AI Advocates

S1 E4: Teaching with AI: How BoodleBox Empowers Educators

• Lisa Dieker • Season 1 • Episode 4

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In this episode of AI Advocates, hosts Lisa Dieker and Dr. Maggie Mosher sit down with France Hoang, co-founder and CEO of BoodleBox, an innovative AI-powered platform designed to enhance collaboration and efficiency in education. France shares how BoodleBox is transforming the way educators and students interact with AI, enabling teachers to create custom chatbots, facilitate collaborative learning, and reclaim valuable time in the classroom.

Discover how BoodleBox empowers educators with AI tools that streamline lesson planning, tutoring, and knowledge sharing—all while maintaining security and accessibility. Learn why AI readiness is essential for the future of education and how institutions can prepare students for an AI-driven world.

Tune in for an engaging discussion on the power of collaborative AI, the future of education, and how technology can support—not replace—great teaching.

BoodleBox: http://boodlebox.ai/ 

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@KUAIAdvocates

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aai-flite-center/ 

Music:

Reclaim your time….., time…., time.

Lisa Dieker:

Welcome to AI advocates. I'm Lisa Dieker.

Maggie Mosher:

And I'm Dr. Maggie Moser.

Lisa Dieker:

And we're excited to have a guest with us today that Maggie has found with some really new, fun, exciting, engaging technology. Maggie, you want to give us a little introduction?

Maggie Mosher:

Yeah, I'm really excited today because we have France Hoang with us, and he's the co-founder and CEO of BoodleBox, which is a new chat that I absolutely love, because I've never found a chat. It's a little like Po in Magic School in some aspects, where it lets me kind of go into different chatbots. I can create my own chatbot for my class. I can have specific folders, but what I love about it is it will let unlike the other two, it'll let me collaborate in folders with other people, so they can be on my chatbot at the same time I'm on my chatbot. And then another cool feature I found in it that I absolutely love is it will let me change chatbots. If I start a chat I can start with Copilot, or I can start with, I guess it's Perplexity or ChatGPT, and then I can ask another question and start with another chatbot in the same exact message area, which I love, because then I can hear everybody's thoughts about the same conversation. And every chatbot has very different answers in the way in which it answers. So Perplexity answer is very different than Claude, very different than ChatGPT. So all in one place, I get all of these answers, and then I know, France, you're going to be talking a lot about all of it. But I also want to say, if you get a chance, go to those favorite bots, because the help bot, the prompt bot, the study plan bot, there's a thesaurus bot. There are so many bots in the favorites that I really love, especially there's like a slide deck, one that I've been playing with for some presentations, that we're doing for some funders, and I love it. So France, gonna have you take it over and tell us about your company and how it started. Great.

France Hoang:

Great. Well, first off, it's just an absolute pleasure to be here. Lisaand Maggie, and I love your enthusiasm for what we built, because we're enthusiastic about we built. I'm France Hoang. I'm the co-founder and CEO, CEO of BoodleBox. We built BoodleBox because we felt there was just too much AI in AI. We've been doing AI before AI was cool. When ChatGPT came out, we looked and said, "Look, I think we need a different type of platform, a platform that is built around collaboration, right? Around encouraging humans versus discouraging humans from collaborating with one another." So I love that what you keyed in on Maggie was the all the ways you can collaborate, whether it's one person with multiple bots, we call that orchestration, or bot stacking, or multiple people working together. True collaborative AI, how can multiple people and multiple AIs, work together? And that, that I think is actually the future of work, right? If you think about it, we are at our best when we are together. And so many times now, I've heard people say this really changes the game and how I work, because now, instead of me working with AI separately, I can work with it with other people, or in your case, as you were demonstrated, the ability to build your own bots and then bring them together as a team, right? And to just to solve a problem. And so we were really focused on this problem of what we call lifelong learning with and about AI, and it's a workplace tool. It's designed to be used from the classroom to careers, and we have 1000s of users, both in and out of schools. And we really are focused on this problem of AI readiness. How can we help and enable institutions to enable their faculty and staff to prepare students for an AI-enabled future, which, in our mind, requires three things. The first is domain expertise. Students need to know the difference between an A and a B-minus, right? And we're all B-minus and everything now, so A is the new standard, but if you're not, if you're not aware of what an A is, you think it's an A, but it's really a B-minus, and you can fall in that trap with AI. So students need to be able to evaluate and validate and explain what AI provides them. Second, we're really focused on this problem of being called, what we call being AI-enabled, which is knowing when and how to use AI responsibly. It's a new tool. Like, I'm the co-founder of an AI company. I forget to use AI, right? Like, I need a little sticky this is like, try AI. We got to teach students that. And third, and this might sound counterintuitive to someone who's created an AI tool, I think we need to create excellent humans. In other words, we need to focus on those skills that are uniquely human, that are even more important now, because we increasingly can cognitively offload more and more things, and so we should focus on those things that we can't offload, right? Creativity and critical thinking and collaboration and communication. So we built a tool to enable institutions and faculty and staff to do these three developmental areas for their students. So that's what we're excited about, enthusiastic about.

Lisa Dieker:

Well, and you know we love the humans. And I, you know, I often call artificial intelligence augmenting my intelligence. It's not in charge of me. I'm in charge of it. And that's what we really love about the bots you have. So can you so one of the things that we're really working on here is giving back time. And so can you tell us to teachers? Because, as you well know, teachers are underpaid and overworked. I don't think anybody would argue about that. And I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about your platform and how it is giving back time to people, and how that might be helpful in the educational arena. And if there's anything there you'd want to show us, that would be great.

France Hoang:

Yeah. So first off, I have a bit of an education background. I've been a trustee of a university, so I've seen how an institution runs at that level, right? And then I'm also a distinguished-visiting lecturer at West Point, and I lectured the Air Force Academy, so I've spent plenty of time in the classroom. So I've, I've been blessed having seen kind of both ends of an educational institution and absolutely, right? Like there are more demands on faculty and staff's time than ever, and so AI holds a great promise, because it allows us to offload some of the work that we would otherwise have to do to AI, right? And then that allows us to spend more time in those high-value things. So for example, right? Tutoring, right? I love doing additional instruction. It lets me connect with my students. It lets me hear what's going on in their brains. It gives me feedback on my teaching. But the reality is probably 80% of the questions that students ask they could have figured out on their own, or they could get answer from a bot, but 20% of it is like the really important stuff, right? The stuff where they've got to think about metacognition or something's going on their life and the human connection. So wouldn't it be awesome if we could create a system where 80% of the tutoring could be done by the students self-accessing a bot, but we still have the opportunity to engage in that 20% high-value time, and if we do that, we could actually help more students in the same amount of time and engage in those times, those things that we are most excited about. And so BoodleBox allows is, allows us to do that. So one of the things that we just released in the platform is the ability to build your own bots of all different types, right? And they could be something like a tutor bot that you provide your students that is helpful, but not too helpful, right? Sorry, let me make sure I'm sharing the right screen here.

Maggie Mosher:

We can see the calculate bot currently. Great. Yeah. So like, this is a calculus bot who will give you

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah. your students help, but it won't give them too much help. Like, if I said, provide me the answer, it refuses, but it'll give you a walkthrough, right? And what's interesting in the in BoodleBox, as you mentioned, Maggie, is multiple people can be in the same chat. That's just not about collaboration. It's also about transparency. So a student could engage in this conversation and then share it with their professor and say,"Hey, I did my best by still some questions." And now the process by which the student engaged with AI is transparent. And I do believe that we live in a world now where process is more important than product, right? It's, it's, it's the how, not the what. And so here's just another example, simulations. We know simulations are engaging, it's active learning, right? It is higher order thinking, but they're also, in the past have been so resource intensive, right? Like that, that is like a semester capstone activity. Well, what if it wasn't right? So here's an example of a bot that simulates Yalta. So instead of reading about Yalta, the student is thrust into the role of Roosevelt or Churchill or Stalin at Yalta and having to make decisions that is a way more engaging and active way to learn. So here's just a couple of small examples of how AI can save professors time by offloading things that would otherwise take a lot of resources, so that professors would spend more time on the things that are higher value, like connecting with the student.

Maggie Mosher:

And what I love about what you just said, France, is that that 80% of the time that the bot can do it, you can, as a classroom teacher, create your own bot. You don't have to use one of the created ones. You can use one created by the expert, but you could create your own. We did that for AI Advocates, and I put in all 55 presentations Lisa and I have given on AI and integrating it into your classroom, and then had it respond back, and it sounded so much like us, like I was shocked at how much it sounded like something I would say in response, but it was because we'd put all of that information from our presentations and our articles into the bot before we had the bot even answer single question. And I loved that about it, because then, you know, you're 80% definitely more accurate, more likely to be like you, and then that 20% you can really spend individualized with the student getting to know them and building relationships. Tell me a little bit about that bot that you created with the experts in education.

France Hoang:

Yeah. So a couple things. First, I tried your bot, Maggie, and it was outstanding and excellent. And one thing we should realize is, when you survey students about what they're using AI for, the natural impression is think, oh, they're just using it to, quote, unquote, cheat and complete assignments. Actually, that's not what surveys show. Students are spending most of the time getting answers to questions they have engaging in self-tutoring, but they're doing it with generic bots, which they're just asking ChatGPT. Well, if you ask a generic model an answer, you get a question, you get a generic answer back. When I was teaching at West Point last semester, I actually created bots like you did Maggie, with the course lesson plan in it, with the learning objectives, with the reading materials, and I provided to the cadets. And the number one piece of feedback I got was that bot was amazing, like it gave me great, way better answers that I'm used to when I just asked ChatGPT, well, no duh, right? Because the bot is actually my bot. It has the information I wanted it to have and I told it to answer the question in a very specific way. Go ahead, Maggie. Looks like you're about to jump in and say something.

Maggie Mosher:

No, I love that. Keep going. Keep going. You're good.

France Hoang:

Yeah. And the second thing is, I can hear already some people saying,"Ooh, that sounds like we're outsourcing teaching." Right? Like, are we trying to replace professors here? So I believe in teaching with AI right, using AI to enhance the educational process and make life easier forprofessors and learning easier for students. I also believe in teaching about AI right, enabling students, Right? To be ready for an AI-enabled world. I do not believe in teaching by AI, right? There is more to being a professor than just sticking knowledge into someone's brain, and so I don't see a world where professors are replaced by AI. Now, I do see a world where AI can be used by professors to enhance the educational process in ways that, like we've been talking about, make life easier for the student and for the professor. So.

Unknown:

exactly

Maggie Mosher:

Exactly.

Lisa Dieker:

So. So, you know, I love, I love everything you've said, and agree 1,000% and one of the things that I really like is the word free. So most of our K-12 teachers, you know, it's a real struggle for us that we keep recommending free tools, because a lot of them pay for things out of their own pocket, for books in their classroom, and for kids who need a snack and and especially in the world we work in with special education. And so I'm curious about some of those free features. And then, of course, the thing that keeps us all up at night is the safety and security behind using those features in the classroom. What are, what are some things there that you would tell us?

France Hoang:

Yeah, so BoodleBox actually has two tiers. We have a free tier and an unlimited tier. And the only difference between those two tiers is how much you get to access or access what we call the premium bots, right? Like there are these models are called premium models. They're the very best models. ChatGPT-4o or Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Perplexity. But there are many, many models, right, that are premium, that are still very capable. And frankly, for a K, you know, a nine through 12 situation, are probably perfectly fine to use, and we include those at no cost. And so you could log in and use that forever, right? And eventually, there may be a time when you want to access the premium bots and you can and pay, or you could just stay in the free tier and you still get five premium messages a day, just so you could try it out. That's the only difference. So everything else I showed you, the ability to upload knowledge, right? The ability to have multiple bots in a conversation, the ability to have multiple people in a conversation, the ability to build bots. As long as you build a bot and you use one of the free models, the other person doesn't need a paid subscription either. And so there's lots you can do in BoodleBox without paying for it, and that is our commitment for for the education community to experience these capabilities. And we think eventually, right, you're going to want to have access to the other models, but we believe there still a lot of value to be gained here.

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, and I noticed you said, 9-12, is it okay in kindergarten class? Is there any privacy concerns once I built my bot, is my bot, stay within my own little world, and if my students are asking it questions, do I worry about identity anything? Because those are kind of the basic things teachers worry about.

France Hoang:

Yeah. So I'm gonna have to defer to individual teachers and their district policy.

Lisa Dieker:

Okay, sure. Of course.

France Hoang:

I will tell you we are FERPA compliant.

Lisa Dieker:

Okay.

France Hoang:

You know, we are built in such a way that anything you upload here is secured, encrypted. We have what's called a SOC 2 for higher education institutions, something called a HECVAT. We have one of those completed. We have accessibility. You can see here we've got our little accessibility features here for accessibility, when you put a prompt into BoodleBox, it is anonymized, and so nothing is attributed directly to a person. Part of why we're FERPA compliant, we don't train on models, nor do we allow any data that we send out to these commercial partners to be used to train a model, and everything is deleted from outside servers from these model providers after 30 days, both in and out. So if that meets the requirements of your institution, you're good, right? And for, for colleges, absolutely, for high schools, absolutely. I think on K through eight, you're gonna have to consult your school district, because we're talking about 13, you know we're talking about younger 13 a lot different rules apply.

Maggie Mosher:

And I love that you said that, because

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah. especially in kindergarten through third grade, you have to consider, when you're using chatbots, if it's the right tool, because they can't discern whether things are accurate or not accurate. At that age, some of the brain functioning just isn't there. So I love that you said that. I also really love that you had mentioned that you get five of the extra because I use the normal one all the time, and it's perfect. I don't need, I don't need more than ChatGPT-4o but I use my five extra for pictures at the end. So I'll put in a chat and have it do lessons and answer questions and all that. But that doesn't have the llama one until the pro so I'll use those five for my pro pictures and say,"Okay, now create a picture that summarizes this for my students who need that visual." And I don't have to retype anything. I just get to go from the free one to the free the five pictures and get my pictures at the end. And I love that too. I do think it's worth getting the subscription, but for those teachers who do not have the money currently, it's a really great process, and I love the security behind it. I really appreciate that that's not going to train and that my information that I put in for my classroom isn't going to be used or is encrypted. And so my, my last question for you would be like,

France Hoang:

Yep. who's using it? Like, help us understand the landscape? Is it worldwide? Is it mostly universities? Is it the K-12, you know, certain states have adopted, and we're just kind of curious, because we know, how long has it existed in kind of where kind of where? Where is its tentacles at this point in time? Yeah, we're, we're relatively new. We launched in terms of focusing on education about seven months ago. We have almost 20,000 users. About over 10,000 them are in education. The vast majority are higher education. Though we have lots of interest from nine through 12 educators. I do know that not students, but K through eight educators do use the platform, but not not exposing it to the students at that age, because we're not, you know, we haven't solved all the COPPA issues there, but nine through 12, we have students who use it. Higher education. Obviously, we've got over 650 colleges and university are using it. Vast majority are in North America, but we do have worldwide users. One of the things that's great about the platform is it is naturally multilingual. I had a school in South Africa. The students rave about it because apparently there's four dialects. I didn't know this, of Zulu, and it handles all four beautifully.

Lisa Dieker:

That's great. Well, and I could even see teacher to teacher so very common in our field would be Maggie, would be the high school algebra teacher, and I would be the special-ed

Maggie Mosher:

One last question for you, because I love the way your mind works, and I love the way you created this. I want to teacher working with her. And I was really thinking about us know from you. How do you think that this will help transform the way our teachers teach in higher ed and in high school?

France Hoang:

Yeah, I think as we move to a world where we're both having bots, her having her algebra bot, I have my special focusing more and more on process versus in-product, right? And there's this idea of it's not what you know, but how you know and how you get there. I really believe we are going to focus on those three areas I talked about, right? Teaching domain mastery. What does right look like? Not because AI told you so, but even apart from AI. So you can evaluate that like that's one thing that I want to teach my kids, right? The answer shouldn't be, oh, ChatGPT told me so. How do you know ChatGPT is right? Right? So we got to focus on that domain mastery that's more important than ever. Second, recognizing those and those two bots talk to each other about helping us plan our opportunities to use AI and how to use it responsibly. That the lessons. It's called co-teaching. I could see that being adult to adult too, which I think is really an asset that same way that you wouldn't hesitate to use Google because you know how to use it responsibly, being AI-enabled, that I hope the field will tap into. So Maggie, yeah. right? Just seeing how and when to use AI and developing that as a separate skill set, and then third, right? Again, just focusing more and more on those critical abilities. So, in education, right? I think you're going to see that one of the questions that's going to become is, how do we make people ready for work in an AI world? And it isn't simply going to be graduating somebody that can use AI. It's going to be somebody who can use AI and do all the things that AI can't do well, right? In communicating, collaborating, critically think, and be creative. And so education, I think should really, really, really focus on those three areas as kind of the outcomes that we want.

Maggie Mosher:

I absolutely love that. And France, I know we're running out of time here, but it's been such a blessing to have you on the show and to find out how we can reclaim our time with your bots. Do you have any last things you want to add to our show that maybe we didn't ask you a question that you really wanted to tell us about?

France Hoang:

Yeah, I will say this. We absolutely view what we do as a partnership, right? Like I, I believe that this question of getting AI right is like one of the most crucial questions for society. Like, every time there's new technology, we wrestle with what's the appropriate role for it? Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we get it wrong. Like, for example, social media, I think we got it really, really wrong. I want to get it right. And I will say this, teachers, you are actually on the front lines of getting this right. It's your classrooms where we're asking and debating and trying to figure this out, and I want to be your partner. I want to provide you the technological tools to get it right in your classrooms. And to do that, I need to hear from you. So I welcome any time, administrators, teachers, professors, teaching assistants, reach out with your feedback and your thoughts. You know, we are very, very open. We have multiple leadership councils. I get emails from professors and teachers all the time. We want to hear from you, and we want to be your partner.

Lisa Dieker:

No, just thank you so much, and like I said, I'm

Maggie Mosher:

Well, thank you so much. We appreciate your partnership, because we like having really good partners in excited. I was sharing before we started recording that I made a technology for our teachers. Lisa, did you have any last thoughts? co-teaching bot for my co-teaching friends in about two minutes, and I sent it to nine friends who co-teach, and they're like, yeah, it answered questions really well, and now I'm going to start coaching it. But I think that's what Maggie and I both love, that people ask us for our expertise. But wouldn't it be nice if our bot could do that when we might be sleeping? So we thank you for creating a tool that's not only easy to use, but really effective in the impact it's making. So thanks.

France Hoang:

We really appreciate that.

Maggie Mosher:

We appreciate you, France and we appreciate BoodleBox that's helping teachers reclaim their time. Have a great day.

France Hoang:

Thank you.