Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, friends and followers. We are on the last episode of a Vision for Learning and the first episode of Artificial Intelligence, real Talk with Eli Davis. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take this podcast, has started out being about a vision for learning and artificial intelligence and virtual reality, augmented reality. And we're gonna shift just a little bit because the conversation and the emphasis has gone towards artificial intelligence.
And so we're gonna bring in Eli Davis. Let me read Eli's bio real quick. is an educator, researcher and thought leader, passionate about the intersections of artificial intelligence, education, and equity. He's a PhD candidate in teaching and learning at the University of South Carolina, and he explores the Transformative power of AI to foster critical thinking, creativity, and inclusivity in educational settings.
Drawing from his experience as a special education teacher and adjunct professor, he champions the use of AI as a tool for empowering educators and students alike, a relentless seeker of knowledge. Eli's work blends scientific inquiry and cultural consciousness, positioning him as a voice for innovation and healing and education. I'm so excited for what you're bringing to this podcast. It's gonna be just awesome.
So thank you for picking up the baton and saying, I've got a voice and an opinion that needs to be shared. Well, well, thank you very much for inviting me, Jethro. This is a an amazing. Opportunity and, you know when you, when you are studying healing, you have to, well, I feel it's, it's nice to try to heal yourself. So I go to therapy and my therapist, I. And told me, she said, she said, Hey Eli, people need to hear you. I said, for real. So thank you for the opportunity.
You are, you are, you know what I mean? You, you are making my therapist look like something. well, happy to support your therapist. That's great. this originally came about because Ross Romano, who's a, a partner at the B Podcast Network met you and said, man, Jethro, I think Eli needs to have his own show and we need to support him and, and get him going on it. And as I've looked at where this podcast has gone, it's definitely veered towards ai and so.
It makes sense that AI would would be the focus going forward. And so you have a different perspective than I do, which I think is valuable. What are some of the things that you are bringing to the table that you think are important as we talk and think about AI in education specifically? How to use AI as a as a partner.
Instead of using AI as a crutch, but also how to navigate using AI as a crutch and having it so that it can enhance your thinking, your ideas, and also offer a. A tool for organiz organizing ideas. I one of the, one of the coolest things that you can do with artificial intelligence is to brainstorm right inside the interface. And then you can go ahead and say, can you organize some of these ideas?
One of the things that I struggled with when I, when I, especially when I first started my PhD program, was organizing my thoughts. My, my instructors would consistently say that this, you, you did this, you said this, this was redundant. This, you know, I would get a lot of feedback from, from my writing.
But what I, what I know, and this was using artificial intelligence inside of my special education classroom and watching my students use artificial intelligence to organize their ideas, especially when they have abstract ideas. Some of them are not connecting. They don't, they don't have the ability to, to express their cognitive thought in a way that will be clear. So, you know, using artificial intelligence as a tool, as a thought partner. That's, that's where, that's where I want to go.
And you know playing the guitar, I know what an instrument does. You know what I mean? It allows you to, well, and it allows you to scream, it allows you to, to say something sometimes that you have in your heart, but you don't have the ability to articulate it. And that is what I believe the artificial intelligence is really good for. Yeah, I, I, I agree with that and I just wanna share a brief story about that opportunity where AI can enhance something.
So my oldest daughter has Down Syndrome and she can communicate, I. But it's not great most of the time, and you gotta work really hard to understand what she's saying. And one of the amazing things is that when we gave her a phone when she was a senior in high school, she started texting us and she started texting us full sentences. I. And because she was able to use the predictive text, she was able to say things and spell things that she just did not know how to do.
Now that was cool that she could now text us, but what made it even better is that as we've had AI be developed and we can start using it, is she's been able to text some of those things write some of those things down in text form. Then be able to put that into chat GBT and have it create something that, here's the key Eli that is true to her heart and what she really believes that is not capable of articulating just yet. Now it, it cannot think for her, it can.
Come up with things and have it be true to her if it's not something that, that she that she's putting in there. But I, she, we wanted her to write a letter to, like a Christmas letter to all of her friends and stuff that she could send out. So she did, and she typed it in the way that she's, that she's comfortable with. And then we put it in the chatt and it expressed, it captured her personality. It expressed who she was, what she cared about. Oh my goodness, Eli, I can't go back.
To her not having a voice. You know what I mean? Yes one of my students, you know um, and this is when chat GPT like had just come out and I you know, and I pulled it up on the screen and he did just, you know, he didn't have the ability to, to, to take his cognitive thought and then to write it out. It, it just, it is just always become distorted. He, you know, and then to have him take his.
His distorted sentence, his thought, and then press enter, and to see his eyes open when he read his sentence. I mean, when he read what it came out with, it was amazing. It was as if you have given this person a gift. That is so powerful and.
That is not the case for every single person that's out there, and I wouldn't pretend that it was the case, but the fact that we can give voice to someone who had hasn't had a voice is incredibly powerful and, and that's the kind of beauty and amazing part that I, that I want to focus on and have, be a part of.
Of what we're doing and because of your background and what you've done professionally and how you're approaching this, that's what I'm seeing you, that you're gonna bring to this conversation about AI and education. And so you've interviewed a few people already. Do you wanna just talk about some of the people that you've got coming on and some of the, the big ideas that you're gonna share? Oh, most definitely. So I have Dr. Teasdale.
Dr. Teasdale is a professor at the university of Clark Atlanta. And she is I think she's coming off of a TED Talk. On how to use artificial intelligence with students with DYS dyslexia. So we had a really interesting conversation about that. We have we have Dr. Tier McMurtry, Dr. Tier McMurtry is a university professor at the university Alabama, Birmingham. She also is my wife and yeah.
So but, you know, we have, we've been having these real interesting conversations about her students using artificial intelligence and how, how they use it and you know how to effectively use it. Also, you know she publishes a lot as well and, and how she uses artificial intelligence to, to publish these very very deep, thorough articles that are published into these. Major journals you know, so educational journals. That's one of, one of 'em. I also have a a, a dear friend of mine.
Who is a, a professor at a community college in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And you know, we, we had a really good conversation. Her, her brother, brother was my best friend and he passed away when he was around 27. So you know we, we just took a really interesting journey on, on our lives. We hadn't talked in, in years, so it was very fascinating. I just hit her up. And, I have another friend Quan Dorsey, who, who used to be the I forget the name of the governor, but the governor of Kentucky.
It was the Democratic governor a few years back. And he used to be the elite community liaison person, and currently he's a, the the director of equity and inclusion for the school district in Kentucky, in Louisville. I think it's Jefferson County. So, you know, and, and we, and we discussed you know, how equity and inclusion looks inside of artificial intelligence and also how it can be used to uplift communities and provide an additional resource for people.
So, you know, we, we've, I, we've been having some really good conversations. Yeah. So those, those are gonna be coming out here in the next few weeks. Definitely stay subscribed, send it to your friends. Also leave ratings interviews in Apple podcasts. That is the best way to help other people see it and, and hear it. Part of the strategy that we're doing with this podcast is using a podcast feed that already exists.
For people who are already interested in this topic, and some of you may have been listening for the augmented reality and artificial reality stuff that we have been talking about, I'm sorry if that if that's you and you don't want anything to do with this AI stuff but if that is you and you wanna do a podcast about that, I'm happy to help you get one started about that specific topic. We've had a lot of good stuff on here.
Those episodes are still gonna stay, you'll still be able to find them and, and go back and listen to them and share them with people. We've had some really great guests but it's, it's also a good time to evolve and continue growing. So, the other thing that I wanted to chat with you about is we we had a little email conversation yesterday and today that, that I thought was, uh, was really good around this topic.
And like so many things, the, the, the advent of AI has a way to disrupt and change how things are done. And one of the things that we were, we were talking about, I wrote a, a blog post yesterday and I shared it with you. And so that is at Jethro site slash oh, what was it? Jethro dot site slash Oh, very long thing. So I'll put it in the show notes. But we talked about students needing human relationships to thrive, and it was about an article from the 74.
Million million that talked about where chatbots could start doing a career in college counseling for high school students. And, and my, my big thing is that if we approach these problems from a certain perspective, I. Then the solutions don't actually solve the problem, and oftentimes they just exacerbate it. And one of my main approaches to education is that education is the responsibility of the family and the state steps in to support when that happens.
And and you wrote back with a different perspective that I appreciated that we'll get to in just a second, but. That did not take away from my original point. It was exactly the same. And the, the problem is, is that when we say that education is the state's responsibility, then we put all the pressure on the states to provide all of that and do everything. And, and they need to support students for sure.
But if we flip it just a little bit and we say the responsibilities on the families and the state steps in. To help and support that is, that is a different approach. And so what to me that says is we can release the burden of taking care of everybody. And this is, I wanna read a quote from Julia Freeland Fisher from this article. She said, this is a domain where chatbots are especially likely to take hold. On average high schools have one guidance counselor for every 385 students.
That perspective one counselor for every 385 students, that right there says it's my responsibility as a counselor to take care of these 385 students, is a lot. And it's impossible to keep track of that many kids as you're just not gonna be successful. But if we turn it around and we say that families are responsible for each one of their kids, which they are, regardless of what schools do or don't do, families are still responsible for it.
That can take the pressure off of that counselor if they have parents who are involved and engaged and really taking that responsibility seriously, which by the way, every single parent takes it as seriously as they possibly can and as responsibly as they possibly can. So we start from that framework, from that setup, and we say, alright, let's say that 200 of these 385 kids have a parent who is capable, involved and supporting.
That leaves 185 students for that counselor to be in charge of making sure they get what they need. And I had you and one other person respond back and say, not every parent is capable of that. And boy, you're absolutely right. Do you wanna share your perspective on that real quick? Oh yeah. so, when I think about the parent being responsible, I think about my mama. You know, my mom had four kids at 20. By the time she was 21, she had four children.
My mom come from, we come from a pretty decent family. I. You know education was something that was big in my family. As a matter of fact, we, I come from a lot of principals, a lot of administrators, reading specialists you know shucks, one of my aunties started a school, you know. So I come from, I come from, from, from big school but.
I also come from the part, the portion of the family in which my mom, you know she didn't have the capacity to, to monitor our learning, whether or not she was a good person, whether or not she desired to be a good parent. It, it, it just wasn't there. One of the consequences of that were, is. Every last one of us had to repeat a grade, you know all four of her children had to re repeat a grade. And and, and when I was reading your response, I what I felt.
And, you know, I do believe that parents have the responsibility to participate in the children's education. And if they do, they can take some burden off of the educators or the state sponsored educational system. But what I was saying in response was that. Yeah, you know, my mom and didn't have that, she didn't have the capacity to monitor our education. And teaching in this Birmingham, Alabama and Birmingham City Schools school system.
You have these, these very large populations of people who are just like my mom, like whole schools of parents who are like my mom. You know what I mean? They don't have the capacity to to monitor the educational system, but that also goes on a generational basis. Did their parent have the capacity?
Their parent, grandparent have the capacity, their great grandparent have capacity, and if you keep on going to those greats, you, you wind up, especially in the African American community, you wind up in a pot of what is called slavery. You know what I mean? You, you, you, you are in slavery in which you are the product of somebody else's wealth.
So being the product of somebody else's wealth and then thinking about generational trauma that keeps on going and going and going and these large portions of community, I, it's this lady by the name of Yvette Jackson. Yvette Jackson wrote this, this book, one of my favorite educational books is called The Pedi Pedagogy of Confidence. And what y Yvette Jackson said is that, just like you said, all parents want people to, to they want their children to learn.
But Yvette Jackson just goes into say that so, so do the child, right? So do the child. The child wants to go ahead and to learn. I had thought about Yvette Jackson yesterday. And, and I didn't put her in into it. But nonetheless, when you, when you come from the product of somebody else's wealth, and then you have all of these generational issues, and these two are state sponsored. I, I personally believe that it, it for certain populations it might be.
Or, or, or a case of reparations to to to lean in a little bit more on the state initiative. You know, that's how I feel. So you, you had this point about how. Parents may not have the capacity, and a whole group of parents may not have the capacity. And, and yet your mom and every other mom and every other dad out there wants their kids to be successful, wants their kids to succeed, and they may or may not have the ability to do that.
And so what we do is we come in and provide support to them, and I had another person write me and say. Hey, I would've never thought of doing I would've never thought of going to college unless somebody from the school had mentioned it to me. And, and this is exactly my point. We need to enable those educators to assist where they are really needed and free up their opportunities free up their time to have those opportunities, to really assist those who really need it.
And the reason why this all comes back to AI is that whole article was about AI taking over the, the counseling portion in high school and where that can be a benefit. And, and you said something specifically that I really appreciated, that it allows someone to get some support without judgment which is a very real thing that, you know, I, I'm a very smart person.
And I know the education system and you would not believe how many times special educators have tried to make me feel dumb because I didn't understand or wanted something different for my daughter. And that just doesn't make any sense, and yet it happens, and I can only imagine how much worse that is for different marginalized communities that I'm not a member of in the disability arena. I definitely do understand that because that has been my experience, so.
So this idea of, of somebody being able to get a space free from judgment where they can get support, where they can get guidance, they can get what they need and it will respect their dignity. I think that's absolutely a powerful thing for, Parents have access to, Especially when they don't have the skills otherwise. And what a blessing that could be for them to go do the research, learn what they need to say, and then go have the confrontation with the teacher.
'cause you do a lot better when you have the knowledge and information back you up. Yes. You know, I, You know, I always do like this reflection on, on, on, on how I grew up when I, when I talk about these things. And, when I went to college, I didn't have anybody help me out. I, I didn't even have the guidance counselor, you know. I went to a largely white populated school in which I was one outta 2000 students. I was, one of a hundred people who were not white.
I'm talking about from all different ethnic groups as well. I didn't, a guidance counselor didn't bother. I. Me with, with, with college or, or, or, or career goals or anything. And with, with that sidestep what artificial intelligence would have been able to do, would have been able to, to teach me about learning about financial aid to. To to, to tell me different kinds of, of trade schools that I could go to or, or even doing an assessment to, to figure out my interest, you know?
So, you know, I I, I, I believe that I, artificial intelligence. In this aspect would most definitely be beneficial and can take off the, of the pressure, but not only take off the pressure of the counselors and also for people who, who are, are, are not seen in the community by the counselors, you know, just because. They're not causing a trouble and, and, you know, they don't open up their mouth, you know so I I, I'm, I'm with you on that.
I believe the 100% that artificial intelligence is something that, that people can use. And, and, and just like many of the families that I deal with in Birmingham, like some of these, some of these parents, they, they have no clue. And if they did have some assistance with artificial intelligence, first of all, they gotta have somebody to teach 'em how to use it.
But but if they had some artificial intelligence assistance, you know, they'll be able to discover a, a ton of things that wouldn't, that wouldn't even have come into their mind. So. Yeah. and and that piece there that, you can really explore things that had not even come into your mind before. I, I got another quick story about this. In 2013, I started building my website, Jethro Jones dot com.
And as I did that, I tried doing a website built in Jekyll, which is a specific static site generator. It's pretty nerdy. I tried it. I couldn't get it to work. I didn't know where to turn, and I gave up. And 10 years later I decided to try it again. And the difference was that I had chat, GPT, and so I would ask chat, GPT, why this wasn't working. Then it would tell me what I needed to fix, and I don't know how to do coding.
I am not a programmer, but I know enough that I can understand some things. And then I told it as it was fixing things for me. I said, be very explicit in your comments and explain every single line so I know what's happening. And I've been able to learn and understand and start fixing problems that I didn't know.
Were problems before, but now when it's not working, I can say, oh, I think I know what's what the problem is because I've used AI to help me figure it out and learn these different things. And it has taken me to a new level of confidence and belief in myself, which is like so silly and so amazing at the same time. And, and that's where like. Those things for me, that's great. Those things for someone who, who didn't think they could ever even go to college, even more powerful.
Someone who didn't think they could ever have a business or make a positive impact on society even more powerful. And that's, that's the kind of thing that I want to open up, that's kind of thing that I want to see more of in, in our system and, and do things that, that open the doors more for more people. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Big on the confidence thing and, and like you I have all of these big, big ideas, you know? I. I remember as a young man I grew up in the church and my granddad was pastor.
He had a little storefront church. At the most, we had 45 people would be there. You know and that's a, that's, that's probably we serving food. You know, food is being served that Sunday. But, but I don't know. I, so, so, so what happens to me is that I will go onto a story and then I would do something like cough and then all of a sudden the story is gone. It is like magic. Not a good kind of magic, not a good kind of magic. I know if I'm gonna catch that one back.
I don't know if this is, normally, this doesn't happen this much, but since I've been talking to Jethro, this has happened three times. I've been putting tally marks down, so, Hey, I, I have, I have that effect on people. I don't know what to say. Yeah. Nonetheless, I love my granddad. How about that? Yeah, that works. I'll take it. So we're gonna wrap up the conversation here. We're gonna have some great stuff coming out from from Eli on this podcast, AI and Education, real Talk.
It's gonna be fantastic. I hope you stick around for it and I hope you share it with others. And if you got ideas or suggestions of who Eli should have on just reach out anytime. We'd love to hear from you. What's the best way for people to get in touch with you, All right, so you can, you can get in contact with me through my email. It's HRIA, MLL c@gmail.com. And, um, you know, I do have social media, but I really don't do social media like that. So I don't, I I I don't check it.
So essentially email will be the best way. 100%. And also, lemme just say this because not only are the people that are current listeners, they're gonna be people that's, that's going to be coming onto this podcast That, that I'm gonna bring on. And so what I have to say is one, if you have an idea of artificial intelligence or you are exploring artificial intelligence in a way that you don't think that other people are in engaged in, most definitely hit me up. Let me know.
I also wanted, 'cause I'm gonna send this to everybody, I'm also wanna say, hey, thank you for everybody who has been doing the podcast. I am honored and I am very interested in having these very good conversations on artificial intelligence and how to explore using it within education, the whole entire frame of education. With a very critical component on it.
So when I say critical, I mean we want to examine power structures with artificial intelligence and how those power structures establish themselves. So with that said, I just wanna say thank you very much Jeff Row. I appreciate you passing this baton and I am going to do it. To death. We are gonna have a, we're gonna have an amazing, we're gonna have an amazing time. And I get to take the reins. And hopefully the people that are out there are already on there.
You stay, you stay a attuned because. Just like Dale and I, the science guy said, everybody has the ability to learn from everybody that they meet. So hopefully I can learn from you and you can learn from me.