Week in EdTech 10/8/25: Cell Phone Bans Sweep Schools, Federal Shutdown Hits Education, Higher Ed Faces Enrollment Crisis, ChatGPT Integrates Coursera, and More! Feat. Jim & Maurie Beasley of AIEDPro, and Stacey Brook of College Essay Advisors

Join hosts Alex Sarlin and Ben Kornell with guest Anna Edwards of Whiteboard Advisors as they unpack a packed week in education technology. From sweeping cell phone bans to AI reshaping classrooms and colleges, and celebrate a major milestone of 400 episodes of EdTech Insiders!

✨ Episode Highlights:
[00:00:00] States expand K–12 phone bans over mental health
[00:04:29] Federal shutdown hits Title I, Head Start, ED
[00:06:28] ICE detains superintendent, raising compliance fears
[00:13:25] Why phone bans need digital-literacy support
[00:19:25] Higher ed faces international enrollment and funding drops
[00:28:41] Harvard grade inflation reignites rigor debate
[00:32:32] States pilot graduate profiles and competency shifts
[00:38:08] ChatGPT adds apps; Coursera leads edtech uses
[00:46:20] Key state and district policy trends

Plus, special guests:
[00:46:20] Jim Beasley, Co-founder & Technology Director and Maurie Beasley, Co-founder & Educator, AIEDPro, on AI PD and classroom pilots.
[01:16:32] Stacey Brook, Founder & Chief Advisor, College Essay Advisors on College EssAI and ethical AI for essays. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 States expand K–12 cell-phone bans amid student mental-health concerns.
• 4:45 Federal shutdown affects Title I, Head Start, and ED operations.
• 6:44 ICE detains superintendent, sparking school compliance fears.
• 14:37 Why digital-literacy must accompany phone restrictions.
• 20:37 Higher ed hit by falling international enrollment and finances.
• 29:53 Harvard grade-inflation debate sparks questions about rigor and remediation.
• 33:44 States pilot “portrait of a graduate” and competency-based shifts.
• 39:20 OpenAI adds third-party apps to ChatGPT; Coursera leads education integrations.
• 47:32 Policy and state/district trends.
• 47:32 Jim Beasley, Co-founder & Technology Director and Maurie Beasley, Co-founder & Educator, AIEDPro, on AI PD and classroom pilots.
• 1:17:44 Stacey Brook, Founder & Chief Advisor, College Essay Advisors on College EssAI and ethical AI for essays.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Anna Edwards: Oftentimes we see this pendulum swing to one direction and then, and then maybe a recalibration, five states enacted blanket bans on, on cell phone use 18 prohibited cell phone use during the school day. And so really significant policy uptake, if you look at the sweep across the nation, those are state level policies.

A number of districts also have enacted be to bell cell phone policies. 

[00:00:24] Alex Sarlin: It always feels like there's these different approaches within access of technology in the classroom. This sort of the block listy type versus white listy approach and these cell phone bands that, as you say, sweeping across the nation.

Many districts, many states are, I think changing the default from, you know, access to cell phones. Uh, you know, and technology is sort of just a default on to access is becoming a default off. 

[00:00:50] Ben Kornell: The US is in a very different space than what I hear about from other countries, specifically developing countries.

Where one-to-one Chromebook is just not a reality, nor is it going to be anytime soon, even though the prices have dropped substantially. And so connectivity, like learning experiences that involve any sort of connectivity, have to have cell phone components. And I just think it will be interesting to see.

How that evolves in that environment.

[00:01:29] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry from funding rounds to impact to AI developments across early childhood K 12 higher ed and work. You'll find it all here at EdTech 

[00:01:43] Ben Kornell: Insiders. Remember to subscribe to the pod, check out our newsletter, and also our event calendar, and to go deeper, check out EdTech Insiders Plus where you can get premium content access to our WhatsApp channel, early access to events and back channel insights from Alex and Ben.

Hope you enjoyed today's pod.

Hello, EdTech Insider listeners. We've got another week in EdTech for you. So excited to bring it today. Alex Sarlin, but we also have Anna Edwards joining us. We are going to cover everything from politics to K 12 to higher ed. But before we get in there, I just want to give a shout out to the one and only Alex Sarlin 400 episodes of EdTech Insiders.

It's a huge milestone. We were looking at some stats, and it's like the top 1% of podcasts have like 30 episodes. So by extrapolation, we are probably in the top 0.01% of podcasts. So a thank you to you, Alex. You are the marathon man of EdTech insiders, and you're giving voice to all of the people that are creating an impact in our space.

So congrats, Alex. Thank you to our production team. A special shout out to Jen, who's been on this journey with us from Jump, and then also to all of you, our listeners. So last I would say thank you to our guests that we've had over the years. Anna is from Whiteboard Advisors. We've just had an incredible cast of guests.

Both in the individual pods and weekend and tech. So shout out to our entire community. 400 episodes, huge milestone. 

[00:03:24] Anna Edwards: Congratulations guys. Thanks Ben. Yeah, 400 

[00:03:26] Alex Sarlin: episodes is pretty, really a lot of episodes. It's pretty, I mean, I was just listening to Pod Save America just hit their thousandth episode and it took them 10 plus years.

We're catching up. We're coming for you. Pod 

[00:03:38] Ben Kornell: Save 

[00:03:39] Alex Sarlin: America, we're coming. Exactly. And we've had these amazing you, our 400th episode was with Lucy Stevens and Vanessa Castaneda Gill from Social Cipher. They make games for Neurodivergent youth. It's, they're a really fascinating company. We just have so many amazing guests on the podcast all the time.

We have, uh, Jason Fournier and Sari Factor from Imagine Learning. Caleb Hicks from SchoolAI was on recently. And in this episode we're talking to Jim and Maurie Beasley, they're husband and wife team that do AI PD outta Texas. And they have all of these really interesting insights about what it's like when AI actually lands in the classroom.

And we talked to Stacey Brook from College EssAI, which is doing College Essay advising through LLMs and ai. So that's a fun one. Anna, welcome to the podcast. I'm really excited to have you here. We have so much to talk about today. Where should we start? 

[00:04:29] Anna Edwards: Well, I think we should start anywhere but Washington probably considering we are in a government shutdown right now, although Title one IDEA, the funding we have been assured is going out in the skeleton plan that the department has.

I always love to start actually out in the field in states and districts. I just got back from Oklahoma where they have a new state superintendent who was sworn in yesterday. Mm-hmm. And so lots continuing to move forward at the state and district level, even amidst the continued uncertainty here in Washington.

[00:05:03] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, week two of the government shutdown, and I'm sure in DC you're feeling it even more acutely than others are. I think they're saying it's starting to affect the air travel. We know there's a lot of, a lot of furloughed workers across the board in many different departments, including the education department, but I bet in DC it just feels like a ghost town right now.

[00:05:23] Anna Edwards: Yeah, the good news is not as much traffic, but yeah, it definitely, it's odd and we are hoping that it wouldn't be a long shutdown. You know, these have been going on for quite some time, and sometimes they've been short in duration, sometimes they've lasted longer, and there are some big deadlines related to paychecks, to government workers that a lot of times dictate how long a shutdown lasts.

Many of us are hopeful that there'll be some sort of resolution before October 15th, which is kind of the next big milestone of paychecks going out. But when I talked to some folks in the Department of Education earlier this morning, they said that they're preparing for this potentially lasting another 30 days, so.

We'll see what that means for rulemaking and some of those other efforts. Head Start is one that we're watching particularly closely in the early childhood space because of the way that Head Start payments are made where there could be some impact if this goes into November, but hopefully there won't be a need to go that far and and there'll be some sort of resolution in the Senate.

[00:06:28] Ben Kornell: Yeah, there's a degree to which the policy pieces in DC have had more impact over the last 12 months in education than we've seen a long time. You mentioned early childhood. In K 12, we had the big delay of funding coming. You know, it was not clear whether federal funds were gonna be stopped or that they'd be deployed, and now we're seeing other policies impacting schools.

One that caught my eye was immigration policies and the Des Moines superintendent. And I think one thing we strive to do on EdTech Insiders is not get into like political partisanship. But the kind of impact of basically ice detaining a superintendent of a large major public school system is that immigration policy and enforcement is coming to K 12 schools.

And a lot of the people I'm talking to in this space, one are worried, what do you do if ICE shows up on campus? And you have students who you're not aware of what their status is documented or undocumented. And the second is, are we going to be in a litigious situation where people who've been employed by districts for years never had their citizenship or work permission status verified?

Or maybe when it was, it was okay to work and then now it may not. So there's a lot of questions around compliance and the overall impact. The third point is it's really taking, eating up psychological and practical bandwidth. That normally goes to teaching and learning or implementing ed tech tools, and it just feels like we're in this like moment of paralysis in K 12 because of this shifting dynamic.

I'm curious for the two of you, what you're seeing and what you think the implications are of all of this. 

[00:08:16] Anna Edwards: Yeah. The Council of Great City Schools annual meeting is coming up in three weeks in Philadelphia, so that's where they bring together all of the large urban school district leaders from around the country.

And I'm sure that this is gonna be a big topic of conversation because it really is the large urban school districts that serve, for the most part, the greatest number of English language learners and immigrant students. They're working through this every day on the front lines. Alex Marrero, the superintendent of Denver Public Schools, has been in the news a lot over the last six months.

For his stance on not allowing ice officers onto school property. Los Angeles. This has been a, a, a big issue in Los Angeles and Texas districts in Florida. And not only is it creating uncertainty and on compounded by some of the funding uncertainty you mentioned, but it's actually having an impact on funding too, because of the way that schools are funded.

So a less intuitive aspect of this is that schools are funded on student enrollment and attendance. And so if students aren't showing up. Then that's less funding that that school district has for their operating budgets. And so one of the things that we're watching is, you know, not just the political response, but also could this have an impact on district funding for solutions that could support students across the board?

Because students are just not showing up. And that enrollment will have a long-term impact on the financial sustainability of the district. So it's definitely a challenging dynamic. I still can't believe that in the Des Moines soup search that that didn't come up in the background check. So in many ways it seems like an anomaly, but I think the issue as a whole is something that we're closely watching.

[00:10:07] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, I mean we're living through an extremely strange political time. We try not to talk about it too much on the podcast just 'cause, but, but sometimes it is hard to ignore. And when I look at this, I try to see a sort of silver lining in that the EdTech space, you know, what we all do in education technology is try to provide opportunities for learning outside of traditional classrooms.

Within traditional classrooms. Uh, more access, more flexibility. And as schools continue to, for many years in a row now, continue to be this sort of battleground for all sorts of different political issues. They're the battleground for vaccines. They're a battleground for immigration. Now. They've been a battleground for ideological.

Culture wars, basically of every different kind. It just distracts from everything that every teacher and principal and administrator in a school actually wants to do. And I'm hoping that education technology can at least provide some safety nets and supports for an environment where in some states and in some regions in this country, you're gonna see students and families scared outta school.

They're going to pull their kids outta school at at risk of being raided by immigration officers. The fact that we have to say that in 2025 in America is really shocking and very depressing. But it is a reality on the ground right now. And I'm hoping that, you know, we as a community can at least provide some supports for the ELL and multi-language learners who may not be in school or who, who are gonna need additional supports in various ways.

And I don't know if I wanna say more than that, even though, like, I could probably talk about this for an hour, but I get me 

[00:11:49] Ben Kornell: angry. I mean, do you think that this feels more homeschooling? Do you think this feels more just unschooling, non schooling, 

[00:11:58] Alex Sarlin: the internal refugees in this country? I mean, that's what they're hoping for.

I, I think that's the goal of this administration is to drive people into hiding, or, I, I guess they want to deport people, but it's to drive people out of the systems that we provide for them. And school, the education system is one of the systems that America provides for, uh, uh, many different types of students, of all different stripes and families of all different stripes.

And, uh, and this administration doesn't want that to be true. 

[00:12:24] Ben Kornell: Yeah, it is an interesting case of state also versus federal powers and you know, we're seeing that play out in the enforcement side, but also in the education system. Are there going to be some states that are more aggressive or are there some states that are gonna adopt the stance like the Denver superintendent?

It will be a flashpoint for sure. The other story that we had in K 12 was really just the evolution of cell phone bans and you know, we have this crisis and fear on the immigration side with schools, and then we also have mental health challenges and kind of the growing epidemic of screen addiction of these negative AI outcomes that Alex, like you predicted long ago.

We're seeing everything from social media, which has been well documented to some of these new cases. I'm curious to get your read on how are you seeing the cell phone policies and bans and all of that evolving in K 12 right now? 

[00:13:25] Anna Edwards: Yeah, we've been closely following cell phone bans, really since Jonathan Height's anxious generation book came out, and I think it was eye-opening for a lot of policy makers that hadn't realized the impact that social media and technology were having on learning.

Oftentimes, we see this pendulum swing to one direction and then, and then maybe a recalibration, five states enacted blanket bans on on cell phone use. 18 prohibited cell phone use during the school day. And so really significant policy uptick, if you look at the sweep across the nation, those are state level policies.

A number of districts also have enacted be to bell cell phone policies. One of the things that I think we're starting to see now, you saw the Heartbreaking New York Times article on the family that's suing Roblox, following their students' interaction with an adult online. But I think there's a realization that students are online, not just when they're at school, but at home too and in other venues.

And we can, can't ban our way into student safety and student responsible technology use. And so more and more. States and policymakers, I think are starting to think about a both. And yes, maybe we should take cell phones away from students when they're in the classroom environment. They shouldn't be distracted.

But also we need to educate students in how to safely use technology and what the rules of the road are. And so I think we're gonna see this legislative session more and more states looking@solutionslikelearning.com and digital literacy. Isti has put out a ton of great resources on digital citizenship and then some emerging technology companies like The Commons and Opal that actually help to enable students to use the technology for the particular purposes that is designated at a specific time, but then shut down the apps that shouldn't be used at those times.

And so a lot evolving in the space. You know, we definitely saw the bands and I think now we're realizing that bands alone are probably not going to get us to exactly where we wanna be from a mental health and student safety standpoint. 

[00:15:33] Alex Sarlin: Hmm. It always feels like there's these different approaches within access of technology in the classroom.

This sort of the black Listy type versus white listy approach and these cell phone bands that, as you say, sweeping across the nation. Many districts, many states are, I think, changing the default. From, you know, access to cell phones, uh, you know, and technology is sort of just a default on to access is becoming a default off.

And I, to your point, Anna, it's like when the access is a default off, then instead of thinking about all the things that can go wrong, you start to think about, well, what are the things we actually need? What are some pieces of the, uh, technology environment we do wanna reintroduce or we do wanna give students access to, like digital literacy or like particular research tools or, you know, you can start to imagine, and I think that maybe is a healthy change.

So instead of it being like, well, worrying about all the things that could cause problems with the cell phone, of which there are infinite, you sort of turn it back to zero and then say, now let's really strategically and in a nuanced way think about what to introduce into the classroom, what technology will be really beneficial and meaningful.

[00:16:40] Ben Kornell: Yeah. I find this whole conversation really interesting too, because the US is in a very different space than what I hear about from other countries. Yeah, I bet. Specifically developing countries where one-to-one Chromebook is just not a reality, nor is it going to be anytime soon, even though the prices have dropped substantially.

And so connectivity, like learning experiences that involve any sort of connectivity have to have cell phone components. And I just think it will be interesting to see how that evolves in that environment. And you know, my hypothesis would be that we see some leapfrogging. In developing countries that are using ai, using cell phones and using personalized interactives that may come much slower to develop countries in the US and Europe, because the alternative is you've got a Chromebook and you can control the access to things online.

You've got a full stack school with a teacher and everything. So on the innovator edge, I think these types of policies actually push innovation out of the us. 

[00:17:54] Anna Edwards: Yeah. Yeah. The other direction I was gonna take that too is thinking about the shifting role of the district chief Information officer. You know, I don't think that Ed Tech directors and CIOs thought that they were going to also become mental health experts and student support services experts, or chief academic officers for that matter.

Right. Uh, you know, the role of A CIO now is just incredibly important in terms of thinking through safety and security and what they've historically been covering cyber security. But now there are all these other considerations that have put the CIOs in the driver's seat for making district decisions that have really big implications.

So I'm grateful to all of the CIOs and ed tech directors out there that are thinking through these big questions. And Ben, hopefully. Pushing us forward with innovation, not letting us fall behind and saying, no, we just wanna cut off all access and, and I think that those CIOs and organizations like CA and Cosin that are trying to help everyone understand the implications of these policy decisions and what responsible use looks like.

And then outside partners, you know, like I know you had Tammy WinCo from securely on, you know, I think there are a lot of partners that are coming in to try to make sure that we keep moving in the direction of incorporating AI and technology in and don't have the knee jerk reaction to pull it back.

'cause I share your concern. If we do that, then our students are the ones that are gonna be definitely left behind their international peers. 

[00:19:25] Alex Sarlin: Yes. So speaking of international peers, one other story that has been raising a lot of eyebrows and I think just been really interesting to watch this week has been that you looking at the higher education landscape and how colleges are starting to really get concerned.

They're starting to be a lot of what they call, you know, headwinds, quote unquote for the higher education sector. They're expecting more mergers, more schools closing down, and one of the main causes of it is this very big chill in international students coming to the us. There's my connection to international there.

They're saying that this year there may be as many as 150,000 fewer international students. Wow. For this academic year, that's a 30 to 40% drop in new students from abroad, and as we know anybody who follows higher ed, they have been using the, not using, but they've been leveraging the fact that international students often pay a larger fee, less, less of a discount than local students in lots of different ways.

So that is a disproportionate effect on revenues. We're also seeing a demographic cliff coming in the us. There are fewer high school students graduating than there have been in a long time, and there is a lot of fear, frankly, in the higher education sector. Anna, let me pass it to you on this. This is obviously a huge topic, but it's one with a lot of really interesting nuance to it.

I'm curious what you think about the decrease in international students and just the general worry about the higher education sector in the upcoming years. 

[00:20:51] Anna Edwards: Yeah, I mean, for sure the financial impact of fewer international students is real. And then you couple that with the increased scrutiny from within the United States, questioning the value of a four year degree.

You have a lot of governors out there talking about the jobs data that they're looking at. And the ROI on four year degrees, particularly in, I feel like the tagline always targets like gender studies and, and majors that when you look at the earnings post degree, just don't add up to what the cost of the degree was.

And so, so that's the soundbite that you're hearing a lot of policy makers carry out, and that then you have higher ed leaders trying to navigate through and really talk about improve the value. I think the workforce element is a huge component of that in discussion about what jobs of the future are going to look like and the pathways into them.

And so there's really an emphasis on, on not just looking at the four years, the default, but looking at pathways into two years and the new workforce, Pell Grants that are coming out, which will enable, you know, more community colleges and workforce training providers to participate. So it's a hard time for higher ed leaders, for political reasons, for financial reasons.

There's still a critical part of our country and the overall portfolio of post-secondary options, but I, I think it's definitely a hard time to be a university leader right now. And Ben, you're highlighting the particular scrutiny and criticism over elite four year institutions, which I think we're also seeing play out.

[00:22:43] Ben Kornell: It's so interesting to hear your thoughts on this. Anna. Alex and I have been predicting the downfall of higher ed for like years now, probably a decade. I mean, you know, Alex is like one of the core people in Coursera, where by the way, they also are one of the apps in chat, GPT, we can talk about that in a second.

But like the predictive downfall of higher ed has had many, many people in that camp for many, many years. And what has sustained the model over and over again has been this ongoing like financial model where you bring high pay kids in and it's working and you keep this four year structure. But what you're talking about is modularized, just in time learning that's responsive to students, that helps them achieve practical goals.

In their career progression. And I feel like we can't declare victory, that's for sure. But it feels like the time is finally coming where the incentives are flipping and the universities that are gonna be first movers that can figure out how to create modularized programs, they can figure out how to support workforce.

They can figure out like degree and certificate programs that stack and so on, which we've already seen a couple of those first movers who are really winning. Now the actual financial incentives are finally lining up. And so to me, the real question for any board or trustee group is, are we going to let ourselves decline over time and take these hits, or are we gonna proactively come in and restructure ourselves?

And so this might be a great time for whiteboard advisors to work with these people to restructure how they're thinking about their pathways. But I know a lot of universities are thinking. Very, very innovatively. Whereas 10 years ago, these ideas would be theoretical to bring up these kind of concepts.

Alex, given your depth in this space, like how are you feeling about where we are today and where it's headed over the next six to 12 months? Yeah, 

[00:24:50] Alex Sarlin: I mean, I agree with what you're both saying a lot. We've been predicting this for a long time, and there was a, there's a famous book by Nathan Gra, as an economist about the demographic cliff in higher education.

It came out five years ago at least, and saying higher education needs to watch out because there is going to be a lot of changes. There's a lot of movement within the country. There's been growth in southern universities and a lot of decrease in the Northeastern universities where a lot of the colleges are are located.

But writ large, the sector has just been sitting on its laurels for way too long. When I was at Coursera. I've been personally critical of the higher education sector for a long time. I think it's spent way too little on career services. It's thought way too little about of having a very clear return on investment.

I think, Anna, to your point about people just worrying about the Paul Tough book that came out just a couple of years ago, his claim with lots of data to support it is basically that a student goes to a school. That for most schools, the chance of a positive ROI is basically 50 50, that it's less true of very selective schools, but for many, many, many schools in the US the chance of a positive ROI is about 50 50.

And the tuition has just continued to rise with, you know, with some discounts, with some nuance there. I think that it is a reckoning. That's been a long time coming. You know, we try not to be political, but one of the things that I think is so ironic about this moment is some of these attacks, some of the political attacks on the higher education sector coming from, frankly both sides, but often coming from the right.

There are points there. There has been a real complacency in the higher education sector, partially from international students, partially from just the fact that they've just never had to really, really examine their core role in society that closely, because it's been a sector where everybody looks around at each other and says that college seems to be doing it this way.

Let's follow them. Let's do something similar. Let's do a slightly different version. The people who have taken big swings. I think, you know, we, we talk about the mega universities a lot here. We talk about the Arizona states and the Southern New Hampshires and the Purdue global campuses and the Penn State World campus, and Maryland.

You know, the places that have really been innovative have gotten great success from being innovative. They've got the ones who have focused on majors that do have positive ris, that have really thought about the student experience, about the non-traditional student experience, about a competency based education or being able to give credit for life experience.

I mean, even the three year degree, there have been a really interesting movement to shorten the four year degree to three years for certain type of places, certain type of majors. Everybody who's embraced this, I think for the most part, they mostly see really positive effects. Yet the industry as a whole tends to move very.

Slowly and they've been waiting for something to push them. And I think hopefully this is the time that they're gonna be pushed and hopefully the innovation that comes out of it happens fast enough so that it feels like there's really exciting things happening and it's not just a crash. 'cause it, there's a very real future here where we look up in, in a few years and hundreds of schools have closed or merged.

[00:27:55] Anna Edwards: Yeah, I think the rapid changes coming to the workforce because of AI and technology are also going to force some of this shift I was mentioning, you know, heading to Oklahoma and Paycom, they're one of their big tech employers just announced that there were 500 jobs that they were gonna be eliminating because now AI could come in and serve those functions.

And so then you say, well, what is the role of higher ed in making sure that we're actually preparing students for the jobs that are there? And so I think that in addition to the kind of political and financial reckoning in higher ed, there's also just a very practical workforce and technology reckoning that's going to accelerate things as well.

[00:28:41] Ben Kornell: Meanwhile, there's like an article on. Harvard coming outta the New York Times, which is the schools that are supposed to be preparing top students. Kids aren't showing up to class and they're still getting straight A's. And I think there's been, I mean, I personally feel like I resonate with the article because I, I went to Harvard and I remember thinking this is what the top education looks like.

Like 10 or 15 of my friends in high school could have been acing this. And really, if we take the most cynical view, Harvard and other elite universities like that have basically been social sorting hats, where once you're in the kind of value add academically is di minimis. It's really around your social network and your ability to have a four year past, explore what you want to explore.

And it's a branding exercise where now you've got this pass into other places. I wish it were not the case. And yes, I struggled in some of my classes because I was in like a rural high school, and then the rigor was challenging in some of the courses. But by and large, I saw a lot of kids getting grade inflated and it made me feel like the kind of academic rigor, if that's our institutions that are at the top that are holding rigor.

How do we hold rigor down below? And then furthermore, I would just say the level of remedial math, even at a place like Harvard, it's mind-boggling. How many kids can't do basic trig, pre-calc. Calc, like even algebraic skills are fundamentally lacking for most of our high school graduates. And so when we're saying that the rigor's not there in college and the foundational skills aren't there, how are you going to prepare kids for the future?

That to me feels like a double whammy here. And you know, the New York Times, kudos to them on the reporting. 'cause this was not some New York Times expose, this was a faculty panel that actually did a study themselves and said, we've gotta change. And it's coming from internal to the university, which I think means that this is authentically a crisis.

[00:31:04] Alex Sarlin: Hmm. 

[00:31:05] Anna Edwards: Yeah, kudos to Atlanta Public Schools. I was an a PS grad who went to Yale, and I will tell you that I found Yale to be easier than my experience at North Atlanta High School. So I hear you. I also, you know, can say I've benefited for sure from the value of the social networks and, and other experiences that I had in college, so I'm incredibly grateful.

I do think you're exactly right then the fact that even students going into these elite institutions still need that much remediation and still need the extra boost of grade inflation is eyeopening. And I think consistent with what we saw in the NA scores, you know, the 12th grade NAP scores that came out last month, showing that 12th grade students in ELA and math.

Only about a third were prepared for post-secondary. I mean, it's just shows, I think, the impact of the pandemic on student learning during those critical high school years. But also, as you were saying, this is something that's been going on for quite some time and the fact that Harvard did an internal panel to look at that, we might see more institutions pick up the same and, and start to look at remapping admissions criteria and examining what the courses of study look like.

It'll be interesting to see what ripple effects come out from that. I had missed a New York Times article, so thank you for flagging that. 

[00:32:32] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. I have a, a modest proposal here and I, I'm gonna try to put together some of the pieces that I'm hearing you all say, which is that. We have a higher education system, and even though it is, I think arguably, maybe not even that, arguably the best higher education system in the world, I, I think in, in pretty much in aggregate, it is, it still has these glaring problems.

You know, lack of relevance to real world outcomes, lack of being held to any kind of academic standard, right? I mean, nobody has to prove on in some kind of third party assessment that they are ready to graduate from almost any school, let alone or including Ivy League schools. At very elite institutions, we have a time problem.

We know that the, with the four year university degree is a remnant. It's a vestige of an old system. There's absolutely no logic behind it, and it's, it's not what people really need or want anymore. You have all these missing pieces. I can imagine one of the innovations that many of these schools to do, especially elite universities like the Harvards and Yales and MITs, and you know, of the world at John Hopkins, is to say, look.

Instead of just taking for granted these four year degrees where everybody's on their own path and they find a major at some point, and then everything's sort of internally, maybe we should take ourselves a little more seriously and align ourselves to some external outcomes and say, Hey, by the time students graduate, they need to be able to x, Y, Z to pass some kind of industry exam, pass some kind of AI skill exam.

I, I'm saying AI skill, but it could be a durable skill exam that allows them to succeed in the modern workforce. Somebody needs to make that exam, but. And given that maybe you don't need four years for that, maybe that could be a one year, a two year, a three year degree, maybe it could be competency based, but it's aligned to something that has a clear, real world relevant outcome.

A certificate program potentially, that allow, you know, certificate programs at Ivy League are like this really silly thing, right? They're not accredited in the same way. They can cost huge amounts, but they have no clear outcomes. Like con certificate programs are, are one element of the complacency of schools, but they could be incredibly powerful.

I mean, you could easily, if you're a Harvard REL right now, you could create a Harvard AI certification. You could go to the mm-hmm. The absolute top people in the world, including corporate and research and say, what does this mean? And then you could offer it at any cost. And you don't have to have the same, and I, I mean, high or low, you could have all kinds of different kinds of incentives for it.

I just think the degree is really part of the problem here. It's the idea of the degree itself. It's something we've just taken for granted for so long and everybody builds their whole institutions on it, including the accrediting bodies. If we start to break down the sort of monopolistic hegemony of the degree and start to think about what do students actually need?

Is it certificates? Is it projects? Is it skill boot camps? What? What is it? And then schools start to innovate around that. I think we could be in a much better shape. 

[00:35:35] Anna Edwards: I think two places that we're seeing states already take action on that front. One is actually states working with the Carnegie Foundation.

So you think, you know, Carnegie units, what the 

[00:35:46] Alex Sarlin: Right exactly. Built 

[00:35:48] Anna Edwards: on Tim Knowles and the Carnegie Foundation are actually on a campaign to get rid of the Carnegie Unit in K 12 and higher ed reflecting the need to shift to this more competency based environment. So I think that's something to watch. A lot of states are working on that now.

And then the other piece is, is kind of the paper ceiling phenomenon that a lot of state agencies are trying to put into place it in addressing them, which is getting rid of degree requirements for state employees. And so if you see states leading the way, encouraging industry to also shift to the way they're thinking about the way they evaluate incoming job applicants.

You know, I think we're starting to see some of that and, and then I think the third piece is. We've been watching closely in K 12, the state portraits of a graduate, or profiles of a graduate movement where industry comes together with higher ed and districts and you try to get the stakeholders together to map out the skills you wanna see your graduates have when they complete the system.

They haven't had a lot of teeth. It's been a really nice exercise, but there hasn't been accountability that's kinda been driving it. But you wonder what that could look like if that did start to happen. And I think that's what we're, we're seeing some of the federal signals coming out in terms of upcoming competitive grants that might actually force a shift more to that system and getting employers together in a state saying, these are the in demand career fields, 

[00:37:15] Alex Sarlin: right?

We 

[00:37:16] Anna Edwards: wanna see students coming in with skills to meet and starting to do that mapping. So we're, we're excited to see some of that play out and I think that there's some policy and funding shifts that could drive in that direction, and hopefully higher ed institutions will be at the table for those conversations.

[00:37:31] Alex Sarlin: Hopefully we see a portrait of a graduate movement at the higher ed level as well. The, you get, you get the teeth for the high school side and then the, I mean, why not? We need portrait of a graduate in higher ed. There's absolutely no standards and it's totally inconsistent. Anyway, I'm totally with you, Anna, and I'm so happy that you're, you're on top of all of the policy at the legal changes that are potentially happening here.

And the teeth part I think is a, is a great point as well. I love the portrait of graduate movement. I love that that states have really been embracing it, but without that handshake from either employers or colleges being like, yes, we require a portrait of a graduate, it's not a complete system. Totally.

[00:38:08] Ben Kornell: Yeah. I mean, all of this gets me very excited. I also think that the other vector here is where is AI learning going to go? And you know, I think we've been documenting those who've been following along the kind of rise of learning as a use case for all the major AI players. And so if you imagine the modularization deconstruction, the kind of reformulating of Carnegie units, there's a real opportunity to have that fully integrated with chat GPT or Claude or these types of things.

And I think there's an interesting moment here. You know, chat, GPT kind of announced apps within chat GPT, and just to make sure everybody's got the arc. About six months ago they announced Agen ai, which allowed you to go through chat. GPT Chat, GBT takes over your screen and does stuff for you. And what they're realizing is that's not a very effective integrated experience.

And a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago, you could create your own custom GPT, which allowed you to kind of build your own app within chat GPT. But now is a major step forward with Coursera being one of the first, I think the first app that's fully integrated into a GPT experience. And I think what you're going to find is that whether it's higher ed or college, I mean maybe more delayed in K 12, but the idea of organizations actually building full integration into AI interfaces so that it's AI where you are, it reminds me a little bit of the Google strategy, AI everywhere, but chat GBT actually bringing that functionality in.

What you could do with Coursera or Spotify or whatever is use the interface to say, here's the task I wanna accomplish. And through the integration, it helps you accomplish that through this third party platform where it's going from a business model for ai, as you could imagine, an app store equivalent where all of these integrations make it the hub where you're interacting with this.

But also from an EdTech standpoint, it feels like a win for us to say these companies are seeding that we aren't experts in everything that you're going to want to accomplish. Let's give you space to have interoperability here. And connecting the threads, like what an awesome future would be if my higher ed, my like online learning, my career, learning my competencies, all could be managed within one AI interface, but across all the different platforms that I'm using.

[00:40:40] Alex Sarlin: A hundred percent. And I mean, and they announced the first like seven apps and it included, like you said, Spotify, things like Zillow and Canva and Figma or Expedia and booking.com. So things for travel, booking, things for music, things for for real estate. But Coursera is the first education app in there.

And I think one interesting connection to what we're saying, and I'd love to hear you on this as well, is that the use cases they're talking about these days, first off, so first off, it's worth noting that Coursera and OpenAI have a lot of shared DNA, right? That Belski, the head of education at OpenAI was one of the top executives at Coursera, the head of education and OpenAI for India was the head of India at Coursera.

So there's a lot of shared people between them and I. So I'm not super surprised that there's a lot of shared thinking there. But the use cases they're talking about right off the bat are that, oh, if you go to open ai, you go to chat GBT and you ask about something, let's say it's. I, I think of Egypt just for fun, because I, Egyptology was one of the first big Coursera classes.

You ask something about ancient Egypt and it can say, Hey, you have the Coursera app installed. We're gonna bring you a video about Egypt from Coursera. We're gonna bring you a video about it from there. Or you ask about market forces, and it's a video from Coursera. That's a great start, and I'm very happy that's happening.

I think it's really powerful. But where it really gets interesting is that Coursera offers certificates and degree programs and mm-hmm. Majors. And to your point, Ben, if you're spending a lot of time on chat, GT talking about, you know, marketing. And the Coursera app is in there and it says, by the way, do you want a certificate in social media marketing?

Because it seems like you sure are interested in it. I can get you there. We can, we can walk you through that. It'll take you six months. Like, wow, that becomes a pretty different educational pathway. And that's the whole point of Coursera, right? Making democratizing access to education, making it easier and cheaper for people to actually get meaningful educational outcomes and credentials.

So if it's in chat GPT, just as it's gonna be easier to find music you like, or easier to find real estate, if you're using the Zillow app in chat, GPT, maybe it's easier to find educational experiences and attainment. It's pretty exciting. Anna, what do you think? 

[00:42:40] Anna Edwards: Yeah, I mean there's still so much unknown about what role AI is going to play in teaching and learning, but I think this use case makes total sense where, you know you have expert content that is then married with an AI experience to customize.

I think that's really heartening in my mind because the thing that worries a lot of experts in the space and a lot of policy makers is whether you can trust the AI sources. And so if you're taking trusted course information and then just using AI to make the experience better seems like a great solution.

And so, you know, I think it'll be interesting to see who's next after Coursera. Who would the K 12 player be that would come in? It's, it's Khan Academy announced. Yeah, it's really interesting. 

[00:43:28] Alex Sarlin: The next set of apps is already announced. It has people like Target, Uber, Thumbtack, you know, Peloton. But it has Khan Academy.

And Khan Academy is already, you know, has been a very close Yeah. Colleague of, of Open air. So I, I think that you're gonna see the Khan Academy app probably very shortly, and that will be similar it, but on a K 12 level, right? You're asking about exponents and you're gonna get Khan or Khan's library of videos or questions or tutorials.

I think that's pretty exciting as well. 

[00:43:53] Ben Kornell: And they'll be, well, I, I mean, I think that's a good note for us to wrap our conversation today. In some ways, we started off on a down note, but I think the future remains really bright as we think about the forces for innovation and actually helping learning Propel students forward.

So we're gonna end on that positive note. Thank you so much, Anna, for joining us from Whiteboard Advisors. If people want to find out more about Whiteboard Advisors, what's the best path for them? 

[00:44:24] Anna Edwards: We have a great newsletter. Would love for everyone to sign up. You can check us out at whiteboardadvisors.com and we're putting out information constantly on what's happening here in DC and around the country.

Thanks so much for having me, guys. 

[00:44:36] Ben Kornell: Awesome. We're big subscribers to that. And if you wanna check out more about EdTech Insiders, you can check out our substack. Check us out on LinkedIn podcasts everywhere. Thank you so much for listening. Alex, do you wanna take us out? 

[00:44:49] Alex Sarlin: Hey, if you, it's gonna happen in EdTech.

You're gonna hear about it here on EdTech Insiders, thank you so much. 400 episodes. Thank you. I know there are some of you who have been with us since the very beginning. Thank you so much for your support. Leave us a rating if you have a chance, and we really appreciate all your support and listening to the podcast.

Thanks so much. For our deep dive this week in EdTech this week, we are talking to the co-founders of AIEDPro, which provides structured hands-on training to help educators integrate AI effectively into their practice. We have with us Jim Beasley. He's a computer engineer and technology director. With over 25 years of experience, he builds, implements, and deeply understands AI systems, bringing hands-on experience to real world applications.

His work bridges technical innovation with practical, scalable solutions in education and beyond. And with Maurie Beasley, who is a K 12 educator and co-founder of AIEDPro, she has over 20 years of experience as a teacher, counselor, tech coach and administrator. A member of the Austin AI Alliance.

Beasley is writing a book on ai, deep fakes and mental health. She's already published a book about all of these amazing things that happen in the classroom and how AI may or may not have helped. We'll talk about that, and she regularly presents on EdTech and innovation at schools and conferences. Jim and Maurie Beasley, welcome to EdTech Insiders.

Thanks for having us. We appreciate you. Yeah. We always like to talk about AI 

[00:46:20] Jim Beasley: stuff. It's kind of our 

[00:46:21] Alex Sarlin: thing. It's becoming our thing too. It is so much fun. Imagination is the limit. That's what we just talked about in our last call. You can do things you couldn't have even imagined doing in the past in the classroom with the help of ai.

So let's start, Jim, lemme start with you. As co-founder of AIEDPro and a computer engineer, 25 years of experience, tell us about the biggest misconceptions that you've seen that schools have about AI and AI systems. You are on the ground a lot, so everybody in schools about how to use ai. What do they understand and what do they not understand?

[00:46:57] Jim Beasley: I think the biggest one is they think it's different from a normal IT function. I mean, they, for some reason AI is so big and it's used so much that people tend to think of it as something different. When in reality the way you implement it properly, I mean, is gonna be the same whether you're using somebody's cloud-based or you're doing it locally like we do, you still have to have, you know, maintenance, you gotta set up accounts, you gotta take accounts down, you gotta give privileges.

I mean, all that stuff applies. So if you need to get your brain wrapped around it, just think of it as another IT project. The other misconception, which is very common, is that AI is a single thing, right? And it's not. And there's a lot of, as you probably well know, there's a lot of different variations on access to these language models.

That's another reason why we did what we did, is because we want to give a variety of access. So those are the two biggest things I think that people get wrong. 

[00:47:48] Maurie Beasley: The number one thing we hear is like, well, we just walked AI. 

[00:47:52] Jim Beasley: No you didn't. No you didn't. 

[00:47:54] Maurie Beasley: No, I don't think so. 

[00:47:56] Alex Sarlin: You think you did, but you did not.

So, yeah. So when you say why you did what you did, explain to the listeners who may not know what you did, what have you been doing to help schools sort of experience, try and ultimately get comfortable with AI in the classroom? What kinds of things have you been building to make that transition smooth?

Jim, let me start with you again on this. But then, uh, Maurie, I'd love to hear you as well. 

[00:48:17] Jim Beasley: The first thing I did was in March of 2023, just a few months after OpenAI released this thing, this bombshell in the world, I released our own version of a chat bot we call Agnes. And basically it was to give people access some level of, of access to.

Open AI stuff and we ran that for about a year. Small pilots. I pilot everything. That's the only reason I did that originally. I just wanted to see how it went. 

[00:48:41] Alex Sarlin: Yeah, 

[00:48:42] Jim Beasley: we did a Next Generation, which is we piloted for another year after that, which is, it went from Agnes Chatbot to AI Toolbox and Ma can probably tell you more about that actual pilot, but I created it.

I, instead of writing all that one myself though. I use some open source tools because it's too much for me to do by myself, so I needed to kind of package some things. Mm-hmm. So some pieces of it I created. I, I'm never creating the AI piece, I'm always using. Right. You know, either I've got local models, which we run using a tool called lama, and then of course we've got open AI and Google and you know, an anthropic, that kind of stuff.

But my goal was focus on teachers. I had no focus on students at all, and my focus was how do we get the teachers up to speed because they can't teach the kids. In my mind, it was always about digital literacy. They can't teach the kids if they don't understand it. And if I give them some prepackaged online thing that you fill out a form and it generates a prompt, you've learned nothing.

So I wanted them to really get a feel for the capabilities of these tools. And the only way to do that is give 'em lots of tools. Yeah. 

[00:49:46] Maurie Beasley: Yeah, the toolbox is amazing. I mean, Agnes, the toolbox, of course you have the access to where the teachers could literally go in and then they can choose whatever model that they want to use.

And I kind of went in and I trained them on, alright, this model's gonna be a little more expensive, this one's gonna be a little less expensive. This is what you need to do for just everyday stuff. This is what you need if you wanna do an image generation. And we only pay for what we use because we use API access, so we only pay for token cost.

And so like the highest bill we had was almost $7, and that was for one month. And that's what the ton of the states teachers using it every single day. Now, from my perspective, coming from an administrative role. What interested me the most were the test scores are the growth, as we call it. We do what we call MAP testing.

[00:50:34] Alex Sarlin: Yep. 

[00:50:34] Maurie Beasley: Beginning of the year, middle of the year, end of the year. And one teacher that was in the pilot program had over a 60% growth. And another teacher that was the same grade level, same subject that was not in the program, only had a 40. Right. In the 40% growth. Wow. And so to me that was significant and the teachers were using it for things.

Fairly specific. The main section that they used AI to help with was the differentiation piece on the engagement activities. So I could take a kid who hates being at school but loves playing soccer, and I could model and get those rubrics specific for things that happen with soccer, and it made the kid want to do the assignment.

So to me, that was like a big key about what AI helped us with last year. This year we're rolled it out, we just put it campus wide now to one of our campuses. So now we have a whole campus using it and we have two elementary campuses. And now I'm curious to see what's gonna happen with the scores at.

One elementary campus versus the other. So, so we shall see. It's almost like a competition, you know? 

[00:51:40] Alex Sarlin: So yeah, it's, so when you see growth like that or use cases like that when people are using AI to differentiate instruction for different types of students based on their interests, you know, that's a really great entry point for ai.

It's something that people can really quickly try and grasp, and as you say, it doesn't cost a lot. I wanna ask you, actually a similar question. When you go in, 'cause you've been going into a number of different schools you're based in, in Austin, you go into different schools and you help people sort of understand this revolution, this really amazing tool suite that's available to them.

The different models, your own chatbot on top of them, all the different use cases, the use cases that really start to open doors. What are the ones that click where, you know, I've heard you mention that sometimes you walk in, you can immediately tell who are the sort of skeptics in the room. Some that in any given room, some people are like.

I've about the, I don't wanna touch it, but what, what tends to turn it called hostiles. 

[00:52:29] Jim Beasley: Yeah. 

[00:52:29] Alex Sarlin: Hostile. 

[00:52:31] Jim Beasley: This is the body language. This is the body language typically that we see. Yeah. 

[00:52:34] Maurie Beasley: The arms are crossed, you know, frowny face. 

[00:52:37] Jim Beasley: And I'm absolutely clueless 'cause I don't get that kind of stuff very well. So I see it as they just, they're really interested, you know?

'cause they're really slamming me with questions and I'm like, oh, this is cool. And afterward, Mari's like, you realize that they hate ai. Right? And that you were, you were irritating them because you were actually enthusiastic about it. Yeah. So she has to translate that human aspect of it into, so Jim understands it, you know, that kind of thing.

So 

[00:52:59] Alex Sarlin: what, so what do you do in the face of this hostile reaction? 

[00:53:03] Maurie Beasley: Well, I think the main thing that we have to do is we have to, I call it the low hanging fruit. Yeah. It's the thing that when you're in a classroom, and part of the book that I wrote was about, I didn't name it up to your ass in alligators, I named it.

Teachers have bigger fish to fry because you know, I, you can't put that on a desk in a third grade classroom to have that title in a book. But the teachers literally are overwhelmed with administrative paperwork. They're overwhelmed with the kid who just threw up on their shoes. I mean, they're overwhelmed with all the day-to-day activities.

Yes. And so when I go into a classroom to train a teacher, I'm like, okay, what's the one thing that you think AI cannot do for you? Let me give you an example. The other day I walked into a first grade teacher's room and we were just talking about artificial intelligence and she, I could tell, you know, she's got 23 kids in there and they're all running around and she's got some classroom management that she needs to, you know, focus on.

And I noticed on her board, she had written down, no stealing, no being mean to my friends. And I asked her, I said, what is that on your board? And she was like, well, that is our classroom contract. We just came up with that. I, we talked to the kids and this is all the stuff they said that they knew that they should not be doing.

I was like, well, what are you gonna do with that? And she was like, well, whenever I get the time, I'm gonna have to type it up and I'm gonna, you know, pass it out and we're gonna get the parent signature and we're gonna go. I said, well, hang on just a second. I took a picture with my phone of what was on the board, put it into an ai and it was done in what, 30 seconds?

Yeah. And I showed it to her and I was like, here you go. Here's your classroom contract. Download it, change it if you need to send it out to your parents and have your kids sign it. And she was like. Oh my God, that just saved me like an hour of my time. And so it's those little things that you have to start with to get the teachers to understand this is truly a tool that is gonna allow you to have more time so that you can then handle the kid who threw up on the shoes and the classroom management issues and, and the other things that you have to do when you're a teacher.

[00:55:09] Alex Sarlin: I'm just gonna ask you to double click on the book because I think our listeners don't know about this book. You have a book called Teachers Have Bigger Fish to Fry. Can you explain the premise of the book because it's a really interesting one and it's related to this topic. 

[00:55:20] Maurie Beasley: Okay. So I started making comments to Jim about how AI was never going to be able to do everything.

And you know, I've been in the classroom for a long time, and then I was a counselor and I was an assistant principal. And so, you know, I've, I've done it all. Hell, I drove a bus for a year, you know, and, and it's like once you drive a bus route for a year, you understand exactly what being an education is like.

Yeah. And I started saying, you know, this happened, or this story happened. And Jim was like, I wonder if AI could help with that. I wonder if AI could help with that. And so I started collecting stories from other teachers because I was like, okay, surely I'm not the only one. So when I went to these conferences, I would put up this QR code, and I had all these teachers and they want to share.

I mean, they want to tell you about what they face in their classrooms. So I picked 68 of these stories and I put 'em in this book, and then I asked the simple question afterwards. Could AI have helped in this situation? And so I literally took the story, I put it into a large language model. I said, here's the prompt.

What can you do? And more often than not, the AI came back with something that I thought was relevant, that I was like, wow, you know, yes, these are five great things that I can implement for a student who has sensory issues. Or, these are five great things that I can do for that student who, you know, cannot learn how to, you know, carry to the next column when they're doing their, you know, division or, or whatever.

And so I put all that in a book. And then the ones that were like, yeah, no, no, this is ridiculous. AI is not gonna help me get the snake off the desk that fell from the AC vent. You know, I would like, let's just put a recipe for a margarita. You know, you know, a, after a day like today, you're gonna need a margarita.

Right. So, and that's what the book, the book came about that way. And I've got enough stories banked up that I can definitely do a volume to. What's funny about the 

[00:57:23] Jim Beasley: stories, think about volume two. What's funny about the stories is they're global. I mean, she's, she collected stories from people in Australia and, and Yeah.

And what, what got me about it is, is that the commonality between them, you would think, you know, they're in Australia, they just maybe have a bigger snake that falls from the ceiling, but they still have the same, it's a 

[00:57:42] Alex Sarlin: kangaroo, it's loose. 

[00:57:44] Jim Beasley: Kangaroo gets loose in the room. But at the same time, but it, I mean, 'cause that story actually is MA's story because it had, she had to go get the snake out of the room, but, oh wow.

It just, it was amazing to me that people were from all over the world. We're, we're like, we see this, this is happening. And Australia, I mentioned it because we've had like four or five people from Australia contact her recently. Yeah. About, oh yeah, that happened to me kind of thing. And, and at our, we had a booth at a show, 'cause we were presenting at a conference and we had a little booth there too.

And we had people lined up to share stories. I mean, they were like writing 'em down and she was ha you know, we had people standing there taking in all these stories. It was kind of, it was kind of cool. 

[00:58:19] Maurie Beasley: Yeah. So I like the book. I, I really do, it's a work of heart because as a counselor I went ahead and I put like coloring pages in there and I put reflection pages in there because like, if this happens to you on this day, and they're not all funny stories, there are some stories that are really sad.

I mean, there, there's, you know, like the first call I had to make to Child Protective Services when I was a first year teacher, you know, there are some stories that are sad because that's the reality of teaching. You don't just have those funny, ridiculous days sometimes you have those heartbreaking days too.

So the response has been overwhelming and, and I'm very happy about that. It makes me feel validated, and I hope it helps the people who shared their stories with me also feel validated. 

[00:59:04] Alex Sarlin: Well, we will put a link to the book in the show notes for this episode because I think it's a great window into, as you say, the reality of being a teacher, the sort of frontline reality.

There's, there's hilarious, crazy stuff that happens that's sad stuff that happens, a lot of unpredictable things that happen in the classroom. Mm-hmm. And then I love the connection here where you say all these crazy things can happen. And in many of them, AI actually can help, even if you might not realize it at the time.

And that's a really interesting insight that connects, you know, both of your interests. So, Jim, I, I wanna say, I just wanna bring you into this in a different way for a second because you, you know, you built and implemented AI systems in non-educational context as well. And I think one of the things that's interesting about this moment is we're all figuring out how AI can work in education.

There's obviously a huge number of potential use cases. What lessons have you learned from your career that you've translated into your work with ai, with Agnes, with what you're doing with AIEDPro to try to make AI really scalable and effective in classrooms and in K 12. 

[01:00:02] Jim Beasley: Well, I mean, I spent 20 something years just, I, I worked for companies like Dell and things like that.

Yeah. But a lot of what I did in my career was the connection between engineering and customers, customer facing kind of stuff. You know, what do you do? And I think the biggest mistake people make and they make it, it seems like it's worse than education. They simply don't ask people, you know, what is your classroom like, what do you need?

So I sit in the classrooms just like I used to sit, you know, I've been to, when I was doing biometrics, I used to go to hospitals because they were putting biometric identification in for doctors. And I would go sit and watch how, how they do it. Well, the first time that I was piloting something here at the school, I went and sat in a classroom.

'cause we were piloting an interactive board. And I was curious, what are the different things that matter to the teacher? And in this particular case, how long do you think, I ask a lot of people this question, how long do you think it takes to lose a seventh grade classroom? The tension of the kids in the classroom become complete chaos if the teacher turns their back.

How long do you think I timed it so I can tell you the number? Gimme a guess. A number of seconds. How? How many seconds do you think it takes? 

[01:01:09] Alex Sarlin: I couldn't guess. A small enough number. Three seconds. Seven. Seven. There you go. Yeah, that's very small. How does it take to get, 

[01:01:15] Jim Beasley: how long does it take to get it back?

10 minutes. A a while. 10 minutes. So if you lose it in seven seconds. So the difference between a product that worked and one that didn't was recalibrating the board, but not turning away from the students. Okay. Those little things matter. So when we pilot this stuff, I make no assumptions. I ask, I watch. I put it in the classroom.

I run. That's why we ran a pilot all last year. I didn't want to tell them how to use it. I wanted to say, what is the best way for you to use it? So the AI toolbox concept. Comes from this idea that teachers are customers. You have to look at your customers and say, what is it you need? And you have to bridge where they are.

Maybe you want 'em to be in a different place from a technology perspective, but you can't just launch them there. The problem with Silicon Valley, kind of the, what I call the tech bro mentality is, you know. Move fast and break things. That doesn't work always. It didn't work in hospitals when we were doing biometrics, and it doesn't work in classrooms either.

You've gotta bridge the gap between where they are to where you want them to be. And the way to do that is what Mari would do. Stuff like I used to make, we had a, a Spanish teacher, which was one of our first pilots that we did at a high school, and I talked to her and I said, we're gonna see if AI can help you.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna come and sit down with you and you're gonna tell us something that you need help with. And Mari is then gonna tell you how AI can help with that. And if she can't, we're gonna buy you breakfast. And she only gets, she only gets 15 minutes. I didn't even, I tell her I was doing it.

I didn't tell her I was doing, did 

[01:02:43] Maurie Beasley: not tell me what we were doing. He just took me into the classroom. He said, oh, by the way, 15 minutes, Marty says it's a problem, or we're gonna have to buy you breakfast. 

[01:02:50] Jim Beasley: 15 minutes was the time, so start the clock. And it took her about four minutes because the teacher was, and it was 

[01:02:56] Maurie Beasley: weird because it wasn't something in the classroom.

I know that teachers have all heard. It's called other duties as assigned. And for her, she had been voluntold that she was going to be the sponsor for the student council. Student council. 

[01:03:12] Alex Sarlin: Yes. 

[01:03:13] Maurie Beasley: And it had to do with the paperwork and all of the stuff that she was having to do to make sure her student council other duty was Well, they, yeah, 

[01:03:22] Jim Beasley: they had to write, they had to write the, it was like a handbook you have to create for the student council.

Right. Like they had to rewrite based on the, 

[01:03:28] Maurie Beasley: and their, their, all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And so we got an AI to help her with it, and it, and, and she's been hooked ever since. 

[01:03:34] Jim Beasley: We bought her breakfast anyway. 

[01:03:37] Alex Sarlin: Mari did win. Mari did win that one. It's just the kind of people you're, that's so nice. I mean, I hear such a clear through line in your approach to this, and I think it's so amazing going from the list of roles on the board or the list of the student contract on the board to the other duties as assigned.

It's like you're talking about meeting people where they are and you're talk, you're both talking about it very consistently. It's not about coming in with a preset solution and saying, we know exactly what you need. We're gonna create it in a lab, and then you're gonna use it just as you need to. It's about going into the classroom, observing, like you say, Jim, watching piloting, seeing what people actually need, seeing what their true needs are, what's drawing their attention away from their kids or what's making them lose the attention of their kids, and then finding solutions.

And what's so exciting about, I think, and I think we all share this, what's so exciting about AI is it's such a flexible tool that it really can sort of meet the needs of so many different situations. I'm curious. You know, we, we only have a few more minutes to talk, but this is such a fun conversation because I just feel like you're, you're putting something together here that I think a lot of the ed tech world wrestles with, which is really not coming in solution first.

Sort of coming in with curiosity, coming in with interest, with trying to really understand what's happening on the ground, the snakes falling through the ceiling, what is actually making teachers' lives hard and how might a technology help And, and not that, I mean, there are plenty of ed tech companies that do that, but it's not always the norm.

And I'd love to ask you both, if you were the head of an education technology company, like many who listen to this podcast who are creating software, I mean, you, you are, but imagine you are, uh, one, somebody else listening to this. How would you incorporate this type of approach, this type of, sort of start with the problem, start with the user, start with the teacher.

What would you recommend doing if you were about to launch an EdTech product? Ma, lemme start with you. 

[01:05:23] Maurie Beasley: Buy my book. I mean, and actually I did have a couple of EdTech companies comment. We're gonna read this because this is telling us the stuff that happens in the classroom. Never assume that everything is the same.

And that's not just like from grade level to grade level. That's from teacher to teacher. That's from, I have done several professional developments in private schools. Yeah. And private schools are a totally different ball game over public schools. So I mean, if you want to pick your niche and like say, um, this is gonna be just for private schools, then go see those private schools and if not, find those people who work in those schools to get exactly no holding back what's happening in your day-to-day life.

And then go from there. Start not with the end in mind. Start with, this is where we're at. And then yes, provide with what you want your idea to be at the end. Jim? 

[01:06:24] Jim Beasley: Yeah. Jim, what would you add to that? I've actually created presentations that I've been trying to get in to see Intel and a MD and all these other companies.

The problem that I have with their approach is most Silicon Valley stuff, most technology stuff, it's the idea of removing friction points. But the problem is, is that teachers don't want every friction point removed. Some friction points are necessary. 'cause learning is messy. Learning has friction. The friction points are where you learn.

My dad used to say, you learn nothing. If you already knew how to do something, you just do it. What you learn is when you don't know how to do it and you learn how. So the assumption is every time you see an ad or you, you know, the future of schools is AI doing this and AI doing that, and AI do, and it's all about removing friction points, but that's not the point.

Mm-hmm. The point is, is when you get into this classroom, you put the tools in a place that kind of, they need to be pushed to the edges to some degree. We've got technology already too focused in the classroom needs to be pushed to the edges. You need to watch what the teachers are doing. And run some pilots.

I mean, stop, stop trying to put out a finished, polished product. If you wait until it's polished and ready, the technology's already moved on. Right? And schools are a great place to test these things. As long as you tell them in the beginning, we're gonna give you this for nothing or for free, but we're gonna collect some data and we're gonna get together with you.

I tell 'em, send me some stuff here at Land OISD and I will put it in the classroom and I will tell you how much they like it or don't. 'cause that's what we do. We've got a room full of TVs right now. We're finally clearing out every company out there that makes big screen displays told us that it could do what we wanted.

In our new model we're, we're redesigning the classroom again and we're, we're calling it our mobile reconfigurable smart classroom. We're trying to find an acronym, 'cause that's too hard to say. The, the idea being that the teacher can literally on the fly, reconfigure their classroom to however they need to when it comes to technology and the AI can fit in where it needs to.

We've been testing all these different components and all what we thought was a very simple function, like how this device connects to that device that they all swear works great, doesn't work very well in the particular paradigm of the classroom. For example, a teacher. It's not unusual for them to do something and then set it down and do something else and then re come back.

I wanna reconnect and then reconnect to this. So they want to kind of swap things around. Most of these devices don't like it when you flip something on, use it for a second, turn it off, you know, do something else. They don't connect well. And so we've had a lot of devices that we've had to push out of our pilot because they simply can't handle that chaotic environment that a classroom is.

It's, it's, and what happens when 

[01:08:58] Maurie Beasley: you're trying to reconnect If it takes seven seconds to reconnect. That's right. Your classroom. 

[01:09:03] Jim Beasley: And we have devices that take 20 seconds to reconnect. If they get lost, guess what? You just expired by 13 seconds, you're over, you're over the limit. 'cause we lost the classroom.

Yep. So we've had to push people out and it's four 

[01:09:14] Alex Sarlin: minutes to come back. So those 

[01:09:15] Jim Beasley: little, the little things matter and, and that's what I think 

[01:09:18] Alex Sarlin: most of these people miss. Quick follow up. When you say technology needs to be pushed to the edges, I'm curious what you mean by that. 

[01:09:24] Jim Beasley: I mean that instead of worrying so much about every kid having a device flipped up in front of them using it, AI is the first time that I'm truly excited about technology because I think the interaction with it can be less screen time.

It's a finally a tool that I can interact with technology. Like right now as we're talking, I've got an AI agent writing some code for me. I don't need to be looking at that while it's off doing something for me. I, when we get off the call, I'm gonna go back and look at it. It's the first time that I might be able to potentially find clever ways, maybe ways I haven't thought of, but clever ways to take it and reduce screen time, but increase usability of the technology.

Everything we have nowadays is all oriented around your face at this. Mm-hmm. And that, how many times do you watch the evening news when the newscasters, they don't have a screen flipped up in front of them because they don't wanna break their connection with the audience. Mm-hmm. But when we're in a classroom, we have this thing where we have kids all have screens, teacher has screens, everybody's selling me screens.

Is that the right answer? I don't think so. I, I think there's another way. 

[01:10:23] Alex Sarlin: Really interesting. One final question for you, and it's a, a little bit of a downer, but I, I think we can turn it around. So Maurie, you mentioned you're working on a book about deep fakes and student wellbeing and ai, and this is a controversial topic right now.

It's obviously something that scares schools, but I know that you're both very much optimistic, very ambassadors and enthusiasts about ai. I'm curious how you're balancing the sort of fear that is real, that comes with these kinds of threats, with the excitement and enthusiasm that, you know, everybody can hear in this conversation.

How are you keeping that balance to sort of help educate schools about the risks while keeping their enthusiasm high? 

[01:11:02] Maurie Beasley: Well, this book is actually, it's very personal for me. And it's one of the situations to where I would like to once again say thank you AI, because we are having conversations and facing realities that we should have been facing a long time ago.

[01:11:19] Alex Sarlin: Mm-hmm. 

[01:11:20] Maurie Beasley: When I was 16 years old, I had someone take a picture of me that I did not know they had taken, and it ended up getting posted on a bulletin board behind a cash register at a local business in my small town. And it was very embarrassing and it really mentally affected me when I went back to school that it was, this happened over the summer and I went back to school that next year.

And of course, everyone had talked about it and what went from an embarrassing photo. Quickly became something that was not because rumors and, oh, did you see that photo and silver? So, so this book has a lot to do with the mental counseling that needs to happen because of deep fakes. It also has to do with, it's not just a female problem.

For a long time, we've always told, I can remember telling my daughter, never get caught in this situation. Make sure that, you know, if you're over at a friend's house and you're changing clothes, that you're in the bathroom with the door shut. Because that's what had happened to me is I was changing clothes and my friend had a camera and I didn't realize it.

You know, that kind of thing. So you, you train our female audience, our kids, our young girls, not to do certain things, but because of artificial intelligence, we need to start training the male population too, because it's gonna happen to them now. And then from a administrative standpoint, it's gonna have a lot to do with know the law.

Know what you can and cannot do. Know who you need to call. Have that information at your fingertips. When I'm a counselor and I have a girl walk into my office or a boy walking into my office to say, this is a video of me and I did not do this. 

[01:13:06] Alex Sarlin: Mm-hmm. 

[01:13:07] Maurie Beasley: You need to know exactly what to do when that happens, who to call, not to delete it, you know, all that stuff.

I actually, I joined the New York State Trial Attorneys Association, even though I'm not an attorney, because I listen in to all of their webinars that have anything to do with any of the current stuff that's coming down about deep fakes and misinformation. 

[01:13:28] Jim Beasley: That's really interesting. Yeah. So I wanted to add one more thing to that.

One of the things that Mario and I, a goal of ours when it comes to digital literacy for kids is we wanna make them skeptics. Hmm. And it sounds counterintuitive for someone who likes ai, but I want them to be skeptical of it because I want them, we didn't do that with social media. We didn't do that Right.

With, with all the things that have. And so kids grew up thinking, if it's on the internet, it's real. If it's on Facebook, it's real, or whatever. I literally wanna make them skeptical. As an example, that same Spanish class, what we told the Spanish teacher to do is let it speak to them in Spanish and then have them critique it.

Don't let them accept it as the gospel. It must be true. Tell me what's wrong with it. Because in the process of doing that, you learn that it can be wrong. And I think that's one of the points you miss when you're so afraid of something that you won't put it out there is you miss the opportunity to have a teaching moment.

Those friction points we gotta teaching moment now, and that moment is the kids should be skeptical of it. And here's how we do that. And we can do it very casually. We don't have to make a big deal out of it. Hey, let's have some fun with this thing. Who doesn't like to point out something that's wrong?

So let's do that. Right? 

[01:14:35] Alex Sarlin: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Really powerful stories. End points. And I think I, I agree with you that I think even though AI is a such an exciting, empowering technology, because it's empowering in so many ways for so many people, it's going to create an environment where it's gonna be a lot of misinformation and disinformation.

Mm-hmm. And deep fakes. And I think that. That sort of skepticism, that's sort of helping young people understand that they are through no fault of their own, entering a world where there's reality is very shifting. Mm-hmm. And you should take very little for granted, including AI outputs is really, really important.

And I, I think what I love about both of your approach to professional learning and professional development and the Agnes tool that you're doing is, I think you're in all cases really starting from the core problems, the situations, the actual needs in the classroom. I love that example about, you know, if the thing turns off, if, if a teacher turns it on, walks away and it disconnects and it's gonna take them 20 seconds to load back up, that's actually a useless technology.

That's like, it's that that one thing will shut down the entire flow of the class and you can't use it. I mean, that is such a. Meaningful. And I think, you know, I'm sure that there are people taking notes when they listen to this from about their own tools. They're like, I gotta, I gotta check how long it takes to turn back on when, when somebody walks away or it logs out.

Yep. Because you're right. And I think everything you do, I think comes to it from that really, really front lines mindset. You know, how do you actually meet people where they are and not push solutions onto them? Which I think is, is really amazing. So I wish we had more time. We will put the links to your site and to what you do as well as to the books in the show notes for this episode.

Jim and Maurie Beasley are co-founders of AIEDPro. They each have more than 20 years of experience in technology and education and they're doing really amazing work to help people understand the pros and cons and power inside ai. Thank you both so much for being here on EdTech Insiders. Much.

[01:16:29] Jim Beasley: Thank you very much.

Thank much. We appreciate you having us much. Bye.

[01:16:32] Alex Sarlin: For our deep dive this week on the week in EdTech Med Tech Insiders, we're speaking with Stacey Brook. She's the founder and chief advisor at College Essay Advisors, and she spent over 20 years helping students craft standout application essays to gain admission to competitive schools across the globe.

She's the author of the Uncommon College essay and recently launched College EssAI, that's E-S-S-A-I, an ethical AI tool that guides students through the essay writing process. Stacey Brook, welcome to EdTech Insiders. 

[01:17:07] Stacey Brook: Hi, so nice to be here. Thank you for having me. 

[01:17:10] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. Thank you for being here. I think you're doing something interesting in the ed tech space.

You, you, you've worked with thousands of students over 20 years for college essays. First, let's just talk about that world. What is that like? What are some of the mistakes that students make in college essays? What have you learned teaching thousands of students how to craft that uncommon, perfect essay?

[01:17:30] Stacey Brook: Absolutely. I mean, I feel like it's an incredible privilege to do what I do. I get to know teenagers during a very interesting, high pressure kind of vulnerable moment in their lives, so I take a lot of joy and pleasure in helping them understand themselves, figure out what might be interesting to say about themselves to other people.

I know when I was 17, I barely understood who I was. It would've really helped to have someone hold up a mirror to me and help me sort of recognize what made me interesting at the time that I might not have realized. So just in terms of overall satisfaction and why I love what I do, I think that's one of the main reasons.

I also love to teach students of this age how to express themselves because those are skills that come in handy essentially immediately after they graduate, even during their high school careers. So I feel like I have a unique opportunity to both help kids better understand who they are, who they wanna be, and also how to put their fingers on how they might wanna tell other people about those things.

[01:18:31] Alex Sarlin: Right. 

[01:18:32] Stacey Brook: And in terms of the college essay world and the kinds of mistakes people make, and what students have been thinking about year after year, again and again, I think the top question that I get asked by students and parents alike is, what does admissions want to hear? What are they looking for? And my answer is frustrating to people, but always the same, which is.

That's the wrong question. It's really about what do you want admissions to know about you? Mm-hmm. This is your opportunity to help differentiate yourself from similarly qualified applicants. It really isn't about trying to back into a mold. It's about trying to break the mold, trying to help admissions get a sense of what your strengths are, what your motivations are, what you're gonna bring to any given community.

So really I think the answer is to turn inwards. 

[01:19:18] Alex Sarlin: Yes. So you're now taking all of that expertise in these learnings and moving them into the ed tech space with your tool College EssAI. Yes. That's ai. It's. In doing so, you're taking a very strong stance on what ethical AI looks like in this particular moment in education.

I imagine that students are using LLMs and JGBT and other tools to think about their college essays in all sorts of ways. What does it mean to do ethical AI in the college admissions process, and how do you ensure that students don't lose their own voice and their own personal take on themselves and why they should be at a particular school in the process of using ai?

[01:19:59] Stacey Brook: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is something that my team and I are seeing a ton this year. Just some very recognizable signs that students have been dabbling in generative AI when putting together their essays. Yeah, I imagine dabbling in, I mean, generally speaking, I think the guideline that I like to use is.

AI tools should guide, not do. Yep. We want AI to help enhance students' creativity and critical thinking skills. We don't want it to replace those things. So for example, in College EssAI, we're setting students up with some brainstorming prompts to get them to start thinking about their life experiences.

What makes you lose track of all time? What have you done that other people maybe you didn't even think you could do? Just kind of trying to inspire students to think about subjects, memories, anecdotes, reflections. They might not ordinarily come up with themselves. It's almost like having a, a College Essay Advisor in your pocket.

So we're trying to get students to dig deep, but we don't want them to just plug in a general prompt, a couple light details about themselves and say. Generate. That's how you get truly generic essays. You get hallucinations that give you entirely different life stories than the ones that are your own 3000 M dashes.

All the things that throw up the red flags for admissions. But I think ethical AI is really about, and I think. In any area of education in the future is going to be about teaching students how to use AI as an assistant, not as a replacement for real thinking. 

[01:21:31] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. You're mentioning three, I see it as almost three different use cases for AI in this important transitional moment for young people and students.

It's serving as a writing coach or a college advising coach. Absolutely. It's serving as an admissions support tool. Mm-hmm. Because you're helping, and it's also a little bit of almost like a mental health tool in helping you tell your own story. Understand yourself. One, I'd love to focus on here just 'cause it's been, uh, people talking about it a lot is actually the writing.

The other one is interesting too. I'd love to hear your thought on the mental health, but the writing coach, people have been doing a lot of hand wring recently about the sort of death of writing instruction in the age of ai. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Very confusing moment for people who are trying to teach writing.

Yes. Colleges in particular, very conflicted about the ability for students to craft so much of their work with AI in, in mm-hmm. Writing. Some are banning it, some are embracing it. Mm-hmm. What do you see as the sort of future of writing instruction? 

[01:22:25] Stacey Brook: Yeah. In 

[01:22:25] Alex Sarlin: ai. In or outside of the college essay process?

[01:22:29] Stacey Brook: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what we tried to do in particular with our tool is to, you know, these AI tools are so powerful and they can do so much at once. They can both process all of this information that you're feeding it that's personal, and also give you detailed feedback and instructions that shows you what you might wanna do.

That gives you a recommendation for potentially how you can rework something as opposed to giving you the answer. Yeah. I think a lot of the future of this and the way that we preserve students' minds and teach them enough writing skills to even know if what chat GBT generate. Is valuable is good writing in the future is to embed instruction in those light generative phases or in those brainstorming or free writing phases.

Our tool prompts students for a lot of highly specific free writing, and in doing so, it helps students better understand what kinds of details make an essay exciting. What are some storytelling components that will actually bring a narrative to life. We also have like an opening and closing coach that will pull from the writing that you've generated.

Our tool actually generates no writing that a student doesn't input themselves. So from the answers that a student gives based on prompts that are personalized for them throughout the process, our tool will help suggest maybe potential areas for exploration for. Amazing opening and closing lines. So just pointing students in the right direction but not doing it for them.

I think making sure that they are part of that process of pulling things together, putting their own stamp on it. It's the only way that students are gonna learn how to generate their own voices. 

[01:24:09] Alex Sarlin: Yeah. I love the way you're phrasing it as sort of embedding instruction in the different phases, in the free writing phase, in the brainstorming, in the opening writing, in the closing writing.

You know, as the students are making their way through each of the aspects of, of crafting their essay, you have this sort of AI on your shoulder, maybe asking questions, giving mm-hmm. Recommendations, never actually grabbing the pen. Exactly. Exactly. 

[01:24:32] Stacey Brook: And that's how we do it in our one-on-one advising. I mean, this is completely inspired by this process we've been using for 20 years, where my goal is not to write an essay for a student.

My goal is to help guide a student through the process without putting my stamp on it at all. So the point is to show someone where the solution might lie if they explore, but not to take them all the way there myself. 

[01:24:55] Alex Sarlin: The thing that comes to mind, and I don't know exactly how your tool works, but is like, you know, Putin is writing about being a volunteer in a hospital, and the AI says, mm-hmm.

What did it smell like? What did this sound like? You know? Yes. What are some details that might make this come alive? Absolutely. That's exactly what an essay, who did 

[01:25:10] Stacey Brook: you meet? Exactly. Right. 1000%. That's 

[01:25:14] Alex Sarlin: exactly the kind of Exactly, and very transferable to writing a nons essay, writing, creative writing or writing research.

I, I can imagine all sorts of different use cases for that type of use. 

[01:25:24] Stacey Brook: Absolutely. And I'm hoping that in the future that we will see more tools. I mean, I think we're really at the beginning of seeing what is possible in terms of applications of these grand scale ideas that AI is allowing us to consider.

But I mean, I think when my team and I really started to grapple with the idea of, okay, what do we do? What do we do with ai? Is this going to be the end of the college essay? I don't think it will be, but I do think we need to teach students how to use these tools responsibly because. They're gonna need them in the future.

I mean, colleges are trying to figure out which AI engines they're gonna implement school-wide. Like there are schools, actually, I love this. There are schools who are assigning prompts asking students to kind of ruminate on the role of AI in their lives. Where should it be used? Where should it not be used?

That's kind of the gist of a Duke question. There's a Michigan honors question that actually asks students to use AI to write an essay, and then they need to write a complimentary essay that breaks down whether or not AI did a good job. That's great. Like I think this is, these are fascinating ways for higher education to allow students to be part of the process of figuring out how we do this, which I think is really empowering for students.

And I think to ask 'em to bury their heads in the sand to pretend AI doesn't exist. First of all, every teenager I've ever met wants to do the thing you tell them not to do. But I also think that. Every professional I know uses AI in some kind of capacity. Why are we trying to ban these tools? Why are we trying to limit the capabilities of, of students who have access to all of these incredible new technologies?

You know, I have a calculator. I'm bad at math. I'm not gonna not use the calculator that is sitting on my desk. Like it's, I think this is gonna become as integral as a calculator. The internet email. So it's scary at first for everybody, but I think students wanna be part of the experiment. 

[01:27:18] Alex Sarlin: No question. My preferred metaphor is the internet.

I always, I think, you know, the first couple years of the internet, nobody knew what to do with it. They didn't know totally growing, lots of fear, and then people realize, no, this is actually just part of our daily life. It's gonna be exactly how we accomplish many of we do in our life. Just like AI is so completely.

Let's talk about the mental health piece of this quickly, just because college admissions rates are still very low. Acceptance rates are low. Yes. The selective schools are, you know, single digit acceptance rates and the admissions process is a time of great anxiety and mm-hmm. Concern and confusion for young people.

Tell us about, I, I'm curious both from your, your in-person experience working with so many students and what you're embedding into College EssAI Absolutely. How do you address that anxiety and get students to sort of embrace this process and not freeze up and be paralyzed in the fear of this strange moment?

[01:28:08] Stacey Brook: Absolutely. I mean, one thing I like to communicate whether a a student can actually internalize this at age 16, 17 or not, is that no matter what happens, it's going to be okay. Failure. I actually think failure is so healthy for someone at that age, like whether someone succeeds and gets what they want or someone fails their lessons to be learned.

But I think. A little. Disappointment is never a terrible thing. It teaches your resilience. It teaches you that new paths are possible, that things will develop, that you never even imagined could be if you stuck to your one plan. So we talk a lot about that. But I think one of the reasons I wanted to create College EssAI was to democratize the help that I bring to students.

I wanted for every student to be able to access a private college advisor. And I think there are a lot of students who go to high schools where the populations are large, the number of counselors are small, and they just don't feel like they can access the information. They don't feel like they can access an editor who will look over every single line, who will help bring interesting angles and conversations to the table when it comes to the essay.

So I think having anything that students can use to make them feel a little more empowered and secure in the process was a huge goal of mine with this. 

[01:29:23] Alex Sarlin: Fantastic. I have one more question for you. It's a little bit of a controversial one, but I'm curious, we have seen the rules and laws change a lot in the last few years about what you can say in an essay mm-hmm.

Related to, to race. Mm-hmm. And, and proxies for various type of, you know, protected status and what it means that, you know, it's, this is a complicated space, but I'm just curious from somebody who's been on the front lines of this. Yeah. What should our listeners know about that space and how are you thinking about it in terms of what you're doing in 

[01:29:52] Stacey Brook: EdTech?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I always encourage students to write from a place of authenticity and the Supreme Court ruling had some very complicated language in it, which essentially boiled down to if your background, if your heritage, if your race ultimately is a factor in what you can bring to the table at a college, you can write about it.

And I think that's probably. The case for almost everybody. Right? Right. Who has I, you know, especially minorities who have come up against challenges. I mean, how could that not impact who you are and who you will be in a school? So I haven't been necessarily pushing students to write about it if they don't feel compelled to independently, but if they do, I absolutely support it.

Yes, I have a lot of complicated feelings about, I can imagine whether or not any of these decisions should have come down the way they did. But I think, I certainly haven't been dissuading students from writing about their backgrounds since the ruling, because I think it's just such a huge, hugely influential component of who people are, the resilience, the struggles, the pride.

Those are all some of the best qualities that a person can bring to any community. So I have a ton of students who still write about it. 

[01:31:06] Alex Sarlin: Right, and in terms of telling your stories, tell, you know, bringing your whole self to the tables, talking about, like you mentioned earlier on, it's not about backing out of a mold, not about saying what do they want from me?

I'm gonna have to try to fit right into that. It's who am I and how do I represent myself? That's obviously a big part of it for a lot of people. 

[01:31:22] Stacey Brook: Completely. And these are not, you know, when students are, are writing about it, they're not just random, kind of drops into an essay about something else. The story is often grounded in something.

That is identity related and that has a larger, deeper message worth communicating. So it's something that we seriously consider. 

[01:31:39] Alex Sarlin: Absolutely. Really interesting work. So this is Stacey Brook. She's the founder and chief advisor at College Essay Advisors, and she has recently launched College EssAI, an Ethical AI tool that guides students through the essay writing process using AI and LLMs.

Thank you so much for being here with us. 

[01:31:57] Stacey Brook: Thank you, Alex. I appreciate it. 

[01:32:00] Alex Sarlin: Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders. If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more, EdTech Insider, subscribe to the Free EdTech Insiders Newsletter on substack.