EP4: What Do We Do with A.I.?

Oakland Schools Learning Design Consultant Dr. Andrea Zellner, self described A.I. passionate skeptic, joins Jay, Katie, and Steven to dive deep into the mysteries of Artificial Intelligence (AI) use in schools. From thinking critically about the careful use of AI in classrooms, to positioning students to learn and lead the charge with this phenomenon, Dr. Zellner provides insightful tips to teachers and leaders alike. 

Hosts: Jay Haffner - Literacy Consultant, Katie Morrison - Mathematics Education Consultant, Dr. Steven Snead - Supervisor of Curriculum & Assessment.

This podcast is proudly brought to you by Oakland Schools Intermediate School District in the great state of Michigan. Oakland Schools is an educational service agency that offers support services to school districts that are best delivered regionally and provide cost, size and quality advantages to those we serve. Oakland Schools is an autonomous, tax-supported public school district governed by Michigan General School Laws and is one of 56 intermediate school districts (ISDs) established in Michigan in 1962.

If you are an educator in Oakland County, Michigan, check out www.oakland.k12.mi.us to explore the services and professional learning opportunities available to support you. 

Have feedback for the hosts? We'd love to hear from you! Email steven.snead@oakland.k12.mi.us to connect with us. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:14

All right, good afternoon, good evening, good morning, wherever you happen to listen to us. This is the Teaching Tomorrow Podcast. We got another good one for you all. I feel like we're setting the bar pretty high of the essence, but you listeners, please let us know. Feedback is good. Today we are going to talk about AI, not a one-sauce. Not a sauce. Not a one. Not a one.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

And we in education love our acronyms. Yeah, we do. So we are also not talking about adaptive inquiry or appreciative inquiry or adaptive instruction.

SPEAKER_05 0:53

Those things are later later episodes. We have future episodes. Future episodes, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 0:59

But today is AI Artificial Intelligence. What do we do about AI? I am one of your esteemed hosts, Dr. Stephen Sneed. Uh I'll let my co-hosts introduce themselves.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yeah. Hi, everyone. Welcome back. Katie Morrison, uh math consultant for Oakland Schools.

SPEAKER_05 1:15

And Jay Hafner, literacy consultant, Oakland Schools.

SPEAKER_06 1:19

That is our merry band of hosts. We have a very special guest today. I don't know why I used a fake French voice there. Someone will get mad at me, I know. I apologize.

SPEAKER_05 1:32

Especially because it wasn't a great question.

SPEAKER_06 1:34

It wasn't a great, it wasn't a great. I'm not countering. I'm not an important speaker. I apologize. Dr. Andrea Zellner, who I feel like she's like a woman for all seasons, right? She has literacy expertise, she has project-based learning expertise. And my girl, because she is my girl, we go back. She definitely has AI expertise. Do you have A1 expertise? Like, do you do A1 steak sauce?

SPEAKER_02 1:57

I don't even like A1 sauce.

SPEAKER_06 1:58

She doesn't. Oh, so we're clear on that. She's not going to talk about that. So we're going to bring her in here in a bit. But as we get started on this topic of like AI artificial intelligence. So for those of you who know me in my background, my time in schools, I was a high school English teacher. And so I love writing. That was my jazz in schools. And so my I really like, I appreciate the opportunity to have a conversation about how do we engage students in authentic writing tasks and sort of reimagining that space of what that might look like. Because of course, if you give a kid an assignment, right, a prompt like, hey, write a five-paragraph essay, they can very much go into AI and crank out some a lot of great, great things and bring that back to class. And I know a lot of us are struggling with like, well, is that cheating? Is that not cheating? I love good old-fashioned, like literal handwriting, like handwriting in the classroom. But then what I've also discovered is that when I'm using uh various AI large language model tools, that my writing skill is necessary to get the thing that I want the AI to do. So AI is helping me to become a better, more precise writer in thinking in order to successfully engage with it. So I say use it as a tool in a way in classroom instruction to not uh obfuscate student writing, but like to sharpen their their writing and really that thinking skill. Um so I see lots of really great applications. So don't I say to folks, don't be scared of it. Don't be scared of it. It's not a thing. Don't don't put it in the closet and fight it, uh, but really try to think about how we can use it. Jay, what do you say?

SPEAKER_05 3:49

Yeah, I mean, I was just gonna pick up on that exactly. Don't be let's not be fearful of it. Let's before we make judgments on it, let's do the best we can to learn uh ways in which we can use it as a tool, uh, and then we can provide students opportunities to learn how to use it as a as a tool as well. Uh I often think about though, like where where does the fear of of AI come from? And I think there's some very real things uh that we need to take into consideration both as a as a society and the way uh new technologies have been developed, both for the betterment of humanity and the destruction of humanity. Um I think a lot of us like real dark hair to show my show. Well, I'm gonna show my age here. I'm I'm a Gen Xer. Okay, and I grew up on films in which AI.

SPEAKER_06 4:40

Film, what's that?

SPEAKER_05 4:40

Yeah, films. Films. Uh I'm referring to uh Terminator uh in Terminator 2 as films.

SPEAKER_06 4:46

Was it like on a real crank in the back door?

SPEAKER_05 4:49

The projector actually made the clicking sound in the movie theater. But things like you know, Terminator, Blade Runner, we were inundated with like imagery of like AI that was going to just like control all of humanity. And I well, so I I just want to acknowledge that I think there's genuine reasons for for concern, but we have to beat back our our concern and not let it become a barrier to an opportunity that we might be able to provide in our in our profession and and for students.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Yeah, I mean, it definitely feels like a tidal wave that's like coming and has hit some places, hitting more more strongly. And yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think it's definitely something we have to like navigate through, but I definitely feel the like unease, especially when I think about like the inequity and like this creating like further gaps. Um so yeah, I think it's real. And I am so grateful that Dr. Andrea Zellner is gonna be here today to help us answer the question what do educators do about AI?

SPEAKER_06 5:58

What do we do?

SPEAKER_01 5:58

What do we do about it? So we have the incredibly talented Dr. Andrea Zellner, a learning design consultant with Oakland Schools. Andrea is a proud former high school biology and English teacher and holds doctorates in ed tech and ed psych. She is a park enthusiast, a mushroom forager, and a teacher consultant for the National Writing Project. So, Andrea, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. She is a lady of particular skills.

SPEAKER_05 6:26

Doctor Doctor, Andrea Zellmer.

SPEAKER_02 6:28

One doctor. Just one doctorate. Look, let me tell you, one is enough. One is enough, right?

SPEAKER_06 6:36

If you if you got multiple PhDs or ADs out there, hey, shout out to you, right? We we just got one over here.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Yep. Um well your doctor, Dr. Snees. Yeah, one though. One. Oh, one and doctor. Yeah, one and done in the room.

SPEAKER_06 6:50

No more dissertations.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

So, Andrea, I want to start us off. So you describe yourself as a passionate skeptic to AI. So can you share with us and all of our listeners what most excites you about AI in schools and then what most worries you about AI in schools?

SPEAKER_02 7:08

Thank you, Katie. So I am gonna start with some definitions because I think it's important to be clear about what we're talking about. Artificial intelligence is a marketing term to quote Emily Bender and Alex Hannah. It is pretty meaningless. And the the metaphor that I like to hang on to when I think about AI is when we say transportation, what do you mean? Do you mean walking? Do you mean riding a bike? Do you mean flying? It's uh talking about AI is pretty meaningless and it doesn't help us further the conversation. So I think when we hear about the fearfulness and and the trepidation, I think it's because it's such a loose term that people don't know where to hang on to. So the the other thing to name is that um Justin Reich at MIT talks about how AI and specifically generative AI, which is those large language models that we see, were an arrival technology to schools. And so when that's think back because we are Gen X, we recall when kids got computers, when interactive whiteboards entered the classroom. Right. One of us is in here.

SPEAKER_06 8:18

One of us is not like you know, it's all right. We're very inclusive here at teaching. We love you, Katie.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

So when interactive whiteboards came into the classroom, schools could say, we're not ready to make that expenditure right now. We'll train our teachers in two years. That's not the case here. Yeah, yeah, it was the same with computers, it was the same with cell phones and smartphones. So this arrival of this technology and what it's capable of uh really hit like a tsunami, especially for those of us who are teachers of writers, because suddenly this uh text extruding, synthetic text extruding machine, as Emily Bender, back to Emily Bender and Alex Hannah call it, um, is making a really great approximation of what we're asking our kids to do. So there's also a whole range of predictive AI tools, which I think also come with their own threats and excitements with them. And so we can talk about either one. Most people are talking about generative AI. And so I'll start there. With generative AI, I like to think about it in terms of how it might be an assistive technology for students who might have barriers to their learning, to their motivation, um, to getting organized. There's a lot of opportunity here in terms of how it might turn into assistive intelligence rather than artificial, thinking about it as artificial intelligence. And for those who are interested, uh CAST, which is the group that supports the universal design for learning uh guidelines, has a lot of supportive content around this idea of assistive technology. So we can get into that if that's a a place you want to go. For me, the biases uh in AI are really what worry me the most. Right. This was these large language models were trained on a huge amount of data that was not freely given, that was taken from people's intellectual property, including our artists, our writers, our best thinkers. All of that data was taken. And now they are using their large language models to track our attention and keep us focused. All of these large language models are incredibly costly, both in terms of human cost, environmental costs, water costs, the data centers, and the noise pollution that they produce, not to mention the human labor that went into training them that came on the backs of most third world countries.

SPEAKER_06 11:01

That's true. That's true.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

That to me is an ethical conundrum that I believe that students want to grapple with, and I believe that because I've been working with students who are grappling with these questions and they're very concerned about it. We had uh a group of students that came to one of our AI opportunities that we provided at Oakland schools, and they were the ones talking about these things through their own research. So it was concerning for them. There was a recent Atlantic article where a student said AI is ruining my education. So I think that there is some concerns. So when my one caution here, and I don't want to belabor the drawbacks, I just know that the sort of the hype that is coming into our schools and the immense pressure for these technology companies to recoup the investment on these large language models, because again, they're expensive. They haven't figured out how to make money on it, and they are looking at education to recoup those costs. And so I just like to put that into the ether because there are also additional harms that we're seeing to children.

SPEAKER_03 12:14

Right.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

These chatbots have sexualized children, these chatbots have contributed to suicide of children, and right now there's no support or legislation to rein in what's happening. What we're hearing is if you don't jump on this train, your kids will not be ready for the future. I'm not sure I believe that right now.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I was gonna say, so Andrea, so in light of all of that, you know, those things that you just mentioned, what are the questions that districts should be leaning into? Like knowing this tidal wave, this tsunami, like what should districts be thinking about and considering and questioning right now?

SPEAKER_02 13:00

When I work with district teams, I always start with what are we valuing as an educational community? Because if we know what our values are, we can make wise decisions about what we're inviting into the space, that sacred space between teachers and students. What AI does is it can get in the middle of that. The students feel like they're not being truly taught because the teachers are using AI to support their planning or to create materials or to even provide feedback. In grade, it's real bad at math. Large language models are bad at math. Do not use it for math. Okay. There is AI tools that there are AI tools that are better, but do not use Chat GBT for math, okay?

SPEAKER_00 13:44

It's super bad at grading. Yes, I was gonna say grade and solve problems, but I have thought in my hot take, I'm gonna shed some idea about it might be.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Please don't do that. I always use Wolfram Alpha for that. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I love that tool. Okay. So, but um uh yeah, it's uh what was I talking about? Now I lost my train of thought. Oh, districts, like, so we start with our values. We have to start with our values because what are we doing? I think AI and generative AI especially brings these sort of um existential questions. What's the meaning of writing now? If I have this machine over here that can do it in a passable way that still brings meaning to me, it can create meaning for us because we're human and we're, and whenever we hear language, Sherry Turkle talks about this a lot. Whenever we hear language or see language from a machine, beer we're so hardwired for language. That is how we coordinate our communities that we are attracted to that and we think we give it more meaning than maybe the fact that it's just probabilities, right? So if we start their values, what do we want for our kids? What do we want for this relationship between teachers and students? How do we want them to grow? And most districts have already done this work. What's our portrait of a graduate? How do we want the end game of this work that we're doing with kids to look? And how do we want them to show up in the world? And so knowing those purposes for schooling uh become really important and can be the center of the decisions we're making, not only around generative AI tools or predictive AI tools, but for any educational technology tools, because this is just another part of the general trend of educational technology companies trying to come into schools to make money off of us. And so that I think that that's that we want to be thoughtful about where we're putting our public dollars, uh, where making sure that we have uh actual data that show that there is a return on the investment of what we're doing with our time, our attention, and our dollars. And that it's really in the service of what we want for our kids. So that's where I want, I can't say what works for you and what doesn't work for you. I have my own code of ethics around generative AI tools and predictive AI tools that I use to guide my individual decisions. And what I would, if I were in charge of everything, I would hope that everybody finds that code of ethics for themselves, um, knowing the full picture before they engage. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:18

So yeah. So to I'm interested and curious about what you talked about with this like tidal wave that's coming or that's here.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

And and it does Andrea calls it tsunami.

SPEAKER_03 16:29

A tsunami, sorry.

SPEAKER_05 16:30

Yeah, it is, right? It's e it's even bigger. And the one thing we know about tsunamis is they they happen fast and they come out of nowhere, and oftentimes with technological developments uh throughout our careers and and and prior to to that, uh, it it has seemed like technology moves faster than we as educators are able to keep up with and and get a hold of. So I'm curious, like right now, as we're sort of still in these like nascent stages of trying to figure out how to use AI uh in a in a meaningful, productive way in the classroom, what are some of the things you're seeing right now on the ground from teachers? What are they, you know, what are they communicating to you? Are they are they optimistic about the the opportunity as a tool for students? Are they sort of fearful? Are they thinking it's something that they're sort of stepping back from? What are you seeing in your conversations on the ground right now, teachers' approach to AI?

SPEAKER_02 17:31

So it runs the gamut. There is that fear, there is that overwhelm that comes with it, the concerns about cheating. Um, I think most teachers are entering, especially with Gemini launching a number of free tools into Google Classroom in most of our districts in the state and the country. Our Google schools. And so Gemini tools are now sitting in Google Classroom and with a lot of efficiencies there. Uh and so that can be incredibly supportive because uh the work of teaching has long been more than the 24-hour day. So it is nice to get those efficiency gains and to be thoughtful about it. Um, for instance, thinking about tax leveling. So if I have a student who needs uh a text that is appropriate for their level so they can engage in the learning, I can do that very quickly with generative AI tools. And so um I think all those efficiencies are really important to teachers. From there, then the shift happens, which is then they start looking at how their students are using it. And the huge concern there is that students are taking whatever assignments and dumping it into a large language model and then getting an answer and then submitting that as their own work. I'm not sure how much of that is truly going on. When we talk to the students, I mean it's going on. I joke that we're we have students turning in assignments generated by AI that are then graded by AI and no humans were harmed in the process of this learning that is happening. I'm sure it has happened. I have no doubt in my mind that it has happened and continues to happen. Many students, when they talk about AI, though, will talk about valuing their learning. They're in school most of their awaken hours. No one wants to be bored.

SPEAKER_03 19:32

Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

People will give themselves electric shocks to avoid being bored. So this idea that we're just gonna offload things is kind of, I don't totally buy it.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

What I see is that when students are making a decision to use generative AI instead of use their own brains, they're either feeling a sense of low self-efficacy. I don't feel competent in this skill, so I need to offload it to this brilliant tool over here that's gonna do it better than me, better than I could ever do it. And then the other reason is that it has no meaning for them. We do give a lot of meaningless tasks to students.

SPEAKER_06 20:13

We get hot. Well, now we turn up the gas. Yeah, yeah. We are.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

So do I want to sit and do a worksheet? No. Do I want to write a really boring essay about the themes of Romeo and Juliet? No. I didn't do that. No one has ever wanted to do that. Talk to Stephen about that.

SPEAKER_06 20:32

Yeah, the romance novels.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

No one has ever wanted to do that. Are we creating students, especially in secondary? Are we inviting them to be the best learners they can be and valuing their voice? Where is that happening? When do they get the chance to do that? We we prescribe so much. And so to me, if we're seeing high levels of this sort of what they call AI cheating, it is not trying to AI proof and put the people who always tell me, Oh, I heard that you just put words in white and then it shows up, like say the word elephant is 15 times and then it shows up in the essay, and then I know they cheated. Okay. I'm not interested in a cat and mouse game because that is just breaking the trust of the relationship with between the learner and the teacher. And if we don't have trust, we cannot risk learning. So I am not interested in any of that. And also, PSA, do not use AI detectors. I do not care what turnerdin.com tells you. They cannot detect whether something is written with AI. It is a marketing strategy.

SPEAKER_06 21:33

So kind of on that, and so here's where I'm like, I I don't know. I think we're like kind of in this gray sort of space. I I did a poll of uh some district leaders across state a little while in informal, unscientific, but the vast majority of them said, uh, because I asked a question, has your district developed policies around the use of AI in district? And most said no. And that kind of made me scared a little bit. I'm like, ooh, so we know that at least on the adult and the professional end, like teachers are using AI in various applications and processes, but there's no policies that are guiding or protecting. And that kind of that kind of gave me like a little knot in my stomach. So like for a teacher out there, or even like a school leader out there, right? School leaders, they tell me, Oh, yeah, I just put it my parent newsletter and GPT and da-da-da. And I'm like, ooh, yikes. Um what what would what do we do or what could we do? Or what wait, I'm sorry, my cognitive coaching. What might be some tennis? What might be some strategies we can think about or things we can think about if I work in a district that hasn't yet developed any AI policies for use, but yet these tools are out there?

SPEAKER_02 22:50

So we've provided some resources from Open Schools. The first are some sample guidance. So we make a distinction between guidance and policy. Sometimes there's a role for guidance, and sometimes there's a role for policy. So for individual teachers, it would be more in the guidance bucket, um, just because of the legal implications of a policy. And so we have sample syllabi language, we have sample guidance documents from our county, and a number of other resources in there for teachers who are thinking about this with their with their students. The other project I want to lift is our Writing Our Futures project-based learning uh project that we did in the spring. And I just got word that one of the teachers is continuing with this project this year.

SPEAKER_03 23:36

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

So that's a we had a pilot last year. We were able to get some funding, and we used a tool called writingpartners.net, which is a social annotation site that invites students to write, and then you sort of have two window panes. So this was an ELA classrooms, and on the side, the the commenting features were there, but they could use AI to use to support that commenting, and they call them writing partners. And so we were using this tool. And the driving question was how might we influence ethical and innovative uses of AI in our school? And the kids eventually presented to the stakeholders in their own districts about what they thought through their investigation into generative AI tools, they created the guidance. So if we are if we are serious about it are y'all listening to this out there, you better write that one down.

SPEAKER_04 24:35

Dr.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Zellner is just like hitting us with all of that.

SPEAKER_04 24:38

Dropping the hot takes right now.

SPEAKER_02 24:40

If we are serious about building digital citizens who can push back against misinformation, who can push back against disinformation, who understand how to live in our society, in our communities, they should be the ones saying, here's what we believe about what ethical and innovative use looks like. And when we have those conversations with them, the things that they do would blow your mind. My favorite example is one of these schools that I worked with. The teacher had a self-contained classroom for ELA. So that meant that every child in there had an IEP that had learning barriers. And one of the invitations on their road to answering this question was to create a chat bot, just uh sort of paper prototype it. What would you do? What problem would you solve? And those students created an IEP bot that would suggest accommodations for them so they could advocate for themselves in their meeting with their teachers, social workers, and everyone providing them support. That gives me chills. That's what happens when we invite students into the conversation. When there's trust between the teacher and the students to investigate this phenomenon together, then the real magic happens. Then you get the innovative uses because they're thinking of those fun ways to do it instead of us running around and checking social media, what cool thing, what cool thing, what cool thing. It's not about that. If this is a general purpose technology as these companies are suggesting to us, then we should figure that out together based on our own values. And if we never invite students into that conversation, we'll never get there. And they're the ones who are lifting some of these issues.

SPEAKER_05 26:31

Yeah, I think, you know, and and you said something earlier. You said put it in the hands of students, and students will they'll they'll blow our minds because that's what students do. They will blow our minds. They won't blow up the world with AI. They're go, they're gonna be the ones in the classrooms working with teachers that are gonna provide the opportunity for the best path forward and how we maximize and use this tool for learning. And so I wanna I wanna talk about ways in which AI might serve that development outside of the classroom as well. Are there are there opportunities for students to use and develop and learn around AI skills in a in a way within the school that's outside of the classroom environment, in these after-school opportunities, in these opportunities that come from uh from companies and partners and community organizations? Where are we seeing some of the work that's being developed outside of the classroom for students?

SPEAKER_02 27:28

Aaron Powell I think the my favorite project is MIT Rays, which does a lot of work with helping students understand the technology behind the large language models and helps them develop their own vision of how they might be used. That's an open source project. And so I tend to gravitate towards those. Although code.org has some interesting for younger students to play around with those ideas and and more in that creative space. To me, that's where the innovation comes, is when we can create with it rather than just like putting in a prompt and getting something cool out. It's it's fancy, it's exciting. And then you kind of go, okay, now what? Now what else can I do with this? And so I think to me, that's kind of the most interesting thing. Uh, but it ends up being around that like personal relationship and understanding like the benefits and drawbacks, the way that it hallucinates, double checking the sources, all of that digital citizenship that I was mentioning earlier. And so that's where I really see uh the impact is focusing more on creation with it. One caveat, however, is that Common Sense Media in Stanford did a study and feel free to look this up, but they did a risk assessment around generative AI chatbots. So when AI first came out, uh, we got really excited, like you could talk to George Washington if you're doing a project on George Washington and all these things. And what we found is that the risk is way too high. And so common sense media, which is a nonprofit and the Stanford researchers basically are advising that there are no safe chatbots for children under 18. And so if we're doing work with students in these spaces, we're wanting to look for educational technology companies that are developed, co-developed with educators that have some some walled gardens for our kids. So I don't always advocate for walled gardens. Sometimes I I think it's can be too s we schoolitize things too much. Sometimes we're kind of a vulture leaning over. What are you doing? I just fear that the risks are too high. Yeah, yeah. I I just at this point when we have the sycophancy issue and and some of these mental health crises that people are experiencing, it is very real, it is very dangerous. And I'm not interested in experience experimenting on kids with this. And I think that that's our role as educators in this conversation is because our interest in it is in protecting and um helping our students grow. And we're not interested in that bottom line in the same way that these tech companies are.

SPEAKER_06 30:15

Well, you mentioned danger. Speaking of danger, we're gonna get real hot right now for our hot takes as we begin to slowly close the show. Doctors are gonna hang out for our hot take. I'm sure you got several.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

I was gonna say you get to close us out. Yeah, you get to close us out with a hot take.

SPEAKER_06 30:32

I I'll I'll kick us off here um with my hot take. And and I and I get it. Like teachers, you know, sh shout out to all my teachers. Listen, I love you all. I know we're all busy, overstressed. We're looking for something that kind of takes work away, something that that makes things easier. I I get that. Huge caution when it comes to using AI to grade student work, and like, and when I say grade, like to put a grade in a grade book that will carry consequence for a student. Extreme caution. I'm almost at a point just like, don't do that. And here's why, because we know that AI hallucinates, AI makes mistakes, but but more importantly, I think if you, the teacher, remove yourself from the evaluation of student work, you, the practitioner, become less knowledgeable about the students' strengths and their assets and their areas for need because you're off offloading that work to the AI. So if there's any work that you're trying to offload, I would say don't do that. Like don't use the AI for grading and totally remove yourself from that process. Maybe it can help you identify some things, but you, the adult uh practitioner who has the relationship with the kid and the trust as well as the content uh area expertise, you have to be a part of that process. Don't use AI to replace you in grading. That's my hot take. Katie, what about you?

SPEAKER_01 31:58

Yeah, yeah. I feel like we need to like throw a plug for like best grading practices. Open schools can help with that, right? Um you also have me thinking about like the pyramid where evaluation is at the top, because like that's the deepest level of like true understanding. And so if you're not evaluating uh the work coming from your students, you're missing that type of level. Um so I felt like I had a hot take, and then Andrea has dropped some knowledge that I'm like, ooh, I don't even know if I want my hot take to be out there. So what I was going to say, and then have further dialogue with Andrea after this, um, was really helping our students like become digital citizens, become digitally literate. Our teachers need support in that, our administrators need to provide teachers' support for that. Um, and really thinking about like how can we use what might be produced from some of these like generative AI tools to then have students evaluate the product and use the knowledge and sense making that they have to rely on whether or not the solution maybe in math is true. And so I think about like maybe like so often in math, we like pull students like work and then we use that as like the example and like find the error. Maybe the AI tool can be the new students that we like find the error for, which is really having us like synthesize and make sense of like products that come out rather than relying it on as like the the solution.

SPEAKER_06 33:22

The solution, okay. Hot Jay.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

Jay Jay, what you got?

SPEAKER_05 33:25

What you got, Jay? Well, I got as you said, this is our we're moving into danger, the danger zone here of hot time. Did you know my middle name is danger? I did not know that. It's not, but now I do it's not now. Jay Danger Hafter.

SPEAKER_06 33:39

It sounds great.

SPEAKER_05 33:40

Google it.

SPEAKER_06 33:41

I I Gemini it? No. Maybe Gemini. AI it. Maybe it'll be it. It'll give me the wrong answer. I don't want to.

SPEAKER_05 33:46

I'm leaning into I'm leaning into creativity. Um, and and really leveraging what we what we can do with students when we put them in opportunities to create and and opportunities to co-create as as adults with the students. So I would I would ask a little call to action here is at some point this school year, develop something within your within your curriculum, your teaching practice, in which you are engaging students in creating something using AI. And then I would challenge the teachers to do this with them, co-create with them. But it's not just, we're not going to look at only the end product of whatever it is we're asking them to create. While we go through this process, we're going to interact with students about what it is that they're seeing in the process of using AI to create something from scratch. How do they feel about it? Do they feel like they have ownership over the thing they're creating? Are they happy with the outcomes of what it is that they're creating? And if we do that as teachers and we co-create with them next to them, and we have a shared mutual experience of what it is we're creating. Maybe it's a short story in an English class, maybe it's a model of some kind in a science class. There's a lot of opportunities wherever you are to create something from scratch. I would I would urge all teachers to spend some time this year, co-create with your students and examine the process as much as we examine the end product, and let's see where we go from there and how we can build and improve on those skills as we move forward.

SPEAKER_06 35:27

Hot takes, hot takes all. We're gonna leave our last hot take to our esteemed guest, Dr. Andrezelna. What's your last hot take? You you've already put some hot takes out there in the atmosphere. So last one.

SPEAKER_02 35:38

So uh bear with me. First, I'll just put another plug-in for the Writing Our Futures unit that is free, open to anyone. You can borrow it, adapt it, modify it for your students if you're taking up Jay's uh call to action. I just want to read a quote from Eric Salvaggio because I think it's a beautiful summary of what we were talking about. So he's discussing large language models in the way that it's a dilution of billions of people, like adding water to sugar until the sweetness dissolves. Writing and lots of art and other things humans do can give you a bit of a taste of the someone behind it. With AI, that sugar is rinsed out of the mug. Uh, my point is that translating your language through AI is a lost opportunity to cultivate the sweetness within you. With your own words connecting to the words of others, we can use stories for what they are for, which is to link ourselves with the stories of the people around us. I want everyone to know you are doing enough. Even if the story feels like a tsunami or feels like you're behind, you are doing enough. Create with your students, build relationships with your students, and that is all you need to do.

SPEAKER_03 36:53

And that's like all the stuff.

SPEAKER_05 36:54

And I think, I think, I think on that, I love it. That that's gonna wrap us up for today. I I don't know if we need to enter. Andrea is the rap. Yeah, that is Andrea is the rap. Uh Google that. Andrea is the rap. Uh huge, huge thank you to Dr. Andrea Zellner for joining us today and uh spending time unpacking this uh artificial intelligence AI, the role that it plays in the classroom. Uh, we hope you found something here to inspire your own practice uh and spark some new ideas in the uh in the classroom. We hope you'll join us next time. We're going to be diving into a conversation uh that I think is also really important and uh sort of front of center right now. Why are so many people talking about dyslexia? Uh it's an interesting conversation in this, yeah, in this moment. Uh, and there's a lot that's being done about it, and there's a lot of implications around it. And uh, we're going to have a uh a guest that I think is gonna offer quite a bit of uh of knowledge and resources around this topic. That should be a really good episode. I think it's gonna be a really good episode. I would be interested in listening to that one. Well, then if you want to listen to it, Dr. Sneed, I would suggest that you subscribe to the Teaching Uh Tomorrow podcast wherever you find your digital entertainment. Uh, please make sure you do that. Uh leave us a rating or comment. It does help other educators find these conversations. Smash the like. And share this episode or other episodes with colleagues who might need a little inspiration uh for the year ahead. We we hope we're providing a little bit of hope and inspiration uh in these challenging times. For now, keep teaching, keep learning, and keep building the tomorrow your students can believe in because here at Teaching Tomorrow, we believe in you. See you next time. Bye bye, y'all.