SEL in EDU
SELinEDU Podcast is stories and insights from outstanding teachers, administrators, leaders, and students on all things Social Emotional Learning in education. These 30-40-minute podcasts are perfect for a commute, a nice cup of joe, or a self-care walk.
SEL in EDU
065: AI Integration and Human-Centered Approaches with Dr. Randy Ziegenfuss
How do we transform K-12 education with a human-centered approach in the age of AI? Join us for this enlightening episode as we sit with the visionary Dr. Randy Ziegenfuss. Randy shares his mission to revolutionize K-12 education by thoughtfully integrating technology while honoring and leveraging human connection.
Unlock the transformative potential of AI in education with our deep dive into personal learning and content consumption. Discover how adopting an AI mindset can revolutionize managing and absorbing information, particularly in nonfiction reading. By leveraging tools like ChatGPT, Randy shares how you can scan, summarize, and analyze books and articles, gaining greater control over learning processes. This method enhances your ability to filter and focus on the most intriguing parts, fostering curiosity and critical thinking. We also discuss the ethical considerations and exciting potential of teaching these AI techniques to students, empowering them to explore their interests more effectively.
Hear real-world examples of how AI can enhance curriculum development, making rote tasks obsolete and paving the way for authentic performance tasks that boost student agency and joy in learning. Join us as we also touch on the Human School initiative, which emphasizes human-centered approaches in the evolving educational landscape.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
- Connect with Dr. Randy Ziegenfuss via The Human School, Instagram, and Facebook.
Welcome to SEL in EDU.
Speaker 2:Where we discuss all things social and emotional in education.
Speaker 1:I'm.
Speaker 2:Krista and I'm Craig, and we are your hosts on this journey.
Speaker 1:Welcome SEL in EDU family to our next episode. Our dearest friend, Craig is still out and about in schools and we are happy to welcome Tammy Musiowski-Borderman, way over from Hawaii, although it's not 6 am anymore. Tammy, how are you doing a couple hours later? Yeah?
Speaker 2:so our first recording today was really early, but yeah, now I'm into my day and it's feeling good. It's sunny, the birds are still chirping, got my workout in and, yeah, I'm just enjoying doing the recordings with you. How are you?
Speaker 1:today I am good and I'm laughing, because when we first got on I'm like, oh, how was your nap? And you're like I didn't nap.
Speaker 2:And I? You're a napper, I'm not the napper.
Speaker 1:Yeah, between us, when we're both feeling tired, you go work out and I crawl into bed, and then we both come back refreshed. You go work out and I crawl into bed and then we both come back refreshed and ready to work. I'm like, oh yeah, you've got all the things done already and it's not even lunchtime there for you. I aspire to be like you at some point in my life. Well, I am excited to have a very special guest and dear friend on. Normally, we eat lunches at Red Robin once a month and catch up on all the things, but now we were able to get him on record talking about all of his brilliance. So I'm excited to introduce Dr Randy Ziegenfuss.
Speaker 1:Randy is a professor of practice in an EDD program at a local university near me called Moravian, and he is on a mission to shake up K-12 education, steering it towards a friendlier, human-centered approach that keeps pace with our tech-filled world. I can't imagine anything better and more aligned to SEL than this. He is innately curious and wonders what if we start by transforming our mindsets and getting inspired by the challenges blocking our path? Randy has worn many hats, as a public school superintendent, tech director, music teacher, choir and musical director and a higher ed administrator. Each role has added a splash of color to his vision of education and leadership, and now, as a professor of practice in the EDD program and the program director at Moravian University, he is still learning and hoping to inspire the next wave of educators. Hi, randy, welcome to SEL in EDU.
Speaker 3:Hello ladies, good to be here.
Speaker 1:What is on your heart today? How are you coming into the conversation?
Speaker 3:Well, I heard you mention the word nap and I love naps. That's one of the ways that I sort of rejuvenate myself before I'm doing something like a podcast. So I have had my nap today and it's been a great day. I was actually in the office and had a couple of really good conversations that are moving things forward. You know, you love those conversations when you like sit down with people and you just kind of get in that vibe and the momentum builds and then you get to the end of that conversation You're like that was awesome, take a couple notes, let's move on to the next thing. So you do that as an introvert, somebody who is actually quite introverted. You do that a couple times and you get a little tired. You got to sort of like recharge, regain your energy. So I like to do that with a nap.
Speaker 2:And I say so, there's three introverts on this podcast right now and it's funny how, you know, you find these connections with people.
Speaker 2:You know you're like people that introverts and the deep conversations though they are really tiring. Like I will find that after a good Zoom session or a good coaching session or something I'm like, ok, I need to just sit back and like sit in my thoughts for a little bit. And I do have an extroverted side. You know, like I used to be very on at conferences and just like, do all the stuff for like all the hours at conferences. And just like, do all the stuff for like all the hours. But then the last you know, since we've been back from COVID, I'm like, ooh, I need some. I'll, I'm happy to go back at eight o'clock to sit in my room and sit with my thoughts and just recharge. So I just found it kind of funny that we we all identify as introverted and we're happy to talk, broadcast, you know, broadcast our ideas for lots of people to listen to. But you know we're not on video either. So that kind of takes some of the pressure off that does.
Speaker 1:So you know, people can't see the crazy faces that Randy's making at me right now.
Speaker 3:Right oh my gosh Tammy, one thing that you mentioned that reminded me. So one thing that, as an introvert I find myself. I wake up in the morning and I've got like all somehow through my dreams or whatever. Like all these things are going through my head. It's the moment I wake up. So one thing I do is I come downstairs and I have my note taking app and I just sort of dump all that stuff out and that actually helps me sort of navigate the day. I'm also one of those people that kind of plans it out the night before, like I'll boom, boom, boom all the appointments or all the tasks and things that I want to do, prioritize things, things. But I think that's one of the ways that I kind of keep myself grounded and a little bit in check and like making sure I'm not overbooking myself and getting too emotionally exhausted but really kind of being scripted about the day. But I also find for me a habit is just to like dump all that stuff out of my brain in the morning.
Speaker 2:I like that idea because I too wake up with all of the things in my head that I know are in my calendar. But, um, I do like the your idea of writing them down as a way to just get it out anyway. Um, I'm one of those people who, you know, I I go against the grain sometimes and I know you're not really supposed to. I'm air quoting, like look at your phone in the morning. But that's the way that I ground my day. I look at my calendar and then I do a quick sweep through my emails, because then if I don't do that right away, then I'm just thinking about who's emailed, like do I need to go check that? So I just check it, do a quick look and if there's nothing important there, then I feel better. And if there's somebody that I need to respond to, then I'm aware of it. So just kind of like a different way to start my day. I know it's you know, screen time isn't the greatest, but it helps me just feel more grounded about the day.
Speaker 3:So here's a curiosity I have. I find myself oftentimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and I'll like have this idea or this solution to something that I've been thinking about and I have to force myself to like well, what I'll do is I'll pick up my phone and I'll text message myself the idea, because I figured if I'd not figure. But I've learned, like, if I don't do that, I'm like oh my god, I remember waking up and thinking about what, that, what I you know there was a solution to some problem or how I was going to approach a conversation with somebody. Um, is that normal to like wake up in the middle of the night and like have, I guess, your dreams or whatever, like solve your problems sometimes?
Speaker 1:I think so. I find that when I, when I can take that nap, when I even things like blow drying my hair in the morning after getting a shower, like I'm just my brain just goes, or when I'm driving and I'm like, oh, I've had this idea, and it's usually at the times when I'm less aware, um, I guess kind of not I don't want to say meditative, but where I'm more calm, I have, I'm with you in that. I'm like, oh, I'll remember this in the morning, and then I don't, and I get very frustrated with myself.
Speaker 3:So I'll say myself things.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious what app you use for note-taking.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh. So a couple, couple. Let me give you a little bit of a backstory and then I'll share the different apps. Um, so I've, since I retired, um, I found myself like I I love reading stuff, whether they be articles or books or whatever and I found myself just like highlighting quotes and putting them down, but I wasn't really doing anything with them and I was like, why am I doing this? I feel like I'm collecting all this garbage and I'm just like having it sit here and not really doing anything.
Speaker 3:So, trying to move from the idea of taking notes to making notes, so how do you actually like make the time to think about them and process them? So I've worked through just about all the possible note making apps that there are. So, um, I started with, uh, let's see, look here something called rome, okay, and of course, we've all probably used evernote. That's been around forever, um so, but I think I abandoned that because that's just like a big garbage incinerator. You just like put notes in it and don't do anything with them. So I've used Roam, and then I went to Notion, and now I'm pretty much sold on Obsidian, because you can link notes and that idea of making notes and thinking about what you put in there. So I find myself sort of navigating away from like I almost don't highlight anything, I almost don't do direct quotes of anything. But I'll take ideas and I'll like a concept and I'll put it in my notes and then I'll make a connection to something, whether it's a connection to another note, so in Obsidian you can actually make links.
Speaker 3:So, um, if there's a, a concept, um, such as AI or AI first mindset, um, I might write something about. Um, you know, maybe a personal three sentence personal reflection about. You know, maybe a personal three sentence personal reflection about. You know how I find, like this is something I'm going to get better at, or this is something that I've noticed the students in my class aren't very good at. So how can I create some conditions? So I'll make some notes, I'm thinking about this and then try to connect them and over the course I feel like I've got all these disparateate notes, but now they're starting to there's some something that's kind of emerging over the course of time as they kind of collide with each other. Um, so so, yeah, I'm kind of into the obsidian thing right now, um, and I'm also with a couple of friends trying to reimagine how we use AI in the act of consuming things, whether they be articles or even books. So if that intrigues you, I'd be interested to throw some ideas out.
Speaker 3:It does Okay to throw some ideas out.
Speaker 1:It does, and I'm loving this, too, because I've been working with a coach who had me go back to StrengthsFinder and I've realized that my number one strength is input, which in essence means I'm a collector of facts and knowledge and things, and I'm finding myself in a very similar situation where I have sticky notes, I have notes, I love books, but I'm not connecting things together, and I get very frustrated that I have all of this stuff that I want to use, but I don't have an organizational system for it, and that's one of the things that Tammy has expertise in is in organizational systems to help streamline your life, and so I'm excited to learn about these connections, and I'd love to hear about your thinking around AI and how to use this when consuming.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I know the word transformation is overused a lot, but it really is a lens through which I try to look at almost everything, and especially with this idea of AI and how like there are no experts on AI. There's lots of people doing a lot of experimenting and some people get a very big megaphone and they just put their stuff out there and we think that they become experts. But I think that you know to kick the tires and to experiment a lot is really important for everybody, and you don't have to be an expert to try it. And I found that, particularly working with students, that if you actually spend the time and try and develop that AI first mindset, even little pieces, that if you think about I'm doing this task, how might I be able to to use AI to do it, you begin to build that habit. And so one of the things that I've sort of tiptoed into the pool on is this idea of reading. So I like to consume things too, like you do, krista, and I always find like there's not enough time in the day to do it and I do have fear of missing out. You know like, oh my God, that book looks so good. When am I ever going to read it, because I already have like 300 books in my pile that I need to read. And so what can I do? How can I deal with this? So one thing that AI is actually really good at is taking large amounts of data and being able to make sense out of them. So one of the things that I've been experimenting with and I'd love to hear your feedback on this, too and push back on it if you think there's something maybe unethical about this or just not right I've asked my English department friends whether this is okay to do. So what I've been experimenting with is kind of like putting reading on steroids, and I've never been one of those people that has felt good about from another person saying, read this book. Or like in school, like a teacher that said, read this book. And also, by the way, I'm talking about nonfiction books.
Speaker 3:I don't think this works for fiction, but what I've been trying is to get the Kindle version, and then I have a book scanner which I can scan on my iPad. So in about eight minutes I can scan a book and I can break it up into chapters, into PDFs, and I can put them into ChatGPT. And what I love about this is that AI gives us agency. Okay, so if I'm actually reading a text that I'm not really sure I'm gonna like or find useful, I am still at the author's. He's got the agency because he has ordered this or she has put these ideas in a particular order and I have to pretty much follow it, even if I'm skimming it. Okay.
Speaker 3:But what I start out with and I have a whole document that my friends and I we've created these prompts. So the first prompt is to outline the chapter using the headings, and what that allows me to do is to say, ooh, that sounds really interesting. Let me ask it to tell me what the author has said about that, and so I can go through this process. So, on one hand, I could read the book in a very linear manner, but using AI, I now have more agency to dig into the parts of it that I find most interesting and the parts that I find really interesting. I will go to the book and read.
Speaker 3:So I'm using the AI as a filter so that I can consume more content, so that I can connect more ideas. I have more ownership over it. I know what my context is. I know what I'm curious about. The author doesn't know that. And now I can use the AI to give me kind of an aerial view of things and I can say, okay, I want to go down this rabbit hole, I'm not interested in that one. Or I see the author has made this statement in this statement.
Speaker 3:Hmm, let me ask the AI, what if we, you know, tell me more information about these two things together? Because one thing AI is really good at is connecting disparate ideas and generating something, some new idea, and then, oh wow, that new idea then gets me to think about something else and make another connection. So my curiosity I don't have an answer to this is a use of something like this allowing me to go deeper? Is it allowing me to take more agency over my learning? It also makes me wonder like, oh my God, what if we taught kids how to do deeper? Is it allowing me to take more agency over my learning? It also makes me wonder like, oh my God, what if we taught kids how to do this? Because, face it, most schools are not set up so that kids can pursue their curiosities. The AI allows us to do that. It allows us to say you know, here's this piece of text.
Speaker 3:I will do that too with articles. I will if, if there's a long form article online, I'll copy and paste the text. I'll put it in chat GPT and I'll say, like, give me a two paragraph summary and and it is a great gatekeeper of like and good I'm glad I didn't read that it's really not applicable, or okay, I want to like, dig into this. And then sometimes I will use use the chat GPT, um, to create a metaphor. It's very creative too. So here's this concept, this idea. Okay, I'm a K-12 principal.
Speaker 3:Create a metaphor so that I can understand this concept a little bit better. Create a metaphor so that I can understand this concept a little bit better. Create me three metaphors and then I can use my human ability to think about things critically and say, ooh, that metaphor that really resonates. Or I can say that metaphor really resonates. But I think you can do better. I think I'd like you to redo that metaphor and I'd like you to make this better connection. So I threw a lot of things out there. What resonates am I. I don't think I'm being unethical because I'm buying the book, I'm just it's. I feel like it's stuff. I'm going to the library and and I'm, um, yeah, okay, so I'll let you, you talk, give me, give me some feedback. What are you thinking?
Speaker 2:so my thoughts were, like you said, there aren't enough opportunities for students to get creative with tools, especially when the tools are scary for teachers, right. So when teachers don't have enough knowledge about what ai can do, especially something like this, right, like you can put in some simple second grade content and help your kids pull out the main ideas and things like that and get them to generate questions about it. And I think sometimes the scary part is like we're just going to rely on what it says. But the value that, like I really was grabbing from you was the connections that you're making, which is such a high level skill when you're thinking about different texts and bringing ideas together. And I really I mean I'm going to steal that idea because I'm going to be doing some more writing soon and like just taking some pieces of text and creating a metaphor, or like bringing another piece of text together to make some connections that sometimes we just don't have the bandwidth even.
Speaker 2:Or like you know how you're saying, the ideas pop in your head when you're sleeping. Or like for me, it's like when I'm walking, I just come back and I'm like full of ideas. Like when I'm walking, I just come back and I'm like full of ideas, but sometimes we just need a phrase or a something to make the connect, to help us make the connection or come up with a fresher idea. And why would we limit students from doing that? Just because it's scary for us on the teaching end on the teaching end.
Speaker 3:I think that that one thing to to add to that, when we use the ai with a teacher, with a student, is to reinforce that it is not the end of the conversation when it gives you something, that you always have to have the human input into that, so like, okay, it's given me this response. What do I think of that? Does that resonate? Could it be better if it's given me this response? What do I think of that? Does that resonate? Could it be better If it could be better? If I'm not satisfied with it, how do I ask it to do a better job? How do I give it feedback and say, just okay, that's amazing practice.
Speaker 3:How often do we let kids give feedback to themselves or to other people? Here's an opportunity to give feedback to an AI, not a human, but something that has generated something that we can critically consume. So when teachers say, oh, it's going to take away the opportunities for students to think, absolutely not. I mean you could use it that way, but absolutely not it's actually. I think it brings the joy back into thinking, because there's nothing more joyless than looking at a blank sheet of paper and going like, where do I start? Throw it in the AI and it will give you 10,000 things to start with, or 12, or five, or six, and then you go, oh okay, that one works. Now let's go with that and let's use it as a partner to make make the idea generation even better.
Speaker 1:You hit me. I mean there are some. There's a bunch of things that I wrote down. To kind of respond to the one part when you you said about it being joyless to stare at a piece of paper, I am a person who has a hard time getting started. So if I can get a couple things started, boom, I am on my way and I'm invested and ready to go and thinking about. When you had asked if it was ethical, honestly, the first thing I thought about is if we're taking something that somebody wrote and it's going into AI, but you've purchased it already and it's also if it's going into this system, that's out there.
Speaker 1:Other people are able to hear these different pieces of what the author has written. So I'm thinking this is probably not anything that's not already out there. Like once an author puts a book out and it goes on to Kindle and it goes on to all the things. I mean, I'm not going to lie. I have a bunch of books that were sent as PDFs and some of them are older but they have really good content and every once in a while somebody will bring it up. I'm like here take this PDF of a book. Once in a while somebody will bring it up. I'm like here, take this PDF of a book, and so I'd be interested to hear, tammy, as an author, if that's something in a moment that you're like, oh, you know, I put time into this, but we're using it and consuming it, and I think that is ultimately what an author would want.
Speaker 1:And thinking about that generation of generating new ideas, I would never buy a textbook where somebody else had already highlighted and other people would be like, oh, I want the one that's highlighted because somebody else already did the work. And I'm like, but what if that's not my work? What if they don't make the same meaning that I make? So I always wanted the fresh books with nothing in them, so that I could start making those meanings.
Speaker 1:And as someone who really loved this idea of pulling desperate ideas together to create something like a grounded theory, I love that idea of seeing where you can make these connections to really launch your own personalized learning. And then, lastly, when you were talking about creating metaphors, I'm like what a great way to connect with families and caregivers and communities, because we know that it was Marzano, wasn't it? We're. One of the nine best ways to learn something is to create metaphors and similes, connecting it to something that's prior. We don't necessarily have somebody else's experiences. How can we be a better way to facilitate learning than to connect it to somebody else's strengths and assets and knowledge base? And so, as an educator, I think we're facilitating that piece as an educator.
Speaker 3:I think we're facilitating that piece. Um, so I think two. Two of the strengths that ai has that humans don't necessarily have, or at least at the great intensity, is the ability to consume so much knowledge, because it it has. The ai has a huge brain, and I hate to make it human, but it has a huge brain. It has more knowledge and experiences inside of it than any human being could possibly have. And the second thing is that it can process that information more quickly than any human being can. So you've got this massive amount of information with this massive amount of computing power behind it. So it acts like a brain, but it acts in a way that is more powerful than any human being. And so how do we use that as a partner? How do we imagine that when we're sitting around a table, or even if I'm sitting alone at my computer, imagine I'm sitting at a table and the AI is a thought partner, is somebody at the table that when I've got a curiosity or a question or need help with something, it can help me?
Speaker 3:I'm writing something, I put it in AI. I say give me feedback. Where's the argument flawed? Where do I need to fill in the gaps. Where's it strong? How can I put a good ending on it?
Speaker 3:Should I use more metaphors here? Should I add a scenario here? What could I do with that? Like, and again, don't take it for granted what it gives you and just say, oh, check, done, let me insert that. But okay, I'm going to be critical. Oh, I like that scenario, but I wish it was connected more to a teacher's life, a principal's life. Give me, give me that, um, give me a scenario built around that concept through the lens of a student. How would a student feel about that? And that leads me to one more thing. I'm probably rambling too long. One of the really interesting things uh, because ai has scraped, you know and this is definitely controversial supposedly, uh, scraped everyone's electronic, digital stuff out there.
Speaker 3:If there's a thought leader in a particular space and they've got stuff out there that AI has consumed in its brain, if you've got a problem or a scenario, ask it to take on the role of that person and to give you advice on how to solve that problem. How would that person solve that problem? So oftentimes, what I will do is, if I'm thinking in terms of systems, like systems thinking, one of the key folks in systems thinking was Danella Meadows, so, and her writing's all over the place. So I will say, okay, here's this educational scenario. There are multiple systems that are involved. Identify the systems, the systems. Okay, now pretend that you're danella meadows and you want to. You want to outline a set of steps to approach a solution, a systems thinking solution to this. What would you do? And so you ask it to take on different personas. You can do it.
Speaker 3:Um, if you have a favorite writer who writes in a particular style, um, right, I actually tried this if you'd like. I like adam grant and the stuff that he posts on instagram. So I'll be like take this writing passage, this thing that I wrote, and actually, before I do that, I say do you say, do you know who Adam Grant is? And it gives me a little bio. And then I say, in bullet points, outline Adam Grant's writing style. And it will actually break it down into pithy, statement, advice, collaborative, those kinds of things.
Speaker 3:And then I'll say take this writing something that I've written and create a meme for social media in the style of adam grant, and it will. It will take what it knows about that style of that particular. It could be anybody. It doesn't have to be adam grant, but it could be a particular writer, and it will translate it into something that that person might say. So there's all sorts of different things, like and I go back to the idea of experimenting Like there's no book or manual on these things that everybody just has to think about. How could the AI help me? And that's, you know, that's human creativity, right there.
Speaker 1:As you're talking, I'm writing all these notes. I'm like you are going to see my social media all of a sudden transform. You'd be like Krista what is happening. But I actually wrote down on a sheet of paper, like the people who I've been most kind of enthralled with lately Adam Grant always has piqued my interest Simon Sinek, seth Godin just emails I get every day. I'm like they're short, they're powerful. I'm like I want a brain like that, like these are the things that and I love this idea of you know thinking about how would they view this scenario or situation and leverage it.
Speaker 3:And again I go back to whatever it generates, for you, don't take it at face value, critique it. And if it generates something in the style of somebody else, or if they're taking on a persona of somebody else and there's something there that doesn't make sense, question it. How did you ask it? Like, how did you get to that? Give me a glimpse into your thinking thinking even though it's not human and it's really not thinking.
Speaker 2:It can explain how it got to that point I like, too, that you've been talking about how it gives agency to whoever is using it, and I'm a huge learner agency person and so I think when students, at whatever age, you would start teaching them how to use this tool, when we open up these opportunities for to be creative with how to use it, give them some prompts to try out and then talk about, like how they decided, like it's almost like another layer of thinking, right, so it's like the stuff that you're inputting and then getting back out. But then why did you use this tool in this way? What was it that was helpful for you? So there's another layer of like skill development and thought process after using a tool like this, and we had a previous conversation about, you know, giving somebody the purpose behind what they're doing, because that's important for people to know, and if we want people to actually invest themselves in learning and especially learning a new tool, they got to know why they're using it and what the purpose is. So I feel like this is a it's such, a such a huge opportunity for all of us to just tinker around.
Speaker 2:Like you said, experiment it's. It doesn't have have a guide, just put something in there and see what comes out, to see what, how it like whatever you put in is. You know, it's so interesting to see what comes out, just even from titles for like ideas for conference sessions or like things that you just. You know, you that no one really likes writing, but it's like, yay, now AI can help me write this blurb for this conference session and even though the ideas might be living in my head, it's just got a way of putting the words together in a much better way than I can. So the experimentation is so important, you know, it makes it fun.
Speaker 1:You have me thinking too and, randy, I think I've mentioned this in some of our conversations that in some of the curriculum support that we do for school districts, that it's around and I believe in this wholeheartedly moving more towards authentic performance tasks as opposed to rote tasks in a given period of time of time, and while there's a framework for being able to do that and clues and tips and tricks, how amazing would it be to type in, you know, here's the components of an authentic performance task, here's what we need our students to learn throughout a unit and the different levels of thinking, complexity of thinking and the different standards.
Speaker 1:Can you please create and I use, please, interestingly, because I still use please at GPT, you know please do this for me, thank you Creating something that would take less time and probably be more developed than what I could do and then, like Tammy and you both said, go back and revise it. So if we're really trying to shift the landscape of what education looks like, making it more meaningful, giving students more agency, making it clear why they're learning what we're learning, let's give them more opportunities to demonstrate what they're learning in a more realistic way.
Speaker 3:And a more joyful way I go back to that word again that you know it doesn't have to be drudgery and I think that you know getting over the mindset that if it's not drudgery then they're losing something. You know that, that you know if we're, if the AI is taking away that joyless part, you know they're not building character, they're not, you know, going to be prepared for a rough life. Or you know when they experience problems, they're not going to be able to persevere. And, like I think you can learn perseverance in other ways than than just being and it goes back to um.
Speaker 3:One of the questions that I'm really curious about right now is to why are educators because we work in that space, but why are educators, I won't say necessarily resistant, but kind of ambivalent to this whole thing about ai. I am surprised and shocked, actually, how many people, the large percentage of people that haven't even used it. They haven't even started having conversations about this. And I'm curious as to like why do you have any thoughts on that and your experiences and people you cross paths with?
Speaker 1:I can share that. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was working with a math team around curriculum development and we got to the part of big ideas and essential questions and I said here's what they are and here's the purpose behind both of them. But for us to sit here as a group and to try to come up with something on our own is a waste of time. Let's see how we can leverage different AI different forms of AI to see what we come up with and then tweak it. Different forms of AI to see what we come up with and then tweak it. The entire group of teachers was in on it. They were in different chat GPT Plus.
Speaker 1:There was another one. I think it was a woman's name, I'm not remembering. Somebody else brought up magic school AI that I still haven't explored yet, but she's like I love this for helping to refine some lesson plan ideas. And then, on the other hand, I met with another administrator who's like oh, I was agonizing over writing this and this and this and a cover letter and applying for this job and I'm like take your ideas and put it into ChatGPT. I'm like it's your ideas, your original ideas, and it's helping you refine. So I'm seeing those two camps as well, and how can we kind of move people in? I'm like let's then have a conversation around what we're finding and how we want to refine that to make it fit what we want, instead of getting frustrated that we're not coming up joylessly looking at a blank screen. Tammy, what are you?
Speaker 2:seeing. I'm seeing nothing. Where I'm at right now. We have not talked about chat GPT. In my previous role as Director of Teaching and Learning I started using it to help teachers build their unit plans vertically, because it's the same content across grade levels from K to six. But of course you've got to increase your complexity with all of those concepts. So I started using it to help them get some lines of inquiry set up for each of their grade levels. And again, like you know, I put in give me a vertical or give me lines of inquiry, grades kindergarten through grade six on this content. I plugged it in and it gave me, you know, a handful for each grade and then I just like refine them and those were the basis for what the units were. And so I was trying to get teachers like into that practice. But then I my funding for that role ran out, so I'm like okay, well you're kind of started.
Speaker 2:This is what it looks like. I made a video for, like, what prompt to put in GPT, chat, gpt, so that they knew exactly what to write, and just like try it out. Right. This is. This is helping you do your vertical alignment with the content that we have. So why would you sit there and try to think about it yourself when we can just have we have the content.
Speaker 3:Let's just have a machine figure it out for us or at least take the joyless work out of it so that we can take and think about and have conversations about what it's putting on the table for us to work with. I think that's a big difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then get to the fun stuff, because teachers they love the planning part, right it's just sometimes you get stuck in those like what can be nebulous or can be just too nitty gritty, so yeah, it just takes some of that out of that process. Too nitty gritty, so yeah, it just takes some of that out of that process.
Speaker 1:Two, if it connects back, randy, you had asked like what might prevent people from doing that, and I think it might be around our concept of ethics or what we think is cheating.
Speaker 1:I mean even thinking about well, you know, we want students to collaborate but they have to do things independently, like it's this dichotomy that we have where you know, do it on your own eyes, on your own paper, but oh no, over here you need to learn how to talk and to communicate and negotiate, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of that space in between. And I wonder if and I am all for, and please understand that, like as somebody who values research, I'm all for sharing where you got information and ideas and honoring the people who came before you, but I also think that it's like that, standing on the shoulders of giants, that they say like you know, here was the path I took. You know the people who created this path. Here was the path I took. You know the people who created this path and here's where I picked it up and where I added something or where I used. You know, I saw these different pieces come and I still had a human touch to it.
Speaker 3:But it's beyond the capacity of what we could perhaps have done over a period of time and always keep the human in partner with the ai. It's not going to replace humans, at least probably in our lifetime, um, but who knows? Uh, but right now, as long as we keep, they say, the human in the loop, we keep the human touch in there. We're the final arbiter of the stuff that it generates and it will. We can always, we can keep it human centered.
Speaker 1:And I think that's one of the things that I've always appreciated about you and I'll share with our listening audience here that I think the first time I met you and I shared this was like 12 years ago. I was just starting off as a grad assistant and coming in to help facilitate a program for the group of superintendents and you were there and Tracy Smith and somebody else were presenting around technology and education.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I remember that yeah.
Speaker 1:And you and Tracy were the nicest, kindest people to me and I know sometimes when people are like, oh, you're a GA, like you're kind of like the bottom of the rung and like both of you didn't and so many people didn't, but you know, a couple of people did, just treating somebody with respect, and I just felt so honored, warm, like it was just a warmth that I really appreciated from both of you, and I admire the fact that, while you appreciate technology and you're excited for it, you don't ever lose the sight of the human piece.
Speaker 1:And I want to wrap that back around, because you started something called the human school and I know we're coming close to our end, but I want people to hear about this and you're looking at a way of being able to transform education through and I'll tell me if I'm misunderstanding this but like four different lenses where you can be a transformer of education through being an inventor, a storyteller, an objector and a curator. And I love thinking, if you don't mind sharing a little bit about those pieces and where people can find them, because I think they'll see that it's not an either and it's a or an either, or it's an and these things together sure.
Speaker 3:So, um, I retired in january of 2021 from public ed and it was in the middle of pandemic and we were all in our homes, like you couldn't go to a restaurant or socialize with anybody. So I was like, hey, maybe I should just think about like, do I have anything else to offer? And so kind of being of an action researchy kind of mindset my whole life. I was like, nah, let me just think about reflect on, like, what did I do and how did I do this? And I think I've always felt that education could be better, even as a superintendent. You know there's political ways that you navigate saying that, but I always felt like we could be doing a better job.
Speaker 3:Look at student data, to the way that we onboard people to so many systems in school are just dehumanizing because they put the task before the people behind it. And you know, one of the things, one of the cores, one of the things in my core, is that everybody has gifts and assets they bring to the table. I don't care if you are a five-year-old kindergartner or a 40-year-old experienced teacher or the custodian working in the building or, you know, the person who cleans out the parking lot or the bus driver. Everybody has something in life. They've had this journey, this trajectory, these milestones. They bring something, and it's our responsibility, when we interact and build relationships with those people, to figure out what those are, for our own benefit, but also to help other people see what their gifts and assets are, that we see in them. And so, over the course of 10 months, I did this reflection based on some of those core principles, and came up with this idea of the human school, which is we need to make school more human centered, where people feel seen, heard and valued. And you know. So how do we go about? What's the process? And so it's kind of a little riff on action research, where first you object to something, you find a challenge within your system, something that's not fulfilling its need as best as it could be, and so then you object to that. And you know how do you object to something without being objectionable? We've had all those people that we've encountered that you know believe that the way to make change happen is to wave their hands and scream and stomp their feet. Well, no, that usually doesn't work. That's not very human centered.
Speaker 3:So then, once you find something that you want to change, you brainstorm a solution, and you have to do that with other people. And this is where the idea of leadership comes in. I think I've, in my career, I've seen a lot of leaders who feel like they have to have the solution, or even the people that they serve feel like the leader has to have the solution, like that's what you get paid for. You're the superintendent or you're the principal, I'm just the teacher. They say, and that's rubbish. It's like OK, this is all of our problem. We're all part of the system. So if this is a problem, let's figure out together, collaboratively, how we solve that. And you do that first by building relationships and connections with people and you honor those things that they bring to the table and you say, oh, this is an interesting group of people. Look at all these things that they bring. How can we use that to design some kind of solution?
Speaker 3:A lot of this sounds like a lot of theory at this point, but it works. And then you want to test that solution out. You got to implement it, you got to gather data and I say it's always human-centered data too, which is usually qualitative data. You want to have conversations with people about how did that solution change your life? How did that change the experience of this particular system? And then you have to make sense of that data by reflecting upon it, and then, ultimately, you want to convert that into a new story that you put out there to help people realize that the system can change. Here's some evidence how.
Speaker 3:And then you start all over.
Speaker 3:Once you tell a story, then you've got to find something else to object to. So the system is never perfect, it's constantly evolving and we have to be agile with it, and so this is a little process by which people can that I found through my experience that you know when we were using technology and when there was, you know the initial way that we were using technology was to just make current practices more efficient. And then asking the question of like is there more to this Like? How might this help us change the way we do assessment, or change the way you know, change the gauge of agency in the classroom, how can? So you start to ask those questions and then you design solutions.
Speaker 3:It could be a new pedagogy, it could be a new practice, it could be translating something that's a theory, a pedagogical theory, into your particular learning environment and let's collect some data on it and then let's let's go to the school board and tell them the story about this so that the next time they make a decision they can see, you know, the wonderful impacts of that, of that particular way of doing things. So, uh, I think, if you do that, uh, in small increments over the course of time, those small things build up uh to larger systemic changes randy, you've given us so much to think about and the human school sounds amazing like.
Speaker 2:if I wish that was available when I was in school in the 70s and 80s, that would have been lovely. But as we wrap up the show, I mean, obviously we could keep talking for a long time about this, but the question at the end of the show is always what is your SEL superpower?
Speaker 3:I think I'm, even though I'm an introvert, I love connecting with people. I love building connecting with people. Yeah, I love. I love building relationships with people. And goes back to what I said I love trying to figure out what's their gift and asset, what's their, what's the thing they're bringing to this conversation, to their work, to this institution.
Speaker 1:Um, and I think that that that keeps me empathetic, curious, and ultimately, I think those are the things that are the grease that keep the wheels moving forward who say how can I learn more about the human school or learn more about the program at Moravian, or just get a hold of Randy and pick his brain more about AI and learn more about his philosophy and the blending of these two things that many people like to separate out being human centered and the use of technology? How can people get a hold of you?
Speaker 3:So the human school is at the human dot school. The domain is a school domain, so it's the human dot school to get in touch with me. If you just probably Google my name, you'll find various ways to get in touch with me. At Moravian, the program is at Moravian dot edu, slash edd, which is very easy, and so the program is based a lot on the things that we talked about today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm happy to connect with people. And the program, too, is mostly online, right, and then people can come during the summer to have that face-to-face connection with them. So it's really meant it and you helped like this philosophy of thinking about what this could be. How can people do this while they're working but then also have a chance to come in and connect, so that blending of tech and being human centered at the same time?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been really fun to design something from the ground up, and it's designed a lot on the principles and the ideas that we talked about today, so that's been fun. So it starts this summer. We have a cohort of 21 people, so it's going to be awesome.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. Best wishes with all of that. We look forward to keeping in touch and hearing how things are going. Also, for those of you who are listening, you can purchase a set of cards around each of the four aspects of the human school, and I have a set that I use in my professional learning. In fact, I am going to be using them tomorrow and I hadn't even told Randy about this yet, but I'll be using them in some work I'm doing tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Thank you to those who have tuned in again. I find myself not able to fill Craig's shoes with his amazing sign-off, but I just want to remind all of us that, if you're listening to SEL and EDU, you know that we are human focused, that we put the students at the center of everything that we are doing, that we're continuing to learn how to improve our lives, to get better together, to improve the lives and the educational systems for our students, and so we hope that you will continue to hold yourself and those closest to you and to stand strong in the SEL light. Thank you, and we'll see you on our next episode.
