're addressing those at the district level so I think one of the one of the pieces that we have to keep in mind and I think um Wyman talked to this earlier you know we have an opportunity ahead of us um or really right now and that we missed years ago when the internet was was introduced it was it was new to kids and new to adults and new to everybody and we really blew it as Educators we have an opportunity now to own uh as Educators this OPP this um AI opportunity um and so who's going to lead it and I think that is one of the things that we have to consider who's leading um the artificial intelligence movement in our world today in our nation today in our states um and in in our local areas is it being driven by the business Community you know profit making entities is it driven by Educators so that truly we see see this as a powerful tools that's one of the challenges I think that we face is who's driving this machine forward do we have the right drivers uh in place I think a second thing that I see and and again somebody has alluded to this already is as Leaders whether it's the the teacher in the classroom leader or building level leader or system level leader uh we all haven't had intimate experiences yet with with AI specifically generative Ai and so our our experiences may have been we heard about it or we've we we we read about someone having an experience but we have yet to have those own experiences and yet we're making decisions about AI so an experience I had last summer was a shocker to me I'm on a zoom session much as this and there are 15 windows um and most of us were superintendent we had a facilitator we were 45 minutes into the session and the facilitator stopped the meeting and she let us know that one of us wasn't real we had been having a conversation and interacting live with an in with an entity that wasn't real and it was the shock and awe that that this superintendent needed um to realize that that we we've we've got to kind of seize the moment um and I have to think at the system level from a policy perspective a procedure perspective a safety P perspective an instructional learning perspective what are all the processes that that we need to have in place so that we can do this work the right way uh because it will affect children one way or the other and I I hopefully it will affect them in a positive way and so we have a lot of systems of a work to do across the country yes Scott uh super important uh example of how AI is being used much like students were using the video Loops right in Zoom early on in the pandemic to make folks think that they were actually online I can assure everyone that all of the panelists and presenters today have been real people real humans so thank you Scott for bringing that to our attention uh I'm going to turn uh the next question over to Kip this question is about how do you anticipate your high school your organization will need to change or pivot as AI becomes more of a part of the education system and what supports and resources do you think you will need as a principal to make those changes especially because I know you're centering equity in this work thank you I've been actually thinking a lot about it as I said before I think if we do AI right then we might just be able to serve every student at the appropriate developmental stage without counting on this very segmented almost artificial way of grading like 9th 10th and 11th and 12th and you take this particular course in this grade because that's what we have set up in terms of our progression and I imagine a world where a N1 11 12 grades are no longer spoken about uh it's more a appropriate content and extended cognition that can Su um be personalized for our students wouldn't that be a dream if there were to happen though I think it needs to be k16 Endeavor because what happens is that oftentimes when I try to bring Innovation to my context as a high school principal number one question that I get is about how is this going to impact my child getting into great universities and and that is a real like stake for our parents and often times they say we love your idea of innovation can you do it after my child graduate so that that my kids can get into college and then you can help other students so I think there is this this tension of wanting things for our students and helping them be prepared for the future but also how do we do so without harming what is being offered as a good practice in order for us to move away from that mentality I think it as Scott said it's everybody needs to be involved and truly understand what is to be learned person right there is this interesting dichotomy between learning versus education or even schooling and I I I imagine a world that this could be all together so that our students are truly able to utilize all the tools that are available to them in a meaningful manner so that they could enjoy learning rather than clocking in and clocking out and schooling becomes a burden thank you Sophia as AI becomes more a part of our education system and Society what supports do you think will be needed so again the training for everybody so every Community member this isn't just a student children parent uh kind of thing it's a a whole Community effort um and I do think that we need to dig deep into what does that look like as a whole for where we want education to go I'm with Kip here in terms of we can't just want um to improve my school my moment my thing it has to be a community-led effort what do we want education to actually look like and what does it need to do because right now it just it's very limiting um so I think that that's the thing and I do think that we need to think about now versus in the future um right now there's things that are just not safe for children so it is important for us to consider teacher facing tools first uh but then also be looking ahead in the next two to three years what do we want that to be so that the tools can be used uh for children who are younger thank you so much what supports do you think are needed wmen yeah I think we have to teach people how to be flexible including our youngest Learners because we know that technology is evolving at such an incredibly rapid pace like I am of the belief that every student should be taught how to be a problem solver whether it's through computational thinking Project based learning or so many other ways so that they can not only like have access to technology learn how to hopefully build that technology for Equity but also interrogate what comes from that technology um both as a user and as a consumer um you know we're going to get more and more things generated for us right and AI I would argue is going to be quite foundational to how we operate so we need to learn how to integrate the information see it and learn how to solve those problems and then we have to evaluate like as we Implement all of these things like is it actually driving the most important thing right like is it driving the educational outcomes of our students and supporting all of the students that we serve thank you so much Wyman really important Judy and I uh supported our colleague Jeremy relle in an ACM piece that we authored in 2021 and we talked about the importance of intelligence augmentation right and the importance of human judgment and I think that human judgment is something that you're all uh touching on and something that will continue to be important for us to develop as Educators and as Learners I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Gabrielle Lou so that she can help us uh help guide us as we ask you all for questions yes and we're actually going to jump into another poll before we engage our panelists in a Q&A so thank you for submitting your questions in the chat so far U so if everyone you're going to navigate to that same link as the prior poll which I'll drop in the chat pollev.com bills and we'll have our second poll up here so for this one our question for you is what practical task has AI helped automate in your classroom or at your District bring up time for more direct interaction with students or your school Community we'll wait a few minutes while you go ahead and submit your answers but yes please let us know thank you and we'll watch that pull everywhere for a little bit Judy thank you for joining us again for this Q&A session I'm going to kick kick it off with an earlier question we got through the chat it wasn't a question it was a comment about adapting to uh expectations for the job market related to the story that Wyman was telling about layoffs related to these emerging Technologies I'm going to turn it over to Scott and then Kip to quickly talk about how you're seeing uh the future of jobs for the students that you're working with uh it's a huge question so feel free to let us know what you're thinking in terms of how how we're adjusting for the future of work one of those adjustments is uh helping our students preparing them for the world of work and not necessarily the world of a career I'm a career educator 36 years in oh I said that out loud 36 years in the business but we just don't exist anymore um you know today it's the five years and out scenario um in in we didn't necessarily prepare uh folks for that but we see that even in education you know we have folks that enter our profession and after 5 years they're spinning out to another profession so we have to make sure that our students um are equipped to know how to constantly evolve their skills you know goes back to the the the three C's you know that which continue to be important today we've got to create you know great communicators while AI could certainly assist with some of that at the end of the day we as human beings own the art of communication and and the tools can make us more artistic but at the at the end of the day it still requires an artist um the collaboration we we we still have to be able to work with other people or even work with a a bot so to speak but it requires the working with opportunity so equipping our kids to make sure they have the ability to work with others and the list goes on but preparing kids for opportunities um and and of course at the end of the day as lifelong Learners learning is is a constant and making sure that our kids uh know that they're that they Embrace uh the power and potential of learning that they see all of the different ways that learning could happen in their own lives so it's it's more than just preparing them for careers uh that were long past that thank you anything to add Kip so uh my husband and I we have two boys and they attended West Point and when they were picking their majors at the time in 20171 18 I was encouraging my older kid to you know go into computer science field because I'm very passionate about stem and I remember my older one saying mom um computer science field may not be relevant in few years so I'm going to go into it instead and he's actually working on his cyber security uh field as an army officer right now he's stationed in Germany and that conversation and he was actually Council to do so right because Army was back in the day in 2015 already anticipating a lot of automation might come in their way and they needed army officers to be trained in the infrastructure and bigger thinking rather than just being able to co so I think about um if that was good for my own child then perhaps that knowledge should be shared and my younger one ended up majoring in operations research which is basically Applied Mathematics right and so these um non less than specialized field might actually become more and more important because a lot of technical um aspects of our digital world may be able to um be automated by AI so I think about those things when I'm interacting with my own students thank you Kip Judy I think we've gotten some good responses in the poll about the Practical tasks that AI has helped folks automate in classrooms at schools and districts can you tell us a little bit about what you noticed in the chat and then we can go with sopia and Wyman to also let us know what they've seen sure so uh emails twice and I think that that's interesting and and that's one of the things um someone else told me about the other day and I really hope that um care is being being done as you generate emails by not putting in uh personal information into the systems when you're generating them maybe getting some ideas one of the things whenever we use uh generative AI tool we are giving much more to it than we are receiving is something that I firmly believe especially at this point as sopia mentioned they just aren't there yet there's this give and take that we have to decide what we want to give up I feel when we give something to the system um and like what we're going to get back and yeah sometimes we have to give and sometimes we'll take but I I don't feel like we're taking that much right now um I do know that one of the things um and I it's I don't know where it went here but I saw curriculum planning and I definitely heard from teachers you know this really does help me on Sunday afternoon I can get a lot of really great things done quickly as I get prepared for the week and as long as you're checking what the systems are giving you then you know that's great anything that can speed things up for you as you prepare for your weeks you are already way too busy um and I think that's awesome and I also want people to think okay I sped this up but I can't tell anybody that this got fed up because then they're going to put something else on my plate so I think that that's something to keep in mind too I don't feel like we're going to be freeing up time for educators so I think we shouldn't like talk about that because I don't want anything else to be put on the Educator's plate um back to you puy thank you Judy and one other thing that you always remind me of from a learning Sciences perspective is that we can't speed up what happens in the head so I think as we think about uh saving time we need to remember that learning takes time Wyman what did you notice yeah I I noticed a lot of the things that Judy mentioned as well but I also want to kind of name that like hopefully all of this is being used and generated using what I like to think of you know I think a long time ago I was taught that you always use a compliment sandwich when like uh working with students where you say something nice and then you give yeah like you frame your feedback but with this I like to think of it as like a human AI human output we sandwich the AI generated outputs with humans from the beginning and the end and I think it's that end piece that's so important right like normally we think about inputs and outputs but it's making sure that at the end we sandwich it with human interrogation at the end going to allow us to filter what is useful and what is not useful and that goes for all of these things that we've seen right whether it's an email right that has real consequences if you don't double check it um or something even more important in my mind is like what we provide to students right in terms of curriculum lessons or anything in general it's like how do we interrogate that information so it's important that we still as humans understand like our content really well our teachers still have content and context specific expertise that we have to continually leverage and allowing our teachers and Educators to know that that is probably never going away thank you Wyman and Sophia what did you notice from this poll yeah so one of the things that I see is you know that that email thing um is surprising to me because uh that's one of the things that we've seen a lot um which is people using AI to write uh but that ends up making everybody's writing extremely similar it loses your individuality it uses your personality it loses your voice a lot of the times when we use it for writing um and then the other thing I wanted to mention is uh the need for creativity so uh I saw a lot of like curriculum planning I saw a lot about differentiating Etc um one of the things that I saw in the chat and I'm going to quote this incorrectly because it's scrolled down but um was uh Rudy mentioned that it's for um let me see I I have to for efficiency not for substituting uh and that's really a great way to see it it's to help you move through what you need to do um but it it doesn't substitute your knowledge and so one of the recommendations that I always have is don't use it for things you don't know don't use it for things that are not beyond that are beyond your expertise because you won't be able to catch the errors because generative AI talks pretty and it sounds right but it isn't so we need to make sure so and and I can't catch errors in content that I don't know but I can catch them in the content that I do yes Sophia this is such an important point and one of the things we recommend that teachers do when they're working with students is to have them have gen generate some content about a world they do know very deeply like Hunger Games or whatever they're into because that's when they notice the errors very quickly I'm gonna ask Kip uh a question that came up earlier in the chat about navigating the overwhelming feelings when choosing AI tools and a navigating AI overall and decisions around AI do you have any recommendations I'm going to go to Kip and then Wyman will'll go to you next yeah so I think um couple of things that I try to emphasize when my staff again is more and quicker and faster is not always better so sometimes when you're choosing tools you have to go slow to go fast and really think about whether it is enhancing the best part about your practice in your classroom right what what problem are you trying to solve rather than just because it's new and and we want to make sure that our kids are not left behind so I I ask my staff to tools can I mean like pencil and paper the best piece of technology in your classroom if used correctly right so that's what I asked them to do and I think engaging your leaders in dialogues regarding what infrastructure what access do we have in place and what training and PD are going to be provided for the tools super important question before we jump into um trying to get as many tools into your ecosystem and ultimately educators are in charge of your classroom right so um being the expert in the room and asking the right question and slowing things down is really important thank you I think that message resonated with a lot of folks g g slow to go fast wman what what do you think yeah I think you have to really ask yourself like what problem are you actually trying to solve for and is it a problem your teachers actually want to solve for right like it doesn't matter what an administrator like myself says to somebody it's like you should use these tools these are great if the actual practitioners aren't using it and don't believe that it's useful it'll never be useful I think the most important thing is to listen first and listen for a while before you make recommendations because at the end of the day right like our teachers are the bridge and that right and like you have to ask them it's like what do you what do you wish can happen with technology and like how can we help you learn how to leverage that technology and if it doesn't exist let's push the powers to be to make those things that exist if they already exist let's teach people how to use it effectively and then measure whether it's effective or not right so like I'll I'll end with a really quick story here it's like the most useful tool that I've seen in AI so far in our classrooms is actually hyp specific built for one classroom of 25 students for one lesson in one use case and it was and it was used with one class over and over again for that one lesson but it did its job and the teacher was like okay I'm sold and I'm GNA find other use cases not some big picture one- siiz fit all tool that was meant to solve all problems because nothing in education that was meant to solve everything has ever worked why I'm in such important context and before I turn it over to each of the panelists to wrap up with one minute of your closing thoughts uh something that you said Wyman really resonated for me and that is to listen for a while before you make recommendations and there was a question earlier in the chat about AI literacy skills and what knowledge practitioners and teacher education leaders need to know one of the things we've been working on at digital promp promise across teams is listening to folks around Ai and AI literacy so we are expecting to launch our AI literacy white paper in the middle of May so please keep an eye on that because we've partnered with organizations uh that are doing this work and practitioners and we've gotten a lot of voices involved in the development of AI literacy recommendations so there's a a preview in this blog post that I just put in chat so check that out but stay tuned for more because we really agree with both Kip and Wyman in terms of going slow to get it right so with that I will turn it over to each of our panelists for uh one minute um wrap up one thing you'd like folks to take away from the time we have here hiip let's go with you first thank you I think having conversations across the globe as well as our region is super important one thing that I will say as I'll call upon School leaders to really get involved in learning about because you have to set good examples for your staff to step up and be partners in this Learning Journey and I think that uh because of the demands of school leadership can be so overwhelming that we forget the opportunity to really engage in learning and leaning into the uh learning science and the AI Tools in that manner so I'll say that uh it's everyone's job to ensure that our students are being well supported so we're all in this together and let's not forget that this is part of our mission to improve education thank you Kip Scott will'll go to you next I on Edwards Deming quote a lot in our or or in our own organization and he said one time your organization is perfectly designed to achieve the results that you're achieving right now our organizations are typically not designed to receive Ai and to use it um effectively and so I would encourage us whether a teacher leader in the classroom principal level system level leader um but our organizations have to continuously evolve and right now we're not POS well positioned to Embrace this new opportunity and so the challenge and the opportunity we have is to evolve um and so that our organiz organization is perfectly designed to achieve really great results and that includes operationally from the assessment perspective data security technical uh leadership professional learning all of the elements of the organization uh have an opportunity to evolve thank you Scott really important elements for us to consider Sophia so I think that um including teacher voice which we've been talking about in the chat is extremely important for anything that we move forward in terms of AI um because they're the users they're the ones that know their classrooms and as somebody who has been out of the classroom now for almost three years I can say that it's been three years and I am disconnected from the classroom sometimes I don't know exactly what's happening um you know 2020 changed a lot of things in the classroom so the current teachers have to have a voice and not just at the implementation stage much earlier when we're thinking about what do they need how are they looking at it what are the what are we trying to accomplish what is it that we're trying to fix they need to have a voice in that not just afterwards being told hey you have a PD and here you go um you're going to use these tools um we need teacher voices to be front and center for any implementation super important thank you and Wyman yeah I'll go really quick I think Sophia mentioned this earlier but I wanted to reiterate it like I am a self-prescribed not an expert in Ai and I probably won't ever be an expert in this field right I don't think there are many experts in this field to begin with right so I'm a disseminator and hopefully a filler of knowledge over time and I am on my Learning Journey and encourage everybody who has de decision-making rights to really learn first um and learn from a diverse group of people like um Kip was talking about earlier so that when you do make decisions it's from a strong place and well Research Place thank you so much yes we're all learning and we're all trying out new things thank you to all the panelist Judy I'm going to turn it over to you for final thoughts before we turn it over to Gabrielle to wrap it up got it thank you um so I'm gonna Echo for final thoughts what Kip was saying about the learning Sciences um that's something that I very much think we need to be bringing into the conversation especially now as we're doing more putting it into into our worlds um and what Scott said that you know we don't want to recreate what we've had all along and just do it faster because we're all tired and if we just do the same thing faster we're g to be more tired so I want to underscore that point um I want to I want to have us make sure we're thinking with intentionality about equity and Justice um I want to think I want to make sure that you know we think about who is giving us the information about Ai and what might they get out of giving you the information about AI um and I want us to go slow to go fast um and I think that you know there are two questions that I've brought into my work and I'm going to give June on credit for making them succinct what intentions does this work amplify and what Notions of equity does it prioritize um and I'm using that to to really help me think in in this moment so I'm going to Judy that great yes that's wonderful thank you so much thank you to all of our participants thank you to everyone who contributed to the chat lots of important questions and Scott thank you for taking that last who is in charge of AI it's a very complicated question that we'd be happy to answer offline but to all of the panelists thank you so much I've learned a lot I'm going to turn it over to our colleague Gabrielle L to wrap it up indeed yes thank you so much so I Echo those thanks and thank you to all the attendees for joining us today um we did record today's sessions so we will be sharing the recording with you all and posting it on digital promises YouTube channel and like I mentioned this webinar is part of a series the age of AI series and so we invite you and I'll drop it in the chat to go ahead and register for our next session on April 9th but with that we'd like to thank you all again for joining us and have a great rest of your day

2024-04-10 10:16

Other news