aiEDU Studios
aiEDU Studios is a podcast from the team at The AI Education Project.
Each week, a new guest joins us for a deep-dive discussion about the ever-changing world of AI, technology, K-12 education, and other topics that will impact the next generation of the American workforce and social fabric.
Learn more about aiEDU at www.aiEDU.org
aiEDU Studios
Khushali Narechania: K-12 education in the age of AI
How can K-12 education adapt to AI?
In this thought-provoking conversation, we sit down with aiEDU's Director of Learning (and former high school math teacher) Khushali Narechania to explore how AI can be leveraged to benefit students in the classroom.
Khushali shares how educators are navigating the tensions between embracing new technology and preserving authentic learning experiences.
"The age of the take-home essay is dead," but that doesn't diminish the importance of writing skills – instead, it shows how classroom time will become even more valuable as a space where students can be taught skills that AI can't replicate. Similarly to how calculators transformed math education decades ago, Khushali discusses how AI may similarly shift our focus toward higher-order thinking and interpersonal skills.
Whether you're a teacher wondering how to adapt your assignments or a parent concerned about your child's education, this conversation offers valuable insights into preparing students for an AI-powered future where human connection may be their greatest advantage.
aiEDU: The AI Education Project
Hey, I'm Alex. I'm the CEO of aiEDU and this is another early episode of aiEDU Studios. For this conversation, I'm sitting down with Khushali Narachania, the Director of Learning at aiEDU. S
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Khushali and I work together. We're in lots of meetings together. We were just in San Diego together for a conference. She lives in the East Bay, so we're even local but this was really a rare opportunity for me to sit down with her for a long period of time and just nerd out together. This started out as a conversation about a specific set of curricular products that we had just released elementary explorations but ended up being a much broader, wide-ranging conversation, including some discussion about what's coming next. So I'm very pleased that all of you will get the chance to meet one of the amazing leaders on our team. Kashali is not just super knowledgeable, but also just very cool and, yeah, hope you enjoy. So, yeah, let's get started with. Why don't you tell me who are you? Who is Khushali? Khushali?
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):yeah I am, in my current role, the director of learning here at aidu, but I think more broadly. I think of myself as an educator first and foremost. I started my career as a high school math teacher and then was in teacher prep um at relay graduate school of education for several years, leading the content programming there, and beyond that I'm a wife, mother, hiking and cooking enthusiast as well. Yeah, Bay Area resident. Bay Area resident. Yes, K , ensington, , so just north of Berkeley.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Okay, that's very esoteric.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Yes, most people are just like oh, Silicon Valley, yeah, exactly, and they don't realize that that's actually like two hours away from where you are.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Um, so when you were in maybe not middle school, but high school, like, did you know you wanted to be a teacher?
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Yes, there's some great stories that my parents can share of me in, like second grade, playing teacher in school, and so that um was very clear from an early age that I wanted to be in teaching and in education in some way, and I think what I wanted to teach, where I wanted to teach that all evolved as I got older, but I was always in the mentality of wanting to be a part of people's learning journeys.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Yeah, so I mean, I think it's interesting working with so many educators there's there is a sort of interesting common thread of people who just were drawn to it even though it's a really tough job. Yeah, doesn't pay well. Actually, in many cases it requires quite a lot of education. Yeah, what was the driving force? Was it just the that, that idea of driving knowledge to this next generation, or just like being around young people?
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):yeah, I think it's like I've always had a curiosity about lots of things, so I've always liked learning um myself and like figuring things out and having those light bulb moments that are just like one of my favorite things to experience myself. And then when I started being able to kind of experience that with other people and realizing like you can be a part of other people having these light bulb moments by having experiences that they can have um, where they figure something out for the first time, it's it's kind of incredible Um, and and I think, as I got older, also, just realizing what joy it is to see in young people's faces like them figuring out the world around them and getting to be a part of that process and making it unique to them is pretty magical, and so that, I think, is what it is it's. Being able to make sense of the world with kids is pretty awesome.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Yeah Well, making sense of the world also, something that's much more difficult, seemingly, these days yes, Way more complicated, yeah, and I suppose the job of teaching has gotten more. Oh, would you, would you say that? I mean I, it seems like it's harder than ever. Um, and there's obviously issues with teacher retention and burnout. Um, you know, you, you sort of left, left the classroom. When year did you leave the classroom to go to?
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):was that 2011, 2012, 2012, so?
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):it was almost like that was kind of right at the cusp. I mean facebook had been. I mean, I remember when I first got my Facebook account, when it sort of opened up and it was 2007, yep. So I guess 2011 was sort of the maturation of the new media like social media and you know, sort of like this digital age where you know online bullying probably wasn't really a thing prior to 2007.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Yeah, and definitely not in the scope it is now or like the rate at which it can happen now.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):I think, yeah, I think teaching has become harder in so many ways because there are actually more demands of teachers, both from state or district requirements and policies, and so there's a lot more than just teaching really that happens in the classroom and I think that's often overlooked in the role People often think it's you're in the classroom, you're teaching kids, that's the end. There's so much beyond that and what teachers have to do. And then I think, like the environment that kids are in has changed a lot and it is. There's so much that's online that used to be physical and trying to kind of navigate that with kids is really, really challenging. So, yeah, I think it's gotten a lot harder. There's oftentimes fewer resources allocated towards teachers as well, uh, and that can make it more challenging. And, um, we are figuring out new technology as adults that our kids are kind of just immersed in from the beginning, and I think that that is not necessarily new new, but the rate at which it's changing for adults too, is pretty rapid.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):So we're in a state of learning alongside our, our students, um, in in a different way now so this is interesting, this, this phenomena of students experiencing technology in parallel and in many cases even before teachers.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):I mean I can remember when that was actually not the case, like when I was in middle school we had computer lab before we had a computer at home.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):We had internet access at school, I mean, we had dial up, but it wasn't very good, yeah, and so there was a period of time in our memories where adults actually could be the arbiters of technology and we could thoughtfully sort of roll it out, and you had these structured environments, computer lab, where students got to learn how to use the internet, and, um, and the internet was actually quite a scary place. It was a lot less guardrails and filters, I mean maybe to a, to a fault actually, um, so they said that we have those today, but, um, but yeah, things have, things change, and it was around the time that you were getting into teaching and even and obviously since you've moved into sort of like training teachers, that's only gotten more and more profound, um, but I am curious if there's like any specific stories or memories that come to mind where, like you know, a student kind of was showing you something about technology or you felt like you were like a few steps behind your students, whether that's like the internet or social media or anything else.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Yeah, I think, um it's. I feel like when I was still in the classroom I had a handle on most of the things that were kind of in my students sphere with technology. It was actually when I was working with graduate students and we were doing a lot of like filming. They were filming their classrooms and getting feedback on their teaching and whatnot.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):That was a moment where I was like I don't actually understand a lot of what is possible by way of how you record, how you get transcriptions of recordings, the ways in which you can edit. I had like very, you know you need a video camera to do this and whatnot. It's like no, you could probably do it on your phone or there's another device you can get. And here are all these tools and apps that you can use to kind of support with building the clips that you might want for video. And so I think that's where I started having these moments of oh wait, a second. I actually have, I mean, like blind spots.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):I think of like what is possible, just because I've been doing things a certain way, or have like a schema that kind of supports one way of doing things with the technology, and that was, I think, just a great learning moment of like what else could we do, how else could we leverage these tools that are available online that actually help us better share our practice with one another across space so we don't actually have to be in physical classrooms to see teachers teaching, but we can watch them from these videos and give give feedback pretty quickly. And so that, like that, really struck me and I think it just really helped me be able to see like I have learning to do and I should be listening to what my students are. The people who are doing this work like regularly are kind of experiencing to understand what they might be interacting with and how I could be using it as well.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Yeah, I mean even even in the process of setting up. You know, getting all the equipment for for AIEDU studios, I guess is the placeholder name that we're using for whatever this project is. Is it a show? I'm not sure. If it's a podcast, I guess we'll see, but I mean in the you know, cause I used to shoot professional photography, did some video, and that was like about seven years ago, and I mean I saw the outcome of the outputs, of the improving technology and the like, the decreasing sort of barriers to access just through YouTube, because YouTube has obviously flourished in the sort of the creator economy. But I didn't realize it like how easy it was to get. I mean, even just listening to some of like the early recordings on these microphones, it's like it sounds like radio quality.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Yeah.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):And these mics have been around, but the, it was really complicated to interface it into your computer and like there weren't that many, and even, frankly, they just like the tutorials yeah, you know, it was a lot of like written tutorials, like very sort of arcane, and now there are millions, maybe not millions, tens of thousands of people on YouTube walking you through step by step, exactly how to do this, and so it was kind of eye-opening just how easy. And now I understand, like sort of why this creator economy is such a big deal, because actually, you know, now there's like the only thing standing in the way of somebody creating, I think, really high quality content is just the content itself. You know, whereas before, and I think even now, like a lot of the, the podcasts and um, and like some of the youtube channels that I see, it's like they're part of the reason they're falling behind is because they just they're. They're still in sort of the mindset of like, oh, like you know, I can just use sort of like my webcam, um, but there are sort of increasing expectations that go along with, yeah, these technologies and so and we're seeing that in to bring us to um, to artificial intelligence.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):I think that's one of the big question marks is, as ai unlocks more and more capabilities, let's say um, will or should that actually change the expectations that we have of students? Um, because the internet certainly has. I think, like in many cases, you know, having one or two sources from the library was probably enough for a research project back in the day. And now I think teachers, rightfully, are like you should have, you know, 10 plus sources, because it should take you, you know, 10 minutes to go and find those things yeah um and but which brings us to like what?
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):what do we need to ensure is in place so students have like understand what's possible right from the technology?
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):there's, um, I think so much of it is just clarity, both from teachers, students, on like how you can use these tools to create or supplement the work that you are doing, and it's and and not replace the thinking that needs to happen, right, um, for students. And so, um, I think similar to when the internet became more readily available and you could, you know, search for anything, get a bunch of information, and then you ended up with a lot of copy and pasted responses to things there had to be some work done to kind of help figure out, like, how do you actually use these sources? There isn't, it isn't just a replacement for your own writing, necessarily, but you can use it to help you kind of think through a lot of different topics together. And I think with artificial intelligence, with AI, I think similar learnings need to happen of where do we use it, how do we use it, how do we actually use it to enhance the work that we're doing or to help you get unstuck, but not completely replace the work that you're doing.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):And I think that means, like teachers, and across all levels, are probably gonna have to rethink what kind of assignments they're having students do and the purpose behind them and being really explicit about that with students and being able to say, if you put this into a chat bot, you're probably going to get this kind of response back. That's not what we're looking for. What we're actually looking for is some deeper thinking and like what you are kind of bringing out from this and so and I don't think that's a bad thing Like there's a lot of information that my kids will ask me about. I'm like I don't know the answer, but I can look it up and then we can have a discussion, a really interesting discussion, about all the things that we find when we look up. But I don't need to necessarily retain all that information in my brain anymore, because we have tools that'll help us kind of access that and then have more interesting discussions about what we find. And so that's what I see kind of being really important in the next few years is how do we really get schools and teachers comfortable thinking about where to be using these tools, if to be using these tools and making it really explicit to students so that they can start developing those skills around, how to use it, how to make it something that really enhances their work instead of replacing their work because, it's not going to so we're going to get to that cheating top of everybody's mind and I think for good reason, and I actually I had this whole diatribe and I was just doing a presentation for a bunch of vcs and I was like people are too quick to dismiss this question of cheating it's
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):like just oh, it's you know, it's just something that luddites are worried about and they need, and everybody needs, to get with the program and sort of move past this question of cheating. I think it's actually for the educators that I talk to and I know that, the ones that you've been working with at AIDU I mean it is very legitimate. They are onto something. Their spidey senses are tingling, for good reason, and I'm remiss at sort of how quick some folks are to dismiss those teachers as just not being technology, technology, technology literate. And in some cases they're not right. In some cases teachers don't really know what to make of language models, chat, gpt, et cetera, um, but they are experts in learning, they're experts in um, you know, knowledge transfer, and I think there's something quite profound about there are some legitimate alarm bells, I think the idea that it's so easy to get answers to questions now, okay. So a fun game that I've been playing recently is, if I'm at a party, you'll be having a conversation with somebody and someone will ask a question.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):I've been trying to think of the example. Specifically, it was, um, I think we were talking about the steam engine and the loom and we were trying to decide like, oh, what was the? What was the start of the first industrial revolution? Was it the steam engine, or the loom, or you know something else, the cotton gin? And I couldn't quite get the answer. And someone was like, oh, I'll just like pull it up. And I was like no, no, no, we should actually let's do this old school.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Let's go and like try to find somebody at this party who might know the answer, and it was actually really hard because nobody could remember their. You know their their uh, social studies class Um, but so there's, there's power in that, but there's also actually there was a lot of I.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):you know I found myself flexing some interesting muscles, not just with myself, but with the folks that I was talking to as we were trying to explore and find the answer to these questions and people were sort of recalling different, you know books that they have read. It was. It was a really, uh, vibrant experience and, even though we maybe didn't quite get to the final right answer, we were also generating a lot of interesting ideation and also recalling other facts. Um, and even though we didn't get to the final answer, the the sum total of my learning from that was actually greater than going into Google or chat GBT and just almost immediately getting the answer. And then it's like okay, done, and it almost it feels like almost like a real or you're getting some cool fact, but then it kind of just immediately floats into the ether yeah, um, so okay.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):So we have a lot to talk about. I want to start with why you're here. Um, besides being super smart and having, I think, some good insights about this topic of cheating that I want to talk about a bit more. Um, your team at AIDU recently launched, uh, a new, uh sort of suite of curricular products. Right before Christmas, we sort of buried the lead there and put it all out and then, like you, know peaced out for the holidays.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Yeah, just tell us about, like, what is it that y'all put out and just if you can give us kind of like a rough overview of what folks can, because it's on the website now, right, yeah it's on the website.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):So there were a few things that we released. First was kind of a revised version of our AI snapshots, which are intended to be kind of five to 10 minute activities that you can do with high school, middle school students, that are meant to kind of engage students in dialogue around topics related to AI, literacy and readiness. For example, one of the really popular ones is about using AI to generate book cover art and kind of who has ownership of that art then, and discussion to ensue by content area for math, ela, social studies, science and a couple of general ones, and these have been really well received because, they are very easy to kind of implement without a lot, of, a lot of extra kind of internalization that needs to happen and kind of fit right in with warmups, with closing activities is a good transition between between different kind of learning experiences as well.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):So that's up and running and I think have been really really really well received by all the folks that have tried them out, for us as well.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):So that's one big one.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):The other big product that we released were projects specifically geared to the AP computer science classroom, and so these are aligned to the college board standards for AP computer science principles and explore again ethical ideas in AI readiness and literacy and range from, you know, a couple hours of instruction to up to, I think, six hours for students to produce at the end of some sort of either presentation or conversation on these topics as well.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):And along with that we have a smart teach manual which is kind of quick ideas for how to think about integrating AI literacy and readiness to an AP computer science principles classroom as well. And so those are kind of the big things that have come out, and prior to all of that there was also the readiness framework which kind of is helping us anchor all of the content that we're building on, kind of naming some of the key skills and concepts that we would want students to kind of master and have in their have in their arsenal as they graduate from from k-12 schools and into into career yeah, I feel like you're giving short thrift to the readiness framework, because I think it's actually a really big deal.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):It's interesting because snapshots were that was one of the first products we released. What you inherited when you joined AIDU was a much bigger corpus of snapshots. I think it was like 180, yes, snapshots, which was way too many, um, but I think it's in in sort of in keeping with the approach that we had early on was we can't go to teachers and say here is sort of a new curriculum, that's ai. In fact, we actually tried that. We built a class.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):It was like a quarter long, I think, maybe even a semester, long course 10 week 10 week course called introduction to ai, and you know, we found as, unsurprisingly, there were very few teachers that had the flexibility to say, oh, I'm just going to completely scrap everything that I'm doing and plug in an entirely new course.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Um, so we went almost the opposite end of the spectrum with these sort of like very bite size, easy to integrate, sort of like between classes or like as bell ringers. And I think what we found and I'm curious if you have any examples of this with our like professional learning communities or like fellowships, you know, while they were designed to be five minute activities, we, I feel like there's a lot of examples where teachers would say, oh yeah, you know, this started out as a five minute classroom discussion, and it was. Would say, oh yeah, you know, this started out as a five minute classroom discussion and it was. The students were so engaged that we ended up creating an entire sort of module around it, or it extended into an entire class period, and I think, um, but yeah, can you just tell me more about like, is that something that you implicitly are expecting teachers to do, or is that more just sort of like a happy accident?
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):It's I mean, I I think they were one of the things in this new release of them is we explicitly call out that they take around 10 minutes, not just five minutes. I think some are doable in five minutes, but realistically to have students engage in conversation and and kind of really think critically about the questions being asked, you need more time for that, so. So I think we've more explicitly named that these should be deeper conversations and you can do it in 10 minutes. And we've had our fellows who've kind of tested out the new snapshots. We've watched them do it in 10 minutes and we've watched some that take 20, because they have actually integrated it into their lesson and have brought in some of their content to the snapshot and and like kind of built out the discussion a bit as well.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):And so are there's two ways to go with it, and I think we want as many people as possible using these, and so the easiest entry is say we have everything for you to facilitate it in 10 minutes and here's what it can look like, and then, if you're interested in doing more, that kind of becomes unique to what your class is, who your students are, and so there's all these other ways that you can think about having a multi-day discussion or building it out, and there is like appetite for that and I think there's like great like community amongst the teachers who have been using this to kind of share how they've been using it as well to, to, to personalize for their classrooms. So I think that's that's like an exciting new place to look as we kind of build out more resources of how can this look in different formats beyond the 10 minute warmup.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Yeah, yeah, the. I mean I think it's a testament to. We are not. You know, our goal is, our vision is never it has never been to be the sole arbiter of AI curriculum, yeah, or for there to be some sort of like reference curriculum that, like all AI literacy, is accomplished through the AIED curriculum package. But I think so.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):One of the early school districts that we engaged with as part of our learning process was Gwinnett County Public Schools.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):They were probably one of the first districts in the country to roll out AI literacy in the flavor of how we think about it, which is all students having access, not just something that gets slotted into STEM or computer science pathways. And they have this sort of, I think, very clever way of thinking about this, which is the swim, snorkel, scuba metaphor, and it's like everybody should learn how to swim, and then some students will want to snorkel and a smaller group will actually go scuba diving, and I feel like snapshots is almost like we're going to sort of a desert where there aren't even like wading pools, and so the first thing is like, if you want students to swim, like they have to have a place where they can actually get in the water, and I think right now teachers are sort of looking around. They're saying like I don't even know how to get their feet wet, let alone how to teach them you know, uh, freestyle and like, put you know the snorkel gear on.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):I'm belaboring the analogy, perhaps a bit too much, um, but I think there is. You know, once you build the pools and again I'm going to really belabor this analogy once you build the pools, you know we don't necessarily have to go and show everybody exactly every single stroke. There are going to be some teachers that are going to take.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Take that as sort of a blank canvas and run with it, but I think you know, until you can actually sort of lead them to the water and sort of help them get their feet wet. It's just like really it's unclear where to start.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Yeah, I think that's right and I think that's part of what we wanted to do in these updated materials was like build more for teachers to have, like building their own confidence and kind of facilitating these discussions, and so there's a lot of notes for the teacher on, like here are some possible misconceptions, or here are the ideas that you might want to kind of hone in on, which I think is intended to help spark for them, like here's what I might want to know more about, and being able to create more of those spaces and comfort for themselves and being able to lead the discussions, cause I do think a lot of times teachers will potentially shy away from engaging in the topic because they themselves want to learn more or want to have, um, kind of more of an understanding.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):And so, uh, our, our desire and kind of upgrading these materials was to build in some of that like learning within the materials so they can have that, as they're trying to facilitate, with their students as well, and so I think they serve as a great space for both the teachers and students to do kind of that swimming in the AI readiness content.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Because you did some. One of the first things you did, besides sort of overhaul the content in fact I think it was a precursor to overhauling the content was doing some research with teachers and so is that something that came up this sort of like, this sort of confidence? Yes, sort of roadblock where they were just weren't feeling like they had the mastery and that.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):And teachers do feel like they're supposed to master a subject, and that's generally. The model is like they become experts in whatever it is they're teaching and then they kind of sort of structure the class. This is a very tough subject for teachers to become, you know gain mastery over.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Yeah, it's so new. We are still learning so much about what LLM technology is, how it applies, how it actually works, and that was like very clear in our research. Actually, it was one of the big headlines to come out of it that, like, educators have a lot of uncertainty and like into fear in some ways around what this technology is and how they should be using it or addressing it or learning about it.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):And I think one of the things that we can do is help disseminate more information that is, uh, digestible and appropriate for teachers and students so that they can build their knowledge, and then I think, very much do. The thing that we're we're saying is important is like think about this critically and decide on when to use it, how to use it, um, what to do with your students? Cause, at the end of the day, teachers are the ones who know their students the best, and so they are the ones that should be making the decisions about how to implement this, any of these curricular resources, for their students, and we just want them to have everything to help them feel confident about how they're implementing it. And that was again driven largely by what we heard from teachers that they don't know enough and they want to learn more, and so we can. We can help provide some of that and some guidance on that.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Yeah. So like I'm going to keep beating this analogy. So you build the pools and you maybe it's not just a wading pool, but there's like you can go a little bit deeper. It's not necessarily like a diving chamber yet.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Yeah.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):But also you need to build the roads to the pools, to have locker room. I mean, like you need, like you can't just put something out there, and I think that was one of the things that we saw, you know, really early on is there's actually there are curricula that address artificial intelligence and certainly, if you are looking for self-guided learning, youtube is maybe the best and worst example, because there's just so much and it's just a ton of noise. But how do you navigate that? What is actually quality versus not quality? Sometimes you can actually get overwhelmed with the amount of information. I think that's the issue with where we are today, where there's certainly not a lack of discussion about AI so like or a lack of awareness at this point, and that's actually changed our you know cause.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):When we were, you know, before your time at AIEDU, before ChatGPT, you know, ai literacy for us was really introducing the topic to people for the very first time and for most people they hadn't even connected the dots with like, oh, I'm using AI in my phone when I use Google Maps, or AI is making content recommendations to me, and so there was some low-hanging fruit there of just sort of like trying to build comfort level.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):But this is not actually science fiction anymore. This is something that's sort of quietly creeping into our lives. But now we have ChatGPT and every education conference is an AI conference now. So it's not so much a lack of awareness, but there's still, I think, teachers are. They don't know really where to attack this problem, because for most teachers which brings us back to this question that you kind of led with which is well, what do I do about? How should I be using ChatGP, gbt? That's actually their first instinct, is? It's not so much like how do I teach students about ai more broadly, but how do I use this, and then how do I deal with my students using it?
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):yeah um, and so this is a way of talking with the framework, because I think when we were going about thinking about, okay, what does the new curriculum they want to build, I remember having these discussions and there was a big sort of fork in the road, I think for us, and even thinking back to some of our early conversations, there was this question of you know, should we be basically teaching students to prompt engineer?
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Right.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):And to become power users of AI technology, which is different from the framework that your team published.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Because the framework.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Actually it addresses AI literacy as one of three buckets. Can you just spout the three off? Ai literacy is the first domain.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Know the basics. Know the basics so it's how to use the AI, and then being a critical thinker is the next one, and then the third is knowing the kind of human advantage going into it.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Yeah, so mastering ChatGPT fits, I guess, certainly the first domain and then also the second. I think you can argue that prompt engineering in the abstract is actually asking critical questions, or knowing how to ask the right questions and then also sort of like critically evaluate the outputs. Um, but it is. It is a far cry from what I think other other folks may be expected from us, but I it brings me to sort of this question of, like, how to deal with cheating Um, because there is, there's a school of thought that, like, the way that you deal with cheating the students using chat GPT is, it's a technical challenge.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):We need to come up with policies and academic integrity procedures and we need to identify the perfect detector tools Right, and we need to design foolproof assignments that can't, where students can't use chat gpt to cheat um. And it's actually, which is a very different question from, I think, the way that the framework really addresses this, which is, what should your, what should your learning be oriented to? Yeah, like, what are the outcomes that we want from students to be able to um, to have the knowledge they need to succeed in a world where they are going to be able to go home and use these tools to generate content and answer questions and write essays, and it seems like the place where you've planted the flag is durable skills, communication and collaboration and creative problem solving, self-agency and then so the answer to how do I deal with cheating is more like well, how do you adapt your assignments to focus on building those durable skills?
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):It's, it's and it's not. And I hesitate to say like this doesn't all fall on the teacher changing their entire curriculum Cause I think that is a really daunting thing to hear, that I have to rethink everything that I'm having students do. But it is really about, I think, like a great counter example, or not a counter example. Another example of this in a similar kind of vein is when a calculator technology became readily available and we went from a time when, like, doing any sort of computation was very like labor intensive and there was no quick way to do it and so a lot of math, where you're so focused on arithmetic, to now you have a device that can do a lot of the arithmetic for you so that you can do more complex problems. Right, and I think the education community really grappled with like, what do we do? Are we banning calculators? Do we focus only on arithmetic or how do we integrate it into curriculum so that it's a part of the learning experience where they actually have to? Students have to learn how to use the calculator, how to use it effectively, and uh, what does that mean for what we can actually ask students to be doing and focusing on? And I think, overall, like I think we can all agree, calculators are a part of our life. We use them, students know how to use them, we have, you know, state tests adapted to it. There's calculators are generally allowed on almost all portions of testing and if they're not, it's very explicit and there's, you know, rationale provided for why. And so I think of that and I think we can learn a lot from that, like we've done this as a society where we've kind of welcomed this technology and that's kind of opened a lot of access and doors to what we can do and how we focus.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):And so, similarly with, I think, ai tools, it's, I think, if we try and close the door to it and say this is not allowed and we should not be using it, we should just have really strict policies in place. I'm just inviting people figuring out how to work around that, instead of it becoming something that we welcome into learning spaces as a tool and we teach students how to be using it, how to think about using them effectively, and for teachers to then be thinking about like, what do we need to do in our coursework? Um, that needs to change. Potentially, that can stay the same.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Uh, that leverages this tool, just like in math, we have a shift, like there is a distinction, I think you can see, in what was taught um before calculators and what was taught after calculators and so um, yeah, so I think that's just like how do we think about, what is it that we want students walking away with and how do we use AI as a tool to help us get there? And that will take some thinking, and I think it's thinking with teachers and students and communities on what those skills need to be and will be most effective for the set of students that any one community is working with as well. Skills need to be and will be most effective for, for the set of students that you know any one community is working with as well.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Yeah, I might, um, I actually want to, I want to, I want to push a little bit on on this and it's it's almost a sort of pull back the curtain on an internal I don't know if I'd call it a debate, but certainly like a vibrant discussion that we're having, um, within our organization about what does it mean? What does it look like for us to say, okay, teachers should embrace the tools. Where is it maybe not appropriate or just not quite the right moment for that to be the guidance? Yeah, um, because some of the questions that I'm grappling with is, if we're going to go and say, well, we need to build around these tools in the same way like we use the calculator example, um, well, if you're going to make assignments that are implicitly or explicitly requiring calculator, we have to make sure every student has access to a calculator. And I think that's we're not quite there yet, you know, in schools, and so it's like that's a conversation we have to have sooner or later.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):But my worry is that for many schools they're actually not even there yet. They kind of need to sort of operate a few steps earlier. And then there's also this question of, while the calculator, I think, is an apt analogy for many reasons. There's something about language models and I think this is why it's had this zeitgeist moment, way bigger than the calculator. I mean the calculator, I think, was a very big moment for educators, but most people outside of education probably didn't realize or couldn't even tell you what a TI-89 is. Everybody's paying attention to Chad GBT.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Yeah.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):And that's because there is something just in our guts. It's like when you see it write essays and press releases and marketing memos and poems and songs, um, and emails and and love letters and, um, you know, uh, wedding plans and itineraries, like there's, there's a breadth of application that, um, yeah, I just I I wonder if, if we, we might need to preserve the experience of not being able to do something, because if, if we, if we, if, if the learning, if the, if the learning in school is basically, how do I use these tools to basically make everything easy? And then, if everything becomes easy, um, there is, I mean, I feel like part of the point of school is also just sort of like the process of, you know, creative struggle and productive struggle, and it seems to me that there's more to education than just how do we make your life as efficient as possible.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Oh yeah, 100%, and I think that's that goes back to what you're saying. It's like what are the outcomes that we're driving towards with being in school and for students to have Right? And I think there's there's just like a lot of work to be done around continuing to foster curiosity and problem solving, and so I don't like in no way do we, I think, do I ever advocate for like schooling should revolve around how to like integrate AI tools and everything that we do. But it's actually like the step above that, which is, how do we think about when we want to use this and why we want to use it, and is it aligned to the kind of goals that we have as a school and for our community and for our students? And being really thoughtful about that process before even bringing anything in front of students.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):And I think it's really important to actually, especially for our older grades, older students, like they should be a part of the conversation. They are experiencing it outside of school. Like they should be a part of the conversation. They are experiencing it outside of school most definitely and um, and and so like how do we actually be really transparent about it with with students and um, have them partake in the solution making, because that is actually the thing that we are wanting to prepare them for, and here we have an opportunity to really have their voice be centered also in kind of like how we think about solutions around this yeah, which actually that brings us to something we're working on, um, which is trying to create like a workshop or a learning experience that, either directly or implicitly, includes sort of the student perspective on how how would?
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):you like, rather than trying to figure out how do you prevent students from using ai tools. Help teachers understand how would you like, rather than trying to figure out how do you prevent students from using AI tools. Help teachers understand how would students use. Ai tools to get around your assignments. And you know, to me the first step in addressing cheating is you have to get into the mind of the cheater and for the most part they're not evil conniving, you know.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):And for the most part they're not evil, conniving, mischievous people. They are enterprising kids who have soccer practice or band or friends, and this assignment where they have to write a book report about someone that they don't really care about, yes they're not going to want to do it.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):And it feels like they just have to go through the motions and it doesn't feel like relevant to what they're interested in and so sure they're gonna. It's and it's also just, I think it's unfair to, um, you know the idea that, like, you can literally type in a sentence and press enter and get an entire assignment, like, so now we are basically. It's like I the the analogy I've used once with somebody, which maybe resonates with educators, is vaping, and so if someone's like, addicted to nicotine and we're trying to, we're telling them, okay, well, we don't want you to use nicotine. But then they are in this world where in front of them is, like you know, a whole matter of you know vapes, right in front of them, yeah, and and their flavor, their candy flavored and, um, you know, even very uh, uh, disciplined adults struggle with quitting nicotine, as, unfortunately, a lot of high school students these days as well.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Um, but it strikes me as like it's really hard to expect a student to like be able to resist the tantalization, the tantalizing opportunity of like you know one sentence, press enter Um, and so you know it's of like you know one sentence, press enter yeah, and so you know it's. To me there's like actually some a sense of almost respect, of like this is not a value judgment on.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):You know you're a bad person for trying to get around the assignment, but actually designing an assignment that's like where they can't just type one sentence and press enter is almost like it's helping them get to the right approach to learning without sort of expecting them to sort of be holier than thou, right, one of the things I want to do on the show or podcast or whatever this is is kind of like get into real world experiences of educators, and so one of the things that I came across I follow a lot of like the educator subreddits. I'm going to paraphrase, but one of the sub, one of the subreddits that I found, um, there was a marketing professor, so he's at a community college and he was posting, he's he's figured out his way around to get around chat, gbt, yeah, and so basically he says oh, you know, I figured out, basically you know how to get around this and the way I structure my sign, one of my assignments is, it's basic, it's I think he has a lecture about how to write like a marketing a good marketing email.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):And so he, he says, well, what I do is I just assume that students are going to use chat GPT, and so what I tell them is I want you to use chat GPT to write a marketing email, yeah. And then I want you to critique it. And um, and then one extra layer. He says, and then in the criticism uh, reference like specific slides in my lecture that they have access to um as part of the critique. And I'm curious uh, I have my own opinions, but I'm curious from your perspective like is is that an example of a chat GPT proof assignment? Like has he solved the problem?
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):yeah, I think it's a. It's a good first attempt. Um the, the, our chat models have increased their ability so you could actually feed the speed chat, gpt the slides and pose the question. Now go back and critique the response you just gave me and use the slide deck for some citations, and you've just used ChatGPT to do the critique, which is the thing that I think the professor was trying to not have students do, and so I think they're like. Adding the additional layer of critique is, I think, is a good direction to go. But again, you can use ChatGPT Cloud to kind of do that critique.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):So the prompt would basically go so first you say, okay, write a marketing email about whatever the topic is, and then you would copy and paste, maybe create a new chat and say, okay, your assignment is you're supposed to now critique this marketing email and chat. Gpt allows you to upload materials and so you upload a PDF file of the PowerPoint and you say reference this PowerPoint and in your critique site, the specific slides um as part of your critique. Yes, exactly, and that would take all of maybe five minutes, I mean.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):I think in total maybe eight minutes, and then let's just add another 15 minutes for a little bit of massaging to make it look and feel a little bit authentic and you can even say like oh, you know, make some grammar mistakes.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):I don't think that's a good, I don't think that's a solution. I think that's actually it's an example of just why it's so important for educators to just come to peace with the fact that they are always going to be a few steps behind their kids, these young, enterprising Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids who are steeped and immersed in not just what this technology is, but also, like you know, like how to uh content is like one of the most sort of common forms of content on um on TikTok, on Instagram.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Um, so, so yeah, I guess what is. Could we help this? Uh, you know well-intentioned college professor.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):What would?
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):it look like to adapt the assignment a little bit.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):So I think I come back to like, what's the purpose of this assignment? Is the purpose for students to be able to draft a really strong, like marketing campaign email? Is it for them to be able to identify, like, the key components of a strong marketing campaign? To be able to identify, like the key components of a strong marketing campaign, or maybe more like, is it for them to be able to actually draft something that they then test and see if it's actually effective with like a, with the demographic that they're trying to reach Right and so um, the last one I mentioned, cause I think that's where you can do some interesting things where it's like have chat, gpt, write your campaign.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Now you actually have to take it out to like three or four different people, have them read it? Did it resonate in the way that you thought it would? And like, haven't have some sort of dialogue or interaction with other people outside the class or even within the class, or bring it to class live. We're going to look at it together. Where do we see it meeting the criteria that we've talked about in class? Where do we see it not meeting the criteria? How do you know? And you can do live polls with students to kind of assess it, and so that's another way of kind of bringing I think it's like and both of those things I think it's thinking about, like what's the human connection back to this? How are we bringing other people in, how are we talking about this together, instead of it continuing to be an individual assignment that is completed and turned into the professor? That's one way that I would think about kind of doing more to make more out of that assignment.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Yeah, okay, so let me try to abstract this. So one of the things I'm hearing is um, you know, I think teachers, educators are increasingly going to have to treat in-class time as one of the most important moments of their, uh, their educator educational toolkit, and they need to use that time to really, um, uh, uh, try to build the skills that they where.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):They need to just be be sure that students are actually doing it themselves. And so I feel the same about like writing an essay, like I don't think you know. I often will say, like the age of the take home essay is dead, and I do think that's the case. Um, but I don't think that students don't no longer need to learn how to write essays. It's just that I think the take-home essay is dead. That's probably something that needs to.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):You need to spend more class time having students write, yeah, um, so I like this, and so you could imagine, yeah, I guess the kids could come in.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):They've used chat gbt to write, you know, try to write the best marketing email, and so, and maybe what I would, even, the one thing I would also do is I would, uh, before any assignment, I would do a share screen and I'm going to, I'm going to pull up chat GPT and I'm going to show you what I know, all of you.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):The first thing you're all going to do, I'm going to copy and paste the assignment, plug it into chat GPT and press enter and so, like that is the baseline. Obviously, I expect something better than that, and so it's up to you, first of all, to come to class with something that's clearly better than whatever the base. You know, the basic thing that chat gbt is yeah, um, and, and then using that clean class time, and then for what happens out of class, yeah, what are the like basically trying to hone in and what are things that just chat gbt can't do. It can't go and have a conversation with um, with people, right, and, and you know what, if a student and I think there's a certain point you get to a place where, if a student is really savvy, they could have chat gpt, create different personas of people and then like have the conversation and like use 11 labs to, like, you know, create the um, uh, you know, uh, like voice, like real, like synthetic voices that are actually sort of like responding, and you know what you might.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):just you might, at a certain point, say, you know, if a student is going that far, I'm, I'm either, like it's just it's going to be a small subset of kids and so I'm not going to like overpronate towards that.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):And also maybe there's actually that student is demonstrating, you know, a lot of sort of enterprise, entrepreneurial spirit and skill that I I'm just going to sort of agree to look the other way, um, but but what you've also pointed to is sort of thinking back to the calculator and what the calculator unlocked is um the depth and the complexity of what we can do in a math class increases.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):And so maybe the same applies to this marketing class, where you know what you can actually go way beyond. You know the assignments that you had before.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Yeah.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):And so, yeah, I think that works. I think it's easier said than done, because I think what often teachers will say is well, but there's other stuff I need to get done in class. Yeah, so it's. I never want to, and I think this is important is like there is no sort of quick fix. Right, I never want to, and I think this is important is like there is no sort of quick fix to these questions. But I think we can actually at least get directionally on the right path and certainly identify where. You know, I think the worst case is that a teacher thinks they have designed a foolproof assignment, yes, and they're blind to the fact that they've just you know, they've just added one more extra step. That might not be, you know, the challenging students, the way that they think.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Right, and I exactly, and I think like the more and more I've been in the world outside of like my own school, the more I realize there's so little that I actually that anybody really actually does in isolation in like a take home assignment kind of way that I did so much of in my especially high school experience.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):And I think there is something around like how do you build in more of those collaborative experiences which I think reflects what life will be like for ever after school, which is you're going to be working with groups of people and completing the assignments like together, right Projects together and I know group work is notoriously challenging to do with kids, but also, I think, some of the most meaningful work and like skill building for kids as well. And I think that there is a opportunity here to figure out and think about how do you use this new technology to kind of help pull out those skills more of like what does it mean to actually work on something across people and across contents? And I think that's really exciting because I think that's reflective of what most of career and life readiness means as well.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Yeah, this is the. At the end of the day, being able to write a good marketing email by itself is actually even if. Even if you were able, even if there was a perfect chat GPT detector and what you were able to do was get around students and force them to go home and just write the email themselves.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):The problem is writing a good marketing email is not that that skill is not going to command economic value in the way that it did two years ago. And which brings me to actually this is so. I mentioned my little anecdote about this nerdy discussion that my friends and I were having about the cotton, gin and the loom and the beginning of the first industrial revolution. It was because I was basically kind of.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):I was talking about I just watched this lecture from David Autore at MIT and he was talking about some of the research that they had done with language models and sort of the way that they're impacting people in workplaces that have actually started to implement them, things like customer service, and one of the insights that he had was it's not actually the. He was like I'm less concerned about AI destroying, like about jobs disappearing, like there will be jobs that disappear. There's going to be more new jobs, but the bigger challenge that we're going to have to face is that the economic value of certain types of expertise decreases, and so, while there might be lots of jobs, um, they aren't necessarily going to command the same, uh, wages that they did before.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Yeah, you know. So, like sure, uh, you might be able to write more marketing emails, and there's going to be people at companies that need to sort of be at the wheel and using chat, gbt, but the skill of using ai tools is going to be commoditized. Yeah, um, and so and this and so. This is like, I think, to me the the meta takeaway there is um, what is the heart? What are the hardest skills to commoditize? It's those durable skills. Yeah, um, and that was like and sam altman, actually he was, this was like actually three years ago yeah, he was.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):You know the jobs that are really going to disappear. People are going to spend less time in front of their computers. Yeah, and he was. It was very apt and I think the and that actually sort of marries with one of the ways that I would talk and people ask me, like well, what is my job at risk? You know it's hard to say what specific job is at risk, but I think if someone wants to know whether they are equipped to succeed or maybe fall behind in the age of AI, I think it's like open up your calendar and look at how many meetings you have yeah.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):And if your workday consists mostly of time by yourself sitting in front of a computer, whether it's writing code or writing advertising copy or press releases, whatever it is, if you're content generating or doing research, you know that that should give you some some concern, right, because I think that's the type of work that is going to be automated. Yeah, what's harder to automate is, you know, having a conversation face to face with a client, a customer, a colleague, yeah, and. And then that brings you to OK, well, if that's, if that's where we're heading, where students need to be able to have more of this or, like, do more of the human aspects of work, well, what are the skills they need to have? To be able to engage with colleagues, or really annoying colleagues, or annoying clients.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Yeah, because that's really where this push comes to shove. I mean, like a great colleague is a great colleague, but some colleagues are. We don't have any difficult colleagues, but obviously many people do and and you know that experience of also just like dealing with, like you talked about, like group assignments as being some of the hardest things that students deal with, but actually even when you fail, as part of a group, you learn a lot about like why did you fail? What was your role in the success or failure?
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):of that. Yeah, I mean, I think it, I think that's it and it's like I was just. We were just having a conversation with our eight year old about, um, some of the things she was experiencing with, like some of her friendships and people that she likes, and we had to explain to her it's like people aren't like math Um, what you do with one person might warrant one reaction one day and another reaction another day, and it hasn't like you haven't changed or done anything differently, but something in their world has and you have to be aware of that, and what you do with one person might be different than what you do with another person because they need something else. And I mean, there's so much of that social learning that happens so young, right, but I think that's what we're trying to instill with, I think, all of our kids.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):It's like, how do you actually interact and interface with others such that you are able to do the best kind of work you want to do and bring out the best kind of work from others? And that requires being able to understand and like read cues and not take things personally, and, um, being able to like confront head on and something isn't going well, and how do you do that effectively? And, um, I think we have a lot to learn from our younger classrooms, because they do a lot of that work explicitly, because it's so much a part of what younger like. What the younger kids are working on in school is just understanding how to interact with one another, and I think we can bring some more of that back to our upper grades too.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Yeah, yeah, and that's why.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):That's why I it gives me pause when some of the excitement around AI tutoring gives me pause because I think it it assumes that the most important thing in education is just sort of like the knowledge transfer and like learning the things.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):But I worry about a world where students are all just sitting in front of their computer, even if, even if, like, scores go up. Yeah, there, there is, there is something to be said about, just like, especially now that kids are, we know, they're going home and they're interacting with companions and we can't necessarily stop that, yeah, or teachers can't, right, they don't have any control over it. So the school, I think increasingly, is going to be the place where we can ensure one place where we can guarantee the students are like building those, those soft skills, yeah, um, and of course, the hard part is, you know, it's easy for us to say that to the teacher, who is measured not on soft skills but rather on the hard skills and the standards, yeah, and I think that kind of brings us back to, like, the curriculum that we've been building there's.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):You know we have we've been paying a lot of attention to how do we align this to the standard so that it can check both boxes, and we're not. This is not some crazy insightful thing. Like there's a lot of other really high quality curriculum out there that does both, yeah, and project-based learning, while we utilize it throughout our curriculum is also not new, right, like we didn't invent the idea of project-based learning, but this is something that schools have talked about for a long time, haven't necessarily, you know, mixed results, in terms of which schools are doing a really good job implementing it at scale. I think they actually oftentimes really struggle.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):So okay, to close things off.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):I just want to like you're, you're not done, unfortunately like the treadmill sort of continues as a, as a curriculum developer um, what? What are you excited about? That's coming next. You know, I know that you don't have to without sharing too much, but maybe like one thing that you can sort of share with our um small but but loyal audience that that they can expect in 2025.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Well, I'll share two things because I think it's really exciting.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):I think AIEDU has kind of focused on secondary in the past and I'm excited to kind of bring elementary into the mix and so we'll have actually some content um specifically for elementary teachers on like how, how to kind of bring some of these concepts into the classroom, which, um, like we were just talking about, it's actually skills that they're already working on um in their ELA and math standards, um and and so that I'm really excited about the other thing that I'm really looking forward to, with having kind of built the AI readiness framework and the competencies for students, we have been mapping kind of what do learning experiences look like across grades or within grades that kind of can build around these competencies, and so thinking about packages of content that address the ethical implications of AI for, say, sixth graders, like what are some warmup activities, some lessons that you might be able to use and projects, so a teacher who is interested in that topic or their students have kind of a bigger bank of resources that they can kind of pull from um to to support kind of a a learning experience across, across that arc too.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):So more to come on that, but um, really excited for kind of these, uh, these resources that are kind of going into younger grades and kind of, uh, deeper learning as well, that are kind of going into younger grades and kind of deeper learning as well.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Yeah, I'm very excited for the elementary school stuff. It's something that people ask for all the time, and it's not that we don't think it's important, but it seemed like the the most important place to start is like the future workers who are, like you know, only a few years away from you know, moving into sort of their post-secondary pathways, whether that's career or college.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):But you know, anybody with young kids will tell you like there is a ripe opportunity to begin conversations and actually start to orient them. So that we're not, you know, because a lot of stuff is baked, especially like I know, like career exploration, you know a lot of the research suggests that you know the fundamental, the most important moments, for you know people sort of self-identifying with different careers happens like a lot younger than people often expect. Yeah, excellent, well ell Well this was really fun.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Thank you f.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):This was legitimately the first show that we recorded. I think it went pretty well. Yeah so yeah. Thank you so much for joining us.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Y Than , , Khushali. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah Director director of Learning.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Thank you so much, Alex, it was great as always, and if anybody who's watching wants to chat with you, follow up. How can they get in touch?
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):You can reach me at khushali@aiEDU. at org org or I f if you want to reach out to the learning team more broadly, at aiEDUrg. rg. rg. org. org.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiEDU):Okay, amazing. Thank you so much.
Khushali Narechania (Director of Learning, aiEDU):Yeah, thanks.