Foreign.
Hello. Welcome to the Hillbrook School podcast. My name is Bill Selleck. He him. I'm director of technology here and I have an extraordinary guest, an extraordinary human. Nick, you are an educator, a maker, an AI. Er. You are a Detroit Lioner. Is that. I don't know what that hat means. You are a lion. You are a lioner.
This is a Tigers. I'm a lion. I'm a Lions fan. But this is also a Tiger. Tigers fan.
You are a tiger. A tigress, a tiger of tigers. A presenter, an author, I'm guessing a blogger, a podcaster. All the things you would hope an educator is. I'm so excited you're here. Nick Provenzano. Hello. Welcome. I'm gonna clap for you.
Oh, thank you. I am super honored to be here. Bill. We go way back and having any opportunity to talk with you about education stuff is always a win in my book because I know I'll walk away thinking differently and with just a new view of whatever it is we talk about. And that's why I love our conversations.
Well, yeah, and I feel like we've initially met at like some ISTE conferences and it's been with us in various roles in education. And so right now I'm tech director. You're working with schooleye. What's your official role?
So I am the community content and training manager, which means at a startup you do all the things.
All the things. Perfect. And I actually got connected with you. I was like, oh, and Nick is going to help you with whatever because at Hillbrook School we have the whatever School AI premium site license. We have. We tried a bunch of different platforms and School AI just continues to be doing rad stuff. And at some point I'm going to hop on your webinar podcast thing with a couple teachers. And then we thought we'd do a little trade thing. And so we're going to talk about generative AI, we're going to talk about creativity, we're going to talk about making, and all of those fit together. And I think I've said this on the podcast before, but when there's like this three month window when kind of out of nowhere, AI went from like, what's AI to like, everyone had a strong opinion on it. So I remember a couple middle school teachers are like, well, I'm a writer. So if ChatGPT, which is what everyone kind of went to, if ChatGPT can write, then who am I? Like, it was this genuine kind of existential crisis. And I remember one teacher I was working with was a deeply creative person. Was like, well, I don't know that I'll ever use generative AI because I'm already a creative person. I was like, oh, you know, like, off. Off the bat. Was like, so that makes sense right away. But then also it was like, oh, this kind of stuck with me because I don't know about you, I'm guessing yes, but, like, I feel like I'm a deeply creative person. And the more I was using any sort of generative AI at the time was almost all chatgpt. Like, the more creative I was being, it was just like multiplying it. And I remember the idea about, like, kind of skills where, like, if you're trying to grow, you pick the thing you're best at and the thing you're worst at and, like, make your best thing even better and then take the worst thing and make it a little bit better. And that's where it's called, like, the high low thing or the something or whatever. And that felt good. And I was like, well, maybe that's what that's like creativity is. Is that, like, it, like, it sounds so cheesy, but, like, to supercharge creativity, you know, like, does that. Does that resonate with you at all, Nick?
You know, it does. I do consider myself a creative person. I'm also a neurodiverse person, so. So my thought line through line is not traditional compared to other people. And so for me, what generative AI has done is helped organize a lot of the noise in my head sometimes.
Oh, interesting. Tell me more.
Format. It just. It formats it in a way that, oh, this is what I was thinking. And so it helps lower the noise. And so that creative spirit in me sometimes, though, is overwhelmed by the inability to organize it in a way that is more acceptable to outwardly facing where, you know, neurotypical people, like, if you just sort of brain dump, they'll look at you and go, that doesn't make sense to my brain. It's like total sense. So. So to be able to use programs to help organize those creative thoughts and then to help me chunk and create action plans for it, because one of the things is, part of being neurodiverse is sometimes you're overwhelmed so much you can't act like you have that paralysis. And so I'll have this creative idea, something I want to accomplish, but I look at it as such a giant task. I don't know where to start. Generative AI has helped me chunk that into. Oh, my God, this little part. That little part and so those types of things and things that I saw and used with students that were neurodiverse to help them take a breath and go, oh, it's just five steps. I can do five steps.
Give me an example of what you're thinking about.
So, jeez. It's one that I just did recently. So I'm thinking about a project that I was doing in my backyard. So I years and years and years ago, I built a pond, which my idea was, oh, I'll just watch something on YouTube, I'll dig a hole and I'll figure it all out. Perfect. Like this makes sense, right?
That's what a pond is. Dig a hole.
Right. My dad built one when I was growing up. So I'm like, I should be able to. I was like a new homeowner. I'm like, I'm gonna do this. My wife was out of the house for the day. So I'm like, I'm gonna do this and it'll be totally fine.
First red flag. Continue.
Right? Yeah. So I built it and I learned a lot in YouTube etc. But as I wanted to evolve and even recently to manage the sort of ecosystem that's been created with, I've got fish in there and there are frogs that come in there. Like I have this like. But I feel like so overwhelmed in how to tackle, how do I winterize this pond, how do I. And so to use something like generative AI, like to use ChatGPT and it's like deep research element now to like not only tell me the best ways to handle something, but also give me the research that went behind it and I can tell it to give me this and then walk away. Come back in 15 or 20 minutes. And here it is all broken down. Recently we've had rabbits in the backyard and I have a two year old dog that thinks they're just giant toys to play with. So I'm like, okay, how do I safely keep the rabbits away from our yard so that my dog doesn't have a really terrible interaction? And it did the same thing and it broke it down. Like your ultrasonic things that you can use, like here are safe organic sprays and plants that you can plant. Like instead of me spending a lot of time going through resources and deciding is this legitimate resource compared to this one, I can put it in, walk away and come back and it'll break down the different things that I need to do. And this is just my day to day life, you know, as an educator, to break down a lesson in steps to Present to students for a student to break down an essay question and have it broken down into parts to help them. Like, that's what I look at Generative AI. It's not sapping my creativity, you know, what it's doing is it's taking what I'm bringing to the table and helping organize, which for some people like me, that's sometimes what's the only thing that's holding us back is our inability to put them in an order that allows us to take action. And so I agree with you that it enhances my creativity. It gives me, I feel more empowered to take some of those ideas and explore them more fully. And sometimes you take an idea and I think all of us have done this as, as educators, teachers, that lesson, you, you start to take the steps and you go, oh, okay, this is why it won't work. Well, I can do that faster now. I can get through to that point where I go, oh, this is. Yeah, that's not, that's not going to work here. But that took me 10 minutes instead of like two or three days of like doing the steps and getting there and going, oh, no. And then I've wasted this time, possibly money, energy to get somewhere where I can now get there faster. And I think the fast part of gen is nice, but, you know, it, it superpowers my creativity and I think it supports for me more accessibility and more inclusion in the creative process. Because I don't know how many kids that you've dealt with that have said, well, I'm not the creative type.
Yeah, right.
They just dismiss it because one, they think of creativity as drawing. Like, if I can't draw, I'm not creative. Like that young age, it's equitable. That's binary. If I can't draw, I'm not creative. And creativity comes in so many different ways. And I think you and I have seen teachers create these amazing lessons, but they might say to you, oh, I'm not creative, right?
Are you kidding me? Did you see what you just created?
Right? And I think all gen does is sometimes help you see that creative element more clearly. And when I was working with teachers as recently as this past, like, fall, when I was still in the classroom, that's what I was showing them was like, look, you can take this idea. And for school AI, we have our assistants, which are these chatbots where you can jump in. It's called co teacher, and it's like a thought partner. And you just drop those ideas in and it starts to work you through that process. So the next thing you know, you got yourself a full lesson with a rubric ready to go with students, when in the past you might just struggle with that process of will it look like this? Will it look like that? And that formatting and that part of that digital conversation only enhances the ideas that you're bringing to the table. It doesn't replace them.
I love that. I'm going to go back just a moment about the organizing. I'd never really thought about the power of generative AI to help you organize thoughts. And you're talking about it from kind of an explicitly neurodiverse way. One thing that I think the reason I continue to have my own podcast is because if I can get through an episode of me, and it's usually just me solo talking through an idea for 10ish minutes, if I can actually have, like a coherent train of thought for those 10 minutes, then I finally solidified how I feel about a thing, right? And there's been so many times where I have this idea and this nugget, and I don't know what the complete thought is. I don't know, like, how this thing can impact a classroom teacher. I don't know how, like, a tech director can take the thing and like, like, it's. It's almost there. I have the kernel of it. And so what I've been doing, my kids are commuting with me a lot. But when I have that kind of nugget and I have that precious moment alone in the car, I'll turn on ChatGPT with just the talking and just have a conversation and say exactly what I just said. I have this idea. I need you to help me think through what it means. And so here's the idea. And I don't. I think it means this. I'm not sure if it's that, like, what are you hearing? And then to hear that reflected back and be like, oh, it sounds like you're saying this, this and that. It's like, yes, that's what I'm trying to say. And then does my initial idea actually make sense? And then hear it go, well, yeah, your initial idea is actually like, this is your theme. And then I'm able to. Maybe just. The last step I'll often do is as I'm coming around the bend to come up the hill to Hillbrook, we actually do have a little hill. And there's. There's a creek, not quite a brook. But as I'm coming up the hill, I'll be like, all right, Summarize this for me in, like, five short bullet points, and I'll do that. And by the time I actually get into my office, I just open up ChatGPT on my desktop and there's my five bullet points. I'm like, cool, I can work off of that. I have that coherent thought of, like, beginning, middle, end of the podcast episode. But more importantly for me is I had this kind of idea about a thing, and now I have a fully formed thought and, like, a story to help educators with. So I love that there's many ways to kind of organize thoughts about that, but I want to keep going on your thought about how generative AI can be more inclusive. I feel like you had more to say about that.
Yeah, I think it's always interesting because every new technology, the loudest voices first are. Kids are going to use this for cheating.
Yep, Yep.
That's immediately the go to. Like, you and I are veteran educators. We've been around for when the Internet became a thing. And, oh, my goodness, the kids are just gonna, you know, use Alta Vista or sgs, not just. Or Google. They were gonna use those words to find the information. For. For me, I had this moment where when I started, like, my first position, they didn't have a teacher's edition of the textbook to get me for some reason, like they. They did. And so I went online and bought my own. And in that moment, I was like, well, anyone could do this. Any kid could just buy the teacher's edition.
And if I were teachers editions have the answers.
Yeah, right. Like, they have everything that's in there. So it was. It was a very distinct moment where I realized I'm no longer the gatekeeper of the answers. Like. Right. Like the traditional model was, the teacher literally has the book with all the answers, and the job is to get the kids to repeat those answers almost verbatim.
You know what? Hang on, I need to simmer on that for a minute. Anyone can buy the teacher's edition. So it's not just anyone can Google anything. It's that, like, the actual book in front of you. Oh, wow. Yeah. No, that. That. That can change. That should change everything.
Right? And so for me, it did. I was like, oh, okay. Not that I thought any of my kids were doing this, but it made me realize I'm like, I need to be a person that takes this information from a book or takes those suggestions and alter it to fit the needs of the students in my classroom. Right. Like any. Any good teacher, you know, I believe is constantly altering what they do per class period, per group of students. Right. That's differentiation at its finest. Right. But that's not easy, and it takes a lot of time. And it's something that's often first thrown by the wayside along with reflection when you're. When you're scrapped for time, those are the things that get tossed. So even starting back then, I realized I need to differentiate what's being here so that kids are not just filling in answers that they could get from anywhere. Like, I need them to be thinkers. Right. I taught high school ela, and you can definitely have a class that is just facts from books. You read the book. Cool. Check mark. Or you're helping to grow builders thinkers. And as we move along in the timeline, you know, with the access to the Internet and then access to phones and. Right. All of these things and technology that make things more accessible. And, you know, there are programs that will just write essays and all of these things. As teachers, I get that it's our instinct to go to. Kids are going to cheat. Like, I've taught over 20 years, 99% of kids don't. Like, you know, it was like the plagiarism essay thing. Like, the vast majority of kids don't do this. Why? Because kids follow rules generally, like they. They really do. Are there kids that cheat? Yes. Are there kids that plagiarized? Yes. I learned to ask not, you know, if they did it, but why they did it. Mr. P. I was stressed because of blah, blah, blah, and I just wanted to make sure, like, very rarely is there a kid that the reason they're cheating or plagiarizing is because I'm a bad kid and I don't follow rules.
Right, Right.
That's not the thing. Because there are societal things going on that we sometimes forget about as teachers. That they are growing humans and they're met with a choice. And because of their life situation, this is the easier choice. And it might be. Mr. P. I had three exams that I had to study for, and I knew I wouldn't be able to get to this essay. This was the choice. And you sort of look at it and go, okay, Like, I get it. Like, I see the rationale why you did that. Now, for me, I felt that it's always important to make sure you create an atmosphere in your class that allows communication so that if a kid needed extra time. Like, Right. Like, so that. And I would say this. I will never say no to you if you need extra time ever. Like, I would rather you ask me for extra day than getting something that is not yours. So now as we take all this back to AI, right, they're going to write essays for them. They're going to do this so well. It can write essays, but if you've structured your class in a way that focuses on thinking and learning, they won't need to. And I always pivoted a little bit more to in class writing as opposed to take home writing as part of a way to sort of like gauge their thinking more accurately. And I don't know, I like, I like writing in the raw. I like having kids sit and think and write in seeing that process. Polished papers are nice, but like to see that. And if your class is built around worksheets and filling in facts, they should be using AI like they should. Like, how is that any different than taking it from their notes? How is it different than flipping open a textbook and filling out a worksheet? Like they're getting just facts and they're placing it on paper. That's not cheating as far as I'm concerned. They're just using a different resource. Instead of carrying a 15 pound textbook, they're using their phone and they're answer the questions. And so what I've seen is that there's that fear, but the inclusiveness of it is that I look at my students that like myself, are dyslexic, have adhd, who have difficulty organizing and processing. And those processing issues can be tempered with solid use of AI. Whether that is providing them a AI tutor, like with our spaces for school AI to build a space that allows kids to get support outside of school hours, Whether it is having students submit chunks of their writing and getting instantaneous feedback in ways that I could never do as an ELA teacher. 32 kids in my classroom, right, for a 55 minute class, like just the math alone, like it's not a real thing. Yeah, it's not mathing at all. But to have all 32 of those kids submit a essay question response, even if it's a short response, Heck, even as an exit ticket, right? A quick response to an exit ticket. I can now get all that information processed more quickly in all of those kids who have difficulty processing, maybe have fine motor skill issues for them to be able to type on a keyboard, to get instantaneous feedback instead of typing a paragraph, waiting a day and then coming back to them going, what was I thinking? What was I doing? Because they have those difficulty processing. And so to get that instant feedback for them to me to go, oh, okay, I get that. And Then respond accordingly. Time is a neurodiverse person's worst enemy. You forget your organization isn't as strong. Typically, you know all of those processing issues. AI can help those students in ways that essentially would require a ton of money and a personal teaching assistant to solve. And that can now be supported using AI in very particular ways. And I think teachers that hem and haw over it, they just haven't found their groove in prompting, much like those teachers who don't feel Google ever gives them the right information. Yeah, it's not Google's fault. It's the prompting of the question. And you and I have worked with tons of students and teachers on that. Like, the kid goes, I can't find anything. You go over and type a very clear search, and all of the resources are there. And the kid goes, what happened? And you go, you have to learn how to talk to Google, much like you have to learn to talk to AI, because all it's doing is guessing, and it guesses more accurately with the more information you provide. And that's true across the board. The guesses will continue to get better as AI grows and learns. But ultimately, as a teacher, this is a skill set. Learning to prompt, teaching kids how to prompt so that they can get answers more efficiently and more clearly to support what it is they're doing. I mean, I was just rocking out in ChatGPT and Claude this morning for work, helping organize my thoughts for a pilot program I have in my head. And just like you said, it helped me see, oh, that is connected to that. Okay. And then get all excited and reorganized. I saw students do that. Students using the speech to text feature on school AI because typing is such a chore for them because of their mobility issues.
But even aside from that, we talk faster than we type.
Yes.
So typing is actually just more efficient.
Yeah, I mean, that's, it's, it's empowering students to work how they think when you can do speech to text. And I agree, my mind in speech go way faster than my type, and I'm a pretty decent typer. But to get all of that out in that fashion and then to get that feedback again, it empowers the kids with their thought process. Like, oh, they're literally being heard, and here's the response to it. And so instead of them focusing on the skill set of typing, they're focusing on the issue, the idea, the problem at hand. And they will get better with their typing over time. Like, you know, when we look at, again, I was looking at these middle schoolers these sixth graders that were struggling, I was more concerned about the thoughts than the keyboarding. The keyboarding will come. Right. And so something like that, that again, makes it more accessible, which makes it more inclusive. I think about our English language learners and how quickly AI can adapt in language and provide responses in English and the language of choice, if that's what you prompted to do. So I think those are powerful things as well, is that it makes it more inclusive. And one of the things that I've been sharing with teachers is that teachers have shared that they are taking their emails that have gone home and they are quickly using AI to translate them into Spanish or Ukrainian is another one, and just add it at the bottom. Like that used to be a chore. Now it's can be done instantaneously and sent out, you know, in 30 seconds. And I see when you see things like that, when you lower the bar, say lower the weight of the lift.
Yeah.
A teacher's more likely to do it.
Right, right.
You know, trying to go to Google Translate and do all that, the teacher's like, you know what? I'm just going to send the email, but now you can just do this and it'll go off. Or. I've had parents or teachers create spaces with school AI directly for parents that speak that are not English speakers, so that they can interact with the classroom in the learning in the language of their choice.
Oh, interesting.
And that's, I mean, that inclusivity all of a sudden now has these parents feeling more empowered to help their child learn, as they themselves are also learning English and trying to learn 8th grade math and science.
And the bigger theme there is actually it's inclusivity. Yes. But I think if you zoom out a little bit more, it's actually more about belonging. And for me, that's even more powerful. One of the themes I'm hearing you say is that for me, what I'm hearing is actually it's more about the scaffolding than particularly about kind of a piece of neurodiversity. So I think that by itself is. Is huge. And you and I could talk about this for like four more hours, but I'm hearing so many connections to how I've been working with third grade teachers about using spaces, about using Sidekick on school AI to help scaffold students and their learning. The first time I ever used Sidekick was actually at home, like a full year ago now with my then third grader, who's now a fourth grader and almost a fifth grader, which breaks my brain but in third grade, it's their informational writing. And so the way you were describing how that works for you or how you'd use that with students that need kind of extra supports, it was like, you're a third grader. Pick your topic. Give me kind of the solid, not necessarily like five paragraph essay, but like informational writing. This was like your big kind of summative writing thing in third grade. And my third grader picked hedgehogs. Clearly, like, inspired by Sonic, but also like actual hedgehogs. And so we got an email that was like, you know, hey, please work with, you know, work to come up with like five facts about hedgehogs. And I was like, what? What is. If you were to give me 100 guesses of sentences I would receive and requests to get as a parent, please help come up with five facts about hedgehogs would. Would not make the top 100. And it was like, okay. So it was like the way the school day worked. It was like we didn't get to it till like after dinner. And at that point, like, executive functioning is close to zero for I think everybody in our family, particularly like a 9 year old, like, bro, you've been awake like 13 hours at this point and now we're gonna need like five facts. And so I was like, are we gonna just Google this? I was like, wait a minute, I just learned about Sidekick. So gave it the prompt of, I'm a third grade teacher. Informational writing help kids, they probably pick topics they don't know much about, so ask them, but then also give them the answers pretty quickly if they're stuck. And so I was having to do something and help out. At that point, our then fifth grader with their math and was like, try this. Got the prompt, got school A going on the phone with Sidekick. And it was basically like, hey, buddy, what are you working on? Informational writing. And he was like, hedgehogs. And I was like, cool, let's just see how this works, right? Let's see if this space can scaffold the way we want, which I think is what you're getting at here. Went and helped the fifth grader. Came back to my third grader and it was like just pages of like, of conversation. And it was for me, like kind of educator hat on. Like, this is perfectly scaffolded. He got stuck, got the support. He didn't just say, you read it for me, because it prompted like, what do you need help with? What are you riding on about hedgehogs? Do they have this? Do they eat that. I don't know. I have no idea what they eat. Was like, cool. Like, this is it, you know, like, how do you. How do you help a third grader that, like, picks a topic and it's determined to the topic and knows nothing about the topic and was like, oh, they eat this and that. And he was like, you know, do they eat this? Yeah, they do. Might they eat this kind of fruit? Actually, they do. You know, you mentioned insects. Tell me about that, this and that. And he was like, do they eat arachnids? They sometimes. You know, it was just like this amazing thing. And so I essentially just left them alone because I was busy parenting other kids and came back and was like, do you think you can tell me five things about hedgehogs? And he was like, yeah. Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. Type it in my notes app. Print it with our black and white printer at home. Here you go. Done. And for me, that really mirrors the story you were just telling about. Here's a learner that has all these needs, as all of them do, right? And then there's these ways that generative AI, like whatever platform it may be, is able to help the kid with the thing. The thing that. That's actually kind of fun. Some of our seventh graders were using Sidekick also. Is it still called sidekick? Am I like, yeah, yeah, yep.
Sidekick, Yep.
We're using it about watershed. Right?
Okay.
And so one was like, you know, I'm going to. I'm going to break school AI. Because he was, like, kind of frustrated that. That he couldn't just use whatever, like chat GPT or just Google or whatever, and was like, do you like surfing? And I'm hearing that that's from my current seventh grader. She's at home telling me this story about how funny it was this kid was going to break school AI and he's like, I like surfing. Do you like surfing? And sure enough, like, sidekick comes in. Was like, surfing can be fun. It does this and that. You know, part of the thing about titles, tides and tidal waves and whatever, is it this and that and then the watershed. And I was just like, whoa. Like, I know some teachers that would actually be able to connect all of these dots and take like the kind of snark, but actually redirect it into, like. Actually what you're talking about is an example of what the topic is. What do you know about watershed? It's just like, surfing is fun. I was like, it can be fun because of this and that. What do you know about what you know, it's like it kept redirecting and ultimately my seventh grader was like, and then he ended up just like doing the work because it wouldn't, it wouldn't go off topic.
Well, and I love what you pointed out is that, you know, the kid would much rather use ChatGPT, right. And we talk about that as an organization at school, AI in particular, where when I do these trainings, yes, I get that you have access to ChatGPT, but guess what? They're not Copa for compliant. Whatever information you're putting in there, they're going to sell and they're going to use the train. Right. And we, as a decision, we're coping for compliant. We don't use information for training, all those things. So the goal is that as any teacher, hopefully is that you're not just giving a kid a sidekick and walking away. You're not giving the kid a space and walking away. You're saying, hey, here is something that can help you learn and go through that process. And like you said, the structure of sidekicks are built to scaffold. The structure of space is based on how you prompted as a teacher is built to scaffold. And so hopefully what you're doing is one, you are empowering the student to take charge of their learning and go down the path that works best for them. And so as the teacher, you're sort of that guide on the side, hopefully where you're bouncing around. And as we talk about project based learning, when we get together on our webinar next month, in May or this month, depending when this drops, either this month in May or next month, the month of May, we're going to talk about project based learning, which is near and dear to my heart. I've written posts in the books about it. It's about empowering that process of solving problems, creating artifacts, demonstrating learning and AI can just help that process of, well, what do you want to create? Well, why do you want to create that? How does that connect to what you're learning? Explain like what you learned and having that ability as AI to just poke them for the questions and answers that as a teacher you can't do all the time in class and when it's 11 at night, and that's when they finally open up their project based learning, whatever classroom you're teaching work because they needed to do their chem work, they needed to do their history. Like whatever it is, you're not there to address those questions or to poke them with the right question. I can do that. Now and as a teacher, as you learn to prompt, you can specialize these spaces to support these students in ways that you just can't because There are only 24 hours in a day and one of you that also likes to sleep or spend time with your family and not be on your email, which.
You should be doing as a teacher, right?
Yes, exactly right. That ability to take care of yourself, you can now do more efficiently. I tell teachers, like, when you're using school AI go, it's not so much that you're going to save an hour in the school day by 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. It's the end of the day where you get to sit on your couch with a book and a glass of, let's say, milk and enjoy the evening instead of doing all of that work that you save throughout the school day. And so that hour a day at home with your family or by yourself or taking that bath, going for a walk, like whatever self care things that you want, that's an hour a day. I look at the things that I saved in terms of utilizing spaces and helping with students. I saved so much of the little busy work. Things like organizing the bell ringer tickets, organizing the quick writing responses and giving feedback. I got that done almost instantaneously by utilizing spaces. And then I had that time at the end of the day to go, okay, what do I need to do? Okay, I can type up this lesson plan really quick based on that data that I got from the students. And so when you're getting quick responses, feedback, that data, that only informs what you're going to do as a teacher, which makes you a better teacher. And I think whether you're project based learning or any other pedagogical approach that you're taking to learning, utilizing AI only helps all of the students, not just those students that maybe need that extra support. And so when you look at UDL and I Bill, I know you know this, like the value of UDL and what AI plays in that to allow for that differentiation to support all of the learners. That's what I try to tell teachers. I'm like, yes, it's good for this group, but actually it's good for everyone.
It's good for everyone.
When it's good for everyone, we all win. And I think when you approach differentiation like that and that UDL model saying how all students are winning and that you're not just making like, right, you've heard those teachers like, why do I have to make something special just for this kid? Well, you could make it special for everyone. And that's awesome. There's nothing against that. There's nothing against giving more options to all of the students instead of just these three. Right. Like, I think that's what AI can do is then it can offer also those suggestions. And the teacher, sometimes you're just overwhelmed. Like, you just. I can't think of a fifth reason for this kid to do the thing and. But throw that into an assistant and you get your response and the kid will go, oh, I'll do that one.
Love it.
Sweet. Here's a sidekick. Get to work. And so, I don't know, I feel like this empowerment of students is something that also is a paradigm shift. And I hate using words like that because it sounds so fancy and like buzzwords. But sure it is. It is because you are empowering students to take more control of their learning. And as a teacher, you have to feel comfortable giving up or let's say transferring that power to the students, which is not an easy thing.
Well, and that's one of the things that universal design for learning udl, I feel is hard to do kind of long term or like whole class because it's like so much focused effort. And so using some of these tools to actually help you go kind of long term with it I think is so, so powerful. I love so much about that.
Yeah. I think if it can make more of those pedagogical shifts accessible, like PBL udl, that's a huge win from I view as an administrative standpoint, because it's easy to say you should do pbl, but you and I both know it is not easy to just do pbl. It's a complete shift in your process and your thinking and your approach to day to day classroom activities, which you and I both know is incredibly valuable. But if you're asking someone to do it who doesn't have the skill set or the tools to make that transition easily, it is far easier just to say, no, I'm good, the kids are fine.
Yeah.
And move forward. But now AI, I think, makes some of those pedagogical shifts more accessible to teachers, which therefore supports student learning across the board.
Well, and even if we just simplify it to like, the person doing the talking is the person doing the learning, suddenly we can shift the talking so the teachers are talking less and the students are talking more. And suddenly students can talk with that assistant that you've set up, and then they're able to have those conversations in a way that isn't remotely replicable with like one Teacher in a whole classroom full of students. It's super exciting. I've heard Joe Marquez talk about this as a Promethean moment that it really is. I really feel like it's. I'm hearing folks who are designing these pieces of generative AI refer to this as like, as impactful as electricity. And it genuinely feels like it's not hyperbole to say those things that it really is or has this opportunity to be this massive shift in how we can have students spend time and how they can own their learning in ways that, like, even five years ago, I think we just kind of dreamed of. It's super, super exciting. So I have two questions for you as we wrap up. All right, the first one, you can put on your, like, school AI hat and then be like, you know, for folks that, that have like, dipped their toe in, like, what's going to help them be like, whoa, like this? Oh, I can't. You know, like, their, their brain isn't braining, as my seventh grader would say, like, what's, what's the thing for that? And then the second thing, I'm just super curious, like, what are you excited about with like, creativity or making or generative AI thing? Like just kind of personally like, is there, is there a pond part two in your life or something?
I love it. Those are great questions. So the first one, I'll put the school. The thing that I love sharing more than anything else is our spaces, so our chatbots that teachers design and share with students to interact and talk about literally anything. Like, and that's the part that's overwhelming when you tell a teacher it can do anything. That sometimes breaks their brain because you don't know where to start when it's everything but pick any topic that you're teaching and share that as a extra hand in having this conversation with students about this topic. But what breaks the brain for me is the fact that the teacher dashboard tracks all of those conversations. And then you can take that data, drop that into our assistant, and ask it to analyze the data and provide information. Information for you. For example, which of the students best understood the topic? Which students struggle. Create a lesson to help those students that are struggling. What would a project be so you can take that data and create something so that you're making data driven instruction happen.
So we jump back to like the hedgehog third grade informational writing thing, right? If it wasn't just my third grader at home, but like, all the third graders did this during the school day, then that teacher can Dump that data and be like, which students struggled? Which students like finally figured it out? And to be like, oh, like, you know, Carl was struggling with hedgehogs and actually really has a good understanding of it, he should be good to go. Like, that would be kind of the feedback you'd get from the, from your teaching assistant.
Yeah. And if you wanted to say, tailor a project just for hedgehogs, tailor a project for every single one of these. And so it could build out a whole suggestion set of pieces for every single student. You have now tailored this project for every student based on their topic. And that is something that as a teacher you could never do in a timely fashion. And so when you take that data, and I think data can be a scary word to teachers sometimes, you know, especially when we're talking about AI too, I think it gets scary. But as a COPA for compliant tool, it's okay. It's the data safe and it's protected and it's not going or doing anywhere. So that data you can then use to inform your instruction and then create differentiated and individualized assessments and formative, summative and projects. And I think this is what I'll say. Sometimes I'm really frustrated the more I learn on what AI can do that I'm not in the classroom anymore because I'm like, oh, I would have used it this way. And you know, if I could go back in time to when I was teaching high school ela, like the ways I would have supported so many different students.
Yeah.
Like, I almost like feel guilty. I know it didn't exist, but it's like, oh my goodness. Like these kids today have a distinct advantage in their learning process that these students didn't have. And so that's my school AI had is processing data, which is really what AI is probably best at analyzing, processing data and doing that in a way that is data driven. And because we connect to standards, it's standard based data driven instruction which should make every administrator so happy. That's the dream. And what's, what's next for me. Oh, geez. I think one, I know I've got the inklings of my, my next book which will be focused on AI and education and taking those ideas and excuse me, it used to take me so long because I was essentially, I used to like write a book in my head and I would not type it out until it was done. Like that's how I processed. That's a very long process. Now with AI, I can organize more efficiently whether I'm using like Gemini or something. So I can dump ideas and then it can organize them and it'll go, oh, that's. Yep, that's how I want it. And then be able to write more efficiently because it helps me organize the ideas more clearly. But also, I think when it comes to AI and what it could do, I love the fact that it can do whatever I want us to do in the moment. And so it is. I used it for cooking the other day. I was like, hey, I have these things. I want to make something different. What is it? I had. I wanted to just something different than like, spaghetti meatballs. I was just like, do that. And it was like, oh, you can do this with the meatballs and you can add mushrooms. And if you mix with mozzarella, it's like, ooh. I'm like, I can't do that.
You know what I did?
It's so much better.
I have three separate notes for my kids for. We call them safe foods of like, if this is on your plate, this is your full meal. So we can take risks with some other food. And they're like, well, I don't want that. I don't like that. I'm scared of that. I was like, cool. But you also have Mac and cheese. So, like, so you're good. It's enough Mac and cheese that you're not going to go to bed hungry. But you don't get only Mac and cheese for dinner. You get these things. Nutritionist on Instagram, we found. And like, that was the idea. Like, safe foods is a healthy approach to food and you get all the stuff. So if you want dessert with it, great. And so we got in this rut of, like, what meal can I make that includes three kids with three safe foods? I was like, I can make like two meals. And so dumped those in to chat GPT and was like, you're an expert, like, parent and expert chef. Like, give me, you know, help me come up with this thing. And it was. It was like, a fair amount of work on my end because I really wanted to kind of own it and bring it to my family and not be like, check. ChatGPT knocked out this thing. But we ended up coming up with, like, almost four weeks of menus that was like, here's a new thing. So I think tonight or tomorrow we're trying, like, pan roasted gnocchi. Was like, because, like, we like pasta. And then on the sides, I was like, well, here's like, you know, here's the. What is it? The apple something sausage that we normally have. Right. So then our 6 year old has this. And so it's, you know, it was helping kind of thin think about that and getting us like just a little bit out of the rut of like, same food all the time. But it was like, here's a bunch of data. Like, here's all the food that our kids approve. Every meal has to have a safe food for each kid. But we need, we need some variety. And it was, it was a lot of back and forth. And then suddenly we have like a bunch of really cool ideas.
You know, it's, it's great at taking that data. Another example is that we're taking our son to New York City for his birthday. He's turning 14.
New York City.
He's never, he's never been to New York City. And so I dumped in all of this information, ChatGPT, about the things we like, the things we want to see. Because maneuvering the city is, you know, very difficult if you're trying to do certain things over certain times of day and like, how long certain things take. And so I dumped it all in and it busted out this like, itinerary of like, oh, because my son also has very specific food tastes and whatnot. And so, like, I need restaurants that will serve this type of food. I want an event to do this. We want to see the Empire State Building. We want to go. And I dumped it in, dropped it into the deep research. So it did all like this. What hotel should we stay at that's most central? Like, where airport should we fly into? Like, it built out the entire itinerary everyone got.
I'm cutting you off with deep research on ChatGPT. It actually researches, right? Like, it's looking up websites and like reading the websites. It's not guessing of like, stay at Midtown Buffet Hotel. And you're like, this doesn't exist. It actually looks it up, reviews, it's.
Reading the reviews on TripAdvisor and things like that. So again, that was a long search, but I was able to type it up and then walk away and then come back in a half hour, and there it was. So instead of me spending a ton of time researching, doing all that stuff, like, boom, save the time, there it was. And then I said, okay, everyone, let's tweak this, you know, based on what we think. And it did 90% of the lift. And so I think that's being able to plan those type of things, which in the past were pain, are so much easier now. And with more access to the web and scrolling for deep research, you're going to get more accurate results on those type of things.
Yeah. I inadvertently use deep research to replace a light switch in my bedroom. I thought I would just ask and like send a picture and it'd be good. And it took like 15 minutes. I was like, what is. It was right when it came out. I was like, what is it doing? Oh, and it gave me like nine references because it's a, it's an older house, it's like early 80s house and it's a brand new 2025 light switch that had like five pins and was like, I don't have five things to put in. So I was like, here's the wire. It used to be this and that. And it didn't like put it in this hole, put it in that hole. And it worked. On the first try. It worked. It was so, so great. And I was like, you don't need to worry about this. You don't do it with that. You don't need to worry about this one. And it actually gave me like the references, you know, looked it up like the whatever, IEE standards, whatever.
It makes you feel so much smarter. Yeah, yeah. Things are getting done much more efficiently and it's just like, great, I'm done. I've solved the problem. And it's just no different than going to Google or going to YouTube. It's just faster in some of those aspects. And I think again, my whole thing, and maybe this is where we could sort of end it, is that there's this fear that using AI removes the human element. My argument is that effective AI use will increase the human element in the classroom because all of those other things will be taking up a different set of your time and allow you to focus more on one to one interactions. And so that's what I've seen firsthand, using it myself and working with other teachers. And that's the feedback that I'm getting from teachers that are effectively using AI in their classroom is that it increases those touch points, it doesn't decrease them.
I love that so much. You just put a nice bow on it. Let's just end it there. Nick, thanks so much for joining us. It's been so great to talk and catch up and talk about all the things.
Yeah, thank you so much. And for everyone out there, stay tuned. We will have Bill and some teachers joining us for a May Connecting the Dots webinar where we're going to dive into project based learning. And what's that look like in the world of AI? So if you want to check that out, go ahead and Visit us@schoolai.com and get more information there.
Awesome. Thanks so much, Nick.
Thank.