Leverage AI to Bring Your Learner Profile to Life

Omar, Dana, Devin and Yusuf discussed the potential of AI to enhance personalized learning experiences for students, with a focus on empowering educators and schools to learn about AI through hands-on projects. They highlighted ethical considerations and professional learning required for responsible AI use in education, emphasizing the importance of understanding AI capabilities, data privacy, and human-centered design. Speakers emphasized the need for creativity and ingenuity in leveraging AI resources to achieve a more democratic education system.

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SPEAKERS

Dana, Omar, Yusuf, Devin

Omar  00:08

Good afternoon, everyone. It is such an exciting day to wrap up one of the most amazing AI professional learning workshops I've been at right here at the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools. You know, before we get started, I want to introduce myself. My name is Omar Shepherd. I have the honor of serving as a project specialist in digital learning and computer science education. And what an honor to kick off the 2024 2025 school year with getting to know more about ways we can leverage AI in the classrooms or at our schools to support students and learning. You know, joining me today are some really incredible folks. One of them I had the opportunity of meeting a few weeks ago when I was first introduced to a wonderful infrastructure, playlab AI Yusuf Ahmed, as well as an opportunity today to be able to learn alongside a wonderful learner centered collaborative leader Devin Vodicka. And also joining us today is an educator that actually joined us in the workshop here at San Bernardino at the West End Educational Services Center, is Dana. Dana, please. What's your last name and where are you from? Again, my

Dana  01:23

last name is Shool. It's like school without a C Oh, wow. And I'm an English teacher currently serving as an instructional coach at Chaffey Joint Union High School District.

Omar  01:32

Wow. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. And you know, what I find to be so exciting is an opportunity to explore the various things that we learned today, to learn more about play lab, AI, but also to have the honor of an educator joining us, to be able to contribute to the conversation. So with that, without further ado, allow me to maybe open up with a question. This one here is going to be pointed toward Yusuf, as I think it's a great opportunity for us to learn more. Hey, Yusuf, so can you provide an overview of play lab, AI and its primary features and perhaps a success story from school districts you've worked with and how they're piloting play lab? Ai,

Yusuf  02:14

Sure. So Hi everyone. My name is Yusuf Ahmed, one of the founders of play lab. We're a tech nonprofit. Our vision is to empower educators, schools and nonprofits to learn about AI by getting hands on and just building and playing with it, like folks like Dana did today. But the second thing is, when they build and they play, they all also realize that they can actually create real, compelling AI projects that have impact in their communities, and so we support them with building and piloting AI responsibly. Piloting is the operative word. We think that we're really early in the AI revolution. The technology is really rough right now, but it's promising. And so what we do with educators is we work with them to support them in figuring out, where might you use AI to impact teaching and learning, to advance your work and to help us move us towards a vision of education that's compelling and exciting. It's why we work with organizations like learner centered collaborative. You hear from their founder, Devin pretty soon, in terms of success stories, I'll go back to New York, where I've spent a lot of a lot of you know my my adult life, and we've been working very closely with with New York City public schools. And what, what the city's done has been pretty beautiful. They've done hands on learning that's really include, which is radically inclusive. They have educators from paraprofessionals, support staff, community educators to superintendents, principals, school leaders, classroom teachers, instructional coaches, all getting hands on together, learning about what this whole AI thing means, what it could mean for their context. And then from that, they have smaller groups of folks building AI tools that they're piloting to advance their work, everything from writing TAs that they're using in the classroom to provide formative feedback to high school students, tools that they're using to assess project based learning and more authentic learning, making it easier for teachers to get students out of worksheets and doing things that are more interesting and connected To the world, to tools that help students find opportunities in their communities. These are all AI powered and things that are built by people, educators, school leaders who have deep expertise in their context, about their students, about their community, and tools that typically would not have gotten built by large companies that don't have an incentive to build things that are very specific to the context of each of these you know, specific schools or classrooms. 

Omar  04:22

Wow wow. Very fascinating and also really inspiring to learn about the multiple ways teachers and educators from as far over as New York, which is on the other side of us, really sharing ways that they're making it, I would say, meaningful for their students. I heard you give a quick plug to Devin from learner, centered, Learner Center, Collaborative. So maybe I have a question for Devin. Devin, how are you seeing a product like play lab? Ai Transforming Learning Communities? 

Devin  04:53

Yeah, so thank you. It's a good question, and I'm just delighted to be in this conversation. I. The educators that we work with are committed to making changes and often thinking about how we can shift away from a school centered model to a learner centered, more human centered approach. There are a lot of elements that go into that change process, very complicated, and it's very necessary. The call for us to do that for our young people is, is really significant. And so if we're committed to a vision where learners know who they are, thrive in community, actively engage in the world as their their best selves, we're going to need new resources to make that happen. And so an example that comes to mind with your question is Laguna Beach, Unified School District, not that far from here is a district we've been working with to co design a learner portrait, a learning model, set of learning experiences that we hope will lead to that sense of self and ability to thrive in this adaptive era. And Yusuf and I did a workshop with them few weeks ago, introduced the idea that you could connect the learner portrait to AI to AI tools and resources like play lab to create new things that improve opportunities for students. And we had one educator who, within minutes, connected not only the learner portrait with the prototype that she was developing, but also brought in environmental literacy and other local resources that articulated the priorities and the aspirations of that community. And it's similar to the example that you said provided in that when we provide resources that allow people to customize and adapt for their local environment and their local needs. The level of creativity and ingenuity and and impact is is profound, and so we're seeing that happening in many different places, and I feel like we're in this era which has a lot of creative potential, shifting to more human or learner centered practices and leveraging powerful new technology resources.

Omar  07:04

Wow. Thank you. Thank you. It's really powerful to think about the opportunity here to really customize these solutions. You know, here in San Bernardino, serving 33 school districts, they all have very unique needs, and often modulating what types of supports are available to them is important because it'll be based on what resources they have available in their communities, in their districts. I do have a quick question for Yousef, how easily can play lab AI integrate with existing educational platforms and technologies? 

Yusuf  07:38

Yeah so, it's something we're working on. We're very early. I only went full time on this in February. We incorporated as a nonprofit less than a year ago, and so we're very young, and so right now, we're working closely with other technology companies. So for example, we're early with some collaboration with clever they do a lot of work around single sign on, protecting student data, connecting student data safely and securely with a range of educational apps. And so we're working closely with their team to find ways to safely and securely allow schools and educators to pull on student data responsibly as they build AI projects that are custom to their context. The second thing that we do, and if I step back for a sec, when you introduced us, you call this infrastructure, and normally, when people see technology, think, Oh, that's a product, that's an app, that's a platform. We call ourselves infrastructure because we're trying to when we're open, we're trying to build open source tools that are created by educators for themselves and for other educators in other communities. But two, we think that the word educator infrastructure helps us think about what technology might be able to do as we try to evolve our education system. And what I mean by that is, if you think about infrastructure, about infrastructure, what do you think of usually think about roads. Maybe think about buildings and bridges. But infrastructure is not just hard, it's also social. And so as we're building play lab, we think about it as software that's supporting people in creating that's radically reducing the barriers for people to bring their ideas to life using software and using AI. But the second thing that we're thinking about is social infrastructure, communities of educators like today coming together to learn, to share, to make to connect with one another. And we think the combination of that hard digital infrastructure and social infrastructure is what might help unlock pretty significant leaps forward in terms of our education system.

Omar  09:19

Wow, wow. It's really powerful to think about the potential for, dare I say, a symbiotic relationship where, by which we're empowered to have new opportunities really created through these new AI systems, such as Play lab AI

Yusuf  09:36

and like, if I just jump in real quick, though, I think the right now, I feel like we're in a moment where there's either a lot of AI hype, where there's a lot of AI like, oh, you know, it's actually just, it's just another technology. It's not going to make a difference. Like, you know, computers or the internet. And I think that one is internet and technology has changed what it means to be human. If you think about the loneliness epidemic that's exacerbating, if you think about just. Polarization. A lot of that, I would argue, has not happened independent of technology. It's co evolved with the technology around us. So minimally, AI is going to change what it means to be human in the coming years, if it doesn't necessarily change school. And I think my hope is that we're able to take this moment, take advantage of some of the capabilities and use it to help advance the kind of not just education system we want, but also the kind of, you know, communities, the kind of civics that we like to see in the world. And we think the only way to do that is by bringing a lot of voices and a lot of people to the table. That's why I think we really like are obsessed with radical accessibility, about making sure that it's everyone coming to the table to understand how this stuff works and to shape how it's adopted in our society. 

Omar  10:40

Oh, well, thank you. Thank you for sharing, and thank you for drawing in ideas around ways in which we can look to new collaboration opportunities through the use of these tools. Dana, thanks again for joining us today, and also for engaging in our workshop throughout the day, learning about play lab. Ai, so given that you're in the world of ELA, what are some ways you envision play, lab, AI can enhance teacher capacity?

Dana  11:10

Well, I think that I've been working with all of our teachers in our district, not just English teachers, and training them, just what is AI? What? What is ChatGPT, how is this something that could enhance your teaching? How is this something that could really enhance your students learning? So we've been really working on that in our district, training our teachers, and so I have some background. I've gone to a lot of workshops for AI, and I would say today's workshop was hands on. They gave a little bit of background into this work and what they do. But it really was teacher centered, getting in and trying this for ourselves. And I think what it was doing is, instead of a software engineer creating an app that they think teachers would use, was really allowing us, as the experts in the room, to be able to say this is what we could actually use. And I just really appreciated the hands on time, if you all my group, what we worked on was an accessibility app, and so we wanted to think of ways that our high school teachers could think through the barriers that their students might experience to their specific content instruction and help them identify ways and create strategies to support learning for all students, and develop an implementation plan and that for any educator that's a really like complicated process and takes a lot of time, but going through kind of the template that's laid out for us, the step by step, we're able to get something really impressive in, I don't know, about 30 minutes, and we could try it. We could see how it worked, how it didn't work. Go back, refine it. We could build off of other ideas in the room. We could pull in frameworks. And I see this being something really exciting, not just for instructional coaches, for training teachers, but then really getting in the hands of our teachers and then being able to create what would be best for them. 

Omar  13:04

Wow wow. That's powerful. And this idea of accessibility really just gives me goosebumps to think about the opportunities this could create to really differentiate and meet the needs of all the students in your community. I heard you speak to something that I discovered during our workshop today about play lab AI, and it was the ability to bring in different reference materials. Were there any specific resources you brought into your tool that you can share? 

Dana  13:32

Yeah, we brought in our UDL framework. We really want to make sure, especially because we're talking about accessibility, we know that there are so many amazing strategies on that framework. We also, as we were going through and trying to refine it, we realized we want to add more trauma informed resources, as well as culturally relevant teaching. And what I like is that it's not just pulling anywhere from the internet for those resources, we can really curate and make sure that it's not biased and really represents the values of our district. So we could go to a website, or we could download PDFs, whatever it was resources that we have available to us, and that was such an easy experience. 

Omar  14:13

Wow wow. That's really fascinating. The idea that we as teams across districts here in San Bernardino are developing resources and tools that we're hoping our students can engage with, and now we can take those things that we've developed or things that we're referencing, like the one you referenced, the UDL framework, and bring them in as reference materials as we're engaging with these tools. That's really fascinating. Thanks for sharing that I do, though, want to make sure I acknowledge, I would say, the elephant in the room when you begin thinking about these AI tools, and what is that student data privacy, I do have a question here for Yusuf, What measures do you have in place to ensure that privacy and security of student data are kind of kept front and center? 

Yusuf  15:00

Yeah, really, really good question. I think there are two aspects to think about when you think about student privacy and we think about just the safety of using these tools. One is the actual technical infrastructure. So there's a lot that we do on our end to make sure data secure, where we're working towards the highest enterprise standards. Soc two, type two, which typically is something that most early stage ed tech projects don't do. And again, the reason we're doing that is we believe we're building infrastructure, so we need to hold kind of we think, you know, students and teachers deserve the highest standards that you know, Fortune 100 companies have, and it's been cool because that's pushed on the space since we since we made that commitment, we've noticed other companies in the space have started pushing that in that direction as well. But what's actually trickier is practice. We can have, like the technical infrastructure built safely, but just like with the Google Drive, even if everything is like safe and secure in terms of technical it's easy for someone to have a spreadsheet that has sensitive data and accidentally make that public or accidentally share that with the wrong set of people. And so one of the reasons we're in a closed beta, what I mean by that, is to join play lab, you have to go through professional learning with us or with a trusted partner like Learner Center Collaborative, is because we think that it's really important to have real professional learning around AI, around the risks associated with the technology, as well as what it means to use it responsibly, and when I say risks, scholars like Dr Ruha Benjamin from Princeton, scholars like Joe Blomwini over at the algorithmic Justice League have done a lot of work documenting the real harm that these systems have created in the world. And so we're at a moment where there's documented harm. There's a lot of possibility as well. And so it's like, how do we empower folks to proceed responsibly? And it's a lot. It's a lot to ask a teacher like, think about the teachers you work with, you, right? They're busy. They have a lot going on, right? You think about budget cuts right now. You think about just all the things young people and adults have going on in their lives. And so it's like, how do you empower folks to deal with this new technology, to adapt to it? And so I think that's where professional learning and support community is really important as we all learn how to use, harness, adapt and bend these technologies to meet our needs.

Omar  16:55

Wow, wow. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And you know what actually hearkens to some comments you were making earlier during the workshop, they really spoke to the idea of well intended persons being introduced to AI tools and not realizing the power for harm as well as good. So that idea of Responsible Use is really something, I think, central to the work that we're trying to do here at SBCSS, you know, you brought up something, and it really is curious to me. And it's the idea of this rapid development and changes within the AI landscape, and admittedly, organizations such as the learner centered collaborative providing professional learning and supports along, that I'm curious. That's a question for Devin, how do you stay updated with the evolving needs of educators and students in the realm of AI, 

Devin  17:48

Yeah, that is a good question. And this landscape is evolving fast. You know, in our lifetime, we've seen, I've seen, some really dramatic transformations driven by technology, Yusuf was talking about the internet and social media. And you know, we've seen these things before, but the pace of change with AI, I think, is is unlike anything else you know. Chat GPT was the fastest 200 million users of any product ever as one example, and it's going to continue to speed up. And so I think in that context of really rapid change, the solution is proximity and relationships. And is paradoxical, because we're talking about technological advancements, but when I say proximity and relationships, I mean proximity to developers like Yusuf, who are on the cutting edge, we can learn a lot from those that are embedded deeply in the space. It's also proximity with educators like Dana or in the classroom and dealing with the realities of what happens day to day in a classroom. And in order to have that kind of proximity, we're going to need strong relationships with many people. And so my doctoral work was around relational trust, and I feel like as the technology advances very quickly, the demands on us to embrace the best of our humanity and to develop high trust relationships have never been more urgent, more imperative. And so just like a quick framework to think about, to develop trust, it's consistency, compassion, competence and communication. And if you have those elements in place, you reduce the level of vulnerability, you demonstrate that you care for others, you get results, and you have opportunities for real listening and real exchange, and those competencies are going to be critical as the world around us changes faster and faster and faster.

Omar  19:51

Wow wow I would say in the educational space, we often hear acronyms. We'll hear the four C's reference, but that was an. New spin on the four C's Correct. Would you mind repeating those one more time? 

Devin  20:03

Yeah, I call them the four elements of trust. It's Consistency, Compassion, Competence and Communication. 

Omar  20:09

Wow. 

Devin  20:10

And this is drawn from research. You know, it's part of my dissertation, so I didn't just make it up, but those things are really important when you're trying to build strong relationship.

Omar  20:18

 Absolutely, absolutely. So a few closing thoughts here. Just wanted to kind of bring us to a point where we can maybe kind of begin to think about ways we can support those that may be hesitant or new, as well as ways we can think about the evolution. So the first of the closing two questions is going to be pointed towards you both maybe consider who will answer first. What advice would you give to administrators and other educational leaders as they evolve with their implementation of AI

Yusuf  20:50

Dana, are you if I actually put that on 

Dana  20:52

I don't mind answering it. Would you repeat it again?

Omar  20:54

Oh, absolutely. What advice would you give to administrators and other educational leaders as they evolve with the implementation of AI. 

Dana  21:04

I thank you. I think administrators would do well to listen to their teachers. I think first, just letting people express their fears that they have with bringing AI into the classroom, whether it's for themselves or for their students. And I think once you get past those fears, once you understand the fears, then you can start to build on what potential there could be to help those teachers overcome that fear. I think, especially coming from an English teacher point of view, there's a lot of teachers that are afraid that, how do I teach writing in the age of AI or what? What are we going to do? Our students aren't going to be able to critically think anymore, and I think listening to that is important for our administration, but then being able to put these kinds of tools in the hands of teachers and let them kind of work through those fears and see that it could be a tool for their students to use. It could be an aid to student learning, rather than something that takes away learning. So I think it's it is really important to to let teachers play, to let teachers get their hands on this.

Omar  22:09

Let teachers play. Let teachers have a say. Yeah, together real quick. But thank you, and I appreciate you elevating some of those ideas, and I'm hopeful that'll benefit some of our listeners as they're engaging in the podcast review. The closing question, how do you see the role of AI and education evolving over the next few years? I'll give you each a moment to kind of think about that, and as you're inspired share reflection,

Devin  22:38

I'll jump in. I think what Yusuf said earlier really resonates, which is that, you know, technology has influenced the human experience to the point that it's very hard to disentangle the two, especially for our young people that have grown up with a level of ubiquitous technology that is new. And so I think that it's going to be a co evolution. I think it's going to be us influencing the technology if we choose to, and it's going to be the technology influencing us if we allow it to. And I've said many times that one of the reasons we use the term learner, centered in the name of our organization and in our messaging is that it reflects this idea that we need to be human centered in our decision making, and a risk is that we will allow technology to make decisions that we are better equipped to make as humans. And so I really hope that in that CO evolution, we remember to stay human centered and learner centered throughout the journey.

Dana  23:45

I just I I'm excited to see the creativity of teachers and also students, and how anytime you put technology in front of students, they end up taking it in a direction that you can't almost anticipate. And I think that we owe it to our students to be bringing them this kind of technology, but also keeping in mind the risks really being aware of biases, of and so that's the job of the educator to to be aware of those things. But I'm excited to see what students what opportunities it opens up for them.

Yusuf  24:21

I think I co sign both, both of those responses. The The only thing I'd add is, I think we're at a crossroads. We're at the start of a new technological wave. And technology waves often bring disruption. They bring change. You're seeing a lot of companies, big tech companies, small startups, going after as much market share as they can right now. And I think educators, districts, young people, we all have a choice about the kind of education system we'd like to see, the kind of things we'd like to push forward. And I hope that we decide to build a path forward that is. Much more democratic, where more people can shape this to Dana's point where young people, educators, people from a variety of backgrounds, are able to shape this future, I hope to Devin's point that we build toward a future that's more human centered. We can use these technologies to reproduce, to reinforce existing practices, or we can use this as an opportunity to build the kind of world you want to see. And that's not easy. That doesn't happen overnight. It takes experimentation, it takes participation, it takes trying and feeling. But I think really trying to build a capacity for educators and young people to be creative, to try things, to fail, to learn from them, and to iterate forward. That's really what I'm hopeful for. And the last thing I'll just say on that is like, you know, education is a complex system. Complex systems. They don't change from top down interventions. They change under conditions of diversity. And diversity is at its best when people can exercise their creativity and experiment. And I'm hopeful that we create conditions where people can experiment responsibly, but also joyfully and playfully, and so that that's my hope for the for the coming years.

Omar  25:57

Wow. Well, thank you. Thank you. Devin Vodicka, Dana Shool and Yusuf Ahmed. Thank you for this opportunity. You know, I think and interesting is one of our beliefs here at San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, is the opportunities to transform lives through education. And we really believe in being courageous advocates for equity and access, and I'm really thankful for the opportunity to engage with you all today to find ways we can leverage tools such as Play lab, AI, excuse me, not a tool, but an infrastructure to be able to work towards this change. So thank you all, and I want to wish you a wonderful afternoon.

Devin  26:35

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

Omar  26:38

That was fun. Y'all. Thanks so much. You.