AI in Education

Hey, Matt. Hey, Dani. All right. Today, I'm the excited one. We're going to be talking about AI. It's super cool. Artificial intelligence is so hot right now as a topic in education and everywhere else, but also... i think for a lot of people absolutely terrifying oh my gosh totally um right now my son thinks everything's ai anything that does anything he's like oh it's ai mom i'm like nope that's computer generated fine like he just everything is ai to him

But I'm curious, have you used AI? I have used AI. I'm... Pushed myself away from using certain AIs because I don't want to become reliant on them. But I love playing around with image generators. I think they're super fun. I love trying to play like spot the... AI kookiness in some.

of those images because there's always something that's just a little bit off yeah absolutely and today we're lucky we have three great guests to talk about ai from three very different perspectives in education we have a teacher yep we have a tech leader in a district and we have the statewide data privacy person as well. It'll be super interesting. Let's listen in.

Utah Education Network is excited to share that our professional development team is now sharing a weekly newsletter with material to support your classroom. Whether you are looking for videos and podcasts to further your learning, UEN courses to support your goals as an educator or professional development across the state to attend. UEN's professional development newsletter supports you.

We also include a resource spotlight every week on topics that are important to Utah educators like artificial intelligence, podcasting, and more. Learn more at www.uen.org development slash newsletter. and subscribe to get the newsletter in your email every Thursday. Check out the show notes for the link to subscribe.

Before we get into the tough questions, would you all take a moment and introduce yourself and what your current role in education is? And I will start with Emma. If you'd go ahead and introduce yourself and then pass it off to someone else.

Perfect. Thanks, Danny. My name is Emma Moss, and I'm excited to be here. I am a digital literacy teacher in Canyon School District. I currently work with eighth graders and absolutely love empowering students with technology and bringing innovative ideas to my class.

classroom. I'm going to pass it off to Dr. Cox. Fancy. So I'm Susie Cox. I'm Director of Innovative Learning for Provo City School District. That means I'm responsible for all educational technology, computer science, and STEM education. I am John Lyman. I am the student data privacy specialist at the Utah State Board of Education. My primary roles are to be a liaison with all 156 LEAs in the state of Utah to help them coordinate their efforts with Utah Law 53E-9-309, which states that...

Anytime that an LEA shares student data with a third party, there needs to be certain provisions in place between the two entities. I help monitor that and I also do a lot of the training throughout the state. in regard to all of the student data privacy practices. And I'm an ed tech futurist and I love AI.

Awesome. Thank you guys so much. We have kind of like a power trio here to talk to us about artificial intelligence. So let's start off with how is artificial intelligence being utilized in the field of education? What's maybe an example you have of its practical application in a classroom or an online learning environment? And Susie, let's start with you.

Yeah, it's an interesting question because we've really had AI in our classroom for decades, but it's coming to the forefront in this new kind of iteration of it. So if we think about what it's been like for the last while, you know, we've had adaptive. testing and adaptive learning platforms. Those are AI based. Even things as simple as like autocomplete, autocorrect suggestions in Google Docs. Like I have not written a paper by myself in Google Docs in eons.

Ever since those suggestions. You mean the robots have already taken over? Yeah, I hate to break it to all of us, but yes. But also a lot of our assistive technologies and our things that we really try to promote among kids, things like using text-to-speech, translation services. plagiarism detection. I mean, all of these things that we've been using for a long time.

are forms of AI in education. So it's really not anything particularly new. I think what we're talking about here is this new generative AI, which has taken those utilities up a notch, shall we say. I am not in the classroom. I haven't been in a classroom with students since before the pandemic. So I am not familiar with the current landscape of what it's like to have every student in the state having their own device.

And the LEAs throughout the state really, you know, there is this new environment that we have where we're. Everybody is connected and trying to still mitigate this digital divide. And, you know, we've got all these different socioeconomic components that come into it and what kids have access to what.

technology. As far as AI is concerned, I mean, you're correct, Dr. Cooks, about all those different things. Like I hadn't thought about how, I mean, I was trying to remember back when I was in fourth grade.

that when you type typing on something and there was no such thing as spell check like it was it was like i don't i mean there are very few of us that remember a time before spell check um the little red line on the document um but i but you know i i know how i'm using it in my professional life and i'm sure we'll be talking about that more

I think from the classroom perspective, it's interesting because like Dr. Cox mentioned, these technologies have been there, but they're suddenly in the forefront and the limelight and even for our students. So I don't think I've gone a day since.

that original version of ChatGPT came out that I haven't had a student come up and be like, do you know about ChatGPT? Can you tell me about... whatever or as it's released new versions have you seen that it can do and even things like um there's a tool with canva where you can generate images like you can say i want you to make me a rainbow cow and looking at it like

It would be hard if you, I can see like from a perspective of a child, like a second or third grader to decipher, like, is that a real image or not? And so I think that's what we're seeing now in public education is even though these technologies have been present. it's really in everyone's mind and seeing the impact of it and they see more of

the generative application of it, of how do I, I can take this and it's accessible and it can bring me all this information. And so what do we do with that in education, I think is really the question that we're going to be kind of tackling here today.

Well, I think that leads us nicely into our next question is, is what are, we're seeing all this new generative AI, like you're talking about Susie, we've had AI for a really long time, but this new generation over the last few months, last year has really. heightened our understanding of what artificial intelligence is. What are some of the potential benefits of incorporating these new generative AI into educational settings and how might they support things like

improving personalizing learning or student engagement or even facilitating, you know, kind of the clerical and day-to-day activities that a teacher has to do as just a teacher. Emma, do you want to start us off on that one? I was going to say, I'm just waiting to see if I should jump in, but I feel like for me, from my perspective in the classroom and working with students, it really has the power to help. our students have a jump off point. I had a chance to go to a conference this past March.

you set and i heard eric kurt speak and he talked about how the most powerful teachers are not those that can just use technology or just teach but those that can use them in combination to empower our students and i think that's really what we need to do with ai obviously there are some drawbacks but if students can use it as a jumping point to have have ai generate something and then learn to be more critical about it analyzing using those

skills that are a greater depth of knowledge using it as a creative outlet. I mean, it's amazing that you can take something some words from your mind about something and have a computer generate what that image might look like, as well as seeing it from a view of having constructive feedback, like taking, I've seen an English teacher that they had them write them an essay and then they said, okay.

what's great about this essay? What's wrong with this essay? How could we improve this essay? Whereas before you'd have students just starting with zero. Now they're looking at that and saying, well, this is good and this isn't good and this is how I tweak that and suddenly you have students that can do so much more instead of just starting from zero.

I was, being the research nerd that I am, reading an article the other day, it's by Uyang and Zhao, talking about these three paradigms of AI in education, I think. It's important for us to kind of frame it and think about it in this way, because there's AI directed education, which is more of those like adaptive learning platforms.

Then there's AI supported and AI empowered learning. And those become really different things as you think about how could I support my learning by sitting down and kind of using this. generative ai or a different form of ai as a tutor or support to what i'm trying to learn and i think emma's talking about that a little bit

And then this AI empowered, like really taking on some personalization and pursuing the topics you're interested in and creating things that weren't possible before. Like we really do have these very different ways. of using AI. And I think we're just at the tip of exploring whether those are going to look like with these new technologies that have been brought into our classrooms. My brother was telling me he's a sixth grade teacher in the district.

that two kids last week brought in essays that were written by ChatGPT. And he realized very quickly that they were easy to catch for him because our sweet kids have not yet learned to say, in the voice and with the vocabulary of a sixth grader, write an essay about X. So they brought these essays that were like... And by professional opinion and in the context of, you know, it's just ridiculous. And he literally started reading it, looked at the kid and was like, no.

So it really does, like Emma was saying, become this new skill set of how do I define problems? How do I construct? queries and then how do I embrace a new form of literacy that is reading this response that it generates. identifying what you like and don't like about it, probing the software to take it in a different direction. So it becomes this new skill set that I don't think many of us have been able to develop yet as educators. That's so funny that you mentioned that.

these sixth graders wrote in the voice of a college student. I remember in November when all of a sudden all of the college professors on my feed were beginning to freak out. because it was coming to finals and they didn't know what to do. And it was a very interesting time. And funny enough, I've seen some... some memes where it was like college professors hate generative AI until they have to write recommendation letters. Bingo. I haven't done that.

Oh, it works, Susie. When it comes to this piece where we're talking about saving teachers time, day-to-day activities and clerical things, some things that I've... worked with some some of my colleagues and friends on like like when it first came out and we're just like try this try this try this and you know write a lesson plan for eighth grade

about edgarion poles the raven and focus on these things and you hit enter and the teacher's job is essentially done as far as that piece of instruction and of course you know they you want to go through and do your stuff but as far as time saving and and doing something that you know that like you can put a lot of thought on into and those times after school weekends

The other thing when it first came out is a friend and I who is a special ed teacher at a charter school. She was like, let's see if it'll do an IEP. And so we went through a couple of iterations of prompt and eventually got to a prompt that was sophisticated enough.

to where it cranked out you know in in seconds uh an iep that had interventions on it that this teacher said that i would have never thought of those um and so I mean, we're talking about potential benefits from the educators standpoint and from, you know, the day to day kind of.

menial tasks of getting things. I mean, I think that this could be something that is very helpful. I believe that that is why a lot of the tech directors across the state have all of their teachers knocking down their doors, asking for access to this. But I mean, and I think that that's kind of where we're talking today. It's really to discuss. We were talking about those three types of AI and maybe how far we are along with those.

And, you know, and just really kind of like defining what it is that we're talking about so that we can get, you know, I mean, that's what these questions are coming up with. It's like, what's next? What are we going to do with this? And so that's where my head's at.

the teacher efficiency because one of the things the conversations emma and i both had a little bit of a like when we were talking about writing a lesson plan because it brings up a question that that i've been having conversations about with fellow educators which is What is our role as teachers? Is our role to sit down and come up with that lesson plan from scratch? Is our role as teachers to free up time so that we're with our kids? And maybe it's both and maybe, I don't know.

But it's a conversation I think that's rich and that needs to be had to say, what is our fundamental purpose as educators? And how can chat GPT support us and empower us or any other AI support us and empower us in those roles that we feel are essential to what we do so that we can be better. As we were talking.

And Dr. Cox mentioned that we both kind of made this face, which I know that the listeners can't see that. But in defining that essential role, you have to understand that I think at the end of the day, you still need. an expert person to look at with the critical lens with those paradigms and how can we use it to empower rather just than having some information that's there i mean admittedly i have i went in and said write me a lesson plan for this just to see what it would do and

Being an educator who has a lot of experience and training, there are things that I was like, that section is really great, but this may not work as well, or that part doesn't even make sense to helping them achieve the learning objective. And so looking at it from a critical lens. Are there times that it's been helpful that it's like, you know, I'm really struggling to come up with ideas for how to teach this concept. Can I have 15 of them? And then I can kind of sort through those.

But I think there still has to be a teacher and an educator with that training. And I think sometimes that's why people are afraid of AI in some senses, because they're like, well, it can do all these things. Yes, it can. It can do a lot of things, but you still need. that heart of an educator behind it. I think that that is what makes education so wonderful is that it is working from person to person, right? You're working with students and it's that creativity and that personal nature that...

Right now, I'm not saying it won't ever, but at this point, AI doesn't bring. And I think you still need that in the classroom. And so I don't know. That's kind of why I was making that face is because it was like.

well yes but and i think that's where people are trying to define the line as to where where you should use it and maybe where where it's still learning and we're still learning how to use that in a way that's effective I love this idea of using AI as a jumping off point so we're not staring at that white screen of death.

that you can use it for something to analyze and take back into your practice or into the piece of writing that you're working on. But one of my favorite tweets that I've seen on AI is a college English professor. And she just tweeted like, you guys, I know you have not mastered the semicolon in the matter of a week since chat GPT has been released. Like.

I know that this is not you. And we as teachers, we have, like Emma was saying, that teacher heart and that teacher mind, and we know you. We know that you did not do this. Moving on to some of the ethical considerations related to AI, we're wondering your thoughts on things like data privacy, bias, fairness. How can we ensure responsible or equitable use of AI? Let's maybe start with John on this one.

is that because like that's in my title is data privacy is that what just just a little bit yeah well um i mean this is i i guess this is where we're at right this is why we're here is to talk about this very kind of, when it comes to privacy, privacy is not like a tangible thing. It is something that is very personal to people. What is private to you may not be private to me. It's very hard to define. However, I think that we have.

system we have we have things that we've put in place to kind of like guardrails guardrails and so if you know i would like to take this opportunity to kind of help some of the educators in the state understand what kind of guardrails in regards to privacy that are already in place, and then what kinds of things we're talking about in regards to this kind of technology going forward. And so essentially where I'll start is that in the state of Utah, if you click, I agree to terms of service or.

You log into an app, you are essentially signing an agreement or contract with that third party. under the umbrella of your agency. There are folks at each LEA in the state that are called data managers. They are the ones that are in charge of the transmission of data. They are the ones that are in charge of making sure that surveys don't include PII or different questions that may be up against our Utah PPRA law.

But I digress. So what I would suggest is that in any instance where there is an educator that wants to work with some sort of ed tech product. that I would say that you need to and there is a we created some supporting trainings with this and I can direct all of you to our supporting trainings on our USB websites.

on YouTube, but I would say that the first thing that I would encourage all educators in the state to do before you want to have access to a third-party application is that you need to ask before you app. You need to ask. You cannot just use something. You cannot put students' information in your roster into it. You don't want to get in one of those trial things. Do that on your personal stuff.

But under the umbrella of what's going on at your LEA, you should be asking before you. That will help. And this is not a we want to take your stuff away from you kind of thing. This is we want to get you to a yes. We want people to be able to use technology.

We want you to familiarize yourself with your agency's data privacy practices. Each one of the agencies in the state has what is called an approved applications list or a metadata dictionary. On this list, it has all the listings of all the third parties. that your LEA has agreed to terms with, and you should be able to use those things. And then again, if what you want to use is not on there, you would then go to your data manager and ask them for access to that.

um but then that's where we get into this issue privacy and chat gpt and um I mean, we can get into the back room, kind of how the sausage is made when you type in your prompt and what it spits out. But in regards to that process, there is a lot of... personally identifiable information that is

shared. We don't really have a grasp on a lot of that and where it all comes from. That's why when you hear about all these AI art processes, a lot of creators are very angry because it is stealing their stuff. uh so a lot of this stuff is is it plagiarism no is it crowdsource yes uh is it correct who knows that's for the uh you know the experts to figure out but one of the things that i want to make very clear

is that when it comes to the policies, the LEAs are starting to swirl around because none of us have policies yet. I talked to these data managers. They don't exist because it's so new. And we're going to, you know, I know that we'll talk about this, but. Government will never move as fast as technology. And this technology is not a steady speed.

this technology is a speed train running down a mountain and it's gonna get faster and it's not gonna stop and if you want to put some guardrails on it good luck i mean we're talking about what it is now

It's five months old folks. I mean, it's five months old and it's learning. And, and I read a thing last night that says, yeah, you may know about chat GPT and we're sitting here talking about chat GPT, but there were a. thousand ai apps released yesterday things that help us with travel things that will do all sorts of things because they're using this as a foundational base so

My point is where we're at is that we don't know where and it's very sticky. So a lot of the LEAs are saying, OK, we are going to allow our teachers to use this because they're adults. And, you know, we're going to offer some PD. I know that there are some, I don't know if I'd heard that UEN was offering some PD through some of the regional service centers.

But what I'm saying is that PD around this would involve things like not putting PII of the kids into the system if you are creating or generating an IEP. that you may want to use it as we've said as like a jump off point. We're not going to put Susie Q's name in the fourth grade into this system. We're not going to do that. We're going to refer to all of the training that the state has created. And I'm going to pat ourselves on the back. Utah is fortunate in that we are one of.

A handful of states in this country that has a student data privacy director, the director of privacy. There are not other states in this country that take privacy. student data privacy as seriously as the state of utah we have a very well regarded uh reputation nationally there are states that are that anyway you understand that it's very archaic

And we are very fortunate to be where we are. However, we are still behind the eight ball in this. And, you know, a lot of other states are kind of looking to us to kind of help figure it out. Because if you Google or chat GPT.

which state has the most children per capita the answer is going to be utah so i found myself in in quite a I don't know, unusual place for me, which is normally as a teacher, I would likely have been the first person to like jump on and start using it and be like, I really use this. And now I'm an evil administrator and I'm not allowed to do that anymore. ask the question at pretty much every meeting I've been at about what do we do about the data privacy side of this?

Thankfully, OpenAI and others are evolving their privacy policies literally day to day. If you check it, there's variation. So it went from nobody under 18 can use it to you can use it over 13 if you have parent permission. are not going to check and see if you're over 13 or have permission. Now they've got some kind of tiered system that if you want your data protected, you can pay for that. Like it's evolving day to day.

So I'm in a position right now where I'm saying exactly what we've been talking about, like teachers use this, understand what it can do, have conversations in your class, bring examples to class, those kinds of things. At the moment, I'm not very comfortable saying students hop on there. Yeah, because we know that students are a little more casual with their data than we might like them to be. And they don't think they're revealing personal things, but they are.

And those privacy policies as they stand make me really uncomfortable. Now, at the same time, Deanna, your initial question was asking about equity as well. Right. So this is where I get all like, oh, my gosh, what do we do? Because I know some kids are not monitored at home and are using it or have parent permission and are using it at home and other kids. don't know about it don't have parent permission or guidance don't have devices at home and so

Not introducing it at school contributes to issues in digital divide, right? In equity issues. We're saying, well, the people who know about it and have parents or access to resources or whatever, they're going to learn how to use it. going to be a tool for them to be successful. Kids who don't have it, know about it, don't have guidance. Sorry.

I mean, we're really contributing to that divide. So it's kind of the same thing we've been talking about forever with just ed tech in general. If we don't do it effectively in the classroom, then we're contributing to digital divide issues. So I'm really struggling personally with kind of managing these facets of what I value. I want to keep that student privacy so close and intact, and I want to make sure that divide's not opening up.

But I also want to be experimenting and exploring and see what we can do. I'm going to just jump in real quick because you talked about a couple of things that I want to applaud you for. One is, yes, it did go from age 18. which was where the initial policies for schools came into play. We're going to just use it for teachers because the kids are not allowed on this. That's our stance. And so we're going to block it. And then a week later, it went to 13.

So what happens is you go to chat GPT and you say that you want to sign in and it will ask you for either a Google or Microsoft instance.

which a lot of schools will have something like that. But then the next piece is that it asks for kind of like a two factor authentication to where you're going to need to type in your telephone number. And so that then assumes that somebody has a. phone in the first place so that gets back to our equity piece as well but that then assumes that you know anybody over the age of 13 has a phone

That's not necessarily parental permission. You got parental permission to have the phone in the first place. And the other piece that I want to talk about is that you said that you were struggling with the data privacy piece and where this gets. kind of back to that uh sticky piece is the the thing that i monitored that metadata dictionary the data privacy agreements so provo clint smith is your guy and he goes and obtains these agreements with vendors and

And there's all sorts of caveats inside of these agreements. And anybody can go and look at these. They're on the metadata dictionaries of all the schools. And you can take a look at these agreements. But the fact of the matter is, is the chat GPT. in order to be used in an LEA, according to our state's law, would have to sign a data privacy with an LEA in the state of Utah. I am confident.

that based on their operation model and what they need to function, that ChatGPT will never sign a data privacy agreement, not only in Utah, But nationwide, it will not be something that will happen. And so our director of privacy, she, I mean, we just kind of like, I mean, we're back here. And maybe what a, you know, a middle ground is, is we get like chat GPT kids.

or something i and and that really i mean and it's silly but when it comes to the law that is in place in this new kind of like tidal wave of of this thing this is something that we're wanting to kind of figure out policy wise and figure out implementation wise like this is a tool and how can we get you access to this tool and right now the way that the law works and as far as everything that we're uh

guiding people with I just don't know if it's something that we can use to be honest I think that just hearing you talk and seeing it from a teacher's perspective like Everyone that I've seen using it has not handed it over to their students. So I'm going to be clear about that, that I think teachers are aware that there are privacy issues that are going to arise and that the information that they're putting in.

is somewhere i think that our students are in hearing them have conversations about it sometimes they are aware and sometimes they are not and so i think where it stands right now i think that's a really important thing to recognize is when your students ask about it. I'm thinking of the teachers in the state because I'm sure they've had similar conversations. My students ask about it and I say, you know, that's a lot of, you don't want to be sharing all of that information.

Because it is going somewhere. It's using that information. It's caching that information. It's using that to answer more of your questions and recognizing that. I know for myself, when I set it up, I'm not using any of my education accounts to access it. I'm using my personal account. I'm making sure that like what I'm putting in there is that something that I would want somebody to know about me because I don't know where this is going to go.

My husband, who's also in tech, he's the one that came home first and was like, hey, have you seen this? And he was telling me about how they were putting in.

like having the AI write like Google reviews for them, but they were using like fake names or fake companies because they're so... like concerned about where is this going and i don't think that we know yet and like you talked about i don't think that chap gbt or other tools will sign those agreements because i don't know that they know where it's going yet either um you talked about it being a freight train but

That freight train is going, it is moving. And so I think we have to realize that we're going to have to apply best practices in these cases. How can we evaluate this technology? How can we use this technology? But how can we do that within those laws? and privacy agreements that already exist and i think that that's what you're saying here and where we're drawing the line is like i mean i'm not using it with my students because i don't want their information shared but

they are all very much aware of it. And so it reminds me of when, like, it's definitely slower moving, but like when cell phones first came out, people were like, Oh, do I use it as a tool in the classroom? Or do I not have them use it at all? Like, I feel that same sense of like, what do I do with this thing? And I think as time goes on, you'll see some of that emerge of how can I use this in a way that's both best practice.

respects privacy and helps our students become 21st century like learners so that they're able to use that when they are adults and have that mentality and those paradigms to be able to say I'm not going to put my address into this thing or I'm not going to ask it about a health concern that I have or I'm not going to tell it about

XYZ so that they are aware of that because they are going to continually encounter this. And so I think that's where right now as a teacher, where I'm at is how can I help my students? know that there need to be guardrails, even if it is a freight train. Absolutely love that, Emma. And John, I got to go back to a comment that Emma referenced as well as this technology.

With AI, it's going so quickly. And it's been described as a technology that we won't really understand the implications of until about 400 or 500 years from now, if we survive that long, that sort of thing. I was fascinated a couple days ago. Greg Brockman, who's the OpenAI co-founder, he did a TED Talk that just came out earlier this week where he showed...

applications of ChatGPT mixing with things like Shopify and Twitter and things like that. And it's incredible to see the speed at which in the five months since ChatGPT came out that we're really seeing this growth and the speed of applications. and thousands of apps coming out. So there's a question here for educators who are trying to keep up with this. Where do you go? What have you seen for professional development to keep yourself?

on top of understanding the implications and best practices for AI in the classroom. I'll send it over to Susie first. um i think this is a tricky one right i was talking to darren hudgens the author of digital detectives uh yesterday day before um kind of about this and how you know there are

Ends of the spectrum on this idea, so I'm sorry. I'm not going to give you an easy answer But on the one end of the spectrum are books about AI and its impact on technology that have been researched for a year and are just about to come out versus ChatGPT came out on November 20-whateverth of 2020. 2022 and by december 1st we had websites and blog posts and things about oh this is how we'll use it in education this is how we'll use it in education so personally i haven't found a single

really great, reliable reference. I have a few places that I've pulled some ideas from and things like that. I've looked at some things. We've had some discussions at ed camps. I've looked at some materials that were produced by Ditch That Textbook pretty early on. a few other things like that. But I think we're actually in a space where we're having to craft these materials ourselves. I do feel like at times I'm like, okay, where is my footing? You asked about places that have good resources.

UNESCO actually has a lot on artificial intelligence. They have a guide that they published on ethics that is long but fascinating. A lot of, not going to sugarcoat that. It's a lot of pages, but it's a good, like, kind of help you kind of visualize those guardrails. They have a lot of resources there, especially. for educators, which I really liked. I also find myself frequently on Twitter.

just scrolling for things that I can find and grab. So I think I'm leaning towards some of those research studies as more of like, here is a foundation for me. Here is some guiding principles. And then kind of reaching out to like my PLN on Twitter.

Here's how that's evolving. How does that fit into that scope of guiding principles that I know are sound and research-based, even if... it's not necessarily looking from a lens of the brand new they are um providing that footing for me and so i can say like the privacy laws i know those exist i'm very well aware of those and so when you first came out it was like

I don't think I want to put that in there because I know about these. And so I'm trying to use it from that perspective and use an application instead of looking for something that's consistently analyzing what's new and just using what I know. as an educator who look at those things. That's such a good point, Emma, because I think that really guides the majority of our ed tech decisions, right? Like when any new technology comes out, we don't immediately have the guidebook that teaches us.

oh this is exactly how we should use this in education but we have an understanding of how kids learn we have an understanding of development and what's appropriate at different ages we have an understanding of data privacy like we have these building blocks at our disposal And those are the ones that help us make those decisions. So the more we can, I think, talk about it within frameworks of effective pedagogy and what's good for kids and these data privacy laws.

That's going to be what drives us to the right kinds of solutions instead of new shiny thing and especially new shiny thing that wasn't intended for children that we're now kind of adapting and saying, OK, how do we prepare children?

for a world in which this exists aside from my position like and that's kind of why you know i found myself in this position is that my my my degrees are in like uh adolescent development and those kind of like and I've always been very fascinated with this juxtaposition of traditional human development which we've all experienced over the course of However many years we all decide that we've been around. And now we are essentially cave men and women with these tools in our hands that.

are so powerful uh i mean we we always kind of like make the uh the connection of like yeah my phone is more powerful than um this the moon landing rocket you know like you know buzz aldrin couldn't fit in my phone but um i mean with that being said like i've always been very peaked And as an educator, it was always very important to me. I worked in after school programs for 25 years with eight to 14 year olds. And I did not have to necessarily work with. I got to do a lot of what I wanted.

And we talked a lot about the future. I studied the future. It was important for me to know that these youth that are in a place generationally to where the technology that they use is going to grow. So exponentially fast, our technology has grown more in the last hundred years than it has over the course of human history. And it's going to continue to get faster. And those that are in the futurist world.

There are certain dates that we kind of like dance around as far as different. There's a thing called Moore's law, and it talks about how fast microchips get. And the concept is that by the year. 2029 that artificial intelligence or this kind of thing that we're talking about, the computing power will be that of a human being. And so that's six years away.

That's pretty exponentially fast. The next date that they kind of throw out there, you know, and this is not necessarily a conspiracy theory stuff, a very like scientific, you know, these are trends and things that people pay attention to. But by the time we get to the year 2045. That is when this computing power gets to be about as smart as all humans.

And so it's called the technological singularity. There are people called named Ray Kurzweil and different folks out there that they've been talking about this. And this is not a possibility. This is a probable. It's the train. It's not going to stop. We're not going to stop it. So we have these youth. What kind of world are we really preparing them for? Are we going to prepare them for a world of jobs that don't exist yet?

Are we preparing them for a world that may not have jobs? What does that look like? What does it look like for my five-year-old daughter that wants to grow up and become a pharmacist? Is that something that people will be doing when she's 25? You know, will a surgeon go into a room and actually cut open a body? No, it's going to be somebody that's really good at video games sitting in another room while that other person is in a sterile environment.

you know, because the robot is going to get in and they're going to be able to get in so close that they can do something. And then we talk about what happens when autonomous cars happen and 3 million people in this country are no longer employed because drivers of Ubers and buses and taxis and all of that stuff.

longer have jobs they're not going to become coders they might some of them but what happens what happens when all of this technology gets so fast and our medicine gets to the point i had one student years ago we were talking about what happens when medicine gets so good that maybe we don't die and he looks at me for a second and he says we're gonna run out of water

It's just these kind of conceptual things, you know, and Matt, you say, we're not going to understand this for 400 years. Like that's not hyperbole. I don't know. Like this, I'll tell you this. When November and December hit and this thing came out, based on all the things that I've been paying attention to for the last 25 years and generational studies and technology and on and on and on, we're at a point where this is faster than where I thought we were. We're farther along.

i thought i don't know if that answers the question but oh it terrifies the crud out of all of us i think but no that that was perfect john um we're gonna jump to our teacher question now I'm Stephanie Adams from Utah Online School in Washington County School District. And I was just wondering, how can AI be used to support students with diverse learning needs, such as students with disabilities, English language learners?

or students require additional support? And what are some best practices for leveraging AI to promote inclusive education? As I've been thinking about it, I think this is one of the ways that I'm most excited for it to come into education. I think sometimes teachers are like, but I don't have time to make X, Y, and Z to support that student. And I feel like there are ways that this technology can do that. I can use it to create a separate thing in.

have it translate something into Spanish or have it provide extra context or have it provide, we talked about personalized learning earlier, have it break something down for me and then say, yes, that's correct. And using it that way, I think that's a very... basic way of using it. I could also see it while I'm hoping that these technologies come forward. At this point, I can't hand it over to a student, but I'm hoping that in some

future world, there are privacy laws that allow a student to be able to have this in their hands. But I could see this being as like a personal tutor, like in a perfect world, I'm imagining these students and having a student sit there and not understand what's going on and being able to ask. this chat GPT or this AI and having them explain it at a level that they understand and then being able to connect and collaborate and work with other people. I just, it reminds me of.

When Google Translate came out and you could speak into it and it would speak the sentence translated into the language. And I ended up going to another country and I could sit there and have a conversation with this person on the bus. And it was like, this is so cool. And that's what I feel. like I'm hoping comes into education is that right now I feel like practically it's those very base level, how do I provide scaffolds and support for those multilingual learners and those that may need.

additional help in whatever way in the classroom, but I'm hoping tools will develop that can provide context and help and tutoring and support and so that all of our learners are able to engage with the content that we're presenting.

Yeah. I mean, to reiterate some of those ideas, the ability of a teacher to say, you know, even something as simple as i've got this group of kids in my class who loves baseball another group who can't stand baseball but love dance and another group that you know won't stop playing minecraft help me get ideas about how to teach all three of those groups

the same lesson because i'm stuck you know and it can generate those ideas for you so from a teacher productivity side like emma was talking about being able to just say hey, help me out here because I can't come up with all these ideas on my own of how to customize these lesson plans. Again, there are things like...

Text to speech, voice typing, translation services that kids are using and I hope will continue and actually kind of encourage their use because those simple versions of AI are things that kids can use right now and that are super.

powerful for empowering them to say you know what I might have some learning differences I might struggle with reading or I might need something in a different language or whatever but I now know that there are tools that can help me so I'm not stuck I don't have to wait for somebody to come and support me. And yeah, hopefully those tutoring capabilities come into play. ChatGPT is not the best tutor ever because it lies. Did we all feel that way?

right so so that's got to be monitored and and we maybe need to start creating some of these similar generative ai solutions that are drawing from a precise and accurate base of data to to draw from that would be awesome and then we can use those for two

to some extent that's already happening in some of the products that we all use. So I think that really is coming along the pipeline of opportunities for kids to take advantage of tools we already have opportunities for teachers to create these customized approaches and then let's see what what's coming really um

And just generally in education, as we look at the power that might come through things like data and analytics and being able to predict where are kids going or what are they going to need two lessons from now so I can be ready for things, that's going to be massive.

Just so many possibilities as far as where it could take some of the load off of us to be with our kids in a more supportive role. And maybe that's actually the most powerful thing is if I can free up some of my... mental space and emotional space and and give over a few of these things and become more efficient in my planning that i can then be more present with my kids and that's the best differentiation tool i can give a kid

I'm just going to say, Dr. Cox says you were talking. I just feel like that that's what I see it right now. I talk about these future possibilities, but right now it really is. helping give that support so that I can build those connections with my students. So I'm not spending hours, you gave that example of trying to find a personalized Minecraft example. I can say, hey, I saw a teacher in a math classroom.

That she actually had it right word problems based on what the students liked. And so then they were really engaged. And it was really fun to watch where instead of spending... time trying to be like okay i don't know anything about minecraft because i mean i know a little bit but um like i don't know that much about minecraft as much as my students do how do i write this even though the database isn't

exactly precise right now it can help provide that engagement piece then that math teacher i remember when i was talking to her she's like it's so fun to walk around because then they were like hey you knew about this and then they were explaining things about um

In her example, it was a student that really liked fish. And so I guess it used some sort of tropical fish in the example. And so then they were telling her and she was able to make that connection, which then they were like, and I can see that from a lens. For me, it's just seeing how teachers can be empowered by it to then help breed those connections with their students and be able to, again, bring that personalized.

self to education. I think sometimes people are so afraid of AI because they're like, oh, it's going to take away. But it's really not. It's really it's just another technology tool that's coming. And we've seen this. at a slower rate happened again and again with new technologies i mean when we brought in one-to-one devices people were nervous when we had cell phones people were nervous um

I'm not this old, but my mom talks about like when they had Google come out, people were nervous. So things like that. Just realizing that this is not. um a new feeling to be nervous about a new technology um and that we've gotten through it before and we figured it out with education we always find a way to figure it out and so for me that helps me have perspective that like

We're going to figure this out, even if it is a freight train versus like a horse-drawn carriage. I remember how nervous I was when the abacus came out. Oh my gosh. Susie, you're dating yourself. I wanted to kind of just touch on a couple of things on this piece. One. The thing that got me started in education was working with autism and youth with autism as a paraprofessional. And this was in 1998 when autism and anybody who knew about it...

The only reference was Dustin Hoffman in Rain Me. It was not something that was very ubiquitous at all. And I remember, you know, talking to people about this and now it's something that is very much part of our culture. But with that experience that I had in special ed for so many years, what I see with this is just like, just is going to eliminate a lot of barriers. Barriers for like we've said with language.

You know, like how real is that Star Trek thing where like you can talk to anybody and there's really just like there's just not that barrier. Like how in human history have we ever experienced something like that? That's just amazing to me. How does it impact students who are blind or deaf students? I know that there's a lot of, I mean, you talk about, Emma, about bringing cell phones.

Rick Gaysford, who a lot of us know, he mentioned at one of our last conferences about comparing ChatGPT to another thing that was kind of seismic, which was like bringing tablets or iPads into the classroom. Like, how are we going to use these things? We've got these things that are cool. What are we going to have them do? And, you know, I know that in a lot of that special ed space that, you know, those students and those iPads can be very, you know, well, they're good friends, let's say.

I mean, one thing that we could experience right now on this call or that this is auto captioning. I know that there are folks that I work with at the state level that are hard of hearing, that are deaf, and they are probably much more equipped at participating in meetings now than... ever before right being in a big room that's echoey or somebody's across like i mean i mean we're really breaking down barriers with this stuff um and the other thing is is i did

You know, here's a plug for the University of Utah School of Instructional Design and Educational Technology. But one of the things that made me go and be a part of that program was. the last kind of thing that was this new thing that was going to come on and take over, which is virtual reality and how that can impact the classroom. And I think that maybe that is kind of a sister conversation to this one. I know that there are a lot of folks.

in my cohort one in particular that was very uh adamant that there will be a time in schools to where we will have Not necessarily just computer labs. We probably wouldn't have a computer lab by that point anyway, but like a holodeck of virtual reality space where you can go on a field trip to anything, anywhere.

can do that now you can do that with google expeditions and you can do those kinds of things and and one of the things that i think that these kinds of technologies vr is amazing at i think that what it can do is is it can have us It can explain empathy in a way that humans aren't really ever been able to experience.

An example would be like I used to have a refugee student during my summer program. And what we did one summer, we had these little virtual reality things. We put the cell phones in them. And I put him on the front. row of the NBA finals and LeBron James dunking in his face and his body moving. If you've ever put a virtual reality headset on somebody, no matter their age station or whatever.

after they get over the kind of the wooziness, their first reaction is, whoa. Like, it's just that kind of, that's remarkable. And so it's that empathy transfer. And then me having my affluent students. go and spend a little bit of time at a refugee camp through their VR goggles. You know, and this kind of brings me back to the autism spectrum disorder is that there are experiences.

where you can be in the VR space and experience what it is like to have autism. Experience what it is like to have overstimulation and oversensory. overload and all of the things that we've learned in the last 20 years. And so, I mean, I think that it can be used for... diverse learning needs and students with disabilities and English language learners and all this additional support like I mean it will it will it will be transformative and it's like Emma you said like

It's going to happen and we're going to figure it out, but it's going to take, you know, how are we going to slow down the train? I don't know. We're just going to jump on as it's going. So let's all just jump on together. But that reminds me of just even a really simple newer use, like as different products and different companies have picked up the use of AI and partnered it. You know, we talked about Canvas being one of those to generate images.

Duolingo has done the same to start modeling more natural conversations because I don't know about you, but I know how to say I need bread in a variety of languages. Thanks to Duolingo.

But don't know how to hold a conversation with somebody in any of those languages, right? Because we were kind of walking through the pre-programmed instruction. So that's one way that they've incorporated it. And as we think about our students with special needs and our kids on the autism spectrum and... those kinds of kids and adults who might need some interactivity and some ability to converse in a safe space.

That's a pretty incredible opportunity and a space that I'm excited to see open up even more than it already is for them to be able to go in and really hold a conversation and see what a response should be like and how it causes them.

spot i think that's a pretty neat way that this is moving yeah there's a lot of opportunities for practice without pain like they're like they they utilize this with firefighters and all sorts of things you're not gonna yeah it's um it's fascinating yeah this has been an excellent conversation and i love that we've kind of gotten to this hopeful place where yes there are concerns that we're thinking of and you know we need all of our great minds in it together to tackle these kind of concerns

But I think we've gotten to a really hopeful place for the possibilities of AI and education. And you guys are amazing. Thank you so much for being here to talk with us about all of this. Thank you so much. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. So... Danny, there was a lot of that conversation. Oh my gosh. It was, it was, we kept hearing the freight train metaphor. And I feel like that conversation was quite the roller coaster. Like there were some high highs and high hopes. There were some scary lows.

Absolutely. I do want to, we kind of have a confession to start off with though. Ooh, we do have a confession. How did we write our questions for this, Danny? What percentage of our questions were made? Make a guess by AI. You have the number in your head? Okay, 100% of our questions were written by AI, but...

We didn't just read them verbatim. Then we went in, we analyzed the questions. We talked about where we wanted this conversation to go. We edited them. We moved them around a little bit. But yeah, this conversation. It was powered by AI. And that's a great example of what you could do with AI based off of our conversation with these wonderful teachers is use it to help you write, develop ideas, and then revise.

Exactly. And put your own spin on it. So at this point, I do want to bring up that UEN is going to be jumping into doing some professional development on AI.

Tell us about it. So very soon we're going to be launching a course called the AI Frontier. It'll probably be coming out around when this episode comes out, but keep an eye on UEN course, our UN course catalog. And you can sign up for this course as a Utah teacher to... learn about ai how it's developed over time some of the ethical implications and then how you might be able to use it in your

classroom. And I know it's an online course, but is there any due dates or anything like that? Nope. You can sign up at any time and finish by the end of the calendar year. All right. That's called a MOOC style course and... We're excited to see it. Thanks everyone for joining us today. We'll see you next time.