Educator Voices: Artificial Intelligence, Part II

In this episode, K-12 educators across the United States again share their experiences and insights about artificial intelligence. Topics are wide-ranging, including comments about embracing AI as a resource, teaching students how to use it, specific AI tools that teachers have found to be helpful, guardrails for use with students, benefits, and concerns. Their comments again shine a light on where things currently stand with AI in our schools and serve as a springboard to our conversation about the best ways to move ahead. These recorded comments were captured during educator interviews at the AVID National Conference in San Diego. Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

#282 – Educator Voices: Artificial Intelligence, Part II

34 min
AVID Open Access

Jeff Henley  0:00  

AI is one of those things that we're going to have to unlearn some things of the past and learn some new things to make sure that we're up to speed with what it can do.

Trina Dickerson  0:09  

We're using it. It's just a matter of looking at the latest research and how we can use it effectively I think in the classroom and I think that's where we are.

Paul Beckermann  0:20  

The topic for today's podcast is Educator Voices: Artificial Intelligence, Part II. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes a single teacher can change the life of the student. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org.

Rena Clark  0:40  

Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I'm Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann  0:51  

I'm Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin  0:52  

And I'm Winston Benjamin. We are educators.

Paul Beckermann  0:56  

And we're here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Student  1:01  

Education is our passport to the future.

Paul Beckermann  1:06  

Our quote for today is from Aaron Mauer, one of our past podcast guests and the STEM Lead for multiple school districts in Iowa. He talks about AI saying "It's a disruption. But we've had these disruptions time and time again." Winston, what does that make? Think about?

Winston Benjamin  1:25  

I think it's, for me, it's about the teachers remembering that we've already gone through things. I think the idea of disruption for kids is a misnomer, because they're going through it. So they don't know that it's a disruption, it's a reality to them. So I think it's reminding the adults who've looked through life and can do hindsight, 20/20, that they need to remember that they've already made it through other points, and that they can continue to develop. So I'm hearing this as a call to action for teachers not really towards students.

Paul Beckermann  2:01  

Good point. Rena? 

Rena Clark  2:04  

And to extend on that, our students, our children, even our millennials are more used to disruption, because technology has amplified the amount of disruptions and the frequency. So like when I talk, well I don't talk to any of my grandparents anymore, they're not here. But when I did, I think about yes, there were disruptions, there are inventions, there are changes. Things like the automobile came around, and then things like, telephones and cell phones. And then if you think about the amount of time between kind of those large disruptions or the calculator, computer. The frequency has become more often, there's less time between. So our students are actually more prepared for those frequent disruptions. So it's interesting. So when we think about there are some generational differences, and we have those conversations, and just the mindset. But when we think about students as well, when we're using something, we're going to talk about AI to prepare students, if we know and can anticipate there will be many disruptions, and they're going to be very frequent, then what do we need to prepare students with. And I liked the idea of really emphasizing kind of the four C's, the critical thinking, the communication, the collaboration, and creativity. Through time and history, we can go back and those are always true. And I foresee that they always will be true, no matter the amount of disruption. So those are the high leverage things that we can implement and then use as we go forward. Thoughts from Rena, anyway. 

Paul Beckermann  3:39  

Thoughts from Rena, that should be a segment.

Rena Clark  3:41  

I went on a tangent there.

Paul Beckermann  3:46  

No, I those transferable skills are so key for sure. Well, like last week, we're going to share with our listeners a collection of recorded comments about artificial intelligence in K–12 education. These insightful clips were captured from educators at the AVID National Conference, which was held in San Diego at the end of November of 2023. So let's take a listen.

Heather Cress  4:10  

I'm Heather Cress, an assistant principal in an elementary school in Kansas, specifically Tecumseh, Kansas.

Paul Beckermann  4:17  

Where are you at with artificial intelligence?

Heather Cress  4:20  

I personally am still at the learning stage. I want to learn a lot more about it only because I know that it's here. Our kids are using it. They probably know more about it than I do. And I don't think it's going to go away in any way. And so we've just had to have to figure out how to embrace it, how to teach knowing it's a resource. I feel like we need to teach our kids how to use it in a way that benefits education and where they're headed with their future. 

Sheila Lewis  4:56  

My name is Sheila Lewis, I'm an instructional coach at Tecumseh North Elementary and it's in Tecumseh, Kansas. Okay, so yesterday I went to a session and discovered that there's instructional or regenerative AI and I didn't really know there was a difference. And I will say, before I came, I was real leery about AI, because I felt like it was taken away from creativity and students' learning. But after the sessions I've attended so far, I feel like I'm in a different place, and more accepting of it, I could see how I could use it to enhance my instruction, and also to enhance student learning. 

Paul Beckermann  5:41  

Give me an example. 

Sheila Lewis  5:42  

Okay, so I'm working with the teacher on [The] Tiger Rising and we're talking about theme. And we're looking at quotes to support the theme that they are choosing from the text. And so I went in there and I said, I went on ChatGPT or something like that. And I went in there, and I said, give me themes from The Tiger Rising and quotes that support those themes. And I got a list of information. And I said, "What would a fourth grader pick out for theme?" And then it gave me something different, more at their level. So I'm like, so I felt like I could use this in my classroom as a teacher. 

Debbie Hall  6:30  

Hi good morning. I'm Debbie Hall. I teach at a middle school in Glendora, California, I teach AVID eighth grade, as well as sixth grade English and history. And I'm also the AVID coordinator this year. I finally tried Claude and I asked it to design a lesson based around the Great Wall of China, it's extremely thorough, it came up with an assessment. I was pretty impressed. So I think that alone, if I take it in small steps, and I focus on maybe a lesson per one unit of study, I think I can probably get some leverage out of that.

Paul Beckermann  7:04  

What are you wondering about? 

Debbie Hall  7:06  

How comfortable am I going to get with knowing my students are probably accessing some form of it. I don't know how much I can chase them down 24 hours a day, I don't think that's my role. Once again, back when we rolled out the internet, back when we rolled out Chromebooks for every child, when we rolled out allowing them then to have their phones and not have their phones, we have always just found a way and or like a common field to agree this is how we're going to behave with this new tool.

Paul Beckermann  7:38  

Do you feel we need to teach students about AI? 

Debbie Hall  7:43  

Yes, but as the other tools have come, so this is my 30th year of teaching, we haven't had to teach them everything about all of it. There are plenty of days, I have found some new shiny tool online, where I can't see it as the child's going to see it. I bring it into the classroom and I say, "Hey, I found this not sure exactly how it works. Can you, let's look at it." And that's a real fun day anyway, because they're like, "oh, look, they can do thing.  Mrs. Hall, look over here, this does this," and then they get really excited about something. That's going to drive them to use it. I can't build all the motivation all of the time.

Jeff Henley  8:19  

My name is Jeff Henley. I'm a principal of Greece Odyssey Academy near Rochester, New York. There's an old quote about technology. And I forget who says it. But it's about learning, unlearning, and relearning. And AI is one of those things that we're going to have to unlearn some things of the past and learn some new things to make sure that we're up to speed with what it can do. So, I think that that those who don't use it, it will get left behind and those who harness it can do great things.

Paul Beckermann  9:01  

Just curious, what do you think we might have to unlearn?

Jeff Henley  9:05  

In education? I think that we have to unlearn that the finished product is what we're looking for. I think it's more about the process and getting to the finished product. Simple, I mean, I was a social studies teacher, I used to grade essays. Now I'm going to have to worry more about what was the process that the kid used to get to the final product. Much like math teachers say, I'm going to grade the work, not the final answer. So and ChatGPT and other types of bots can can do that, can help with that process. I was messing around with some of the bots today and I asked her to write a lesson, a lesson plan for me, it did. And then I said make a rubric for that lesson plan. It did in seconds. It can help teachers think of new ways to teach lessons that they've taught for many years. And refresh those some of those those old ideas into new types of lessons and new ideas. So it's something that, education doesn't move quickly. It never has in any way, shape, or form. But it's going to have to learn how to harness this technology and use it for the good, like we did with the old TI82 calculators. 

Trina Dickerson  10:18  

I'm Trina Dickerson. I'm from Dent Middle School in Richland Two in Columbia, South Carolina. Well, I'm realizing, we see some of the examples we've been using it naturally anyway. And it's come to be part of what we normally do, we just have a call that that. My students use different translation tools and things like that. So we're using it, it's just a matter of looking at latest research and how we can use it effectively, I think in the classroom, and I think that's where we are.

Paul Beckermann  10:45  

Absolutely. Are there any things that kind of get you excited about the potential of AI looking to the future? 

Trina Dickerson  10:53  

I think the ability for the students to find their own voice, to explore their interests, to bring those things into the classroom, and having students to see that learning, they can learn about all kinds of things beyond the classroom is exciting. That says, we tell them they're going to be global learners and global participants. This is the world. And so I think it's just incumbent upon us to be comfortable teaching the students how to use it responsibly. 

Paul Beckermann  11:20  

Awesome. So as we do that, how do we put some guardrails on that for kids?

Trina Dickerson  11:25  

I think it goes back to what we do even with digital literacy, we've been looking at this, knowing that the students can always find a way to work around, but just teaching them what the parameters should be. Keeping them safe, and those kinds of things like that, giving them productive ways to use it, modeling that, and just encouraging them to make good choices, you have to trust them.

Katrina Sisneros  11:48  

My name is Katrina Sisneros, I'm from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I'm a principal at Hayes Dual Language Magnet School. I'm excited for it. I think, sometimes I feel like we need to communicate more like our students. And I've been able to use it to readjust our teacher talk in language. And we're like, write it in the way a sixth grader would say it, and then it kind of helps us like, change the way we're communicating with our kids. 

Paul Beckermann  12:15  

Awesome. Can you think of any other positive ways that teachers might end up using it in your school?

Katrina Sisneros  12:21  

So, a lot of our, I have a high population of English language learners. If they can put in a prompt for like an extended response and get a rough draft of that, and then adjust it, change it, and make it their own and practice that skill set. Their work would look very similar to native English students. So I think that there's some cool possibilities with that kind of levels the playing field a bit.

Paul Beckermann  12:47  

Absolutely. So do you see students at some point using it in the classroom?

Katrina Sisneros  12:54  

They already do. They beat us all the time, they learn things way faster than all the educators. So they teach us more sometimes in regards to the newest technology. So I think it's our job is to really catch up with them. In high school, they're doing it a ton, in middle school, I'm already starting to see it. So I want to make sure that I'm in the know, and that my teachers are in the know, so that we can really use it as a tool.

Donna Goode  13:18  

My name is Donna Goode. I am a high school teacher at Perris High School in California. And I teach Spanish and AVID.

Paul Beckermann  13:25  

When you think about AI in high school, what are some things that you immediately think about? 

Donna Goode  13:32  

Well, I know a lot of my colleagues automatically go to cheating, automatically go to some of the ways students want to use it to take advantage of, but for me, I use it as a time saver, as a teacher as a way for me to lesson plan. And for students it's a way to effectively research so that once they have the information in front of them, then they can go into the process of critically thinking, evaluating, and reflecting. And we can spend more time on that instead of just researching to get the information in front of them.

Paul Beckermann  13:59  

As we do that, obviously, we need to have some guardrails, and we need to go in with our eyes wide open. What are some potential concerns that we may have to keep in mind as we're implementing AI?

Donna Goode  14:09  

There's bias that's already built into the system. There's bias that goes everywhere from gender to race, to socioeconomic background to educational access, that we all carry with us. But when humans are building these programs, and AI is just receiving the information and processing it quickly and digitizing it for us, we have to be aware that those biases exist. And even one of the tools and critical thinking skills we can teach our kids is how to identify it. So that way we find that bias, now what are ways we can counter bias that so that that can be part of their learning process as well.

I love that mindset because then you can take this as an opportunity to make it a positive.

It's a teaching tool. So that way they will be critical thinkers, not only when they're using artificial intelligence, but when they're watching the news, when they're on social media, when they're doing their daily lives, they can say, wait, hold up, let me double check that and get a little more information about it, instead of taking it at face value.

Paul Beckermann  15:07  

What have you used and what's a favorite application of it?

Donna Goode  15:12  

I like ChatGPT. I mean, our district, we're a one to one district, so our kids have a computer. And they're very pro AI in the sense of learning it as a tool. So it's in the process of integrating it. But also I like to use it to where students learn the tool, like I like to teach it to them, so that they know the functionality of it. And that it's not just simply answer this essay, that they can use it to really, as an opportunity to dig deeper into things that normally if they would have had to go to a library, or even research articles online, it could have taken them hours or days to find that information that now can be generated immediately. So then they can go deeper into the process and higher levels of Bloom's processing.

Kylan Kottenstette  16:02  

I'm Kylan Kottenstette, I'm from Eagle Valley High School in Gypsum, Colorado. I think the concerns are that students are not using their own thoughts, and they're not needing to use their own thoughts, because AI is contributing that for them and telling them what to think. So teachers are nervous that students are no longer going to be thinking for themselves.

Paul Beckermann  16:28  

What are your thoughts on how we can maybe get around that or make it a positive?

Kylan Kottenstette  16:34  

I think the more that you require them to make connections to their personal life, connections to experiences, asking them to analyze it with in comparison to real world current events that are closer to today's date and time, that AI doesn't have as much knowledge of.

Speaker 1  16:34  

How have you seen your kids actually using it? Have you have you seeing evidence of that? Have they talked about it? Or have you seen anything?

Kylan Kottenstette  17:10  

I've seen what looks like students are using it because it's writing that is above their reading level. And you're not really going to produce writing that is way beyond your vocabulary that easily. Yeah, as a teacher, it excites me that it's going to be a time saver for writing lesson plans, adding in inquiry, adding in discussions, all those different things.

Rachel Fierros  17:42  

My name is Rachel Fierros. I am in AVID and social studies teacher in Mesa, Arizona.

Paul Beckermann  17:47  

What AI tools have you discovered that you think are pretty powerful?

Rachel Fierros  17:52  

There's two specifically that I like to use. And the first one would be a tool called the Brisk. It's a Google Docs extension that gives students feedback if they're writing essays or answering questions. What I like about it is it's a good starting point to give students that feedback that they need. So you, you type it into the Google Doc where the students type into the Google Doc. And then to grade it, you type in the prompt, you click Brisk It, and then it will give a glow, something that they did well with, a grow, something that they can improve, and then something that you're wondering. So I think it's a good starting point to give students like really rich feedback.

Paul Beckermann  18:31  

Absolutely. Any other tools that are high on your list?

Rachel Fierros  18:34  

I really liked QuestionWell as well. So QuestionWell is another AI tool that is used to create multiple-choice questions, essential questions, and learning objectives for students. So it's also a good starting point for when you're starting a new unit or lesson plan or want to review. And you can download all of the questions and then upload it into a Kahoot! or whatever gaming tools you want to use. And instead of like typing everything in using like 30 minutes to an hour to create a Kahoot! or a Quizizz. It will take maybe two to three minutes. 

Student  19:18  

My name is Michelle Magallanez. And I am the Head of Strategic Partnerships and Innovation at AVID. I think that a lot of teachers want to learn more about it. But it seems to be an overwhelming topic, especially when they are beholden to so many other things that they need to do in the classroom, that it becomes that one more thing. And I would love to figure out how to help more teachers access it so that they can bring it into the classroom so that their kids can learn from it. I think we have to start with administration and overcome some of the hurdles that have encouraged people to put up firewalls against AI in their schools and districts. And then once they see that their administration is bought into the topic, that cues to teachers that it's something that they can do. And those who are curious are going to lean in and do it. And once they see other teachers on their campus exploring with it and the engagement and excitement that their kiddos have, I think it'll take off.

Paul Beckermann  20:20  

All right, lots of great insights from our fellow educators. What's standing out to you? Or what does that prompting in your own minds?

Winston Benjamin  20:30  

I'll jump in if y'all don't mind. One thing that's really standing out to me is the teachers need support in learning how to use AI. Professional development is an important aspect of what I'm hearing when teacher say is like, I did this thing today, and I tried this and I learned how we can how to use it in the classroom. So I think having more PDs can help demystify and dispel the mystery of AI and how it can be used and incorporated in the classroom. So I think it's upon leadership to truly provide that learning space for teachers so that they can provide the learning space for students. So I think giving them a chance to do the messy learning so that they aren't worried of harming kids while they're still learning, I think is an important thing.

Paul Beckermann  21:15  

Yeah, wasn't it cool to listen to them share some of the things that they were actually doing, some of those specific examples?

Rena Clark  21:23  

Yeah, it's that, who was it? Sheila, she talked about I think we want to change student minds. Think about teacher minds. She talked about how she went in and was like eh, no. But then had the opportunity to try it on. And this gets back in, was it PBS? I don't know, where the thing comes up, like, "The more you know." It was, a little ad thing. Now that I have that information, and I have dispelled some of those things that I thought, Oh, I tried it on, I have this opportunity. And now I'm thinking, I could use this and this could be helpful. And I know you've been working with educators myself, we need to make room for that. We need to provide that time for professional learning. And time, as Paul said in the last episode, we need like 10 hours to just try things out. And we're back to, we have to figure out where to put that time, because time is valuable.

Paul Beckermann  22:23  

And don't you think some of that PD is simply teachers having a chance to share with each other? It doesn't have to be the front of the room, here are the answers. It's like, what have you learned? Share.

Rena Clark  22:35  

And it could be, Hey, try this out. Now share what you learned in the last 10 minutes. And it's amazing.

Paul Beckermann  22:42  

Exactly. I was struck by Heather Cress, too. She said, it's not going away. She reemphasized that we're in the learning stage. But I think we all realize it's not going away. And as Rena mentioned earlier, you know the the rate of acceleration and technology change is incredible right now. Think about how much it's how much AI has changed just in the first year that it was released. Unbelievable explosion.

Rena Clark  23:10  

Probably since you talk to these people in November.

Paul Beckermann  23:13  

Maybe since we recorded this episode.

Rena Clark  23:16  

It's changed immensely. And I love it was Jeff talked about learning, unlearning, relearning. 

Paul Beckermann  23:23  

I love that. 

Rena Clark  23:25  

And I just think that is a mindset as an educator, how many things that I learned that I had to unlearn and relearn in this cycle of what we call life?

Paul Beckermann  23:36  

There were a few things that were talked about, I think, that are a bit timeless, though. Like Donna Goode was talking about the bias in the system, and how it's kind of baked in. I don't think the skills we need to identify that in the things were consuming is going to change, I think we're going to need to continue to have that regardless of how fast things change.

Winston Benjamin  24:01  

Let's support students in the critical thinking about those things. As we all know, like you just said, it's going to be forever, but how do they now analyze false media content that they're engaging with?

Paul Beckermann  24:17  

Yeah, media literacy is huge. And as we head into election season in the fall, it's really become forefront on everybody's mind.

Rena Clark  24:24  

Yeah, it's it's a little bit frightening. Was that we talked about, yeah, I have two minutes of you doing a video, now I can have a video of you saying anything I want you to say. But it's also providing opportunities for all students to experience and try this on because also some way to fight bias in the system is to have more diverse populations of people in the system, creating the system, being a part of the system and the only way that happens if we give access to the system. So we need to be mindful of the way we're thinking, aware of biases that exist. Just and really, even my young kids, they're unaware, these young kids that AI is like, that's what they've known since their infancy, really. How do we help them identify and be aware of the bias and not take everything at face value? My own kids, when they ask Google a question, or Alexa, they think everything is true. So how do we fight that? Oh, that might not be true. How do we know that's true?

Winston Benjamin  25:28  

Just to keep going on that idea of bias. Even several teachers in the last episode and in this episode, what [they] mentioned when they first thought about AI, [they] thought about students cheating. How are they going to make sure that their students have integrity? And in this one, it was important that I heard someone just say trust our students. It's important that we trust our students to be able to do the work. As you mentioned, Rena, if we allow them to engage in those biases, and thinking about what's next, because holding them back from that opportunity is really going to harm them more than actually letting them try and fail with AI. 

Paul Beckermann  26:08  

I love Debbie Hall said, it's not my role to chase kids down and catch them using AI. And it was great that her name was Debbie Hall, because I could just see her running down the hall. No, but really, we have to kind of flip that mindset. And then she also was encouraging us to let kids unpack these new tools, just like we talked about in a staff PD session, let teachers kind of unpack it too, let kids do that as well. Give them some prompting questions, like identify something in here that you question. What might not be totally accurate? Do that as a group and let kids unpack that.

Rena Clark  26:45  

And then it was, I believe Trina, that brought up teaching kids to be global learners. This is the world and I'm thinking, even the ISTE standard, global collaborator, that's what we're trying to have students be. I'm telling you, when I was in elementary, I didn't have teachers trying to have me communicating with the world and being a global collaborator. But now we have access to all of these things, these opportunities. And I think it was, what was the gentleman's name? It wasn't Kyle, it was Kylan, because he talked about making connections to personal life, and current events. And I think we can do that more easily through AI. And then we can learn to be those global collaborators, and contributors to that, rather than than just consuming. You know my stance always, instead of consuming, we have to be contributing or creating. And I think that's a huge part of this.

Paul Beckermann  27:41  

That example you just gave about connecting it to our local context. If you're worried about kids cheating when they're generating things with AI, that is one way around that, because the AI will not know your local context. So if you're working on something in the classroom at the time, have the assignment somehow tie that in to the final product. So that has to be connected to your local discussions or your local reality. That's one way to make sure that your student work is authentic.

Winston Benjamin  28:12  

And something I'm hearing that's in the underlying of all of this is motivation for students to work. And Paul, you kind of mentioned that Miss Hall, already talked about that she can't pull students in with AI. But she also says that teachers can't do all the motivation all the time. And I think that's an important thing that we need to realize is that it's not just us to push, push, push, push, it's really how do we help students say, I want to move, move, move, move. So I think that changing that direction for control is really an important part about this in terms of engaging them with global learning, like engaging them with topics that are valuable to them, engaging them on the local level of interest that they have, I think will be those motivators. So I think helping that piece for teachers to shift their mindset is an important part as well.

Paul Beckermann  29:03  

You know, what else can motivate people, Winston?

Winston Benjamin  29:06  

What is that 

Paul Beckermann  29:06  

Tools!

Winston Benjamin  29:07  

Time for the toolkit.

Student  29:11  

Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? Check it out.

Winston Benjamin  29:21  

All right, y'all. What's in your toolkit? You heard some things from these teachers, what do you take away? What are you walking around with, maybe utilize in your future? Paul, Rina?

Rena Clark  29:30  

I heard, it was funny, I heard, I believe it was Rachel talking about Brisk Teaching. I'd never heard of that before. I literally went [and] typed in the Chrome Store, Brisk Teaching, and it's a freemium, so let's not pretend like these things aren't. Where some of them you have some access, and then there's also paid but it looked pretty interesting. So I was checking it out. 

Paul Beckermann  29:52  

And the cool thing is, you say let's Brisk It. 

Winston Benjamin  29:55  

I'm down to eat. Paul, what do you thinking?

Paul Beckermann  30:03  

Yeah, I was thinking of, but Katrina Sisneros was talking about how you can put in text and then have it level that text at a different reading level or different comprehension level. I think that's got immediate practical applications for teachers. So if you need leveled content so you can differentiate, there it is for you. I mean, instantly. You could also use it for translation, and others other translators out there. But the AI is becoming really good at that as well.

Rena Clark  30:31  

Can I add on to that, because one way I've used it, I work with younger students, and we have these learning targets and learning goals, and they're not written for kids, they're written for educators. So that's another way if you put in kind of those learning targets, learning goals, and you prompt it to say, write this at a third grade level, or for third grade students to understand. And of course, you need to read through and you might change it, but it saves so much time and is a great place to start to make those learning targets accessible to students, or even game instructions, they're not written for the kids. 

Winston Benjamin  31:04  

See, that leads me into mind, what I heard was QuestionWell, which is a tool to help teachers create questions that support student engagement around topics. And I really even love the idea that the teachers can use it to develop questions for new topics for themselves, like what are the key things within this area that of study or this topic or this specific lesson plan that I'm working on that could support students to do a little bit deeper diving, to differentiate for students? So I really appreciate the QuestionWell tool.

Paul Beckermann  31:39  

I like to play on words with that too, because it's like a well of questions, but QuestionWell. it's almost as good as Brisk It.

Rena Clark  31:51  

I don't know. I don't know. But we're gonna move into our one thing. So it's time for the one thing. 

Paul, Rena, and Winston singing  32:00  

It's time for that one thing. One thing. One thing. It's time for that one thing. It's that one thing. 

Rena Clark  32:13  

All right, who wants to start out?

Winston Benjamin  32:16  

I'll jump in. I think, again, for me, the one thing is you can't do until you've tried. So we're asking teachers to have students do things with AI and all of these things. So there's a lot of fears coming out of the unknown. So I think if we as professional leaders, provide teachers the time to do some work, it'll give them a chance to be able to support students doing their work. So for me, the one thing I'm thinking about is how do we support teachers learning and doing AI work.

Rena Clark  32:48  

Winston here it is. Explore to know more.

Paul Beckermann  32:54  

T-shirt, Rena. What did we say this was going to be called? Rena's corner? What was it?

Winston Benjamin  33:02  

Rena's rant.

Rena Clark  33:05  

That feels negative. Oh, sure.

Paul Beckermann  33:06  

I still like in the arena with Rena. 

Winston Benjamin  33:09  

I like it.

Rena Clark  33:11  

How about you, Paul?

Paul Beckermann  33:12  

I'm, I'm gonna hop back on what you mentioned earlier, Rena, you were talking about Jeff Henley saying that we need to learn, unlearn, and relearn. I think that's a great mantra and something to really keep in mind as we move forward with any of this stuff, especially as it accelerates. We need to have this open mind to reevaluate what's happening and ask ourselves that we can improve it. Well, really interesting comments from the teachers that we interviewed at NatCon. I know that you've all the listeners out there been having similar conversations. I encourage you to keep that going. Let's continue learning, relearning, and unlearning together.

Rena Clark  33:57  

Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin  34:00  

We invite you to visit us at AVIDopenaccess.org where you can discover resources to support student agency, equity, and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future ready learners. 

Paul Beckermann  34:15  

We'll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education. 

Rena Clark  34:19  

And remember, Go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin  34:23  

Thank you for all you do. 

Paul Beckermann  34:25  

You make a difference.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai