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 https://www.aiEDU.org
aiEDU Studios
Dr. Kiesha King: The education revolution needs Internet access
What good is 'innovation in edtech' if millions of students can't access it?
Dr. Keisha King takes us on her journey from classroom teacher to education technology leader at T-Mobile, showing how authentic educator perspectives can transform tech initiatives in schools. With a background in virtual schooling and curriculum development, Dr. King brings a uniquely grounded approach to her work in connecting millions of students to the Internet.
At the heart of Dr. King's philosophy is a powerful framework: "Curriculum is the foundation, pedagogy is the method, and technology is the support." This perspective has guided her leadership of Project 10Million, T-Mobile's $10.7 billion commitment that has connected over 6 million students across 4,000 school districts with no-cost hotspots and five years of service.
Despite that progress, Dr. King candidly acknowledges the digital divide's persistence as pandemic-era connectivity programs expire. "Under-served populations are accustomed to programs coming and going," she notes, highlighting how short-term interventions often leave students with devices that become "paperweights" without ongoing connectivity. This reality creates real challenges as schools adopt AI and other advanced technologies, potentially widening rather than narrowing opportunity gaps.
Our conversation with Dr. King offers invaluable insight for educators, technology leaders, and policymakers who are navigating the intersection of innovation and access in schools. Her approach (listening deeply to educators' needs rather than prescribing solutions) provides a powerful model for corporate-education partnerships that truly serve students and their communities.
Learn more about Dr. Kiesha King and T-Mobile's Project 10Million:
aiEDU: The AI Education Project
Dr Keisha King. You're an educator and yet you find yourself now at, you know, one of the largest technology companies in the world. You know, doing work across the country Like how did you get to where? Yeah, what does that journey look like for someone to be in the classroom and working in schools?
Kiesha King:Yeah, it's definitely so different. I feel like just yesterday I was in a classroom with kiddos, right, and it's funny, I remember when I first got here I used to I was still calling them my babies. I'm like you know, what are we going to do with the babies? What happens, you know? And I'm like, okay, there's, there's big babies and small babies we're talking about here.
Kiesha King:So I came from this space of being a teacher, went into kind of leading a virtual school from a principal perspective and then moved into curriculum and technology innovation and what that looks like from an integrative like model within schools, and then transition from there and building virtual schools into this idea of, well, I can build virtual schools anywhere, but what does that look like from a strategic perspective, designing it from like a county agency or a community college or a state education agency? And so I started my own company and started building all over the country. And then T-Mobile I was one of T-Mobile's first education customers in the school district I was in. We had around 70,000 kiddos, very high percentage of free and reduced lunch in that district. Which district was this? It was Aldi and ISD out of Houston, yeah, and so I was one of T-Mobile's first customers there, because for virtual school, obviously you're going to have gaps and access, right. So kiddos are going home, we're building all these amazing virtual courses, but they didn't have devices and they didn't have connectivity. And so I worked with T-Mobile to provide that for them and T-Mobile said hey.
Kiesha King:A few years later, with T-Mobile to provide that for them, and T-Mobile said hey. A few years later, they said hey, can you come and help us build an education segment? And so I came on board to start working with what they were just launching the EmpowerEd award program. So I came in and kind of worked on building up that program to capacity and then I think we had connected maybe around 20,000 students at the time and we just knew that there was this huge trajectory for growth in the education market. Right, it was just necessary.
Kiesha King:You know, access is something akin to, you know, having electricity. It is at the core of making sure you have everything you need. When we talk about innovation, none of it could happen if no one has access to the internet and tools, resources that they need. And so when I got to about 2.6 million students connected with the team of Wolfer Government Team, we inherited Sprint, so we had this, you know, this great merging of teams coming together and Sprint's education team was already doing the One Million Project, which they were doing phenomenal work over there with Dan Copps and his team, and so we really just came together as this unique organization with this highly philanthropic background, but this core industry driving kind of desire, and brought all that together and launched Project 10 Million, which was a $10.7 billion commitment to bridge the digital divide, and today we're over 6 million kiddos connected in over 4,000 school districts.
Kiesha King:So we've come a long way. We still have a long way to go, I think, looking at a lot of the investments that T-Mobile has made in respect to the network and, you know, thinking about all the research and policy and all the things that have taken place to make sure that we're being innovative, but we're also thinking about the infrastructure that's required to support that innovation.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):I think that part's been really important. So I'm proud to just be a part of a part of the conversation and a part of, you know, the change agent in making biggest districts in the country.
Kiesha King:Yeah.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Before. This is way before the pandemic. This is like. This is literally as education is starting to figure out. Oh wait, we can actually do online learning.
Kiesha King:This is like years before, years before and I would probably say maybe around 2008 or 2009,. You know, I just fell into this love for technology and Sony put PlayStation 1s for digital literacy in my classroom, you know, and it just, it just spurred this spark of innovation in me to say what else is possible? Right? How else can I expand this learning journey? How how can we think outside of the box with education? And I've been there ever since. I'm still there today. You know, I live in this organization from a work perspective, but I have this really unique opportunity to build strategy here, right? Like, how do we think about leveraging 5G technologies and within the realm of education and government and digital equity and all these other kind of buzzwords that we talk about so much?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, how does it feel? I mean because this is not your first rodeo and you know I was at the ASU GSB Summit. You've been how many times have you been, is it like? Was that a number to?
Kiesha King:you. Yeah, I've been there a few times. I have a unique opportunity to go and speak and meet my friends, like you, so yeah, it's been. It's been fun. That's just one of the forums, though, right, like there's so many, how do you prioritize them?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Well, that's, that's a yeah. How long do you have? Um, but but my, I guess. I guess what I'm getting at is you know, this year at the ACGC summit it was, it was might as well have been the ACGC AI summit. You know that AI was, yeah, almost every conversation in some way was artificial and I missed the AI show this year.
Kiesha King:I really wanted to go. I had another commitment so I couldn't make it. I had to get my daughter ready for prom. I was like, ok, I can't miss doing what has to come first.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Oh see, you were in San Diego last week.
Kiesha King:No, I was supposed to be in San Diego last week. I was in Houston and then I ended up in Boston because I was asked to speak at Harvard at their innovation summit.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Oh, that's cool.
Kiesha King:Okay, yeah, it was nice and I flew back home.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):That's cool. Okay, yeah, it was nice and I flew back home, but I'm sure this is the I mean, I'm sure at most of the education conferences and summits that you've attended over the past let's say, two years, it's felt like very heavy and like bring us back to sort of this moment where the Internet is starting to mature, you know video and like bandwidth is unlocking the ability to do sort of synchronous video and certainly asynchronous video. Was there sort of a similar level of exuberance? Was it sort of like every conversation was about online learning or the internet, or did it have that zeitgeist feeling that, like AI has right now?
Kiesha King:I think so, but I think that it just rapidly. You know AI. You can talk about AI every day within a different framework and still be talking about AI, right, and I think that's the thing that's so exciting about it. It feels like it's just never ending, like we will probably be in the throes of AI for, you know, as long as we can think. I think at that time you know around. You know between 2010, 2012,. We're looking at E-rate and modernization. We're thinking about how do we create. You know, between 2010, 2012,. We're looking at E-rate and modernization. We're thinking about how do we create, you know, a 99.9% Wi-Fi infrastructure across K-12 school districts all over the country, right, so the conversations were very different, but I think, as we started to address those things and figure out exactly how right, like oh, we can't do the access points like this we actually need to think about, you know, how do we run fiber and what does that look like and how do we make sure we have the bandwidth and capacity required to manage all these kids and what happens on, you know, thursdays, when they're all testing at the same time or they all get on teacher tube at the same, whatever, it is right. So we're kind of overcoming those things.
Kiesha King:And then we moved into the next phase and I think online learning was kind of this all the way for a long time, but I think it was. So it felt so contradictory to teaching right To like, in-person teaching. So there was this challenge about it that said like okay, well, you know, if we're going to build online learning, then what does that mean for our teachers? Right Like, and are we trying to replace teachers? What does that? You know what does that look like? And there's a saying I used to always say you know, curriculum is the foundation, pedagogy is the method and technology is the support. And I would say this you know, I kind of was open with that all the time because I never wanted teachers or people, even people outside of education from a private-public partnership perspective to think that there was any confusion around curriculum and teaching and learning being at the core right of how we work with our kiddos, and that was a big part of the framework and the conversation just continued to evolve.
Kiesha King:Now I think we're seeing the technology evolve really quickly, but we're seeing on a higher level, the conversations stay consistent, and that's where AI has consistently been at the core of our conversations for an extended period of time now and, honestly, I mean, aiedu was one of the first conversations that I had, one of the first, like uniform organizations, that said this is what we want to talk about and this is what we want to address, and it wasn't piecemeal like there was 15 different priorities. It was this is the priority, this is the focus and this is the conversation. Right, yes, we're going to grow with it and evolve with it, but this is essentially where we want to focus and I admire that. I mean again, you've seen it over the years. I've seen it over the years, but I've also seen it matriculate really quickly and I think sitting in this space is really, really important.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, well, you have, I mean we, we, we kind of did call it Um, and so, you know, you know I, I will.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):I'm increasingly just sort of, you know, trying not to be sort of like a um, you know, almost like a passive, aggressively humble, you know, like no, like we, really like we, like we really had, like we, we got one thing really right, but I think the other, like you, actually get to something that that we, that I am obsessed with, speaking of what we're obsessed with, um, so, at not just asv, gsv, but really like all the ai and education summits, um, most of the focus is on the tools, right, like 95 of the conversations that were happening in San Diego last week were how do we use AI to improve teaching and learning, to help teachers, to help them save time, support, tutoring, et cetera, et cetera, many, many different sort of like flavors of this.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):And we don't offer a tool and I actually had a little bit of FOMO, I'll be honest, because you know it's hard to go into all these for a tool, and I actually had a little bit of fomo, I'll be honest, because you know it's hard to go into all these like and there was like a few funder receptions that are like, oh, we're, we're launching a new fund specifically for people building ai tools and I'm like, oh well, that's really not us. Um, yeah, so there was a little bit of fomo there, but at the same time, um, I, I feel confident that we really stand out, because our, our whole push is that there's like two sides of this equation. There's like the technology side, which is important, if not critical, but the much harder work is in the human side of the equation. You know, there's like there's 13,000 school districts, there's like almost 4 million teachers, 50 million plus kids yeah 100 million parents, 50 state agencies, and it's all decentralized and it's fragmented and it's not interconnected.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):There's no, uh, there's a lot less collaboration than than what you'd you'd hope would exist. And so it's we. We have a very big, complicated, maybe one of the most complicated human systems, uh, in the U? S, maybe in the world, um, and we are trying to help it change and evolve at a timeline that feels unique. I think, you know, the internet happened gradually enough, like we all remember. The first time we had dial-up, and then it was like several years later and then you had slightly faster internet and then, you know, suddenly you had computer labs.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):I mean, what's happening now is you have, you know, on a monthly basis, you know, breakthrough developments in technology, immediate proliferation of access to teachers and students, yeah, and so there's there's this question of how are we going to help this very complicated system adapt? And to me, what you're sort of getting at is like there's the big idea of how do we use technology to, as you say, support the work of education, which is really a way of saying, educators, but then how do educators need to adapt, teaching and learning, given that AI is not just going to be used to support educators, it's going to be used to support every other domain in the, in the economy. Yeah, all the career pathways are going to start incorporating ai and potentially shifting quite significantly. Like that, like people, people in silicon valley are just like it's a it's a foregone conclusion that ai is going to like massively disrupt computer science, for example.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Um, so, so yeah, I mean like double clicking on this idea of how do we center teachers, um, what are some strategies? Because you, you mean, you've you spent a long time, you know, like at in district leadership, so you kind of know what it's like to be on the other side of the equation and now you're sort of you're not really a vendor because you're actually giving a lot of resources for free to schools. So I'm sure it's like a different type of meeting than like people that are hustling and trying to sell stuff. But like, what does it look like to engage educators and ed leaders in a way that's really authentic and that doesn't just make them feel like you're sort of presupposing the technology is sort of going to be the savior for all of their problems?
Kiesha King:I mean, in any conversation it starts with listening, right? I mean we know that private public partnership is at the core of the type of growth that we need to see in the education world. It can't happen single-handedly on either side of the house else. And so you know, just being open to listen to what schools need, understanding that they all have different needs and different leaders have different perspectives on how to solve those needs. I think from an industry, you know framework, we have to be open to just really sitting down with school district leaders and a lot of times I go in and I just say, well, like can we just sit down and whiteboard this out? Like can we bring in your leadership team and just talk about it as a problem solution framework or as a here's the direction we want to go, here's the end goal? Let's do some backwards planning and talk about what that can look like. Right, because in most places, 99.9% of schools have like the infrastructure on campus in order to support. You know Wi-Fi and those types of things, but when you start getting into e-sports, you start getting into immersive learning. You know drone technology, other types of AI development that depends on low latency. Now you can have bigger conversations around. Do you really have the infrastructure that you need to drive the innovation that you're hoping to drive? Some school districts that's a priority. Other school districts it's not necessarily a priority, but they're open to the conversation to say, like, what exactly do we need? Is there a certain subset of students that, like, deserves to have access to this? You know I love what you mentioned earlier because you made me think about this example I use from Sir Ken Robinson sometimes when I'm talking, and it's just this idea that you know there's this time you had to. You know, light a match and light something to make the lights come on Right, and then you get to this point where you got to flip a switch and now you walk in the room and the lights just know you're there, right, and that's what's happening with this world of AI.
Kiesha King:We're sitting and we're preparing and try and think about how we create the structures and I had a word for it before and I was talking about it when I was on stage at South by Southwest EDU. But it's what does a structure look like for education? How do we create the same way that we sit down and we do our curriculum writing in summer and we do all the alignments and we think about how we want to integrate this into, you know, the world of our kids and get them test ready, right, like in world ready and workforce ready. How do we do that same type of thing with AI in a way that creates structure that can eliminate some of the fear? Right, and that's another component of this that I think AIEDU really like hits the nail on the head with. And you've been kind of opening the doors to that for so long and saying, right, like, yes, all these technologies are amazing and the direction of AI and the growth it's going to happen, whether we want it to happen or not, right.
Kiesha King:But how do we align that from a policy perspective?
Kiesha King:How do we create some structures and standards right for this new technology that allows us to integrate it in a way that's safe, that protects our kiddos' privacy, that, you know, makes sure that they have the literacy the AI literacy needed in order to use the technology?
Kiesha King:You know, that's really been a lot of the focus for me right in this transition Like how can I, when I'm sitting across from school district leaders, really listen intently in a way that says, right, I understand what it is you know, and there's a baseline there. I want to contribute what I know and create a joint baseline. And then how do we now go build a priority structure that can allow your kiddos to experience the best, brightest future that's available to them and your teachers? Right, I love your point. And like how do you enable teachers Because you know you can put the devices and the technology and the resources there all day long but unless you create again the standards and framework for the requirement for use and the requirement for integration and make sure that they're upskilling in a way that lets them do that, you're going to be in a difficult position, right?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):So yeah, that's a really great question but I mean, I mean what I'm hearing.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Is this, this idea that you're not entering the conversations, um, with this assumption that, like you know what's best, you're really engaging the system leaders to like, like, like they need to chart the strategy you um have a vested interest in their success.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):But you also recognize that there's like super multidimensional and there's a lot of different interconnected pieces that you're not necessarily going to be able to help them with. But part of it is, I think there is value in sort of like sketching it out, because all the things that you just described you basically described the um you know core components of an ai readiness strategy. Right, it's like, yeah, um, it's not just about what tool, it's like what tool that fits within your procurement guidelines. And if you don't have guidelines, well, you need to have a plan to deal with the fact that there are no guidelines and you need to have alignment with your goals on, and requirements on, privacy and student safety. And. But I wonder if you have one of the easier jobs in this space, because the necessary condition to all of that is access to the Internet.
Kiesha King:Yeah.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Right and so yeah, for sure. And can you tell me about? I mean, I sometimes I worry that there's all this exuberance about AI and coming out of COVID, there's now this assumption that we've solved the problem of of access, of broadband access. And I'm curious for your take on that, like how, how close are we and how far are we?
Kiesha King:We're far. I mean we still have a long way to go. You know, we have millions and millions of folks all over the country that still lack um that core internet access right. We, uh, we saw the end of the um ACP. We saw the end of the uh, the affordable connectivity plan.
Kiesha King:Got it Right. So that was, you know, a multimillion dollar project to provide connectivity to families and communities that had the need. We saw the end of that last spring. We saw the end of the emergency connectivity plan Right, that was, you know, billions of dollars set aside to make sure that kiddos had connectivity outside of the traditional school day. That was initiated through the pandemic. We saw NTIA come in and say you know what, we are going to dedicate one point two, five billion dollars for this competitive digital equity grant and all these other things.
Kiesha King:Some of those things are, you know, paused now until, you know, we sort through some things from a policy perspective. We saw, you know, we see all these government programs kind of come and go, and I think we've seen this over time, right, we've seen this over the years. These different programs and I think, unfortunately, underserved populations are accustomed to programs coming and going. Right, you know, for a year we have this and then we don't have it anymore, and a year we have that eligible student households to qualify for a no-cost hotspot and five years of connectivity previously 100 gigs per year and now 200 gigs per year as of this last year, and I think it's exciting to see, timo will not only continue that commitment into its fifth year now, but also double down right. And that's been really exciting, particularly where it comes in and says this is going to be directly to the consumer and the family, right? So the family can just go to the website, put in their information, without the credit checks and the hassles and all that, and it's just shipped directly to the home. That's a really special situation that you know.
Kiesha King:A lot of times you're having this conversation and you're saying I know, for me, I talk with other vendors, I talk with private entities, I talk with all types of folks, even conferences, and I say is there any way you can tell the people coming to your conference about Project 10 Million? And a lot of times you know, the response that I get is well, can you pay us for us to tell them about this? Right, like. And I totally understand that. But I think there is an element that says right for the folks that I'm hoping to serve. I want to make sure they have the absolute best value for what I'm providing for them, and a part of that value is for me to put every program and resource in front of them that's going to come in and do great work. Yes, it is a K-12 program, but guess what? If they're a senior in high school, that's still five years of connectivity that can support their post-secondary education.
Kiesha King:Like you know, to me I think it's a no-brainer. You know, johnny, sitting at the front of you, front of his mom's job, waiting for her to get off work, can now continue searching or can Google a random thought about how to fix his bike. Those are the things that make kiddos smarter, right, and it's something that for me, it just means so much. It just means so much, and I think we miss the mark on opportunities to continue to share. When an organization decides to do something this big, it's massive. Right, there's no red tape, there's nothing else involved, it's just a massive commitment and it was a massive undertaking to build. But I think me, leading this part of T-Mobile's work allows me to sit in spaces with you know, it almost feels like no skin in the game, other than saying I want us all to do really, really good work, right, like what incentivizes you, and let's figure out how we build around that. And I can do it purely, and I can do it from a framework of the expertise that I built over the last two decades and I'm excited to keep doing it, alex, like I really am.
Kiesha King:I think there's an element of humility that has to come in when you are sitting across from someone and you say I just want to hear you, right, like I'm doing this big stuff and we got these things going on, but maybe that's not really the answer to what like, to what you actually need. Maybe it's a mindset, maybe it's a maybe. Maybe you don't know how to connect the dots between this great offer and the next steps that you're hoping to go, like, how do we figure that part out? Right, and so that's the piece I think that I'm going to continue to really just hone in on. Are we exacerbating some of our problems because we're afraid that there's no structure around what's new and what's innovative?
Kiesha King:I wonder that, right, I know that there's fear because AI is there. You know, I think there was a Gallup poll that found that maybe 28% of students reported that their schools allowed AI use. Now, obviously, this is for students, right? But why the fear? Right and most of the time. If I were to ask you right now, alex, if you had access to all the information in the world, all the information. You could ask any question you want. What would you do with it? You could do one thing. What would you do?
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Hmm, that's a good question. Um, I mean, I think I'd do what I have been doing, which is learning about. I mean, I've had the opportunity through and this is I specifically credit YouTube for this. You know I can now go and be teleported into classrooms at Stanford and MIT, hear from the world's leading astrophysicists. You know I'm not a STEM person, but I was always interested in space and you know I wouldn't have made it would be.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):It was really inaccessible for me to go to, like the you know, the physics building at OSU. I don't have to deal with any of that. Um, I totally, I totally see where you're going with this in terms of the this. This has the opportunity to be such a gift. It does the students and, but, but it's it, yeah, I for its worth. I credit to you, um, because while you were one of the first people to take a meeting with me and like I just want to, it was, you know, like, like now I feel like I'm constantly, you know, on the other side of it where I have to feel really bad about not having time to take all the meetings that I really would love to take I get a lot of flat because I have that personality.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):By the way, I take meetings with students everybody but you, you took a meeting with me before most people really were, I mean, for most people. I think the AI education project just might as well have been like the crypto education project or the metaverse education project. It was sort of just, you know, another hype technology. You know there's not substance here. So you saw it, you, you, I mean you and I immediately connected and I understand why.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Right, because you have this unique vantage point of, like the past technology revolution, the most recent one, right in terms of, like, mobile and internet, um, but the other thing I'll credit you for is, even though we told, I mean, I think we really connected and you know, you were always super responsive and we had lots of calls, lots and lots of calls and at the end of the day, you know, you didn't give us a grant and it wasn't because you were, you believed that what we were doing was important.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):But you, you were like we're really focused, like, we're really focused on this, like on access and, and I remember saying like, oh, but this could be a way to like, promote and raise awareness. And you know, I think it's hard to sometimes acknowledge that, like, you know, when, when funders are not, when you don't perfectly align with the funders party, but I also have like respect, because on the corporate side it's, you know, like sometimes philanthropy is seen as just a you know a marketing strategy, and when you were talking about those sort of being, those communities, I think I'm sure it takes a lot of time to build the trust that you're not just coming in to like do a press release and capture some videos that T-Mobile is going to post on Twitter and disappear. Yeah.
Kiesha King:And disappear. Yeah, you're so right. You know the hotspots could have been done in a way where they just became a paperweight. You know all that funding, all the things that were canceled, I mean the equipment's still out there. It's still out there. It's still sitting, you know, on that kiddo's dresser with no connectivity to it. If they were a part of the emergency connectivity project or potentially a part of ACP, right, those things are still there.
Kiesha King:I want to go back to the question I asked you because there's a way that you didn't answer. You didn't say right, if you had access to all the technology in the world, you would plagiarize, right? And when we think about the fear that's happening in the K-12 world and just in education in general, I think the fear is around this idea of just copywriting. Now, of course, there's some privacy and some other. You know things that are there, but it's really not. It's really not understanding the expansive opportunity to unlock the minds of people who are leveraging these new technologies. It's really just a lack of core understanding and literacy around the exponential potential of having access to all the information in the world. Right, because it's a very minor way to think to say, oh well, you know. I just don't want them to cheat on their paper. I don't want them to. You know, go and write something that they didn't write. I don't want to right.
Kiesha King:There's so much opportunity in creating a broader perspective around AI and immersive technology that I think we miss because of the fear.
Kiesha King:And that's why, in my opinion, the work that AIEDU is so critically important, because if you can create some standards and you can influence policy and you can create some infrastructure around these new technologies, you start to break away at the fear that keeps them from infiltrating the areas where they actually need to go, places that kiddos do not have the opportunity to see or leverage these technologies at all.
Kiesha King:Right, and that's what's so special about the work that you do and so many others at all. Right, and that's what's so special about the work that you do and so many others. I'm going to tell you it wasn't easy for me having all these amazing ideas come forward and say, you know, well, well, dr King, is there a sponsorship? Is there some opportunity to fund this? Can you do these things? And knowing that, as an organization, there's this laser focus on $10.7 billion of funding going into access and equity Right, but knowing that made it a lot easier. Knowing that told me no matter what we're doing, we're going to influence your program and your success Right Because we're providing the access and that's been a really beautiful journey for over six million students and counting. It's been a beautiful journey they're not dumb.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):It's not that they just don't get it, it's that well, there is that they don't get it. But it's not that they don't understand what their kids should or shouldn't be doing. It's, I think, it's two things. One, the teachers are right, are correct in feeling like their kids are way ahead, like their students, are a lot more effective at using language models than teachers are. And so you know, teachers, like there is, there is scope for students using shortcuts and not necessarily using ai, in a way that's, like you know, generating productive struggle and building the sort of knowledge and and competencies that they need.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Um, but the solution, unfortunately, is not to ban it, because you can't ban it. Yeah, um, or the yeah, or that's not the only solution. Maybe that's like a temporary thing, maybe you have to do that. It's a longer conversation. The solution is the teacher needs to figure out how language models work and then start to adapt their learning. And it's just like you know, I was just looking at research on before and after the computer. Students used to write on average, I think, think like half a page, like a like long form writing per week and then, after the computer, that's up to, like, you know, three to five pages.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Yeah, it's like three, three to five x growth, so not quite like two to two to four pages. Let's say, um, so you know, with ai it could just be that the, the, maybe the volume and the sophistication of what they're working on increases, it becomes more engaging. So, um, I love that, that's, that's the, that's what you're getting at. Right is like this, like the, the opportunity for this technology to be, um, like nurtured so that students can be empowered by it.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):But the other piece that I think and not all teachers are necessarily thinking about this, but I think a lot of them are especially teachers that work in communities where there's sort of like a big disparity between, you know, like schools that are sort of on the fringe of you know, urban and suburban parts of their community and what they see is that not all the students are going home and getting access to the AI tools or have parents that are showing them. And if you start to adapt your assignments to be designed to work in concert with AI, you're sort of assuming that all the students have access. And that kind of brings me back to. I know we're at time. I'd love to find more time with you.
Kiesha King:Dr King, I know I see exactly where you're going, because it was.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):Does that make sense? It's like that's where, like that's, you need to be there.
Kiesha King:Yeah, it's like we're repeating this cycle again. It's the same thing with building virtual school. It's the same thing with building up online classes. It's a well, if you build it, they will come. Maybe, maybe, right, maybe they will. If you build a capacity within the teachers, like from a training perspective, is it actually going to be something that is will be impactful to what school districts actually are measuring from an attendance, motivation, engagement, student achievement perspective? Right, how does it align to those things? Will it drive the outcomes that you need? So, how do you encourage the capacity building? Right? I hear you loud and clear. I mean I, yeah, it is, we are. You know, it's a different technology, it's a different conversation, but it's the same conversation. That part is interesting.
Alex Kotran (aiEDU):And we've got work to do. Yeah, we do dr keisha king, it's been a pleasure.
Kiesha King:I uh, I will track you down for for some more time yeah hopefully we intersect at one of the many spaces that we're both going to be in yeah, if not, you know, there's always an opportunity to intentionally intersect and I'm happy to do that also.