#398 – SchoolAI, with Kevin Morrill

If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:

• What is SchoolAI?
• What features of SchoolAI sound most appealing to you?
• What are the most pressing student and teacher needs that you see in the classroom today?
• How might SchoolAI help to address these needs?
• What is one action step that you could take based on the content of this episode?

• SchoolAI (official website)
• How SchoolAI’s Sidekick Empowers Multilingual Learners: Student Success Story at Utah (SchoolAI)
• AI Training (SchoolAI)

#398 SchoolAI, with Kevin Morrill

AVID Open Access
42 min

Keywords

School AI, student engagement, AI in education, teacher feedback, student support, personalized learning, AI tools, student spaces, language barriers, AI safety, teacher experience, student agency, AI literacy, educational technology, student success.

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

I’ll clean up the spelling, mechanics, and punctuation while maintaining the original content, speaker names, and timestamps.

Kevin Morrill 0:00
We felt like there was the biggest opportunity ever to actually reach more students, to be able to find a way to make school more human, really help students be seen and heard, and for students to feel more in their own skin in school.

Rena Clark 0:16
The topic for today’s podcast is School AI with Kevin Morrill.

Rena Clark 0:22
Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes in seeing the potential of every student. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org. Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 0:47
I’m Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin 0:49
And I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators, and we’re

Paul Beckermann 0:53
here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Rena Clark 0:57
Education is our passport to the future. Our quote for today is from the School AI website. It reads, “Reach every student every day.” Short, but sweet and powerful. So I’m really curious about your takeaways today, Winston, Paul.

Paul Beckermann 1:17
That’s the mission, right? Reach all those kids every day if we can, and it’s a daunting task. It’s something that teachers have wrestled with forever. And during that time, we’ve always tried to leverage every tool that we have in our toolkit, but the toolkit sometimes has been limited. That’s why I’m kind of so excited right now with the age of AI that we’re sort of wading into, because I think our toolkit is expanding now, and it’s giving us more opportunities to reach every student every day. So I’m kind of excited about that.

Winston Benjamin 1:47
Oh, Paul, you are so good at your interpretation that it’s like it leaves me a little sliver of conversation. But I’m going to even push it a little further. Like, for me, one of the things is like, how do you acknowledge knowledge that you don’t know? So sometimes, being a Jamaican immigrant as a kid, like, teachers weren’t really able to figure out ways of including me every day.

So I think with AI, as you said, with new tools, it gives teachers opportunities to be able to engage with students in spaces that they’re not really 100% versed in. But they can also utilize that tool to be able to access knowledge that students are bringing, right? Using those funds of knowledge. So I think that really will be able to reach students every day because teachers aren’t trying to fill their knowledge while delivering knowledge. This helps them make sense of the knowledge they already have in the space.

Rena Clark 2:40
Amplify the strengths, right? That’s right. I appreciate that. Well, we’re excited to welcome Kevin Morrill to the podcast, because Kevin is the co-founder of School AI. And if you haven’t heard about School AI, you’re going to today. So, you know, Kevin, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to co-founding School AI? I always love these stories to find out how did this happen.

Kevin Morrill 3:07
Yeah, and thanks for having me, guys. Very happy here today. You know, I have some gray hairs on my head from the past few years of this wild journey of AI and education. Prior to School AI, I’ve always kind of considered myself a bit of a student success nerd—the philosophies and strategies that go into that.

And more specifically, the founder and CEO currently of School AI is Caleb Hicks, and I’ve worked with him a lot in my career. And more specifically, Caleb, you know, as a new teacher, was overwhelmed with the reality of 300-plus students, and all of those students having different needs, and depending upon the day of the week, those needs being incredibly diverse. And not being able to really spend a lot of time with them myself—specifically, just so daunting to be able to support the students on the level that you actually want to, doing the things that you know work, but you can’t. There’s just not enough time in the day.

And so prior to School AI, we were running a teenage immersion program to let students get a real dosage of real life inside of a company and work with corporations on projects. We had built some software and technology early on to support some of that stuff. And then with the advent of developments with ChatGPT and LLMs, we felt like there was the biggest opportunity ever to actually reach more students, to be able to find a way to make school more human, really help students be seen and heard, and for students to feel more in their own skin in school.

More specifically, one of the things that I can’t help myself but mention is I have three little boys under the age of 11. And my oldest at home would type so quickly. If we were doing any type of typing practice or working on something, he would type very fluidly. But at school, he would feel the pressure of the entire class around him and the teacher looking over his shoulder—even though she had great intentions—and he felt as if he was falling behind and wasn’t a fast typer. And he had what, for me, was really the first time I was hearing insecurities at school, and it was due to typing. And I had this major disconnect of, but you’re so good at this. How can this be happening at school, right?

And this was around the time of ChatGPT, and I was just blown away as an early language model nerd, trying to push it to do more of what, you know, you really try to get out of AI. And it dawned on me, hey, maybe if I could get more practice in for Jake, my oldest son, at home. And so I was trying to help him use ChatGPT and mess around with it. And he was kind of like, you know, what’s the big deal, Dad, you know? But at the time, there was a SpongeBob episode on in the background, and I had this thought: What if I make it so Jake is talking to SpongeBob, using AI, right?

And so I did some basic little thing where I said, you know, you’re SpongeBob. Ask a lot of open-ended, funny questions. Throw in a joke every once in a while. And I turned my laptop to Jake, and he spent a couple of hours just sitting there typing and having the time of his life, answering these questions and practicing. And that started a thing that we continued to do, and that helped him feel more fluid and natural and normal when he would go in and do typing practice at school.

And, you know, fast forward, I’m skipping a whole bunch of stuff. Caleb and I, we really wanted to see what the perspective was from teachers and administrators. You know, we have this question that we asked hundreds of teachers over a period of time: If you had a magic wand and you could just wave it and make something come true that would meaningfully impact your life as a teacher, what would it be? And don’t think about the constraints of AI. Don’t think about anything else. Just tell us, what is it?

And I imagine you can probably call out the three or four things that come to mind, and those were—they came to the surface: the challenges of grading, the desire to give feedback to all students in a way that was meaningful, in a timely way that mattered, reduce all of the administrative burden of teaching, and spend more time doing the things they intended to do when becoming a teacher.

And we really vetted and tested that and kept going and going and getting more and more feedback. And our initial functionality that we built, prior to writing any code, we just kept going and getting more inputs from teachers. Really let us have it. And our initial functionality that started School AI came out of that feedback from teachers, aimed directly at focusing on the student with the teacher, not only a part of the equation, but amplified in the process as students are using things.

That’s the fast version, guys. If we had all day, all of the nitty-gritty details of all of that time above Caleb’s garage in the early days in Utah, starting School AI.

Winston Benjamin 8:39
Now, yes, I would have loved to hear some of that.

Rena Clark 8:43
The movie will be out. The movie will be out in a few years.

Winston Benjamin 8:49
Something that you’re saying that I really appreciated is this idea of joy as a part of learning, and I just want to amplify that aspect of your story. But AVID Open Access, we’re a little familiar with School AI. We’ve been talking about it for a while, just trying to do the deep dive that we need to do to really think about this AI space. Some of our listeners have been riding with us, and they’ve understood and followed along, but we got a lot of new people that are listening. Could you give us a big picture description of School AI? What is it? What is it used for? Maybe?

Kevin Morrill 9:25
Absolutely. And I’m going to caveat the elevator pitch of School AI with one time someone asked me, specifically, you know, give me the little overview of School AI. And as he heard me describe everything the platform does, he said to me, “Wow, that must be incredibly hard to put that in a paragraph, because AI does so much stuff, does so much.” And I contend with that every day, because depending on who you are and what your needs are, my description of what School AI is is going to be very specific to that.

But in short, School AI is an AI-powered system built by teachers for teachers to help educators reach every student every day. And notably, a beloved feature in the platform is called Spaces, which allow teachers to essentially spell out an outcome or an idea or, you know, the way they want to put it to work, and then share access with their students or peers or fellow teachers and have that carried out.

And I mentioned earlier that we want to amplify teachers, not just have them a part of the equation, but make sure that being a part of the equation amplifies their abilities. And so as a student is using a space, a teacher is receiving meaningful insights about the student that help them really understand how the student’s doing as a whole—not just in that activity, but more on how they’re feeling, what’s going on, where they’re struggling.

And a teacher recently, I believe in Kansas, had reflected when starting to use Spaces on a daily basis. She mentioned she didn’t realize there was so much going on with each student, and it was kind of daunting. There was so much going on that was completely off of her radar until starting to receive some of these insights. So that’s the latest elevator pitch I can give. I hope that helps.

Paul Beckermann 11:28
That’s good. And we’re going to ask you about—Rena is actually going to ask you about the student experience in just a minute. But let’s back up and start with the teacher experience, just as far as teacher tasks go. How might a teacher use School AI to help them in their everyday?

Kevin Morrill 11:45
Yeah, of course. We have a couple of different areas of the platform that focus just on the teacher. One of those is called Assistants. And Assistants are kind of purpose-built agents that will help the teacher with things like modernizing or adapting their instruction and content to make it more relevant for their audience and the students there.

Time-saving things like Co-Teacher that can not only help you with writing, email productivity-type stuff, but it can also give you really good ideas and even help you prompt a space to set it up to carry out something for you. And on top of that, we have a lot of tools—tools that can be used, that are used to build artifacts, content, specifically image generation and whatnot.

And I’m going to have a hard time not slipping up today and talking about our major release that’s coming at ISTE this year. And so I’m intentionally leaving out quite a few things that are going to be unveiled in San Antonio this year.

Paul Beckermann 12:49
And when is that, so people have it on their calendar?

Rena Clark 12:51
June 29 to July something. But I know because I just signed up.

Paul Beckermann 13:00
So by July, people should be able to go and find out what’s going on.

Kevin Morrill 13:04
Come visit us at the booth. We’re going to have amazing swag, and we’re going to be doing this grand unveiling. A lot of amazing people that I’m sure your audience knows well will be there as part of that. But come by and hear all of the latest. We’ve been working on it for over a year.

Rena Clark 13:21
Awesome. I’m excited.

Paul Beckermann 13:24
We need suspense music right now.

Rena Clark 13:29
I have to stop by there.

Paul Beckermann 13:30
Yeah, very good. You’ll have to see Kevin.

Rena Clark 13:35
And I’ve been lucky enough, working with School AI. So I got my little, you know, tools are for teachers and spaces are for students, so getting my little song. But I have found, even with working with teachers, and the power I really see is engaging students. So I’d love to have you talk more about how School AI can be used to engage students, and maybe describe Spaces a little bit more.

Kevin Morrill 14:01
So I could talk about this all day, and first I have to out myself. I was not a very engaged student myself. I went to one of the smallest, if not the smallest, school districts in Utah, very rural area. Graduating class of ’05, shout out Paiute High School, 31 students. And unfortunately, my childhood was filled with, you know, a lot of circumstances that were pretty challenging at the time. And I was raised by my grandparents.

And a lot of times when I went into class, when I started my day, I was carrying something probably pretty too heavy for the subject area I was going into. And I would be grappling with the joys of learning algebra but contending with something that happened last night or that morning. And regardless of how good the instruction was and how prepared the teacher was, I myself—my brain was in a different place and was struggling.

And it wasn’t until—and I promise I’ll get around to the answer to this—but I was a first-generation college student myself, and I had an incredibly hard class, Medical Terminology. And the instructor was known as one of the hardest at the university. And I myself fell in love with Medical Terminology. It felt like the first real time that I had agency and choice in how I was going about learning all these incredibly complex, you know, like language, essentially, for Medical Terminology.

The very first day of that class, the way she hooked my attention, the way she brought me in, teed me up, got me ready to go, kind of spelled it out, the best practice that I should follow in learning Medical Terminology—some light bulb turned on in my brain that forever changed how I think about learning for the very first time. And I’ve really not been the same since then.

That was the first real time that I got an A and I felt it. I felt that I had done really well. I pushed myself. I had some of the most extreme levels of discomfort learning Medical Terminology, but I had fallen in love with going about it, having choice. I felt inclined to raise my hand, stay after class and ask. And I don’t know all the mechanics that went into that, but it was really the first time that I can recall feeling incredibly engaged in a subject area in a way that I couldn’t put a book down.

And I look now at school, and when I think about engaging students, I think about all of the things that are going on that prevent a student from being engaged like myself. Home life being a barrier, but for most students, it’s anything from lack of relevance to them, a low sense of agency, fears of failure, an acne breakout that day and you got your head down at the desk, you know, you don’t have the relationships you wish you had in school, health challenges, language barriers, cultural differences, static and passive environment. Like, the list goes on and on and on. All these different things get in the way of a student showing up and giving themself to the moment.

And so with School AI, a lot of that is baked into the functionality and the features that are there that help meet a student that maybe did go through something hard that morning or that weekend, that feels alone in middle school, and allows them to not be afraid to interact and put themselves out there a little bit and feel heard, feel seen, in a sense.

And so what I encourage teachers everywhere to do, regardless of comfort level, is to try it, is to express your intention. As a teacher, do a bell ringer, do something, and let a student open up and engage. And watch the light bulb turn on. Watch it click for them and help them feel seen in that moment.

Rena Clark 18:35
And I think I’m just going to fill in a little gap. I think that is a wonderful, like, overarching idea. But I think for some of our listeners that just don’t understand, like can’t visualize this, like, Spaces thing, it’s the idea of—you can fill me in in a moment—it’s more like creating a customized chatbot for your students. And there’s lots of different, for lack of, like, templates to help you, or you can create your own. You can even upload your own resources and things to create your own. I think I’ve talked about the one I even created for the baseball team I’m coaching.

But the idea is then your students can interact with that, but in real time, you are getting kind of feedback. It’s open-ended, so they’re engaging with this chatbot, and you can see that in real time, how they were engaging. And then when you end it, you also get a summary of all the feedback.

So I’ve seen it used—you can use it in all kinds of different ways. But I just kind of want to give you that, like, more idea of maybe you can visualize that in your head if you haven’t used it yet before. So it’s just a different way for kids to interact. And we know if you’ve ever walked through a high school lately, which I have, every kid is on a device, on their phone. For some reason, they have no problem—if you ask anybody, they’d much rather text someone or type something than call or talk. We work on those skills, but as Kevin pointed out, they might be more willing to open up.

And we even just did have an incident where a student—I forget what the ELA prompt was—but they ended up sharing something that prompted actually getting support from the counselor and getting some of the social-emotional and counseling support that they needed because of what they were going through. That I don’t think anyone else would have been aware of if they had not been in that experience. And it was flagged, and it was real. So it was like they ended up getting some support for something that we otherwise never would have known. It was kind of an interesting situation. So, yeah.

Kevin Morrill 20:30
It’s a great overview, and essentially a teacher is able to express their intent, set some rules. Speaking to the English teachers that are listening, you know, write for the student, or don’t write, be a writing coach, etc. And a student has this adapted space where they’re able to have a conversation back and forth that is as helpful in the moment or on an ongoing basis across subject areas.

Winston Benjamin 20:54
I love that your conversation starts from personal experience as a learner, right? What made school feel unsafe, and then what turned on the light bulb—that engagement. As you started speaking, you were telling us that your early, early portion of the work was starting with teacher feedback, like, this is what we need, this is what we want. You’ve developed this device. You’re now out in schools trying to communicate, trying to get engagement. As you’ve been out in schools, what have been the feedback from teachers, and what are you seeing, and what are they saying about School AI and the supports it offers for students’ learning?

Kevin Morrill 21:38
Yeah, it’s honestly the best part of my job, is being able to spend time with teachers that use School AI. One, I’m often surprised. I learn something new every time of how teachers are using School AI. There’s this cross-pollination that occurs and how teachers riff on each other’s ideas—just incredible.

One is overwhelming positivity and excitement. A recent teacher I was speaking with mentioned—and this was a teacher retiring at the end of the year—she mentioned to me, since starting to use Spaces, she actually had to spend some time rethinking whether or not she would maybe teach for a couple more years. And I asked her to elaborate, tell me more. That’s amazing.

And she mentioned that she specifically had a lot of feelings of burnout, mainly because she couldn’t show up the way she wanted to show up for all of her students and go home almost with a sense of guilt of not being able to support those students that were clearly in need but couldn’t extend herself to be able to do it. And how many teachers feel that every day?

And so in terms of, you know, feeling like there’s a real extra resource that helps you do more and be more, that’s my favorite. That’s common feedback and my favorite type of feedback to receive. The other great thing is teachers—they give great feedback. They tell you the things that are working and not working and what needs improvement and when. When that feedback is received, we make it a part of the company. We take it seriously. We wrestle with it, and we figure out how we can meet that teacher right where they are and incorporate that.

Paul Beckermann 23:28
So have you had a chance to chat with some students too, while you’ve been out in the buildings?

Kevin Morrill 23:33
I have, and actually very recently. I will—I’m actually going to tell you all something that has been really surprising to me about student feedback, and I don’t think it gets talked about enough, actually. And that is, you know, you have your students that are maybe, you know, struggling to learn English at the moment, struggling to learn a new subject area and English in US classrooms, and the needs are very clearly spelled out there. They’re using it as that resource to be able to understand what’s going on. And those students, it’s a lifeline for them. It’s how they are fitting in. It’s how they’re surviving. It’s how they’re doing as well as they know they can.

And your really gifted population of students who are starting to stretch into areas and pull on threads that they’ve been wanting to—but I actually want to highlight an area that doesn’t get discussed all that much. And this was new to me.

We do a lot of classroom observation at School AI, and talking with students, I was actually surprised to hear how much the 70 or 80% of students are actually uncomfortable using AI when it’s not sanctioned by the school or teachers. So here I am, you know, doing research for a writing assignment, I’m compiling content resources, and meanwhile, they feel like they’re breaking some rules. They, you know, AI can sometimes word vomit and give you so much, and all of a sudden you’re sitting there with a lot of the answers, and it kind of does a lot of the work for you. A lot of School AI is designed to not do that, by the way.

But I was actually so surprised to hear this. We often hear about the concerns of cheating and not engaging at all, but a broad majority of students struggle with just not feeling like they’re allowed. And so a big piece of feedback I get from students is it feels good to use this when my teacher shares it. It’s really, really helpful. I don’t feel like my hand is raised all class anymore. I can ask a question in the moment, get it.

But overall, I hear so much feedback about positive, you know, forming these positive ideas around AI use and not feeling like they’re doing it kind of in the shadows. And that’s what I think, overall, more broadly speaking to schools and teachers, is wherever you’re at in policy development and working with your community and how you’re going about AI, the quicker you can get to some version of proactive, sanctioned use, the quicker you’re going to be reaching the majority of those students that are having a lot of discomfort right now with what they are supposed to be doing and not doing.

Paul Beckermann 26:23
Doesn’t that kind of give you some faith in the future that these kids want to do the right thing?

Kevin Morrill 26:28
It really does. I mean, that’s why I highlight it. I mean, such a surprising thing that came out of a lot of student feedback. But just hearing that positive intent—I want to do the right thing here, and I’m allowed to do this, and I like it. Yeah.

Paul Beckermann 26:42
I want to do it right now. We can let them.

Rena Clark 26:44
Yeah, my teacher told me to use it. What are you talking about? They made me. They made me. And we talked a little bit, you know, about Spaces. I’m curious if you have a favorite tool within the School AI, you know, ecosystem, or maybe you’ve gotten feedback about teachers’ favorite tool that they like using?

Kevin Morrill 27:04
Yeah, and I’m going to hop tail that back to you all, because I want to hear your favorite tool as well. But it’s Spaces, but I’ll be more specific there. One of the things that I like to show teachers is bilingual mode. And that is when you tee up a Sidekick. A Sidekick is, you know, readily available right at the top of the library. And by default, Sidekick is going to be, you know, regardless of what you put in, it’s going to be kind of what a teacher would be if they were sitting next to every student. It’s going to be more guiding. It’s going to be kind of leading the student, helping them get unstuck.

But if you just put in the instructions, “Send every message in English and insert language,” it actually will add a nice little line break, and it will send the message in English and the language. And you can even have it send it in multiple languages at once, so the students get the benefit of kind of that osmosis of multiple languages, of being able to read and grok, you know, what the message says, and try, maybe first in English, and then if they don’t understand, read it in their native language and go from there.

And now you’ve turned on this language tool, essentially, but the student is going to be able to use it for any number of purposes. So Spaces in general—TLDR, Spaces—but also supporting language learners with bilingual mode.

Paul Beckermann 28:34
How many languages do you have now in School AI? I’m just curious.

Kevin Morrill 28:37
We are well over 100. I would like to give you the specific number, but I’d have to check it first. It’s an area we continue to invest in heavily as we work with immersion programs, schools that focus on supporting specific disabilities. We continue to invest there heavily, especially with our new walkie-talkie mode. Works great on Chromebooks, works great on just about any laptop, and it makes it really easy for students of really any ability to hold their space bar, talk, and have more of a fluid conversation in their tongue and receive a response back in English.

Paul Beckermann 29:13
Cool. I’m not familiar with the walkie-talkie mode.

Rena Clark 29:18
We have even been using it. It’s kind of fun, kind of fun.

Winston Benjamin 29:24
So as you stated, this started from your love and focus on your own child, right? As you look to the future of what you see in terms of AI and education, maybe even specifically thinking about School AI, what are some of your hopes and dreams for AI, how School AI or AI can transform teaching and learning as a hope?

Kevin Morrill 29:57
I—50 different things that are coming to mind right now to answer that question. But I’ll just, right off the tip of the tongue, I’ll highlight what was surprising to me when my oldest son went to middle school, was his concern about not being able to find his locker, and what if he can’t find his locker, and what if, in front of everybody, he can’t remember his combination?

And I mean, you can take that concern and feeling that every student has, and you can apply it to a million different scenarios that are occurring as a student is progressing grade by grade. And so hopes and dreams of AI—I hope that there’s more of a steady continuation, almost a learning companion, that goes along with a student’s progression, that understands what they’re going through, what helps them the most when they are diving into a new subject, the type of help they like to receive. And all of that adds up to a student feeling very high agency in the learning process, that they feel like they have choice, that if there’s a thread, they can pull on it, the curiosity is satiated, that they’re able to actually figure something out and keep going.

So, you know, my optimism is that learning gets incredibly personalized in a way that creates this continuity and builds upon itself year after year for a student, all the way into whatever it is they choose to go into. That’s my dad part is coming into that answer. Just know that there are 500 other things that I would touch on as well.

Paul Beckermann 31:45
So the other thing that dads and moms sometimes worry about is the safety element. And for teachers who are excited about this but they get a little nervous about, you know, information that’s being gathered, things like that, can you just talk for a minute about privacy and safety with School AI?

Kevin Morrill 32:00
Yeah, it’s an area we take incredibly seriously at School AI. We have worked with states and large organizations, organizations of all sizes, to really understand what needs need to be met there. And the way we’ve approached data privacy security at School AI is in direct response to that. So more specifically, we just go above and beyond. If there’s a certification, a box to check, we go out and do it. And so that’s the last concern an organization needs to actually wrestle with or contend with.

Notably, we don’t use any of the data collected for any type of nefarious reasons or anything like that. You know, we try to do as little as possible there and make the functionality of the product the core thing, not the data side of it.

Paul Beckermann 32:52
Awesome. Thanks for kind of spelling that out for our listeners who might be concerned. And now it’s time to share a little bit more as we jump into our toolkit.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 33:09
Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 33:12
All right, it’s toolkit time. So Rena, Winston, what would you like to jump in and add to the toolkit with?

Rena Clark 33:19
So we talked about Spaces for students, but one thing that is actually Spaces for families and communities. So I’ve seen it now using like these chatbots to gather not just information from students, but gathering information from families or caretakers. And the ability to get more open-ended, because when you give out, you know, if you’re just handing out a form and you check a box, you’re really limited to the feedback you can get. Whereas if you have it more open-ended, we found that there’s things that you never would have thought of to even ask. You’re going to get more information about, and the interaction piece is really great. And how that might now inform your instruction based on families, and they’re usually more comfortable providing feedback in that way than phone calls or other things, and it’s more accessible. So it’s just another way to gather feedback.

Paul Beckermann 34:13
Awesome. Winston, what are you thinking about?

Winston Benjamin 34:16
I’m just one of those people who like to get a lot of information before I jump into something. So if you’re like me and you just want to hear some conversations, talk about AI, how do you think about it in your classroom, check out our previous episodes on AI in our podcast. Go to AVID Open Access—simple plug—but also gives you a chance to get yourself grounded. You can think about it, rewind an episode, and then begin to ask yourself deep questions about how could you use it? Where could you see it in your own work? So take the time to think through and then enact.

Paul Beckermann 34:51
Awesome. I’m going to say pick something to try. You know, you’ve got to start developing that AI toolbox. I think it’s just an incredible opportunity for teachers to expand the effectiveness of what they can do. Just gives more options and more ability to reach all those kids every day. Pick something. My personal favorite is probably Spaces in School AI, to be honest. I think it’s such a powerful piece, and it’s student-facing, which I love. Not only are we empowering students through the experience they’re getting there, but we’re also teaching them how to interact with AI, which is such a huge literacy skill moving forward. So pick something, whatever that AI tool is, be it Spaces or something else, and start diving in and learning. All right, Kevin, you get to play along too. Is there something else that you would like to drop in?

Kevin Morrill 35:41
I’m going to piggyback on what you said, Paul. I am fond of saying build the habit. And so wherever you are, whatever your comfort level is today with AI, give up one thing that is a bit of a thorn in your side and see, you know, day after day consecutively, get a little help on a tricky email and stick to it each day. Keep letting that happen, because it will actually start to expand from there. So pick an area, build the habit in that area of leveraging AI, and let it germinate and let it expand from there as it will.

Winston Benjamin 36:19
Oh, I love that. That’s an easy way to transition to our one thing.

Transition Music 36:36
It’s time for that one thing. It’s that one thing.

Winston Benjamin 36:37
What’s one thing that’s still bouncing around in your mind that you’re hoping to continue on and keep thinking about? Paul, Rena, what’s your one thing?

Paul Beckermann 36:46
I am still hanging on to when Kevin said that AI is a way to make school more human, to allow students to be seen and heard. People don’t always think of that as the first thing when they think of AI, because people have this notion that tech is cold, you know, and it’s a sterile thing on the side. But if we use it correctly, it enhances the humanity in our classroom. And that just really stuck with me. I love it. Rena?

Rena Clark 37:17
And I think I’ll just add on to that, because that’s literally what I had written down.

Paul Beckermann 37:21
Oh, Rena, you and I do that all the time.

Rena Clark 37:24
Right here on my paper. Oh my goodness. But I was thinking, and it’s back to we’ve talked about this idea before. You know, if a child was just having this conversation, let’s say in Chat, ChatGPT, and they, let’s, you know, weren’t sitting next to their dad, or just, it kind of would be a cold thing. But in this whole idea of this idea of human, AI, human on the other end. So in this case, it has to be human-centered. And this is where teachers are fearful, but you’re not going to be replaced. It’s because we still need that human on the other end. It doesn’t work if you’re not there to look at this stuff, see the data, like do something with it, make that personal connection to the student. Like that, there has to be a human on both ends. We have to have bookmarked human with AI in the middle. This reiterates that point, I think.

Winston Benjamin 38:14
I think the thing that’s been sticking through for me is the joy of engaging and watching a student learn. Kevin talking about his son, his own experience of knowledge being joyful, even though I’m like medical terms—nah, don’t want to do that, sir. Don’t want to do that at all. But your conversation of how it made you feel good to get that first A—I think that is every student that every teacher wants to reach, right? That’s why we do it. So I’m so glad that this work is grounded in that idea of every student. So thank you for that. Kevin, I’m going to throw it to you. What’s one of the last things that you would like to hope to leave with our audience?

Kevin Morrill 39:09
We talk a lot about the human impact at School AI and the meaningfulness of teachers. And I think one of my favorite things to ask people is, who was that teacher for you that connected with you in the hallway or made you feel seen that day, that brought learning alive and was a core aspect of who you are today, that led to that? My hope and dream is that more teachers are spending more time in the classroom doing what led to them getting into teaching in the first place, what actually was behind that decision.

And there are just so many other things that are on a teacher’s plate that, you know, their day-to-day reality can be quite divorced of that reason that got them into the profession in the first place. And I hope that teachers can be ruthless in getting back to that pure intent that led to that profession in the first place, and they can focus on being that teacher for that student, being that thing that leads to so many other things to follow in that learning journey for a student.

Rena Clark 40:21
I love that—being ruthless. And I know we talked a lot today about that student-facing piece, but I’m going to suggest you get in there, go to schoolai.com, try out the tools for teachers. They’re really great. You can edit right there. They really seamlessly integrate with a lot of platforms, learning management systems. Make it really take some of those tasks that we’re talking about off your plate. So it’s really helpful. And I just want to thank you, Kevin, so much for taking the time. We know you’ve been busy and talking with us today, making room and sharing with our listeners. We look forward to the unveiling of what’s coming next, and maybe we’ll have to check back in as you continue to grow.

Kevin Morrill 41:06
Happy to circle back, and honestly, just such a pleasure to be here with you today, and I appreciate your time and all the work that you all do. Thank you.

Rena Clark 41:17
Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 41:20
We invite you to visit us at avidopenaccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 41:32
We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark 41:38
And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 41:41
Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 41:43
You make a difference.