Applied AI in K-12, Higher Ed and Industry - Live Panel from TitletownTech

What happens when K-12, higher education, manufacturing, and a startup tech company sit around the same table to talk about AI? This episode brings that rare collaboration to life.

Recorded live at TitletownTech—the venture studio founded by Microsoft and the Green Bay Packers—this panel features four leaders from distinctly different sectors, all navigating how AI is changing their world. From fault anomaly detection in industrial equipment to generative AI in K-12 classrooms, this episode is a crash course in what applied AI really looks like on the ground.

Panelists include:

• Mike Beighley, Superintendent, Whitehall School District
• Dr. Kate Burns, Provost & Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, University of Wisconsin–Green Bay
• Rick Roeske, Senior Director of Service and Solutions, BW Converting
• Alex Tyink, Founder & CEO, Fork Farms

Moderated by Matt Kirchner, Host of The TechEd Podcast

Through stories of innovation, disruption, and surprising lessons, these leaders share how they’re preparing students, supporting workers, and strengthening their communities with artificial intelligence.

Listen to learn:

• How a rural K-12 school is using AI to power personalized learning and student-led scheduling
• What happens when higher ed rethinks writing and assessment in the age of ChatGPT
• How manufacturers are using AI to capture tribal knowledge and improve customer relationships
• What it’s like to co-develop AI solutions inside the Microsoft AI Co-Innovation Lab
• Why human connection and relevance still matter more than ever in the AI-powered classroom

3 Big Takeaways from this Episode:

1. AI is expanding what’s possible in education by unlocking more personalized, student-centered learning. In both K-12 and higher ed, AI is giving educators the tools to meet students where they are—academically, emotionally, and logistically. From adaptive math instruction to AI-driven student support systems, the future of learning is more flexible, scalable, and responsive.

2. Manufacturing is using AI not just to fix machines, but to build better relationships. Rick Roeske shares how BW Converting uses AI to detect fault anomalies, preserve expert knowledge, and improve customer support—often solving problems before clients even notice. It’s not just about performance; it’s about trust.

3. For startups, AI partnerships can unlock capabilities far beyond their headcount. Alex Tyink explains how Fork Farms built a proprietary AI farm management system with help from the Microsoft AI Co-Innovation Lab—accessing high-level expertise and infrastructure that most early-stage companies could never afford to build in-house.

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Transcript

Matt Kirchner: 0:00

Hi. It's Matt Kirkner. I am the host of the TechEd podcast, hoping to see you at the Midwest manufacturing AI summit on October 7 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at State Fair Park. You know, one of the things that we hear from so many people in manufacturing is, I know I should be doing something in artificial intelligence. I'm just not sure where to start. I'm not exactly sure what I should be doing. We have people ask us, are other companies even going down an AI journey? The answer to that question is absolutely, and that is the reason that we're having this summit. There's an opportunity for everyone, regardless of where they are, on their AI journey, to come together, to meet with other like minded, technology driven manufacturing companies if you're just starting your journey, a great opportunity to talk to peers and meet others that are on their journey. We are going to have incredible keynote speakers and panelists from companies large and small, telling you how you can implement AI in your manufacturing operations, in your front and back office. Starting today, we are going to have a whole collection of technology partners, people who are providing goods and services in the world of industry, 4.0 in the world of artificial intelligence, available for you to learn from. We're going to have a great speed round with so many of those companies. You're going to come away with a tremendous understanding of AI technology as it exists today. We also have a whole group of strategic partners, educators and consultants and people in the business of helping you on your artificial intelligence journey. Is one day, a single day is all we're asking for to transform everything about your manufacturing operation again. It's October 7 at State Fair Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Midwest manufacturing AI Summit. Hope to see you there. Welcome to this week's episode of The TechEd podcast, the number one podcast in STEM and technical education. This is Matt Kirkner. I am your host. You know, as part of our work at the TechEd podcast and our parent company, the tech ed Media Group, we have opportunities to go to all kinds of amazing events, gatherings of people that are sharing best practices, sharing ideas, talking about STEM education, talking about technology. I have to tell you that if I was to make a list of my top five events, probably so far of 2025 at or near the top of that list would be the event that we did at Titletown tech. Now if you're not familiar with Title town tech, this is an organization that is a partnership primarily between the green may packers and Microsoft. And who hasn't heard of those two great organizations? And they created this amazing incubator, this amazing venture capital fund, helping emerging companies, helping founders build their dreams around advancing technology. In partnership with that organization, right in the shadow of Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, we held this event as part of that event, which was all around artificial intelligence. We brought together thought leaders. We brought together individuals from across every economic sector to learn about what's happening in the world of artificial intelligence. As part of that event, we had an incredible panel. We wanted that panel to include representatives of K 12 education, of higher education, a startup company, maybe a smaller to mid size company that's into their AI journey, as well as a larger, established company that is investing in artificial intelligence. We had tremendous feedback from the over capacity crowd that showed up for that event. We thought there was no better way to spend this episode of The TechEd podcast, than to share that panel with you. So what follows is our panel from earlier this year at Titletown tech, all around artificial intelligence. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks to Jill. You know, said everybody here at Titletown tech, what an honor it is to be connected with these great brands. So many good things happening here, driving innovation forward as we think about the future of applied artificial intelligence, it's my pleasure now to introduce our panelists. First in line there is my dear friend Mike Bigley. Mike is the district administrator at the white ball School District, and he is in his 23rd year as district administrator and 29th year as Wisconsin school superintendent. So if I mean, what did you start when you were 26 Yeah, he actually did start when he was 26 he had his first superintendent job when he was 26 years old. Mike is an incredible innovator. I've worked with Mike on a whole number of efforts and initiatives around artificial intelligence industry 4.0 and applied learning. You're going to learn about the great things happening at the White Hall School District. Next it looks like is Doctor Kate burns. And Kate is the Provost and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs at UW Green Bay. She's been there since 2006 since she was formerly a professor of psychology and Associate Dean for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Her teaching is focused. Based on statistics, research methods and social psychology, so you can understand where she is going to fit in. Rick reski is next, and He is senior director of service and solutions at BW converting. He's been there 25 years, and has 25 years of experience in the equipment industry leadership roles plant spanning service sales and digital services. And what I like most about Rick, we've met a couple times over the course of the last couple of weeks, is like the examples that Katherine gave us. He's going to talk about real, applied artificial intelligence and manufacturing. And finally, Alex tynk is the founder and CEO of fork farms and the innovator of its farming technology and methods. I wasn't going to read the whole bio, but you have to

Mike Beighley: 5:41

know, we all have our route to artificial intelligence and to education. Alex is as an opera singer, so he has 10 years of leadership experience following being an opera singer, and he was in the social service sector before starting fork farms eight years ago. We're gonna learn all about the great things happening at fork farms as well. Please join me in welcoming our panelists as they take a seat. So let's start with Mike. Since you've got the microphone there, Mike in 30 seconds, how is AI transforming education? You can fit that all into 30 seconds, right? I think education, in our perspective, it is transforming each and every aspect. What it should be doing across our state across our country, is causing us to really re evaluate what future ready should look like. We need to reevaluate what kids need to know. We need to figure out how to get that to them very quickly, where they are not where a bunch of old people sitting in a in a standards writing scenario says they should be.

Matt Kirchner: 6:38

So let's go on to Dr. Kate burns, Kate, how is UW Green Bay leveraging AI and student support? Yeah.

Kate Burns: 6:44

So on the student side, we are looking at it for student success. So we have a tool that we use both as a chat bot, right? So students are able to get answers at any time, but also trying to look at it's a way to give out surveys on a regular basis. So we say things like, how are you feeling about the start of the semester? Are you worried about being able to pay for college? And we're able to use those answers. Students are much more likely to self disclose to this tool than they would be to raise their hand and talk to a person about any problems that they might be having. We then use their answers, and we direct them to a real life person, right to be able to follow up with them, to be able to use the technology, but then to be able to partner with an actual human, and we found that these are students who are not on our radar. We did not realize they were having problems, and that we were able to discover that through this tool and using that generative AI then as that layer to help support awesome.

Matt Kirchner: 7:34

And while you have the microphone there, we might as well let you ask the same 32nd question too. Is there a quick 32nd answer to how AI is transforming

Kate Burns: 7:41

your space? Yeah, I think very similar to Mike right. I think education just as a whole, right, being disrupted in terms of what do we want students to gain upon graduation?

Unknown: 7:50

Very good. Rick, same

Rick Roeske: 7:52

question to you, 30 seconds, how is AI transforming manufacturing? Yeah, so AI through machine performance. You know, we've done a lot with fault anomalies to help get quicker reactions for our customer support. So for mainly for us, it's through customer support and large language models that we're using, along with tools for marketing and all different kinds of everyday things that we're using it

Matt Kirchner: 8:12

for. And I know we're gonna go deeper on that as the discussion goes on. Alex, same question, how in 30 seconds, is AI transforming

Alex Tyink: 8:19

your work again two ways. So one is on the product side. We're developing education focused AI tools to help the learning process. So how can we use generative AI as a more engaging way for the kids to interact with our work and our fields? The second way is internal workflows. We're integrating AI across our business, pretty much in every way, making sure it's additive to our team, that it's not subtracting from the quality that human beings still bring to the work, and making sure that it's not replacing jobs, but really using it as a way to increase efficiency. I think that's a really, really good distinction that we hear from so many people, that AI is not replacing jobs, it's changing the world of work. That's why we're here today. But but certainly I think as we did a survey about a year ago of employers across Wisconsin, they actually expect AI to be accretive to employment. So I think you make a really, really good point. I also know, Alex, you've been incredibly involved with the Microsoft co Innovation Lab. Tell us about the work that you did with the CO Innovation Lab at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Yeah, I'd love to first. Thank you to jewel and the title Town team, they got us in pretty early on that, and we had this incredible experience where the Microsoft team comes in and they really work hand in hand with you, but it becomes our company's proprietary intellectual property, which is really incredible when you think about the amount of resource that you get. Our use case was, as a company, we're offering a wider variety of products as we grow and scale, one of which is an enterprise project. And so when you think about farming at a commercial scale, if you're a school district, that's daunting. It's not part of the core competency. But every school has a food problem. They want to grow a lot of food. They want to give kids this level of industry level interaction. But the fear is, how. Are we going to make sure it's successful? And so what we developed was an AI system that basically brings the core competency of a commercial farm manager to a digital solution, and it makes it where just by utilizing this tool, it both teaches the kids how to do the farming, but it also makes sure that nothing goes wrong on the farm itself. And so what we see this doing is breaking down barriers to entry for anybody who wants to get into our space. And it's like a first of its kind. So really, really exciting.

Matt Kirchner: 10:28

And so you were basically allowed or able to just plug into the CO Innovation Lab and leverage the expertise there to help that project go on. Yeah, we

Alex Tyink: 10:35

had to hire an internal development team, a small development team, to actually put the hands on the keyboard. That's how you make sure you retain the IP rights. But other than that, they had long standing AI experts from Microsoft, from their Redmond office, coming to Milwaukee to meet with our team to help us understand, first the architecture of the solution, and then they actually worked hand in hand with us as we figured out what actual mechanically has to happen in the cloud and with different plugins that they offered to make it come to life. And it was, it's moving so fast as a space, to have people on the inside developing all the architecture and the back end, supporting the development was really key for us to make sure it was successful.

Matt Kirchner: 11:15

Excellent. There's so many great things happening at UW M and really, really excited for the innovation that's happening there. Excited to hear about the work you're doing, Rick, in this whole area of capturing knowledge from seasoned employees. And that was one of the things that impressed me most about the work that you're doing, is, how do we take folks as we know there's there's more and more people that are getting deeper into their careers, more people are retiring out of the workforce, in many cases, that are entering the workforce, capturing this knowledge from people that have been in our organizations forever and ever, and leveraging AI to do that, tell us about that work. Yeah, so our company has been around for over 100 years, and we had a lot of technicians that were 30 to 40 years, and we they'd walk out the door and we weren't capturing any of it, right? And that's how we came up with our large language model, our chatgpt, right? And so we started collecting data from them and our service reports. We went back and pulled those machine manuals, machine any machine documentation we had. Then with our new CRM that we instituted, we were able to use knowledge based articles. So we are looking at all our knowledge base articles. We actually have a little game and incentive for the team to create knowledge based articles. So our large language model is capturing all of that information and bringing it in, and it's it's been really great for our team. If you have any new people, and we're trying to bring them up to speed, it's increased that rate a lot. They feel comfortable answering questions. It's been a really big game changer for us. And so, if I understand correctly, you're taking, like, all of your work instructions, all the articles, anything that pertains to a job, creating an LLM out of that information, and then you've got some kind of an agent that enables people to an AI agent, or an app that enables them to access that tell us about that. Yeah, exactly. So it's we work with another company, a third party company that it developed the actual large language model itself. So it works just like chatgpt. You ask it a question, and it gives you the answer. What's nice about it? What we're working with the company is we all know AI hallucinates, so there's actually a thumbs up or a thumbs down. If the information isn't correct, you give a thumbs down, and then it records all that. And then we meet with the team that we're working with, and they go through and make changes to our large language model. And you can give a plug to the company too. I'm sure a lot of people, yes, it's called abacus AI. I'll just say they have a fantastic service. Anytime we call them, they answer, I believe it's 50 PhDs, and they're always willing to help at any time. So they've been remarkable to

Mike Beighley: 13:32

work with. Absolutely awesome. And Kate,

Matt Kirchner: 13:35

when we think about whether it's leveraging an LLM, whether it's leveraging AI in a business like Rick's, or we could think about students leveraging AI in their coursework, and we know that, and I spend a lot of time in higher education these days, there's perhaps no more greater disruption happening in any segment of our economy than is what is happening in education. So talk a little bit about how you think about things like writing and assessment in higher education in the age of artificial intelligence.

Kate Burns: 14:03

Yeah, our writing foundations department, which is like our English Composition intro to writing department, has really used this as an opportunity to rethink about what does writing look like in this modern era. So they really, they start the course with what they call extreme transparency, right? They just say, okay, AI is here. What are your fears? What are your anxieties? What are you excited about? Right? Let's talk about this and be open about it. And they partner that then with zero punitive action on their part. So what happens then is when students write something that they feel like, you know, this kind of sounds like it's aI generated completely they say the tone on this seems a bit off. It seems a little stilted here and and, you know, I think right now I'm going to give you a placeholder as a zero, but I would love for you to have a chance to rewrite this and to be able to improve the tone, and so that kind of gets out of the litigating and instead focuses on, this is a teaching moment. We need to be able to use it. The other thing that they've really been trying to do is trying to replicate. Replicate the world of work. So they've been using, you know, let's have we're all in the lab together. We're all going to create publishable professional writing during our lab time together. So they've really been trying to focus on, how do we replicate that work environment, so that students are thinking about, how am I going to use this tool, and how am I getting practice in my current time? So I think it's been a nice way of really building that relationship side, but then also really having some good practice.

Matt Kirchner: 15:23

I heard somebody say not too long ago that in the past, that school was where we would go to learn, right? We would go to school and learn, and then we would go home to practice. We'd go home to do our homework, we'd write essays, we'd study for exams. And that that is being flipped in higher education, and now with so many ways to learn, whether it's e learning, whether it's YouTube, whether it's Tiktok, whether it's videos, we're flipping that model and home, in many ways, is where we can learn, and then school is where we go to practice, which is almost exactly what you just talked about, which is, how do we create a higher education environment that mimics the work environment that our students are going to that are they're going to see when they move out of higher Education? Speaking of that applied engagement in that applied environment for learning. I want to, I want to ask Mike Bigley the next question. But before I do that, I want to set this question up a little bit. So Mike, I mean, he's a true disrupter. And if there's a education model that is willing there, that can be disrupted, Mike will find a way to do it. I've seen, we've been working together on projects for probably going on 10 years, absolutely fascinating the work that he does. He's a real innovator. And to put this next question into perspective, he opened up this emerging technologies lab he and the district in White Hall last September, at the beginning of the last school year, and we were kind of hoping and praying that we would get 120 students or so to sign up for that emerging technologies lab. We had 400 plus students in that district sign up for that at the beginning of last year. So a year ago, at the beginning of second semester, I think that number was 500 plus. And I got a text from Mike a couple of weeks ago that now we're into the quadruple digits, if I'm not mistaken. So if I didn't set that up well enough for you tell us a little bit about this incredible project. You're one of the first districts in the country, maybe the first to teach applied artificial intelligence in a K 12 or in a secondary education environment, and certainly first one to do it in the way that you're doing it. So talk about how students are learning about AI in a hands on way at Whitehall, well, that's a

Mike Beighley: 17:12

tough setup. Matt, thanks, but I appreciate that. I think that the emerging technology lab that we rolled out last fall, with the help of the folks at Ashley furniture and the wanick Foundation really allowed us to really look at what was possible for kids. If you see the equipment, here it is in our Emerging Technology Lab, and then some okay. And in top of this stuff, we're teaching computer science and coding, and we teach SolidWorks and rest of the automation suite that revolves around industry 4.0 but what we also set out to do was remove the artificial limits that we continue to place on kids. Okay, the folks at Ashley hauled me all over the country, spent some time in Germany, gonna spend some time in China in a few weeks, really looking at what we need to do to better prepare our kids. And what was evident very quickly is how limiting we were to our kids. We spent a lot of time in this country telling them what they can't do, so we set out to really challenge our kids and figure out what they could do. And they have really blown things away. To do that, though, one of the most limiting factors is our schedule. We're a small rural school, one of everything, okay, I'm a product of that, trying to figure out how to navigate through a system where you can't get the classes because you have another class that butts up against it. So our folks got together, once we had the technology, once we had the equipment, and figured out how to personalize all of that stuff. If the kids have an hour in their day, they can come to the emerging tech lab. We build a class for them. We turn them loose. And not only did the exceed expectations. They were teaching the instructors how to use pieces of the equipment. They learned it on their own. So all this engagement conversation that we continue to have, it's us as adults. We're the engagement problem. We limit them. That's what we've done with the emerging tech lab. The equipment is cool. It grabs their attention. It turns them on. What we've done inside it is more meaningful. We've removed the limits. Removing limits is what it's all about. I want to pose a question now to Kate, and it really kind of speaks to

Matt Kirchner: 19:12

this idea of what Mike just talked about, right? If we think about and we challenge people in higher education, when you think about what students are seeing in places like the emerging technologies lab. They're working with edge to cloud technology, working with drones, the autonomous vehicles that are behind me, autonomous mobile robots, mechatronics industry, 4.0 all of these technologies that many of us wouldn't have even dreamed of 10 years ago. And now you think about a high school student that comes to the world of higher education with all of that experience, and is expecting that same kind of experience, because that's the way they've learned really put some pressure on folks like Kate burns right to create this next generation of higher education. So if we think about five years from now, as students who are freshmen or maybe eighth graders at the White House School District are coming through secondary education. Then entering higher ed. What is higher education gonna look like when a student can just go to an LLM or just go to a chat bot for an answer to a question?

Kate Burns: 20:08

Yeah, I think the answer is really relationships. And I think about relationships in two ways. So one way right, in terms of the faculty member, right? So the classic model is the sage up on the stage, right? And so that person is supposed to be imparting their knowledge to you? Well, you know, it's really the guide on the side, right? Like, how do I make sure that I'm supporting you? How do I make sure that you know when you have questions, I'm helpful? And it's really more about mentorship and relationships, as opposed to just that expertise alone, full stop. The other way I think about relationships really then, is on the student side. So thinking about that collaboration, that connection that students need to be building with each other, how do we make sure that students, then are building that network while they are in higher education? How do we make sure that they are building the soft skills, ability to work as a team, so that they are going to be equipped for that future world, right? But really that focus has to be on the humanity side of human connection and relationships.

Matt Kirchner: 21:05

Absolutely, I know. I read a book Kate not too long ago called Genesis, and it was written by and some of you might have read it. It was Henry Kissinger who wrote it in association with the former Vice President of Strategy for Microsoft and the former CEO of Google. And one of the things that they talk about, there's some pretty dystopian stuff in that book about what happens if we let AI just go in and on its own without any guardrails. And it can get really, really scary. I think it starts to speak to the idea that some of these, some of this coursework that maybe we've gotten away from. I remember my my journey through higher education included nine credits in theology, nine credits in philosophy and and really thinking about what it means to be a human in as much as you've got this incredible background, Kate in in the humanities, is that what you're getting at when you talk about the importance there, and maybe an example or two of how that might look?

Kate Burns: 21:53

Yeah, I think that's a piece of it for sure, right? So when we think about, you know, the ethics side of it, right? So thinking about things where philosophy or close reading, right? Like, what are these skills that are still going to translate into the modern world of humanities, but making sure that students understand the why, right? So that we're not just teaching this in a bubble of, okay, why do I have to memorize this? Or why do I have to read this? Well, this is why, and this is how we're going to see that play out in the real world, I think, is even more important now,

Matt Kirchner: 22:19

absolutely, way more focused on the meaning of what we're learning and not just, not just the facts. So related to that topic, Rick, I know you've been really, really focusing on the meaning of business and customer relationships in your in your work at BW, converting so much so that you also partnered with the Microsoft co Innovation Lab at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, in the same way that Alex did. I know our audience would love to hear about that experience. Yeah. So coming into Titletown and meeting Katherine close has been just a great experience for us. Working with the engineering team down at the CO Innovation Lab, was great, as Alex said, you know that you get to own the proprietary information when you come out of it. But what we wanted to do is create an AI model for fault anomalies, and we chose fault anomalies because we build several different kinds of equipment. We're an OEM equipment builder. I didn't mention that before, but several different kinds of products all over the world, and we wanted something that could go across all the different equipment lines. So fault anomalies worked, where that all tied into relationships, though, was we were surprised not about how much we were learning about our equipment and our customers were learning about our equipment, but how much it improved our relationships with our customers. You were reaching out to us more often, having more meaningful conversations with us, and that was the part that shocked us the most, because when you think about AI, you're not really thinking about how it's going to build a customer relationship, but it was really, really good, well,

Alex Tyink: 23:37

and maybe just a little bit more on making that connection between the fault anomalies in and improving the customer experience, and the feedback you got from customers was that just because your performance as a supplier was was improving, or how does that fit together? Yeah. So yes, it was. It was improving as a supplier, like I said, we were surprised how much in what we learned about our equipment and how people used it through the fault anomalies, and they were teaching us things about our equipment, but yeah, so as part of the fault anomalies, we were getting alerts whenever their machine had an anomaly. So we were reaching out to the customer, and many times before they even knew they had an issue. So the leadership teams at our customers facilities were very happy to know that we were jumping on issues before they even knew they had them. Sort of put that into perspective from my 25 years in manufacturing. I mean, the way we troubleshot equipment was, usually, we have a problem. We'd have a fault, we'd send the maintenance team there. They'd review it, they'd try to fix it. If they couldn't, then we'd bring another group of people to review it. Maybe at some point, we do a whole Kaizen Event around that problem. And what I'm hearing from you is that you're actually using artificial intelligence to help identify where that problem is, what the root cause of that problem is, and even suggest this potential corrective action, right exactly, and not only that, but you know, like you said, how do we service customers? These days, we have a complete remote service team. Obviously, these guys are experts that can go on and troubleshoot electronic issues, but we also have visualization of data, so we have what we as our digital. Services branded accelerate. We created our own dashboards to visualize the data, so we use that data also to troubleshoot the issues. Awesome, awesome application for artificial intelligence. I know Alex, one of yours, has been to leverage AI to actually develop curriculum. You and I are both huge believers that you know, if you're a supplier to education, it's one thing to have a really, really cool piece of equipment that's like 25% of the equation, and the other 75% is, what are we trying to teach? What are the learning outcomes? What do we want our students to know? What do we want them to be able to do when they're through this experience? That all speaks to curriculum and delivery. So talk about how you've leveraged AI on the curriculum side, especially for your horticulture product. Yeah, great question. So for us, it's really about trying to meet the kids where they're at and allowing them to engage at their own pace, and allowing them to engage at whatever level they feel most comfortable with. And so we've had curriculum as an organization for quite a while, but what we learned is that usage of the curriculum was really spotty across different locations. It was really dependent on the staffing and the teacher that was there on the class, the nature of that district and school community. And so one thing we've always been seeking to do is, how do we deepen that, and how do we allow the flexibility to engage with our program in whatever way is most meaningful to them, while also allowing them to take it more deeply, more easily. And so for us, that's taken the form of generative AI and using an LLM and training it on our curriculum, and giving the kids a digital friend, basically a little farmer buddy to talk to and ask questions of and to and to engage with. And the early results on this have been really exceptional. I think the biggest learning that I've had from it is that there's an active way to engage with AI, and there's a passive way to engage with AI, and in my opinion, teaching kids how to be active with it and to really understand that, yes, it can teach you a lot, but you also have a lot to add that the AI is not going to be able to bring to the table like this. Focus on relationships is so key. Because I think, and in our organization internally, that's a big thing that we're constantly doing, is quality checking the AI and quality checking it for humanism. And you know, if you're talking to a customer, like remembering when their kid's birthday is, I mean, that's the stuff that the AI is not going to be able to do anytime soon, and is really critical to being effective. What have you heard from students as they've engaged with the curriculum? It's just been more excitement. It's been more engagement. It's been, you know, I think, a little bit faster for us to get traction in the classroom. And those are the things that we like to see. It just feels like a more seamless integration, if that makes sense, it does

Matt Kirchner: 27:40

indeed, Rick, I know you've done, obviously, a ton on the whole use of AI for fault anomalies and recognizing faults. You're also starting to think, if I'm not mistaken, about how we use it for forecasting. And you know, I tell people quite often, you know, in the past, we used to look over our shoulder. You get your financial statements on the 15th of the month to see how you did in June, for example, and then really good companies got good at figuring out where are we today, and if I don't like what I'm seeing today, I fix it now, rather than fixing a problem I had a month ago. Now you're starting to use AI to look forward for forecasting and fix problems before they ever happen. Tell us about that. Yeah, so we haven't jumped in yet full board, but definitely my leader and I have been talking a lot about how we do better forecasting for service services, so up and down, and it can be extremely busy one month and light the next month. So how do we look at trends, and how do we use that data to better forecast for our company? So forecasting financials, but also inventory control for our parts department. I actually heard this morning from one of our operational leaders, how they're using it for inventory control, just using copilot, and it's actually been working really well for them. So that we can improve our on time delivery, awesome. So obviously, improving that on time delivery, customers are getting products more quickly. We're not stringing people out. We're not straining capacity in manufacturing. So super, super important and a great application for artificial intelligence. Kate, I'm going to put you on the spot here for a moment and ask you a question about what you're starting to hear from your students. I know, as we look as whether we're educators or people that work in and around education, we're all starting to think about the future of education in higher ed and in that environment. What are you starting to hear from students about both their concerns and opportunities as they look to the future of higher education for in this age of artificial

Kate Burns: 29:23

intelligence, yeah, I think it's a real mix. So I think, you know, I'm really excited by what Mike's doing. I think that for some K through 12 districts, the approach is just to ban it, right? So they kind of, that comes in when they when they enter college, right? Of, I'm still not supposed to do this. This is kind of illegal, you know. And so they don't really have any kind of baseline knowledge, because it's just been prohibited full stop. Some people are over reliant, right? And they've kind of used it, they don't necessarily understand the limitations, and so they maybe don't realize that I need to think about how I'm going to kind of pare down a little bit. And I think some people are just very much at an anxious stage, right? So thinking about what does the future. Mean, for me, am I going to be able to get a job? Is AI going to take my job? What does this look like as a person who's going to be graduating in this many years? So it is really, it's that emotional that you're having to work with as opposed to just just pure knowledge and trying to work with students.

Mike Beighley: 30:15

So like anything else in education, it sounds like it's meeting students where they are. They're all coming to this from a different angle, making sure that we're personalizing this experience as much as possible. Which Mike, I know, is something that you're doing a ton of work on. I know you were in San Diego just a few short weeks ago doing a presentation and talking about some of the applications for personalized learning through artificial intelligence. So take some time to talk about the innovation that's happening on that side at White Hall, and what you've learned from some of your early work when we started in on the Emerging Technology Lab and talked about removing those artificial limits, it didn't take us long, for those of you that haven't seen it, it is across the street from our existing K 12 building, and we literally, we were sitting in the lab one day, and we thought, if this works over here, why doesn't it work over there? So we set out to personalize our environment across the board. Meet the kids where they are. Much of our time is spent in minimal compliance, okay, as opposed to human capacity. We use that phrase a lot. What's the minimum Mike Bigley could do to be eligible to play football each fall? Was what mattered, right? Because what I was learning was determined by someone else, and it really didn't have a lot of effect on my future. Okay, that's flipped. Now the personalized learning environment has put kids in charge of their learning we started, in fact, when we get done with this, our teacher that started our first pilot is here. I just happened to be married to her, so that's phenomenal, too, but she jumped in with eighth grade math. Okay, took all of our eighth graders, not a select group. We took all of our eighth graders, started them in a completely personalized learning environment. She flipped her entire world upside down. We got huge results right away. The engagement level went up, the behaviors went down, the performance went through the roof. By Christmas time, about half the kids, not quite half the kids, had completed eighth grade math to mastery, not minimal compliance. They had completed eighth grade math and wanted more. They were asking for more help, more assignments, more more to do. I wanted to make sure that I've learned this stuff, as opposed to regurgitate something on a test. That's how we've leveraged the AI tools, and I think it's important to remember they are as poor or as limited as they are ever going to be right now we're getting better and better every day. Now we have the ability to do those things, but the but the relationships matter. Okay? We got great results with eighth grade math, but Shannon also changed her entire learning environment. Talked about working with kids, teaching them how to learn, holding them accountable, teaching them empathy, teaching them how to communicate. And they did it without her making it happen. They just did it naturally. So I think that's the biggest thing that we have to learn again. I mentioned the limits. I will say that until I'm dead, we are the limits. We as the adults, are the problem, not the kids. I think as we continue to go down that road, it's going to get better and better. We've done the same thing now. Kindergarteners watched a group of kindergarteners this summer or this winter. Excuse me, the spring, I think some of you were there, had an opportunity 20 kindergarteners in a room, teacher with a small group of four kids up at the board, doing a little mini lesson. The other kids were involved with their iPads, okay, reading into the iPad, which was recording their reading, which was differentiating what they were having trouble with, giving that feedback to the teacher, suggesting what they should do tomorrow. She just had to sign off on it, and every one of the 20 kids was engaged. There's never a kindergarten class with 20 kids engaged. Every one of them was engaged with me walking around the room. That's the power, and that really is the future of education. Mike, I'm going to pose one last question, both to you and Kate. But the question is this, you talked about we as adults being the limiting factor. I've got to believe, I mean, we've got a lot of educators in the room today. I've got to believe that you're seeing every version of, let's go into this with everything guns a blazing, and we've got people that are saying, oh my goodness, this isn't for me. How are you managing through some of the some of the changes, and what kind of feedback are you getting from your instructional staff as you're asking them to make changes in the way they're delivering education. I think that the important thing is, we've spent the last two, two and a half years explaining the why of this as well, talking about the need to really re evaluate what kids need so they are successful in their future, not the past we lived in in it's been mixed. I will tell you, our staff is exceptional, though. Everybody says that I was really is okay. There's been, there have been a few that have been a little resistant. We've spent a lot of time explaining the why and the right up until the point where we say, this is where we're going, because this is good for kids. If you don't like it, find someplace else to be. That's the bottom line. These are kids. This is our collective future. We don't say that in a threatening manner, though. You. Really don't Okay. We just tell the truth. This is what we need to do. I think that the PD side, we've done a lot to free our folks up to try things, to give them the opportunity. If it doesn't work, re evaluate it, figure out what to do next, and we hold accountability in terms of pushing the limit, as opposed to conforming or or hitting that minimal compliance piece, terrific.

Matt Kirchner: 35:25

And when we put the student first, it's amazing what can happen. It sounds like you're doing exactly that. Kate, any last thoughts on on managing through some of the challenges or some of the feedback you're getting from faculty in this age of huge innovation and education?

Kate Burns: 35:38

Yeah. I mean, I think it is a mix, for sure. Of some folks are very excited. Some folks, I think, less excited, to put it terribly, and so it is tricky to manage. I think we've really been trying to lean into teaching with technology. Is really about good teaching, right? When you're talking about, Why are students learning? Why am I teaching this? Right? You need to be able to explain that, and that shows what the role of technology is, but that also shows the relevance, right? And I think that sometimes folks aren't used to focusing on that relevance in that same way, but that is core, right? And that's just even more important now than it was in the past, importance

Matt Kirchner: 36:14

for students to understand the relevance, and, for that matter, for faculty as well. So great advice from Kate burns. Let me thank our panelists, Mike Bigley, Kate burns, Rick rusky and Alex tying please give them a big round of applause. Wow. What an incredible panel we had, and an incredible discussion around artificial intelligence. Lessons for everyone, regardless of whether you're in education, you're in industry, you're in public, policy, doesn't matter. There was takeaways from every single aspect of the AI economy in that panel. So glad you joined us. And of course, there were a number of references that folks made over the course of that discussion. As always, we will link them all up in the show notes, which you will find at TechEd podcast.com/titletown AI, that's TechEd podcast.com/t. I, T, L, E, T, O, W, n, a, i, that's where you'll find the show notes. When you're done there, as always, check us out on social media, Instagram, Facebook, tick, tock, LinkedIn, wherever you go. To consume your social media, you will find the TechEd podcast when you're there, reach out and say hello and don't forget to join us again next week for another episode of The TechEd podcast. Until then, I am your host. Matt Kirkner, thanks for being with us.

Unknown: 37:34

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