EDT Jake on the State of Ed Podcast

Uh, but. I was unable to pull that off because it is May and it is crazy right now. So many band concerts and choir concerts and baseball games and soccer games and awards assemblies and work things and crazy stuff going on at work and lawn projects and all, all of the things happening right now. So I don't have a brand new episode for you, but I do have something really, really awesome that I'm excited to share with you.

So about a month ago, I had the good fortune of appearing on an episode of the State of Ed podcast with two awesome gentlemen, Dr. Nick Simone and Dr. Marc Isseks I was on episode, I think it was 73 of the State of Ed podcast. They have 72 even better episodes prior to the one that I was on featuring the likes of Rick Wormeli, Laura Williams, Jen Womble from FETC, a whole bunch of just really amazing folks have been on the show. I really recommend checking out the show.

And to give you a sneak preview, uh, we're gonna listen to my appearance on the State of Ed podcast. So I had had so much fun talking to Marc and Nick and I said to the guys, I said, since this was such an awesome conversation, I really enjoyed talking to them After the episode had been released on their platform, would it be okay if I released it in the educational duct tape feed? And they were generous enough to say, yes, please do so.

So I am airing this here in the show notes is a link to the show so you can hop over there and find the rest of their amazing episodes, I think you're gonna find they're really awesome and intelligent guys, and it's really great talking to them. And I think you're gonna find that you wanna hear their input on other topics as well too.

Speaking of which Marc recently released a new book called Captivate: engaging and Empowering Students in a World of Digital Distractions which is right up my alley. That idea of empowering them and thinking about the way we do things now in this era of digital distractions. I have a copy of the book. I have not started reading it yet, is definitely is on my summer reading list, and I'll be sharing with you what I think of it.

But having spoken with Marc, I'm feeling pretty confident this is gonna be a really good book, so I'm eager to check that out. And like I said, I'll share about that book with you after I read it. But without further ado, let's jump into my appearance on the State of Ed podcast with the awesome Marc Isseks and Nick Simone. Here we go.

In the classroom teaching math, science, and STEM at various grade levels with all the changes currently going on in schools. What better time to have an ed tech specialist on the show? Jake Miller, welcome to State of Ed podcast.

So let's just start by talking about your own journey here. How did you get to this place where you're, you know, a technological uh, specialist and a tech specialist and a personalized learning guru? Can you. Take us through that. Yeah, sure. So this is year 22 in education. I think I've stopped counting 'cause it just makes me feel old. Uh, but I think it's 22. I started off teaching middle school math and science.

Uh, at first thought I wanted to do it for all of my 35 years career until retirement or 42 like my mom did. Wow. Um, and then, um, found that I got interested in other things as I was going. So first I got interested in teaching stem and then I got really interested in educational technology. First it was using it. Just for myself in the classroom for how I taught. And then it was having the kids use it. That was the stem part really.

Then I found that I really wanted to help other teachers use it 'cause they were so overwhelmed and scared of it maybe at the time. Uh, and then I found that I really enjoyed that and I really wanted to support them more. So then I shifted into a technology integration specialist or tech coach role, and then I found that I, I wanted to help more than just the teachers in my school. So I started presenting at local conferences and I was like, well, that's not enough. I wanna do more.

And then it was Twitter and then it was a website, and then it was local conferences and then it was. Podcast and then it was all the things. And so, and then it was a book and it was all these things over the years, but really it's just in the interest of helping teachers do good things for kids. And the last three years I've been fortunate to fall into this role as a personalized learning specialist, which when I started it, I was like, what is, what is personalized learning?

I kind of have an idea, like I may have been bluffing a little bit in the interview, but then once I got in I was like, yes, this is, this is the thing and this is what I'm so excited about. So I've been doing that for three years now. So it's been a journey, but I like that it's. You know, a lot of different stops on this journey.

That. But the way most people think of differentiated learning or instruction is you're honoring the differences in variability in your learners. You're honoring their levels, you're honoring their preferences and how they learn and maybe the their there things that they're find relevant and enjoyable and you're presenting different opportunities to them. Oftentimes, you're prescribing them to certain learners and personalized learning.

We're taking it a step further and giving those learners some agency to make those choices themselves. So the teacher is maybe saying, Hey, based on what I know about my kids, these are the three different levels of this assignment that I'm gonna offer. These are the three different. Topics I'm gonna offer, or three different modes that you could do it in. And then letting the kids go like, this is the one that's right for me.

Instead of the teachers putting in the work of saying like, Marc, you'd prefer it this way, and Nick, you're currently accelerated on this topic, so let's do it this way. Giving the kids some control over that experience and letting them advocate for themselves and be autonomous and build that agency that's gonna benefit them after graduation for sure.

Uh, but this week I've, I've already been with three different school districts in three different days, and I love, that's great. I love bouncing around, working with different schools, but. Yet being with them often enough that I know those teachers, you know, 'cause you have those experiences where a great presenter maybe comes in, not, not that I'm comparing myself to a great presenter, but a great presenter comes in, present for one day and then you never see 'em again. Right, right. I do.

I have the, the nice benefit of, I'll see you in a couple weeks, or I might see you on Thursday, or like, I'm gonna be back again soon. And so I have these longitudinal relationships with these educators where I keep supporting them, but then I get to go and work with other educators too, which is really cool. That's

But sometimes we have the opportunity to do some a la carte things and some workshops and some trainings and things like that too, which I, I love that just. Variability at different things all the time.

And, and seeing them in that time, but seeing like the vulnerability they were ready to admit about, like not understanding things, but also the compassion they had for their kids. They just want to do the best, you know? And so it was like, I just, I wanted more of that, you know, I've always just really enjoyed working with teachers ever since I first experienced providing them with support like that.

So it's the opportunity to do that, and it's the opportunity to build those relationships, to support them in that way.

Getting towards, I'm not talking about the laggers, like the, the, you know, over my dead body folks, which hopefully is just a very small number, but like how do you get towards the middle where you get the masses thinking differently and starting to really make those kinds of cultural shifts? Mm-hmm. Where change really starts to take hold in a school.

And then there is that chasm, and then as you move towards the center, you've got that early majority and the late majority, and then all the way over to the right, you've got that, that group of laggards, I think is what it says on it. Mm-hmm. Um, and. My belief is I haven't read any specific documentation that says is the case, but my belief is that each group can only really be impacted by the group next to them. Right? Yeah. So if, if a early adopter.

Comes to a laggard and says, you've gotta try out this AI tool, let's say, because that's something that they're gonna be really, um, intimidated by. They're not gonna listen to that person at all because they, they're just, they're, they don't relate to them over that topic. And so I believe, and, and again, I don't have any studies that back up that, that's just my belief. So I believe that you've got to let. Let it trickle down from one group to the next group.

Now, I believe it also goes the other way too, that if a laggard has a negative experience relating to this new innovation or this new strategy or this new tech tool, and they tell that next notch up, that late majority or whatever they are, they could pull them down into, into essentially being a laggard. That's my belief. And so you, you've really gotta impact them kind of one at a time.

And so my goal always, if I, if I'm working with the school district, let's say, and I go to the dreaded staff meeting and I'm presenting to the whole staff and I know that. I've got all five levels of that bell curve in the room with me. I know that there's nothing I could do to bring that laggard on board right now, but there are things that I could do to turn them off right now. So my goal is always to keep everybody positive.

Whether or not they want to adopt it right now is fine because sooner or later that idea is gonna get to that laggard, and I don't want them to feel negative about it. And I don't want them to pull the other people down with them. So I, I, I would rather all 100% of people in that group feel positively.

And maybe right now I'm just winning over the 17% and knowing that seeing person at the 17th percentile do this is gonna impact the person at the 18th percentile and the person at the 19th percentile. So I think that that positivity, and that comes with relationship too, that comes with trust that they have in you when you're presenting to them or working with them. That's really smart.

Without regard for why, like why are you using that tool? Why are you using a cahoot right now? I don't know. The kids like it. Are you trying to build their DOK knowledge, one knowledge? Are you trying to teach 'em some vocabulary? Are you trying to review something? Like why are you doing that? And they didn't really have a reason.

When I talked to that class, I really wanted to talk to em about how we use educational technology as tools to support us in achieving pedagogical or teacher goals or solving problems or meeting needs. And so I gave him that presentation and then afterwards I said to the teacher, I said, you know, I think I want. To continue to do this work and speak to people about this exact topic. Uh, he said, what do you think? And he said, yeah, that's great.

Uh, except the title that you gave for the talk, which was something like viewing educational technology tools as things that can help us achieve it was like a really long name. Right? He is like that, that title that you gave it, it needs to be sexier if you're gonna keep doing this and. So soon thereafter, my kids are now, uh, 15, 13, and 11, but they were much, they were five, three and one or something like that at this time. We had an inflatable bounce house in our house.

Um, and my kids loved playing in this inflatable bounce house. And one day I went to fill it up for them and it sprung a leak. It was pushing air out of it. And we had thrown away the patch kit years ago 'cause we didn't know what it was. We were just laying on the floor with our kids' toys. So we had no patch kit. And what I. Discovered was that duct tape was a really good patch for the bounce house.

And I started kind of thinking about that idea about how duct tape by itself, it's, it's just a thing, right? But when it's solving a problem for us, then it's super powerful and super impactful. And so that became my metaphor, that educational technology is our educational duct tape. It is our thing, it's our tool that solves problems for us. Sometimes. It sounds like I'm saying that educational technology is, is just by default, non elegant, like.

Like Ed, like a duct tape is, but that doesn't mean that can't be elegant. Right. There's some really sophisticated ed tech out there, but the important part is it's just a tool that that tool that you're using and excited about isn't, is worthless or nothing if you're not focusing on achieving some specific pedagogical benefit. Right, right,

I'm, I'm currently reading this book More Than Words by John Warner. Have you guys heard of it? I have not. No, I just, I kept hearing about it. I just stole the song

Uh, I don't know, one of the quotes in the book and put it out on his social media. And that's the first place I heard it. And then I heard it on a podcast, I believe it was the search engine podcast. Uh, and I heard it somewhere else too. And I was like, I keep hearing about this book and I keep being really excited about it. I think I need to read this. And so I, I'm two or three chapters in right now. Um, but it's talking about how, uh, the written language words are more than words, right?

So something like chat, GPT or any large language model does a great job of writing words. And it does a great job of generating words that it thinks we're going to like, but that's not what the process of writing is about, right? Writing isn't just about writing words, it's, it's about more than the words. And so I think when I think about ai, I am excited about the possibilities of it. I use it a lot, but I think we need to go back.

To that, that duct tape idea, and really think about what are we trying to achieve here now? What are we trying to get across with what we're doing here? I saw a guy named Dave Stewart Jr. Speak recently, and Dave referenced this metaphor that he had recently heard from somebody else. That was if, if I wanna get really strong and I go to the gym to lift weights and I bring a forklift with me and I load the weights on the forklift and have the forklift. Take the weights up and down for me.

Is that okay? And I, and Dave didn't say this next part, I was like waiting on the edge of my seat for him to say it. I think he was being a writer and letting me think it instead of him saying it. But the point is, the goal wasn't to lift the weights, right? The goal was to get stronger. And so I think we have to keep that in mind with ai. What is the ai, what, what is our goal when we're using it?

You know, so if, if for example, we're using a tool like school ai and we want our kids to do some self-assessment and reflection, uh, about a certain topic, and school AI is kind of like a tutor, helping them do that, that's I think a pretty great use of ai, right? Because it's helping us achieve the goal. But if a kid's going to Claude, let's say a large language model. And saying, write this essay for me, then the kid's not getting stronger, like in that weightlifting metaphor, right?

So we just have to be really mindful about that. I think that requires a couple things too. One is, which is part of what this book is talking about, uh, more than words, is changing the way we think about writing in school to make it so it's actually relevant and meaningful and important and motivational for kids, right? But it also means that we need to be.

Talking to our kids about this, talking 'em about how we use ai, how we don't use AI, and, and our reasoning behind it and why some uses are okay and other users are not okay.

So we have to really take, take a strong look at what we are doing and, and the carrots and the sticks that we are bringing into the educational model because we, I think rhetorically have all the right messages, but are we historically creating the right. Frameworks to get the outcomes that we're talking about.

What does that look like? And so as I was learning about goal setting, I learned about the two different orientations that a goal could have. One is, uh, a, uh, mastery goal. And one is a, uh, performance oriented, performance oriented or mastery oriented goals. Um, and a performance oriented goal is exactly what you're saying. The perform if all, if your goal is the A or the finished essay or lifting the weights, the studies have shown that you are going to try to do those things.

By any means necessary. Right? That's right. And we all, we all have a border of what we will and won't do. Mm-hmm. But some people for, in that situation, if they could cheat, they'll just cheat, right? By any means necessary. They want to achieve that goal. And so what you're saying is we need to get away from these performance oriented goals. Focus on mastery oriented goals, which is saying, I'm trying to build a skill here. I'm trying to get better at something.

And the studies have also shown that if you're doing that, then you're less likely to do means of like cheating, for example, to get there because cheating doesn't achieve that goal. For example, for me, I'm 45 years old. I'm getting to the age of life where I need to make, I need to take care of my body and make sure I'm strong, right? I'm not just trying to show up, looking good in a, in a bathing suit at the lake this summer. Like, I need to just take care of myself as I get older. And so.

When I work out, it doesn't make sense for me to use a forklift because my goal is not lifting the weights. Similarly, it doesn't make sense for me to use steroids because my goal is not how I look with my shirt off. My goal is to be strong and healthy, and steroids won't help with that. Forklift won't help with that. Lifting some weights and going for a run on the treadmill, those things will help with that. So my goal is mastery oriented, not performance oriented.

I think that's, that, that's the biggest problem with ai. But it's a problem we've been dealing with in education for decades, maybe a century. Right? It's, it's, it's all of the problems we've had come out of that. That's the way we've built education. It's a system,

It's essential to everything. But I, I fear what I'm calling like the AI infinite loop, which is the teacher uses AI to generate the assignment. The student uses AI to complete the assignment, and the teacher uses AI to grade the assignment. The loop is complete and not a single human being has actually contributed to the work. Yeah. And, and I feel like we're like on the cusp of that very, very thing happening. And it, it's a major concern.

Yeah. Because once we get on that hamster wheel, I don't know how easy it's gonna be to get off that hamster wheel.

I don't think that all AI use is bad, for example, I think agreed. Teacher is using it for some, some grading. I actually don't think that's horrible. Like I want them to do as much grading as they possibly have time for within reason. But if we can give kids more feedback faster, right, and take some time off of teacher's plates so that they can work with those kids, I'm okay with it.

The issue is that that's a mastery oriented goal of supporting those kids and that that's the change that needs to happen. I think,

Submitting so that you can give them that type of feedback. So if you just read the feedback, I don't know if that's gonna be enough.

If all the kid sees it as is a way to get a grade and all the teacher sees it as, is it a way to more quickly enter the grade, essentially, then we're looking at assessment wrong and the AI fits just fine there. Why not? Right. Right. And it shouldn't, but yeah.

A lot of that noise so they can kind of get focused on the task in hand and learn in their classrooms.

I think we do like they're addictive devices. And so we have to, to an extent, step in for those kids and help them out as they're building those skills of doing it themselves.

I think there's a little bit of that. Um. The other part just goes back to, to true motivation and the ver the difference between, first of all, between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. So if everything we're doing in school is an extrinsic motivator, if we're trying to motivate them with grades and punishments, carrots and sticks, as you said before, we're not gonna motivate them very well. And then they're gonna be really apt to be distracted by the technology, right?

Whereas if we could motivate them intrinsically, help them want to learn, help them see this self-assess, and want to grow and wanna get better at things, develop a growth mindset in our classroom, see learning as an opportunity to take some risks and make some mistakes, and then learn from them. If we could shift to that. Then we get more motivation 'cause it's intrinsic. And then we see them being less apt to go to those distractions.

Now, whenever I talk with teachers, I have to tell them, I understand that we're not in utopia. That's, this is reality. That's right. These are children, these are real children and real teenagers. And I can't just say, we'll make them intrinsically motivated and then they'll put their phones away and the teachers are like, yeah, whatever. Right? Because I know that's not true. One thing, do you guys know the self-determination theory continuum that, uh, DC and I forget the other.

Author of it that breaks up the levels of extrinsic motivation. Are you familiar with that?

Hey, I told you 10 minutes ago, empty the dishwasher, get up and go empty the dishwasher, and then they'll do it. Now, me with chores, I don't like to do chores. I'm not very motivated to do chores, but I know that if I don't clean that bathroom, my wife's gonna clean that bathroom and I'm gonna feel guilty about it. So I have kind of taken on her goal. Right. And I'm doing it for that reason. So that's a step up in terms of motivation. It's still extrinsic, right?

I'm so motivated by her desire to do it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But she's not forcing me anymore. The next notch up is her, right? She doesn't want to clean the bathroom, right. But she takes, she takes pride out of it being clean, and she desires it being clean. She wants it to be clean. So even though she's not intrinsically motivated to clean it, she is more motivated because she desires that. And that's like a kid starting to desire the learning, right? Mm-hmm. So they wouldn't do it.

If there weren't a grade, you know?

I go outside and I mow the lawn, right? Because he's in, he's actually enjoying the learning. So that's the next step up. My wife doesn't enjoy. Cleaning that bathroom. She enjoys having it done. My neighbor enjoys the process of mowing the lawn. Hmm. Now I will point out that I haven't seen him mow his lawn in six weeks. Um, six, six months. I'm sorry. Since before, since the weather changed. Right.

He could be out there mowing in the winter, but he's not right because it's still a little bit of extrinsic motivation. He still needs the grass to grow. To tell him to go mow. He could potentially just mow nothing if he enjoys it that much. But that's still a little bit extrinsic motivation. So my question always is, how do we shift kids that direction, right? Mm-hmm. How do we make them value the goals? How do we make them value completion of the goals? How do we make them value the learning?

How do we make them enjoy the process? They still might not choose to do it, but how do we shift them in that direction? That's what I talk about. That has nothing to do with ed tech either. But nowadays, everything we do, we can do with ed tech. But a kids, I remember when I first started teaching 22 years ago, just using technology, made kids excited. They wanna to do it because of technology. Nowadays that's not the case. So how do we shift them in that direction to do that? I don't know.

Where are you guys at on goals? Or I'm sorry, on chores. How are, how are you doing your chores, Nick? Are you a good chore doer?

Whereas that student teacher was just choosing to use Kahoot, you choose to do a formative assessment or you choose to, I don't know, have kids share with each other or you choose to, um, engage them in some, some exploration of a topic or whatever it might be. You have your pedagogical goal and then you'd identify the tool. So I think if we always start with that step. Then they're more likely to, to choose a technology that's going to do those things.

And so whatever the goal is, if we start with a goal, then we're more sure, more, sure. More certain that we're not just doing bells and whistles, you know?

Mm-hmm. We're just like substituting. So instead of the overhead projector, I'll put it on the proximal. Instead of the proximal, I'll put it on a flat screen TV instead of the flat screen tv. It'll be on a one-to-one tablet instead of the one-to-one tablet. Soon it'll be in the meta glasses, you know? Yeah. But it's still the same packet or the same handout that was written in 2006. Mm-hmm. Or 1996.

Of course, if you had identified that you have some kids that are reading at a lower level, then using a technology tool is gonna let you translate it, but. If you don't have any of those issues you're trying to resolve, you really are just substituting

They're just going, Hey, did you see the new thing that came out on Magic School? And they're just throwing out these exciting tools without knowing what the problems are. And that's not the coach's or the the coach's fault, the tech person's fault. They just don't have that opportunity to have that relationship. What really needs to happen, I think, is talking to that teacher. And saying, what are you working on? Right?

So talking into Nick and saying like, what's that STR struggle you're having in your classroom? What could be better? And if he says like, I just don't know if my kids are understanding the lesson while I'm teaching it, then I could suggest some formative assessment ideas. I could say, well, let's try Pear Deck so you could hear from every kid while you're doing it. Or, let's try Nearpod.

And so I could put in place, I could suggest those tech tools that I know with my expertise based on what you actually want. Which thinking about how we talked about motivation earlier, you as a teacher are gonna be more motivated. To listen to me and implement it because it pertains back to your own actual problem. So it, it's that same thing that we talk about with our kids. You're more likely to do that chore because you, val value the result.

But that really is what needs to happen because that's when the best professional development is going to take place. Yeah, for sure.

'cause that is a nice program that you're part of.

You have to have the proper organization for the seeds. You have to have the proper watering of the seeds and all of these different steps. And I think a lot of times with what you're saying is like, okay, so here's technology. We're gonna sprinkle seeds and they'll grow because that's what, that's what. Happens with seeds, but farming is a lot more complicated than that. Yeah. And a lot more scientific than that, and a lot more specific and intentional than that.

And I think that's kind of what you're talking about. Yeah. Whereas there's a lot of drive by help, which is not without its value, but it's not nearly making the impact and having a level of effectiveness mm-hmm. As what espousing here with your, your kind of pedagogical mindset and your duct tape. Approach to things. Yeah.

And to your point earlier, I think Nick said it earlier about Kahoot, we don't really want them all doing the same thing anyhow because that's when it gets boring if everybody's doing it. So it's best for, that's why it's hard to have a, um. A presenter come into a school and talk about a certain technology tool. 'cause we really don't want every teacher in that school using it, number one. And then number two, it's not actually the right tool for all of them.

'cause they don't have the problem or the lens or whatever that that yields it or that needs it. Yeah,

I just wanna ask one more question before we, before we wrap up with, with wearable technology being on the cusp of the next huge thing, which is like, it hard to imagine that we're gonna first go through a next huge thing since we just got completely like, you know, sideswipe with, with large language models, not even, you know, two, two and a half years ago at this point, to what extent is AR and VR. Going to be like the next plateau or the next hill that we climb?

Or do you think we're gonna like miss that? Like I What's your take on that? Because of the, because of these glasses and, yeah. And the integration. Do you think that that's gonna make its way into our classroom in a profound way? Or do you think it's gonna be like a passing fat?

But the same problems will be there where kids are distracted by those devices if they don't care about the learning, right? Kids are likely to use those devices to cheat. If they're motivated only by the grade and by completing the work, by the carrots, by the sticks. So it's going to be the same sets of problems that we're dealing with AI that we dealt with, with cell phones, that we dealt with, with Wikipedia, with the internet, with Chromebooks.

Those same sets of problems are going to present themselves with these wearable technologies. The the additional problem, it's gonna be really hard to tell when kids are using them and not. So we really have to build our environments so that the kids don't want to use them. I think is the most important part.

Captivate, engaging and empowering students in a world of digital distractions available on Amazon. So, uh, and please be sure to leave a comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts about the book, about the podcast, and anything else education related. Jake Miller, thank you so much for sharing your time with us this evening. And I'm, uh, selfishly happy that your son's, uh, baseball game was rained out so you could keep our appointment here with us, uh, this evening.

It was such a treat to, to talk to you.