#452 – Human-Centered Skills in the Age of AI, with Jen Hegna

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:

• How has your approach to instructional technology evolved over time?
• What human-centered skills do you prioritize in your classroom?
• How can AI serve as a thought partner rather than just a shortcut?
• What does “authentic learning” look like in your context?
• How do you support students in becoming self-directed learners?
• What professional learning around AI would best support your needs?
• How might you begin integrating AI in ways that align with your pedagogy?

• Byron Public Schools (official website)
• Profile of a Graduate (Byron Public Schools)
• Minnesota Generative AI Alliance for Education (official website)
• NotebookLM (Google)
• Claude (Anthropic)

#452 Human-Centered Skills in the Age of AI, with Jen Hegna

AVID Open Access
42 min

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.

Jen Hegna 0:00
In the past, we’ve done professional development all around tools. The more we focus in on the pedagogy, and more that we understand what teachers need, the better we can design around that. Pedagogy is the driver. Technology is the amplifier.

Rena Clark 0:20
The topic for today’s podcast is human-centered skills in the age of AI with Jen Hegna.

Rena Clark 0:29
Unpacking Education is brought to you by AVID. 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 0:53
I’m Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin 0:54
And I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators, and

Paul Beckermann 0:59
we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 1:03 Education is our passport to the future.

Rena Clark 1:07
So our quote for today is from the technology page of the Byron Public Schools website, and it states, “Our students will leave Byron to live and work in a complex economy. Jobs and life in general will require people who can solve problems, understand complex terminology, communicate clearly, and make sense out of rapidly changing information. Life itself will demand higher levels of literacy in all areas.” Some weighty things in there. So just curious. We’re going to dig in.

Winston Benjamin 1:44
Oh, man. I’ve been thinking about this as you were reading it. It’s like, I love my pops. I love him to death. He is the most interesting man that I know, not the most well-educated man, but the most people-literate person I have ever met in my life. He can read a person. He could figure out what he needs to say. He could figure out how to get the best out of any situation, just by boom, 30 seconds knowing a person.

So that last piece of like, high levels of literacy. To me, it’s like, really not just about the book smarts. It’s really about like, how do you engage with people? What are the things that you—how do you make a person feel when they interact with you? How are they walking away from that interaction willing to give you something out of that? It’s not transactional, but something where it’s like, I want to benefit and help this person. So there’s a bit of literacy in terms of benefiting yourself, but also just being able to like, understand and read people. So back in the day, they say used to be like book smart and street smarts. So I’m feeling a little bit of that, like combination coming out of this quote.

Paul Beckermann 2:55
Sounds like you’re thinking your dad should have gone to Byron public schools.

Winston Benjamin 2:58
I’m thinking if he had the chance, they would have loved him.

Paul Beckermann 3:03
Yeah, I’m hanging on that last part that life itself will demand higher levels of literacy in all areas. I think that is just so true. You know, the literacy students that our students are going to need are evolving and changing faster than I think, probably any other time in history. You know, the content and the specific skills are rapidly evolving.

So I think we’ve got to make that focus on, what are the constants? What are those skills, those human skills that our students are going to need to navigate that uncertainty, to continue learning, and, as the quote pointed out, problem solving, you know? Because the only thing that’s not going to change is that there’s going to be change, right? I mean, how do we get our kids ready?

Rena Clark 3:46
There’s going to always be problems.

Paul Beckermann 3:47
You think there’ll be problems to solve in the future, Rena?

Rena Clark 3:52
You think so. I’m excited to dig in today and get into it a little bit more. So we’re excited to welcome Jen Hegna to the podcast. And as I mentioned earlier, Jen is the director of information and learning technology at Byron Public Schools in Minnesota, where we just heard that lovely quote from. So welcome, Jen. Thank you. And we always just love to start our episodes off with the listeners getting to know you a little bit more. So if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself to kind of ground us in this conversation, we’d appreciate it.

Jen Hegna 4:28
Sure. I am the tech director for Byron Public Schools. I started my 31st first day of school this year.

Rena Clark 4:37
Congratulations.

Jen Hegna 4:38
So I have 30 years in the school district. And when I started in Byron, we had one computer hooked up to the internet, and it was for our library system. And so now I think about, you know, I’ve been through the change of internet connecting. Our first internet-connected computer lab, Wi-Fi, laptops, mobile devices, cloud computing, and now artificial intelligence.

As I think about it, we went from one computer in the whole district to now multiple devices—students have the watches, their phones, their laptops or Chromebooks or iPads. So definitely changes, definitely in the mix of all of this. And I think, you know, there’s been so much reflecting as artificial intelligence has come to play. There’s been a lot of reflecting of like, how we did things before, you know, what had the most impact, and what are the things that students need to be successful. So I’m super excited to join you, and yeah, ready to have that conversation.

Winston Benjamin 5:46
Oh, man, congratulations. 30 years is a good chunk of time, and I hope to get to that level of time with you. So I’ve always thought that there’s like, important shifts in societies, right? Technology creates those—the time before, the time after, the time before the internet, the time after the internet. As you just stated yourself, you’ve gone 30 years, and you’ve probably seen a lot of those before this, and then after this, right? A lot of technological changes. And now we’re in this AI era. What makes this a unique change?

Jen Hegna 6:27
There’s a couple things that I feel that are unique. First of all, the speed that it’s changing, you know, as I think about internet, you know, it was just super, super gradual. I mean, we talked, you know, maybe a decade, you know, before things really started connecting to the classroom. I remember having PD sessions on how to do email, but that took a while, like, it took a while to get there.

And the speed at which things are changing, and the speed at which things are changing, you know, the jobs that our kids will be working with—I think that’s first and foremost, the biggest for me. And then what it can do. Before it was just kind of an additional like, you know, you can get on the internet, which, you know, the Information Age is super important, but like this can do so much for individuals if they know how to utilize the tool. And that has its good sides and bad sides, right? You have academic integrity, and a lot of, you know, really strong concerns around that area.

But on the flip side, you can do some amazing things, and there’s been amazing breakthroughs with artificial intelligence and solving these really hard problems by utilizing it. So I think that for me is just the speed at which it’s coming, and the what it can do for an individual is probably the most impressive for me.

Paul Beckermann 7:53
So I’m sure this is causing all kinds of angst amongst teachers, because they want to do the right thing, and they want to do well with the kids, you know, and they want to prepare kids. Fortunately, you’ve had those 30 years. You’ve seen changes come and go. And why don’t you talk a little bit about, you know, what did you learn from going through those changes, like hooking up your first, you know, wired lab, or getting one-to-one devices? What did you learn from those transitions that you think maybe will help you as we go forward in the AI?

Jen Hegna 8:29
One of the big things that was kind of a shift for me was about seven, eight years ago, when we designed our profile of a graduate. And our profile of a graduate took on, you know, we have all these standards and things that our kids need, but we looked at like, what are the human skills that, you know, are transferable across any job?

And I mean, this was before AI—this was before generative AI, not before AI, before generative AI, like I said seven years ago—and when we honed in and focused in on that work, one of the proponents of it was looking at authentic learning, you know, looking at, you know, how do we transition, or, you know, not just have memorization and tests, you know, as our end game. Like, what are the ways we can go deeper?

Because in the environments that are truly authentic, you know, students easily can gain communication, collaboration skills, creativity, critical thinking, citizenship and character—those are our six C’s. And so it was exciting. It’s exciting work, and it takes some time, you know, because it’s not that we’re just saying shift everything, you know, formative assessments, quizzes and all of that still have a place, but, like, where’s the end game? What do we want our students and our graduates to have before they leave Byron?

And so this was really embraced by our school district, and some of the learning experiences that came from that were fantastic—students designing apps for their community based on the needs of their community. You know, we have, for instance, we have a co-curricular class between our FACS class and our business class, and we have a student-led food truck that’s going on right now.

So it’s really thinking about like, what are those real-world experiences that students can have? And I always call them resume-ready experiences. And they begin, you know, as early as elementary school, and they get more and more developed as the older the students get.

And so that work that we did five, you know, five to seven years ago, when generative AI came on the, you know, came to reality in November of 2022, and probably in January, you know, it was just like, holy cow, it’s just amazing what it can do. But it was just like, you know, it’s almost anxiety of what the opportunities are.

But as I went in and was observing classrooms that really embraced authentic learning, AI wasn’t a shortcut in those classrooms. It was a thought partner. It was a way to, you know, figure out these challenges. And I think that, to me, was my biggest aha, you know, is we did this work seven years ago, and we’re still continuing that work, but in the classrooms that embraced, you know, real-world, authentic learning and those experiences, AI can really be a good companion, versus just a shortcut that it can be seen in other classrooms.

So that’s probably my number one. And that’s where the human-centeredness gets in, because these are skills that you just like. I can’t imagine having a creativity test or a collaboration test. But there’s opportunities, whether you’re teaching science or math, that collaboration can come to play, and the more authentic that is, and the opportunities for kids to go outside of the classroom walls, the bigger the opportunities. So that, to me, is probably the biggest opportunity that I’ve seen.

Paul Beckermann 12:23
So you’ve made this profile of a graduate, and that kind of became your north star as you’ve been navigating kind of through these things. Is that what I’m hearing?

Jen Hegna 12:30
That is, yes. That was the work designed by a bunch of our administrators and teachers, and after a year-long cohort, that was the outcome—was our profile of a graduate, was the six C’s. And then the following year, we created a design team that said, “Okay, if every graduate is to have these, you know, six competencies, what does it look like?” You know, working backwards.

And so that was designed and developed. And, you know, great work for our teachers and administrators and our students that all contributed to that work, as well as the work the teachers that continue to design and develop today. That’s great.

Rena Clark 13:18
And, you know, I kind of—as somebody that I’ll just say this year, I’ve jumped back in the classroom, and I’m what it’s called, a singleton, so I don’t have a team, and I’m developing new curriculum and content for classes that have never happened, and using AI as a thought partner, like you’re saying.

But having that clear north star, like understanding like these are the standards, this is what we want students to be able to know and do—having a thought partner is so wonderful, because you can put all of those things in, and it’s powerful, because I can’t imagine, because then I would truly would be just be sitting there alone. I’d be like, I don’t know where to do. So it is, it is helpful. I like real humans best, but it is nice to have that tool.

And so I was thinking about, you’re talking about the north star you develop. And I know out there we’re trying to constantly provide professional learning and support our teachers. So in lieu of another, you know, you’re talking about the email training we had, whatever, 20 years ago. Now, I’m just thinking about, what are those skills that we really should think about developing in our educators? What are those things that we should support them with as we continue developing the technology?

Jen Hegna 14:30
Well, I think it all depends on where our educators are, right? So every educator comes to the table at a different place. In the past, you know, we’ve done professional development all around tools. So, you know, when AI came out, it was like, here’s this tool, here’s this tool. And we did that with Web 2.0, we did that with, you know, internet like, and it’s all about the tool.

And I think the more we focus in on the pedagogy and more that we understand what teachers need, the better we can design around that. So last year, my colleague and I created an accommodations and modifications training with AI. So, you know, that’s something that, first of all, in Minnesota, every educator needs a CEU that shows that they’re, you know, keeping up with their professional development.

But it also really hits home with these are the students, you know, that have certain needs. And we were hearing from special ed teachers like they, you know, they weren’t able to connect all the time with general ed teachers. So how can we give, you know, general ed teachers kind of the tools to show them where AI can be supportive of their students, and, you know, the challenges that they have? I mean, for multilingual students, there’s just amazing opportunities with artificial intelligence.

And so I really think, at a district, you know, kind of a school level, or district level, thinking about, like, what is it that, you know, we’re still wanting every teacher to do that’s not too intensive, you know, and showing them how you can use AI to quickly design or redesign an activity, a lesson, you know, to change the reading level of something, you know, if you have students with, you know, lower reading abilities.

So I really love the idea of showing how you can differentiate and then have it ready to go the next day, like, you know, the idea of a sit and get and not really designing anything is a challenge. And I’ve seen lots of bad PD, and I’ve even done bad PD where you just, you know, chat, and they don’t get to do and then they don’t get to take anything with them or the skills.

So, you know, I think the more, you know, we can listen and learn to our educators and find out what challenges that they have, and then figure out how you can swizzle in AI and the prompting techniques, you know, to better support them.

Rena Clark 17:14
All right, I like swizzling in. It’s like the Swiss Army knife. It’s like swizzling in, I like that.

Jen Hegna 17:21
Well, some of the work that I did, you know, is just really, I worked with our middle school and just listen and learn, did some empathy interviews, which is a part of the design thinking process. And, you know, we send out surveys all the time, but really listening and trying to get like, what are the biggest challenges? And then, you know, figuring out where AI can be a support to educators, I think, is super important.

Winston Benjamin 17:47
I appreciate that you’re pushing our teachers to think more in depth about how to engage the technology than just use it, right? But there’s something that I want to go back to which you said in Paul’s question about the graduation competencies. It seems that you’re focused on skill development, as well as we did. You just spoke about for the human development of teachers.

As you’re thinking about how students are engaging in a world and a future economy that’s going to be based on AI, what are some of the human skills that you think students should develop in terms of those literacies that we talked about earlier, right? And then, what might some of these skills look like in an AI world? How do we develop those skills within an AI-powered classroom?

Jen Hegna 18:42
So there’s a couple ideas. You know, I actually worked last year with an eighth grade teacher. He worked with eighth graders, and they were doing career research. And in the past, they, you know, would research a certain career, and then they would have a presentation during the school’s showcase night of all about their career and kind of their plans. They’re in eighth grade. Here’s what I want to be. Here’s my four-year high school plan and some of the experiences that I expect.

Well, he was in one of our sessions, and then he just asked AI, and AI literally kicked it out in like, you know, three minutes, what would have taken a whole, you know, whole semester for him to work with students on. And so a couple of things that we did is we kind of redesigned, you know, some of the questions. And, you know, instead of, you know, singling in on one career, maybe it’s singling in on a few careers.

The other thing was thinking about the presentation itself, and how can students become better storytellers? And that’s where AI was a great thought partner, because, you know, you can definitely say, you know, take this research and create, you know, 10 slides, and it’ll give you all the ideas, but really being storytellers and utilizing, you know, different techniques to better present instead of just reading slides, you know, copy-paste, read slides, that kind of thing.

So I think influence and storytelling is definitely a great skill, whether it’s—that’s a great communication skill. The other thing that I think about too is we need to have students that are self-directed. At the rate at which things are changing, you know, a student that’s in a scenario where they’re told what to do, when to do it, how to do it—I think we need to give students more opportunities for choice and voice to make those decisions and learn from those decisions.

Because I told the eighth graders that, you know, like, I want to make sure that you can make your own informed decisions, and you’re not just relying on a machine, because even as the machine kicks out information for you and I, we’re still reading and making sure that the output is good. So definitely self-directed.

And so a great way is just introducing choice and voice. In our elementaries, they were really working on executive functioning skills. And so, you know, even the “ask three before me,” you know, instead of always being the giver of the knowledge, like, what are the little things that, you know, we can do to empower our students, versus always looking at us for the answers, because we don’t want them just to rely on AI for the answers, right? We want them to be critical thinkers.

So that’s some other ideas. We also have had educators like, you know, when I think about going back to that modification and accommodation, like giving students the power to do that, depending on, of course, the class, but, you know, showing them, especially if, you know, they don’t have the reading skills as some of their peers, that they can input things and, you know, kick out outputs at things that are more at their reading level, metaphors so that they better understand. But that’s engaging it, you know, with AI versus just looking for that single output.

Last year, we rolled out our AI guidelines, and so teachers were engaging with AI quite a bit, but our students hadn’t yet. And once we rolled out the guidelines, it kind of gave our teachers permission to try things. And so we’re at that, you know, at that level where we’re just beginning, and teachers are starting to utilize AI with students. So we’re just learning right now and piloting different things, and we’ll be learning from each other.

Paul Beckermann 22:56
Let me ask a little bit about that early integration. Because one of the challenges, obviously, teachers worry about, are kids going to just use it to cheat, take a shortcut? But then, on the other hand, they realize the students need to develop these skills, because this is their future. How have you kind of seen your teachers balancing those two things, and as your teachers have started to dabble in this a little bit, have any found kind of a nice formula that seems to be working for them?

Jen Hegna 23:27
I don’t know if there’s the perfect formula. I think it all depends on the class. You know, we have some educators that, you know, you’re not allowed to use AI, you know, for this activity or this specific—and that’s okay, like, you know, I actually like the idea of, you know, being a little critical of AI right now, you know, because we still, by, you know, our state standards, we still have to make sure that they learn something.

And I think having the open dialog, you know, with our students, I think that was some feedback, you know, we received with those eighth graders is, you know, instead of ignoring it, you know, like, first of all, when I asked them, you know, how many of you have used tools like ChatGPT, 90% of their hands went up—eighth grade.

In another class, I was working with our elementary, fourth graders, and I would say, you know, there was, I don’t know if they used it, but I couldn’t believe how well they understood what ChatGPT was, you know, and a lot of them are engaging with, you know, Siri and Alexa. And by the way, Alexa, just this summer, got a huge upgrade, so it’s not quite as, you know, I’ll say the dumb bot as it used to be. So they’re very in tune to it.

And I think what I worry about is if we don’t have an opportunity to have those conversations and teach students how to use it, you know, they’re kind of just left on their own, kind of like with social media was the same thing, you know, people wanted to block social media, or ban social media, and then all of a sudden we have all these problems with kids, you know, not truly understanding it.

So part of me says, I understand where, you know, educators and specific standards, like we, you know, right now we’re learning, and, you know, we have to do it this way, but somewhere they have to learn, like, how to use it, you know, because this is their world, and this is where they’re going.

Paul Beckermann 25:33
And I really like that you talked about the conversation between the teachers and the students, because I think that transparency and honesty really is one of the keys. I’m curious. Have your teachers felt open to doing that? Do you think?

Jen Hegna 25:49
I think we’re at different levels, different, you know, and just again, you know, we just launched our guidelines, or we got them, you know, launched them last May. So but we’re just at that beginning stage, and we have educators at different levels in different areas. Some are embracing and moving forward, whereas some are being a little more hesitant.

And that’s absolutely okay at this point. We need our innovators and early adopters, you know, to figure out what this looks like in their classrooms and to share that with our other educators, to learn from each other. So I’d love to say we’re just there and everything’s integrated, but, you know, we’re at the beginning. I’ll be honest.

Paul Beckermann 26:37
No, what you’re describing is reality. I mean, that’s the case everywhere, for sure.

Jen Hegna 26:41
Yeah, but I’m really, really happy with, you know, our guidelines, with our task force. I’m happy with our profile of a graduate, because I think that just gives us, you know, opportunities to move forward quicker, but we’re still at the beginning, I’ll be completely honest.

Rena Clark 27:00
So I’m just curious, because I know that Byron Public Schools is part of the Minnesota Generative AI Alliance, and I know some of us aren’t from Minnesota, so we’re just curious. You know, what is that? What have you learned from that? How are you collaborating together?

Jen Hegna 27:18
Sure. So two years ago, St. Cloud Public Schools hosted a thought leader, AI thought leader conference, and, you know, this was, like I said, in ’24, and it was really well received. I think they had over 200 participants, and everybody seemed to be in the same place. And when I say everybody, I’m K–12, higher ed, you know, higher ed is also in this, you know, trying to figure things out.

And so this was the first time that I felt like higher ed and K–12 got together and we’re in the same space, talking about, like, what are the opportunities, the vision, the challenges, all of those things around AI. Some of the work outside of that, and again, kudos to St. Cloud Public Schools, was the development of the Minnesota Generative AI Alliance, and coming together and working together, kind of a grassroots effort to work together and solve some of these problems.

From the conversations we’re having right now, like, what are the strategies for professional development to, you know, really seeing practitioners do—I’ll be honest—amazing things. Like, you know, I think about AI and just prompting the machine, and some of these other practitioners are using Claude to generate code to, you know, take differentiation to a whole new level.

And so I think it’s just a way to keep us all together. But then also our goal is, you know, to be a support for Minnesota and to provide districts with, you know, some guidance, you know, eventual guidance, but we’re just somewhat new yet, and so we’re still forming some of those items.

And so I’m really excited though, because right now, there’s a lot of districts with different folks in their school districts, and how do we make sure just not Byron or Elk River or, you know, this one district—we got to think about all of our kids in our state. And so knowing that there’s different skill sets in every district, how can we support one another?

Winston Benjamin 29:41
So we’ve done a lot of asking you questions, hard-line questions, softball questions, but I’m going to throw the softest ball of all of them. What have you been thinking about? What’s in the front of your mind? Like, what are you thinking about these days in terms of education?

Jen Hegna 29:58
You know, I think a lot about AI literacy, you know, what are the strategies around informing our educators to hopefully, you know, get to our students? You know, this year, we’ll have another set of graduates go off into the real world. And, you know, are we doing what we can to support them?

I also think of the opportunities, you know, what are the opportunities in teaching and learning that AI can support, also in operations? What are the things that we’re doing that, you know, AI can support our educational system as a whole? And what are the supports that we need, both locally and statewide, to be able to grow and improve as AI continues to evolve very quickly?

Jen Hegna 30:51
Just a few little things.

Paul Beckermann 30:52
Yeah, just the small things.

Winston Benjamin 30:54
The ponderings, the pondering.

Jen Hegna 30:59
And there’s probably a lot more, but I’m sure—

Winston Benjamin 31:02
I’m sure. Thank you for that answer. But it’s time for me to ask everyone this question: what’s in your toolkit?

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 31:11
Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Winston Benjamin 31:21
What’s in your toolkit? What are you taking away today from our conversation that you would like to implement or utilize in the future? Paul, Rena?

Paul Beckermann 31:31
Jen mentioned earlier the importance of authentic learning in getting to their, you know, their learner outcomes, in their profile of a graduate, as well as developing skills that are relevant to AI. And I’ve shared the strategy before, but I think it applies here again. If we can have students create with other students, they are doing the four C’s for sure—communication, collaboration, creativity, problem solving.

And if we can have them create using technology, now we’ve brought in some of that technical skill building as well. I don’t want to say it’s the easy button, but it kind of is, if we can have something that’s curricularly aligned, where students are creating with other students in our classroom. That is a magical, powerful strategy.

Rena Clark 32:20
This is secret sauce.

Paul Beckermann 32:22
Secret sauce.

Rena Clark 32:24
Yeah, kids love to create, and I’ve had, this is pretty technical, but I’ve had a lot of fun lately, especially in Canva, which is, you know, free access for educators and students. And so the kids are having a lot of fun with that one. And we came up with a new acronym with the help of AI, helping me create an acronym to help with AI.

But anyways, I’m doing, for, you know, digital images, we’re always trying to make images, so we use the acronym IMAGE. So you have I—the item, like, what is it? M is for mood, what’s the feeling or vibe you’re trying to get? A is for action. So what are they doing? G is for graphic style. Is it anime, pixel art, watercolor, whatever your kids are into? And then E is extra details.

So you’ve had, you’ve been using that acronym. It’s been really helpful, and getting some really awesome images that go along with their work, or even then in my own creation of slides and things, which has been really helpful.

Paul Beckermann 33:22
That’s cool. Are the kids discovering things themselves as they’re doing that?

Rena Clark 33:25
Yeah, and we’ve been talking a lot because I’m doing a digital design class, but we’re doing a lot of the different types of styles. And so even, like, our mascot’s a grizzly bear, so I did like 20 different styles of a grizzly bear, from like, realism to techno art to like—and so the kids have just been having a blast, like trying on those different styles and getting different images. It’s been really fun. That’s cool, engaging.

Winston Benjamin 33:53
So for me, I think AI is a thought partner for authentic learning experiences, and authentic learning spaces is what I’m taking away. Because sometimes in my head, like, I know what I’m trying to do, but I hate the idea of my classes being the experiment. Like, first period, I got an idea. Doesn’t really work. Third period, I made a couple of improvements. By the end of the day, I figure out I got a whole lot of ideas going. The system is working.

Then it’s important to not have our students be the losers of learning because we’re trying. So I really like the idea of like, using AI as the opportunity to really think through all those nuances that I want to think through, but because nobody else in my family is a teacher, and I don’t really have the time to talk to anybody else who really wants to get into those deep weeds, so I think having an opportunity to use AI as a thought partner in that space is a very valuable thing.

Jen, I’m going to offer the space to you. What’s a tool or some thought or something you would like to add to our listeners so they can think about using in the future?

Jen Hegna 35:04
Well, actually, something you just shared, you know, about when you’re doing something, and you know it didn’t work out first block and second. And I think we need to model that actually, like giving students opportunity to see like, man, things did not go the way I wanted. I’m going to own this failure, but, you know, because I really feel that, you know, they can’t see perfection all the time.

And I really feel that the more our students have opportunities to learn and fail and learn from their failures, I think is actually an okay thing. So I want to say kudos for you to show them that, because I think that’s great.

Some of the things that are in my, like, in my head right now are things that I want to—you know, one of the tools is, of course, NotebookLM is just an amazing, amazing tool. And our special ed teachers are actually having students design their own notebooks so that they can accommodate, you know, get the, you know, the podcasts of their biology unit two biology units, which I think is fantastic.

But some of the advanced things is really somewhere where I’d like to think about Claude or some of the coding that you can do. I think there’s some real opportunities there that I’m excited to dabble in.

Paul Beckermann 36:35
Awesome. All right. Well, it’s time for us to jump into our one thing.

Transition Music 36:39
It’s time for that one thing, for that one thing, one thing.

Paul Beckermann 36:50
All right, one thing time. What’s your final thought for the day? Rena, you want to go first?

Rena Clark 36:55
Sure. I like the idea of focusing on the constants, but the constant being that we always know there’ll be change and we’ll always have to be solving problems. So I love the fact that we’d be developing the—well, now I’ve heard the four C’s, the five C’s and the six C’s, so however many C’s y’all have—developing those C’s, but really focusing on those constant and transferable skills, which kind of takes us back to that beginning quote, because it will be useful no matter what kids choose to pursue.

Paul Beckermann 37:29
Winston, how about you? What do you think about?

Winston Benjamin 37:32
As everything that I’m thinking about relates back to the classroom, as I think principals and admin should think about, but the thing that I’m really deep in is focusing on PDs and not just being that this is the tools and how to use the tools and like mechanics of the tools, but actually digging into the pedagogy of using the tool, right? I think that shifts the practice and the purpose and really allows people to walk away.

Just like if we shift the why and how to the students, they’ll understand and dig into the learning a little more. So I really love that idea.

Paul Beckermann 38:07
That was exactly what I was thinking about, Winston. I mean, if we want our students to have these transferable skills, our teachers need to have these transferable skills. And what’s transferable is the strategy, the approach. You know, the tool is going to continually change, but if we can focus on the how do we do it and the why do we do it, that’s going to really be empowering in the long run. So I’m with you on that one.

Hey, Jen, your final takeaway for today. What would you like to leave our listeners with?

Jen Hegna 38:37
Yeah, there’s a quote by—I have to look up the name where they said pedagogy is the driver, technology is the amplifier. And so I want to say it’s—I’ll have to look it up. Mike, is it Mike? It’s right… anyways. And in all of the experiences that I’ve had, you know, with internet and all of the different devices, I’m not certain how much pedagogy changed, but I think to really, truly tackle AI and embed it into our system, we’re going to have to think differently about assessment, and we’re going to have to think differently about, you know, what our kids are learning and doing.

And I think, you know, having those conversations around pedagogy and relationships and all of those things, I think that’s going to be, that’s going to be what really will accelerate AI in education.

Paul Beckermann 39:42
By the way, my AI summary in Google just told me that Michael Fullan—

Jen Hegna 39:46
Fullan, that’s right. Michael Fullan.

Paul Beckermann 39:48
There you go. AI to the rescue.

Jen Hegna 39:50
Michael Fullan, yeah.

Rena Clark 39:53
I love that. Well, Jen, we just appreciate you joining us today and letting us know a little bit more about what’s going on in your district and the larger state of Minnesota. I’m walking away with a few new things I’m thinking about. And so hopefully our listeners—and who knows, in another year, who knows what the next big thing will be or not. And it’ll be interesting to see where we are in a year. So hopefully you’ll join us again.

Jen Hegna 40:18
Absolutely, and I’ll send you the link too to MINGAI. Actually, it’s AIforMN.org. We’re just starting getting the content built up. So if people want to join, they’re more than welcome to. So there’s a lot of great opportunities when we all learn with each other.

Paul Beckermann 40:37
For sure, I’ll put that link on our show notes.

Jen Hegna 40:39
Awesome. Thank you.

Rena Clark 40:41
Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 40:45
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 40:58
We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark 41:02
And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 41:05
Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 41:08
You make a difference.