AI in the Classroom: Supporting Teachers and Students

As the Destination District, CCSD is embracing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support how teachers teach and how students learn. In this episode, you’ll hear from district leaders, educators, and students about how AI is helping future-proof learning, giving teachers more time for connection, and giving students more timely feedback. 

Transcript

Welcome & Why AI Matters

Jhone 0:01

I'm Superintendent Jhone Ebert, and I'm excited to engage with our school communities to talk about how we can make CCSD the destination district for our students and families. Right here in the Clark County School District, Artificial Intelligence or AI is no longer science fiction. We're talking about AI-powered tools that could act as a personal tutor for every single student, from Henderson to North Las Vegas and beyond to our rural communities. Imagine your child getting instant help, tailored for their strengths and areas for growth, really allowing our teachers to drill down to additional support our students need. But what does it really mean for our 280,000 students and their teachers? Is it a game changer for student success or just another tech fad? Stay tuned as we dive into AI's real-world impact on CCSD from the leadership level to the classroom. Welcome back to the Destination District, a CCSD podcast. Thank you to everyone who listened to the first episode. And if this is your first time listening, we're excited for you. We're back again in the fantastic Vegas PBS podcasting studio. As always, it is a pleasure to work with everyone here, the amazing production staff. I can't thank you enough for what you do in making sure that everyone has access to this information. Today, artificial intelligence or AI seems to be everywhere. It's on your phone, it's there to greet you in some of your favorite places to eat, and we are starting to see it used in education. We have some great guests with us today who are going to talk about ways that our district is looking at AI, both in the short term, the long term, and where it fits into the classroom. Before we begin, take a listen to some of our students at Jan Jones Blackhurst Elementary School using Green Our Planet's virtual scientists, Dr. Splash and Bugsy, to learn about how hydroponics works in their STEM lab.

Kaylee 2:16

My name is Kaylee and I'm in fourth grade. I want to know um what in the nutrient solution is there for growing hydroponics? Hi Kaylee, great to meet you. The nutrient solution contains three main nutrients that plants need to grow. I'm like, how does he know? Dr. Splash, my name is Bodhi. I'm in fourth grade. And how long does it take to grow parsley? Excellent question, Bodhi. I love how you're thinking about specific plants. In a hydroponic system, parsley typically takes about three to four weeks before you can start harvesting it. That's like about 28 bunny hops worth of days. Hi, my name is Nicholas, and my question is, can you show me a picture of an ebb and flow system? Ah, ebb and flow, one of my favorite systems. It reminds me of the tides in my pond. Ooh, is this the one that's like a plant elevator? Up and down, up and down. That's actually a clever way to think about it, Bugsy. Oh yeah, it was really fun and very helpful.

Leadership Vision: Guardrails and Communication

Jhone 3:23

Thank you to Green Our Planet for sharing that interaction and showcasing how they keep engaging our students through gardening. This is a great example of an AI program supplementing the learning taking place in a classroom environment. My first guest today is Dr. Deanna Jaskolski, the Chief of Teaching and Learning Initiatives for the Clark County School District. We really want to start from the top of our organization and talk about what we see with AI in education. Dr. Jaskolski, thank you for joining me today. Thank you for the opportunity. So exciting. I'm sorry. I just have to go back to knowing you for so many years in your first year teaching. You were a pioneer in technology.

Deanna 4:09

Well, I was a pioneer because you led the way at that time 28 years ago. So I love the fact that you and I are having this conversation 28 years later, where the cutting edge technology that you led at that time was the laptop project, which was one laptop for the teacher.

Jhone 4:25

Yeah, I know. Isn't that crazy? We think about one laptop. We were really excited at, you know, that moment in time. But I know you're excited about today's topic as well. And we know now that AI can be a powerful tool for all of education. So what is guiding CCSD down this path to make sure that AI is used correctly?

Deanna 4:46

Well, just as we spoke about that, you were leading the way 28 years ago, you're continuing to lead the way, starting at the state level as our state superintendent with our Nevada AI Alliance, making sure that we had collaboration with educators, policymakers, community members, and industry leaders through research groups, through town halls and stakeholder meetings. It was brought to our executive leadership team through professional learning for all of our staff. So our administrators, our support professionals, and our educators to ensure that there's ethical use and knowledge and understanding within the AI world.

Jhone 5:17

And so when we think about our students and families, you know, you've had the experience now, others at the cabinet level have had those experiences. But we serve students and families. How do we make sure that we're transparent about the application in our classrooms?

Deanna 5:34

Well, what I love is this past Friday with our Clark County School District family newsletter, there was an article in there that was titled AI is a New Tool in Education. So we start by educating our families. We start by partnering with them, collaborating with them at the district level as well as at the school, individual school level. So we're working shoulder to shoulder so they again understand the powerful use of AI and how it can really help our educators and most importantly our students and personalize their learning and also talk about the ethical use and the safety use around AI. So I think communicating with our families is key for that knowledge and understanding.

Jhone 6:09

Making sure that our students, our families know about the ethical use is very, very important. So thank you for bringing that up as well. And when we think about our principals leading their schools in the topic of AI, how is that going? Do you see positive things? Are there do principals need assistance in that as well?

Deanna 6:30

So we all need professional learning to ensure that we're we're partnering with our students for the use of AI as well as learning from one another. Time is our most valuable non-renewable resource. How do we capitalize on the time that we have in our schools and our buildings? And the one way that I've seen our leaders utilize AI is really around our school improvement planning. So we have the opportunity to really generate wonderful ideas and the use of AI to really drill down to that level of specificity and create those action steps to be able to monitor. So the principals are really engaged in the how, and AI can help us in the what to ensure that we're moving forward to meet the needs of all of our students.

Jhone 7:09

You think about time saving, that's a big piece in education. We never have enough time. And so having AI do that is wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me today. Hearing from you, your perspective really lays the groundwork for our guests in our next segment.

From Policy to Practice: School Leaders and AI

Deanna 7:24

Thank you for the opportunity.

Jhone 7:26

Implementing new technology into an education system takes time. Questions need to be answered. How does it work with our current infrastructure? What are the potential roadblocks to access? Where can it be used during instruction? The Clark County School District is lucky to have departments that look at all of these questions and more. Joining me to discuss how any AI program could be used in the district is John French, manager of CCSD's Emerging Technology Department, Lucas Levitt, Director of Digital Learning and Instructional Technology Department, and Brandy Mora, principal at Richard Bryan Elementary School. Thank you all for being here today. Okay, so we have a playground. We've put in the sand, so to speak. How do we know what equipment we can use to make this a safe and effective place for fun and learning? John, we're gonna start with you. What role does the emerging technology department play when it comes to AI in the Clark County School District?

John 8:36

So I'll say in any technology, when it's relatively new, there's gonna be a time frame when there's not a lot of understanding about the safety or the efficacy or maybe even the security elements involved. Uh that's when you have emerging technology groups that will come in like ours and they will establish and make sure that those security, safety, and efficacy kind of components are in there before we release it and we extrapolate that as a larger enterprise environment. So we're there to kind of start that initial phase of introduction of the technology into our group, and then we see how we can run that at scale.

Jhone 9:07

Is that something you've participated in your whole life?

John 9:12

I would say so. So having been a student in CCSD in a school with you, yeah, over the course of years, I think technology and specifically educational technology has been the cornerstone of my life, and at least so far it can will continue to be so.

Jhone 9:26

So Clark County School District students can become directors of emerging technology. That's exciting.

John 9:32

Anything they want to be.

Jhone 9:33

Yes. Lucas, how are you doing today?

Lucas 9:37

Great.

Jhone 9:41

Okay. So John is looking at the back end of the systems to make sure they play nice with our existing infrastructure. Where does your team with the digital learning and instructional technology come in?

Lucas 9:55

Yeah, so our department partners really well with John's group. And we are the intersection or the cross-section, if you will, from the technology as it enters the classroom. So we work with region leaders to provide admin support and professional learning on what these tools are, how they're used, how to use them, those types of things. And then we even go into the classroom and work with teachers in small or large groups to help them implement these technologies.

Jhone 10:19

Like a translator, you're the middleman?

Lucas 10:22

Yeah, kind of. So, like with John's group, they're not form, they're not educators. And so we bring a lot of the education technology, like the education speak and the educational like purposes, if you will, to what John's group is already doing. And so we we try to make meaning of it that way.

Jhone 10:36

That's awesome. And here we also now have principal Richard Bryan. Actually, I was with him the other day. Amazing human being. He's a great man. He's a great man.

Brandi 10:48

All the time to our school.

Jhone 10:49

Oh, that's wonderful. Yes, yeah. That is wonderful. So we've got John, Lucas, and now you leading a school building with students. Lucas was talking about translation. How does that translate into a school building?

Brandi 11:02

Yeah, great question. So I'm very grateful for everything that they do in the background because that opens it up for me as a building leader to model for my teachers and just get them excited about AI and those productivity tools. I started using it just for myself and just the task that I had as a principal and just saw the potential and knew that the teachers would like something like this. But how do I get that out there to them? Because they have so many other things that they're thinking about, what's this gonna look like for them? And I think the biggest thing was it's gonna save them time. When they talk about the time that they don't have throughout the day, this is gonna be one of those tools that's gonna save them time. So I really looked at how could I bring this to them in a way that is going to be supportive. And I partnered with ASCD and ISTE and just took some of my professional learning funds and decided that I wanted to spend a good year exploring AI with a group of teachers. So I had them apply to kind of be part of this cohort, if you say. Volunteers. Yeah, and and just like we explored everything. And one of the biggest things that I heard you guys talk in the earlier segment about was just that protection and privacy of students. And so that wasn't something that I had thought about initially, but I was really excited to talk about that with ASCD and ST and get my teachers understanding that that's going to be the number one priority as they start to utilize AI in the classroom.

Jhone 12:27

Yeah, so you brought in national organizations, people that have been out there exploring into your space at your school and led the way. And I love how you because it is, you know, sometimes people think it's oh, another thing, but how you can adjust the space there to support is wonderful. So, Lucas, when we do pilot programs, when we have pilot programs in small groups, why is that important? Be wh why don't we just dive in with both feet and and say, all 374 schools here, AI tomorrow?

Lucas 13:00

Yeah, that's a great question. I think the the challenge we have is to know exactly what it's gonna look like. So John's group can test anything they want, right? But I think once you put it in hands of kids, then I think we see really not only what they what it can and can't do, but but even around what support they need. And so I think we help we use those pilot programs, process of concept concepts, those types of things to help build out the support levels that need that are needed for the district as a whole.

Jhone 13:26

You find things that go wrong ever in these pilot programs?

Lucas 13:29

Oh, that's the point of them, right? Like we try to figure out what are all the things that are going wrong, right? So once we find out the things that are going wrong, then we can figure out you know, is that a deal breaker? Does that how do we make it right, or do we eliminate that? So we use those types of opportunities to learn those things.

Jhone 13:44

Great. And John, we're gonna have you close out. You know, we're a destination district. And when we think about our district as a whole, are we in a good position and ready for growth in AI education?

John 13:57

I would say absolutely. We have a very firm guideline at an entire district level that's that's been fairly vetted. We have wonderful backing by the state that has aligned our guidelines with what state mandates are coming down, and we have a lot of buy-in from all of our stakeholders, whether that be in the classroom, whether it be at the region level. And we're all really excited to see what potential we can leverage with AI to assist the classroom.

Pilots in Action: Testing, Learning, Scaling

Jhone 14:18

Well, I really enjoyed this conversation about the back end systems, right? John, we have a place to make sure that we use the classroom supports, the translator, Lucas, for many, many years. Thank you for everything you do in the Clark County School District. And so much of what we do in that environment leads to classroom student success, teachers being able to explore, get out there. I'm excited for the work that all of you are doing and uh within our schools and classrooms. When we return, we'll be talking with Rachel Solomon, Director of Literacy and Language Development Department and some guests from Wilbur and Teresa Faiss Middle School about some current programs being used in the Clark County School District with AI support. So we've hit on the why of AI in education, and we've talked about the how of AI and education, but let's talk about where of AI and education. Joining me now are Rachel Solom, Director of Literacy and Language Development. Karen Del casino, a National Board certified teacher. Congratulations on that. That is no easy task. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. She is the ELA English Language Arts. We have those acronyms in education. She is the English language arts department chair and eighth grade ELA teacher at Faiss Middle School. And our very special guests, we have True Young, who is an eighth grade student, as well as Kiana Jones. They are also both Faiss Middle School students. Rachel, I'm going to jump in, start with you. What ways has the Literacy and Language Development Department supported our educators with professional development related to artificial intelligence?

Rachel 16:11

Well, we go out and directly support teachers at their schools in addition to providing professional learning after school.

Jhone 16:18

So we have How many are there of you?

Rachel 16:20

If you're doing it, do you have clones? Kind of. So we were actually fortunate enough to get the support of professional learning and implementation managers in the purchase of our tier one instructional materials. So it's kind of like we are cloned in a way. And they support us in providing professional learning opportunities virtually every month, kind of the entry-level writable course to just get people's feet wet. And then we also offer professional learning face-to-face. And we rely on some of our expert teachers, such as Miss Del casino, to help support that work because our teachers are doing wonderful things and we really want to leverage their knowledge and expertise in that professional learning space.

Jhone 17:04

Oh, that's great. And I love it's not on top of. You actually added it into our tier one instruction so it can hands. We talked about time earlier. Karen, your turn. Are you ready? Oh, I'm ready. Okay, great. You use specific programs in your class that helps students with their learning objectives. What has been your experience with AI?

Karen 17:26

AI has been something that I think has been really exciting to embrace. A lot of times we've we're used to getting the very static data points, right? Like we get our maps, we get our S back, and that's just such a small snapshot in time. The thing that I love about AI and Writable in particular as a program that we use is the way that I'm getting constant feedback on my students because their growth and what they're learning is is always changing and their abilities are always changing. So that immediate feedback has been just instrumental in success.

Jhone 17:56

So I hear is drilling down on students, again, that time kind of element, but you you said specific. Can you get a little more specific, if you will, on some of those elements and understanding a student? If I was a parent, how would I know that this is helping?

Karen 18:11

So in terms of the AI feedback, there is a student-centered piece to it, which I'm sure that Drew and Kiana are gonna are will speak on. But from the teacher standpoint, I can see specific standards, I can see specific skills that my students are doing well on and that they might need support on. And I also have practice recommendations for my students too. So if I see that they're struggling, I have supports for my students that are at different levels of learning from support all the way up to extending our high achievers.

Jhone 18:39

That's great. The entire spectrum. Wonderful. Our most important guest today, True and Kiana. And Kiana and True. We've been talking about AI. So we just heard your teacher talk about the AI portion of writable and how it has helped in class. Can you be a little specific? And do you see it as being helpful?

AI in Literacy Classrooms

Kiana 18:59

Yes, I see it as being helpful. I feel like writable AI has made writing feel more like a process instead of just like a one and done something I struggle with a lot. I'm like, my writing is great. I don't think it needs any more improvements. And then here comes the AI. It's like, oh, you could fix this, you could fix this. It gives me tailored feedback to like the exact subject I'm using. For example, Ms. Del casino wasn't in class today, and we were writing a CER about the outsider by Lovecraft. And I kind of struggled with it a little bit, but the AI told me the what I need to fix and how I could fix it exactly how I could fix it. Like for like example, it told me you could fix this and how will this make the audience feel? How will this implication change how the audience views this? I feel like that helped me a lot and it really invoked critical thinking.

Jhone 19:47

That's awesome. And critical thinking is very important. And so I love hearing that it just didn't give you the answer. So, true, does it just give you the answer? How are you using it in class?

True 19:57

Yeah, no, I agree with what Kiana said. Like it doesn't necessarily just immediately give you the answer. It'll more help you and give you feedback in order to find that correct answer for you that you've kind of been building onto. Have you guys used it in any other classes? Yeah, we use it in science. Um, last year we used it a little bit in math. We you pretty much use it in every class almost. It's a very big tool and it helps like students and everyone.

Jhone 20:25

And you enjoy it. You would you recommend it for for uh other students and teachers maybe that haven't had the opportunity to use it yet? Oh yeah, for sure.

Student Perspectives on AI Feedback

True 20:34

Like, for example, how she was saying, like, even if you know the teacher isn't there, it's more of like AI's an assistant. Like it'll help you with grammar and it'll it honestly helps the teacher too, because like let's say she's helping a student, you can ask an AI for revision or help, and it'll give you feedback and the grammar spelling options, it'll all like give you reasons and help you learn as well in a way so it can be an inclusive environment.

Jhone 21:04

That's awesome. I want to go back to school. I want to write. I love mathematics, but now I I I'm gonna you guys are gonna need to teach me how to do this. Rachel and Karen, back to you. Both you're actively talking with other educators around the Clark County School District. Are you experiencing a sea change where people are starting to become more interested in learning about AI and support in their classrooms?

Rachel 21:29

Yeah, so we have those early adopters who really jumped in and tried out those tools and saw what it could do. And once they start to talk about the things that their students are doing in the classroom, others get excited as well. So we're really seeing increased attendance in our professional learning, increased requests for that direct school support. You know, teachers are just really excited about the differentiation and feedback that they can provide to their students in the classroom.

Karen 21:53

I would agree. I feel like AI started off, teachers were very apprehensive about what AI could do, but AI is growing so exponentially. Um, and teachers are really seeing the benefit that it can provide to their classroom and the way that it can make our lives a little bit more efficient. So I'm definitely seeing a lot more teachers embracing it.

Jhone 22:11

Wonderful. So let's wrap up this conversation in AI with True and Kiana. What does it mean to have teachers like your amazing teacher that you have, Miss Del casino, trying new ways and to support all the students like yourself?

Kiana 22:28

I feel like it means that teachers are willing to try new things to increase our education, and also it means they care about our individual learning because AI like tail it tailors our education, it gives us specific feedback. And don't get me wrong, Miss Del casino is a great teacher, and she is great at teaching us as a whole class. But it's like English is more about like how you feel, you put your emotion into it, it's not one answer. So I feel like AI could really help you with that. True. Any would you like to add anything to that, Kiana's response?

True 22:57

I can agree. Like, you know, as she was saying, she's a great teacher, Miss Del casino. And what it really does, I feel like it's almost like an assistant in the classroom. Like, Miss Del casino runs it, and then, like, you know, let's say you just asked a question, she answered it, then you're like, hmm, okay. Uh, I implement it, and then you use AI revision, it can help you make your writing better, even if you're like the best writer ever. It'll still find ways for you to make it better, which always helped.

Closing Reflections & Looking Ahead

Jhone 23:25

I really appreciate you all joining me today and the insightful discussion. It's been great to hear how AI can support educators, students in ways that are positive for everyone. And I'm glad we could wrap up today's discussion with some fantastic student perspectives. Congratulations to Faiss Middle School on your jump. I want to close it out on your jump to four stars. English language arts, as we know, is a big part of that in the school performance framework. And for you two, I want you to think about becoming a teacher just like Miss Del casino, because she's amazing and she's affecting your lives. And I think the two of you are amazing, and you can share what you do with everyone else. Thank you. It's funny to think about how a former math teacher can use the most advanced piece of technology in my classroom was a TI-84 graphing calculator. And we now live in a world where technology feels that it is moving faster than we are ready to fully understand. Artificial intelligence or AI is here to stay, but that doesn't mean that we can't take a measured approach to understanding what its role can be and should be in education. As our discussion showed in this episode, CCSD is making sure that what our education environment looks like with emerging technology is safe for students and allowing our educators to be AI co-pilots when appropriate. Thank you for listening and make sure you come back in October as we will celebrate the schools who made significant gains in the Nevada School Performance Framework. This has been Destination District, a CCSD podcast recorded at the Vegas PBS Podcasting Studio. For more information about CCSD or to listen to previous episodes, visit CCSD.net. Remember, the destination is better when we get there together. Have a great day.