Beyond Efficiency—Empowering Students with AI

Hey everyone, I'm glad you could join us today.

We are here for an AI meetup.

This is one of our quarterly meetups,

and these are sponsored by tottle,

so we appreciate all of their support.

Today. We have a special guest.

We've got Heather with us y'all.

Heather is from the Fletcher School

and she's the director of Educational Technology there.

Um, if you're not familiar with it,

there're in Charlotte, uh, North Carolina.

So Heather, thank you for being with us today

and helping facilitate today's conversation.

Absolutely. I'm excited to be here and excited to chat ai.

Awesome. Um, y'all to, as we kind

of get things kicked off, Heather's gonna guide us

through a couple of questions.

This is an interactive session.

So, um, the point of this is not a webinar,

it's not a presentation, it's that we gather together,

we ask questions and we talk about what's going on.

So, um, I understand some people this hits

during their lunch hour or kind of close to it.

Um, if you are able to turn on your camera

and join us, that is much appreciated.

If you're aware, you can only participate

by chat, that's okay too.

Um, we do encourage you though, to participate as much

as you are able, um, kind of in your work environment.

If you have any questions for us

or if there's anything that you really wanna talk about,

you have a burning question that you came here with,

we can definitely accommodate that.

So, um, place that in the chat.

But, um, in the meantime, again,

I'll let Heather kick us off.

Perfect. I do have a mentee meeting to start.

Do you, will you let me share my screen?

Yeah, absolutely. Put

The link in the chat too for everybody else.

Perfect. So, yep, that's great. All right.

You should be able to share now.

And yep, that link is live in the chat. So here we go.

We're gathering questions right away. I love it.

Hey y'all, if you just joined us, um, we are

with Heather over here on Minty meter,

and so if you don't mind if you'll grab

that link that's in the chat for you.

The codes should also be at the top of the page.

Can y'all see my screen? Perfect?

Yep, looks good.

This first one's asking how your school's currently using

ai, if you're using it more for, uh, teacher efficiency

or more for student learning.

Yeah, no surprise there.

We're still kind of skewing towards the adults a little bit.

If you have to, you know, black and white, pick a choice.

Yeah, yeah,

go ahead and go to the next question as well.

Yeah, sounds good. So this one's looking more at, um,

how your school is currently

serving students who learn differently.

So here at Fletcher, um, we serve students

with language-based learning differences in A DHD.

And, um, that's our, that's our primary mission is, um,

to serve those kiddos.

Um, so we are very tech focused here with the ability,

um, to provide

that assistive technology piece for our students.

This question should let you do a couple

of different ones up there, um,

just in how your school's serving.

Um, whether you just offer more like afterschool tutoring

or pushing or pull out service.

Again, our school is 100% all the time,

small class sizes, um, focused on dyslexia,

dysgraphia, another language-based things.

And then I do see that four of you, um, wrote

that you are using some digital tools.

So, um, I am going to go to the next slide,

which just asks you for some of those specifically

that you might be using

Read and writes.

Absolutely. One of my favorites, um, uh, I call it an,

an og, um, Google Chrome app.

And I think it was even around before Chrome got big.

Um, I did just notice an email today that

that text help has officially

changed their name on everything.

So that's gonna be interesting to look for that,

that new name that's not text help

because I've been so, like text Help Heavy for years.

Um, learning Allies is another one that comes up.

Um, if you're not familiar with Learning Ally, it is a

audiobook, human read audiobooks for students.

Um, and it typically provides the audiobook as well

as the text book.

Um, somebody else not sure, um,

immersive Reader is a Microsoft tool,

if I remember correctly, that that's built into a lot

of the Microsoft products.

Um, I, I assume reading coach

and math, math assistant are also through Microsoft,

so I do not know those.

Um, we are an Apple distinguished school.

Um, so we are heavily, heavily Apple

and pretty heavy Google here at Fletcher as well.

Um, so I, but I'd love to hear more about,

um, some of those others.

Um, I'll give you just another, that's probably good.

We'll, um, I think that was my last question.

The last one is just, yeah, just audience questions.

So I will leave it open.

So if you have anything you wanna add here, you're welcome

to as we go along.

Um, but I will stop sharing my screen so

that we can chat a little bit more.

Um, and then I can always go back

and screen share if we wanna look at anything specific.

That's what I was looking there.

You're, um, does anybody have questions about any

of these tools or anything that you wanna go into a little

bit more that you're currently using or in have been looking

at?

Crickets? Um, I can talk a little bit about read and write

and how they have, um, added onto some,

some AI features.

Like a lot of the tools, um, they are,

um, at, they're adding some AI stuff, um,

particularly the enhanced voices.

I think that's been one of my biggest complaints about

reading write the whole time, um, is that the voice isn't

as fantastic as it could be.

It gets the very digital, um, voice

and it's just not fluent.

Um, not the fluent reading that we want our kids who

struggle to read, to use to read better.

Um, but they have done a lot of work getting, um,

some more AI voices in there.

Um, for me, I think Speechify is like hands down, um,

the best option for good voices, especially with ai.

Um, 'cause they have so many voices that you can choose from

and they truly are fluent and you can change accents

and you can do all the things to, um,

make them a little bit better.

Um, anybody else using voice, voice

to text that you really like?

Particularly if it's ai?

Nothing

Is anybody Go ahead. You first, Heather.

Oh, uh, I was just gonna say, I don't, um,

use it very often, but I know that our, um, learning

and support staff, um, relies on it pretty heavily, um,

again, through Microsoft,

but I also believe that they are, uh,

using some other tools, um, that are out there,

but we don't have like a school specific, um, method

that we use across the board.

Yeah. Thanks for sharing.

I mean, I'm ha I can, I can talk all day.

Um, I'm happy to go through some

of my favorite tools if that would be helpful.

Um, and talk a little bit about how we use 'em and,

and why we use 'em, um, for our kids

who learn differently, if that would be helpful.

Yeah, why don't you share a couple

that'd be great to kick us off.

Perfect. And then you'll, if there's, if there's, again,

if there's questions, if there's things that you want

to talk about, um, outside of this too,

drop them in the chat and we can circle around

and talk about different things too.

So y'all let us know what did you come here, um, today,

what do you wanna learn about, what do you wanna share?

What are you struggling with? What's going well?

So yeah, Heather, kick us

off with some tools. That'd be great.

Okay, I'm gonna reshare my screen again.

And, um, this has been one of my new favorite tools,

um, that I've been using.

It's called Goblin Tools, um,

and we've been using it with students as well.

Um, one of our big focuses this year has been really this

year and last year has been

executive function for our students.

So, um, a lot of kids who have, um, you know,

specifically A DHD,

but also a lot of the other, um, learning, um,

disabilities, uh, really struggle with

that executive function piece.

So not only the learning, but like, how do I stay organized?

How do I, um, you know,

limit distractions and things like that.

So we've been doing a lot.

Um, we use the Peg Dawson model here at Fletcher.

Um, she wrote the book, um, smart

but Scattered, which is, is pretty popular, um, as far

as executive function goes.

Um, so this is one of the tools

that, um, I really like.

And this is an AI tool.

Um, I do love that it saves your work in your browser

until you clear your cookies.

Um, but you don't have to log in.

So if we, like, when we, when we're thinking about

that safety piece, um, this will just,

it'll all save right here, um, as long

as you let those cookies run.

Um, so you can type in different tasks that you wanna do,

and it really breaks it down into more manageable steps.

So, um, this first one was an example, um, that you're,

you've got an assignment where you need

to write an essay on the causes of the American

Revolutionary War, not the wa, the not the way.

Um, and then you kinda choose your level

of support that you need.

So if you need more support or less support,

and then it will, um,

really truly break it down for you into, um,

more manageable tasks.

So begin by understanding the assignment.

Um, choose your writing format.

You know, we do MLAI think most, um,

KK 12 schools use MLA, um, consider the audience.

So really does a good job

of helping break those things down.

Um, this one I thought was a bit heavy of, create a list

of potential sources for research books,

academic journals, and websites.

So I broke this down a little bit, um, again,

but just by hitting that breakdown item button

and it, it pulls it into smaller, um,

slightly more manageable steps, um, for you.

Again, it can go really in detail

or be a little bit more, um, general depending on how,

what you, what you tell it.

Um, another example, um,

is cleaning my room once a week.

So, you know, if that's something that, you know, your, your

students are really, and it could be things

around the school, clean out your backpack, um,

straighten up the classroom, things like that.

So it, it recommends gathering supplies, um,

putting items back in their proper place, sorting

through clutter, um, and, and so on.

So I think this is really helpful for our students

who struggle, um, with that task initiation piece.

Like, I have all these things that I have to do,

but I truly don't know where to start.

Um, so this is a really good one.

They also have teacher tools built in

and they have a couple of other, um, tools

as you can see across the top, um, depending on your

role and your job to kind of help you, help you get started.

Um, again, this is not, um,

generative as much as it is.

Like if you come in here and say, you know,

write my paper on the American Re Revolutionary War,

it's not going to, not gonna know what to do with that.

Um, but, but a really good EF tool for, um, kids

and adults who have trouble getting started.

Heather, I really like that

because there's a lot of, um, adults

neurodivergent people on your teams as well.

And so having some scaffolding

and some support for bigger projects

or more overwhelming task, um, could really be very helpful.

I know, um, we've got some neuro spicy brains on the Atlas

staff and having technology tools, um,

that we can all rely on is super, super helpful, um,

to navigate and kind of compensate and,

and really be super productive at work.

Yeah, definitely. I definitely have, um,

used this some in my personal account to kind of

just kickstart my brain if I like, am just feeling like

so much overwhelmed

that I don't even even know where to start.

Like at least give, gimme some ideas to get started.

Even if I don't follow it step by step.

I think it can be really helpful. Um, another one

that we've really leaned in here, um, at Fletcher

with is Grammarly, GRA.

Um, we are, we do use Grammarly edu, um,

which is the paid version,

but most of the other versions, um,

they still allow a lot of the AI features.

Um, we had the AI stuff turned off for a while, um,

but we did finally turn it on

and, you know, we've had a couple of issues

where a kid has gone in

and said, um, you know, answer, you know,

write my essay on this question.

Um, and Grammarly, I love does a pretty good job of saying,

um, well, it sounds like this is something that, um,

you're supposed to be doing for school.

Maybe there's another way I can help you with this.

Um, so it's another really great one, um, for ai.

Is anybody else using Grammarly?

How's that? Uh, my, um,

our teachers have struggled with it a little bit.

Um, we have to have a lot of conversations about

what is the goal of the assignment.

If the goal of the assignment is like a writing,

um, like assessment to see

how well students can write, you know,

Grammarly is maybe not the tool for that,

but if, um, the goal is for students

to get out their ideas about the civil, you know,

primary figures from the civil rights movement,

maybe it's okay that Grammarly, um, becomes that, you know,

partner to help you write a little bit more have

how have your teachers, um, um,

and your, your staff really looked at the difference

between, um, the AI writing

for, for getting ideas out versus like formal writing.

Nothing. You are quiet

today. That's okay.

Our English teachers are definitely struggling. Mm-hmm.

Um, feeling comfortable allowing students.

Um, so we're trying to support them in finding ways to,

um, help students see

that the AI is never going to be their voice.

Like they have to have their own voice, but the AI features

and things like this can help them in assistive ways.

So, um, but I definitely have a couple very fearful,

longstanding English teachers.

They've been here a long time. It's really hard for them.

Yeah. Um, I've been very fortunate that three

of my upper school teachers who have really run with ai, two

of them are English teachers

and one of them is a history teacher.

Um, and they have done a really great job trying

to make it a little less scary, um,

which has been really nice.

Um, and having those conversations with our students about,

um, you know, this is something that you know,

is appropriate for school

and this is something that like you wouldn't, um,

I actually wrote this quote down to share today,

and I think it might be a good time to throw it in there.

I don't rem so I feel really bad

because I don't remember who said this to me.

Um, but I, I liked it

and I, I wrote it down, it says,

if you wouldn't ask your teacher to do this,

then don't ask AI to do it for you.

It was pretty much the goal.

Um, so you wouldn't walk up to your teacher

and be like, Hey, write this essay for me.

So you shouldn't ask AI to do that for you.

But if you're, if you walk up to your teacher

and say, Hey, I don't really understand this.

Can you explain it to me a different way?

Like, that is a good appropriate use for ai.

So I've really been trying to, um, talk

with our students about that

and get them kind of thinking about it that way.

Like, what, you know, maybe your teacher has a line,

you know, we're, like I said, we're small class sizes,

but I know in, you know, an an average classroom,

you might be sixth or seventh

or eighth in line, um, to talk to the teacher.

So if that's when AI can step in

and help you, like take advantage of it, um,

but again, don't copy and paste that prompt right in there

and, um, ask it to do, do that work

for you if you wouldn't ask your teacher, your tutor

or your, um, your mom to help with that.

Um, trying to think if there's anything else in Grammarly.

Um, I, Grammarly does

have, um, some degenerative AI and the AI

and plagiarism, uh, checker in, built in there.

Um, I'm not a huge fan. I don't think they're great.

I think, um, that they cause more

scare than anything.

Um, I finished

my doctorate two, almost two years ago now, I guess.

And when my paper got run,

and this was like a little bit pre a, like,

it was like right when things were like really ramping up

in, in higher ed.

Um, and like I, you know,

I ran it through for the university

and it was like 40% or something.

I was like, I'm gonna get expelled, you know,

they're not gonna gimme my degree.

And they're like, no, as long as you're not like 70%.

So like, I, I don't want our teachers to look at that

and think like, oh gosh, this whole thing.

Like, this is not, this was not AI written.

This was a journal article I, I started, um,

and like right from the beginning, it, it, it picked it up.

But so, um, as,

as being AI resemble a section resembles ai, um,

so I just tell my teachers to be careful.

Um, you might also notice my little brisk button down here.

Um, is anybody using Brisk?

We have teachers that use Brisk. Yeah.

Um, so we, we, we did decide to go with Brisk as a school

because those upper school teachers

that I had were really bought on, um, really sold on it,

um, and bought in.

So we, we did go that way.

But they do have this inspect student writing, um,

which is very similar to, it's,

it only works in Google Docs, um,

which is why it's not showing up here.

Um, but if you're familiar with, um,

back not backflash, what's the,

what's the, um, backdraft back?

Backdraft? Yes. If you're familiar with Backdraft,

it works very similarly,

but I think it's a lot more detailed.

Um,

trying to see if I can find a document that's like

relatively innocuous than I can, um, pull up here

and kinda, so if I go to inspect writing,

and again, I think inspect writing is a piece of brisk

that is always available even if you

don't have the paid account.

So, um, I would say it's definitely one to look at, um,

because it gives you, um, like copy and paste

and time spent.

Um, and it, it's been really

enlightening for some of our teachers.

Like, we had a kid who spent almost 24

hours writing an essay that should have been like

maybe 10, 12.

And we had to have the conversation with him, like,

we really appreciate that you're putting

so much work into this, but like,

you're not gonna survive if you spend triple the amount

of time on every single assignment that you know,

that we're really expecting you to put in.

Um, so as you can see it's going through

and, um, it's just going back in history.

Um, wow. Back to 2017.

Oh, I guess it started at the beginning. It's an old doc.

Um, but even with such an old doc,

it's still showing like all these huge copy paste,

the number of edits, the hours, like all that stuff.

Um, so it, it's, it's really interesting.

We had another kid who wrote

really a very good essay and like, it didn't look so bad,

but then we did finally realize that he was using Grammarly

and was getting whole huge chunks of text.

So again, it was a conversation.

Um, so that, that that's worked really well for us

as far as, um, a little bit better than Backdraft.

Um, but still like, please don't

expel your students because it says it's ai.

Are, are your teachers looking

for this or are they just, how, how are y'all dealing with

the writing piece and,

and the type of, the type of writing it is

and how it's being assessed and monitored for ai?

They definitely hate being police people.

Yeah. They don't like it at all. It frustrates them.

Um, so I told them, you have to rethink the assessment, like

how, how you assign it

and how you, um, have students put it together for you.

Things like that. But they're definitely,

I think the students are a little frustrated

because, you know, they're trying to get them

to do their writing in class, like in front of them.

And yeah, they're like, the kids are basically saying like,

I miss being able to write at home, you know,

when I'm comfortable and, and able to think

and, you know, not just like, turn it on, write it now,

and then we're gonna grade it.

Like, so I get it, I totally get it.

They're really, really frustrated.

But, um, we're six through 12, so, um,

that teachers are getting better

and better at, um, you know, creating assignments

that make sense and that allow kids some freedom

to do the things they need to do.

Not everything right in the room,

but there are a few still, boy, I don't know about you guys,

but there are a few that are still like, boy,

I wish we had blue books.

And I'm like, oh my God. Like, yeah,

Yeah. But,

you know, fewer and fewer

and the other voices are growing

and we're moving to Todd next year.

So we're, um, we did a whole exploration of the AI in there,

um, last week and changed some minds.

So it was good. Productive. Yeah.

Yeah. I, I think there's some great stuff

and I mean, it's, it's still just changing

so very quickly that it's, um, still next

to impossible to keep up with.

So I mean, I think if we see the change

in the next two years that we've seen in the last two years,

that it is just, it's continue to, to,

it's gonna continue to be exponential.

Um, I I, the, the chat closed when I went back

to share my screen, so I'm trying, I'm trying to catch up

with if anything in here that I missed. Um, yeah, so

There, there's some people just talking in the chat,

you know, I mean, you could have, for example,

a two browser windows open, right?

You've got your generative AI essay

that you just straight up copied and pasted in this one,

and then you can sit there and type it out, right?

So your log is going to show you typing it out, type

It out. Yeah.

It's not necessarily a foolproof plan.

So I think just having those discussions with the faculty

as well, you know, um, and,

and really focusing on that, the content,

the process, all that good stuff.

Yeah. And I mean, what the conversation

that I've had constantly is like, you know, your students,

does this sound like them?

And they were like, well, you know, sometimes,

oh yes, it absolutely does.

Well, okay. And then sometimes it's like, well, not really,

like, let's, let's pull another example and, and compare

and, and all of that.

So I think again, um, one of the things

that I love about being in education, um, is

that we really are so people centric

and like, we're doing our kids a disservice if

we're not having those conversations.

If we don't feel like we can pull them to the side

and say, Hey, like, let's, let's look at this.

This is my thinking, this is what I'm seeing.

Like, talk to me about it.

Um, and I would say for the most part, our,

our students here at Fletcher have been very, very, um, open

and honest in those conversations.

Again, I'm sure it's not like that everywhere.

Um, but, but we've been fortunate enough here

and we have, again, small enough classes

and, um, relationships that are strong enough to like,

be able to have those like honest conversations.

Um, another tool that I'll share

with you if you want is,

um, glean.

So this is a notetaking tool.

Um, it was brought to us, um,

because one of our graduates, um, went

to the learning support program at his university,

and they, they purchased it for him.

Um, so we, I'll, I'll be honest with you, we started

with this, but then we did not renew it

when our renewal was up.

Um, not because it wasn't good, but just

because our, our teaching faculty

doesn't really teach this way.

Um, but if you've got students who are sitting

through lectures who need, um, that extra support

and they like note takers, glean is phenomenal.

And it has built in ai, um, features.

So if you, you can kind of see from this image, um,

you start with your, you can start

with a presentation, you don't have to have one.

Um, but then it just does that audio recording, um,

down the side and it, it, it transcribes.

But what I love about it is that students can take notes

and put like marks

and things like you can add an exclamation point

or a question mark so that when you're going back later

to study, you can really look

and, um, see exactly where, um, like go back

to that part of the discussion

and like listen to it again to really see

and try to get help with what you were having trouble with.

Um, I would highly,

highly recommend it for any kids that you have

that are preparing for, um, college.

Like I said, we started with our 11th and 12th graders

and the ones that were using it really liked it.

Um, but it really was cost prohibitive for us, um,

with the fact that our teachers don't do a ton of lecture.

Um, but I think a lot of them will together.

Yeah. What

I, I said I think that that's a

good thing, you know? Oh, yeah,

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Definitely a good

Thing going to college.

It's not a complaint, But

Want them. And, and my

guess is that we'll probably, um,

try it again in the like next school year for our, our,

that next group just so they can kind of see it.

Mm-hmm. Um, yeah, again, it, it didn't hurt my feelings

to get rid of it, but I do think it is a really powerful

tool, especially for those kids who, um, who need

that extra like, listening and, um, reviewing.

Um, I mean, I can keep going if y'all,

is there anything else AI wise y'all wanna talk about?

Anything that you have?

Oh, I know one thing I was gonna mention is that, um, our,

um, director of finance

and operations, um, got, he

was accepted into the, um, perplexity Fellows program.

Um, so we are gonna slowly roll out perplexity to faculty

and staff and probably 11th

and 12th graders, um, just for the year

that he gets it for free.

If it's like life changing, we, we may keep it.

Um, but we didn't wanna give it.

We, we figured 11th and 12th grade was appropriate.

Um, like I said, my, um, my

upper school senior English teacher is,

was already using Perplexity, um, with kids,

helping them plan their senior projects.

So, uh, it just, it worked out really well,

but we just got this like this week.

So, um, we haven't really started it yet,

but we are, are gonna run with it.

Um, we really like perplexity

because, um, it does a really good job

of providing those supports about

where they pull their info from versus Chad g pt.

That's just like a whole list of stuff

and doesn't really tell you what's what.

Heather, can we pause?

Do you mind actually just navigating to perplexity

and like, let's look at it together.

So y'all, I really like perplexity too.

This is something that we share when we, um, go out

and we kind of do the road show.

I feel like this is a really easy barrier to entry, um,

or a low, low barrier, right?

Like it's a good place and especially for the faculty

that are, you know, really still googling a lot of things,

perplexity can be that nice, like, well, have you tried, um,

to put it into Perplexity instead?

And it's interesting

because a lot of the times it'll give you this highly visual

like Pinterest style, um, version

of like results from the web

and then it's got this great generative AI

as Heather mentioned, it does your sources.

So we talk about doing this with your, your faculty, um,

on professional development

and getting them to put in things like, uh,

help me generate exit tickets for middle school, you know,

whatever their subject is, right?

Or bell ringers or, um, you know, anchor charts

or whatever their thing is.

And it pulls up some really great results.

It's kind of a nice way to just get comfortable with,

with some of the more the generative ais.

Yeah, I mean it's, it,

it does a pretty good job.

And again, just, just being able to go up there

and see, um, don't love

that Teachers Pay Teachers is the very first link,

but at least, at least I know where it's looking.

Um, and again, i, I can really go through

and look at these sources

and again, I think great conversation when you're talking

about it with kids, um, to

go through and say, Hey, this is where it's getting it from.

Um, do you see any, are there any potential problems

with this when you really wanna talk about the digital

literacy piece and the, um, the, the, the news

and media stuff to see where it's pulling from?

Um, Joe, I see your question in the chat about Magic School

or Magic Student.

Um, we have not,

but Brisk does have, um, it's called Brisk Boost

and it's the student piece

and we have just started playing with that.

Is anybody choosing, um,

magic School or Magic Student?

I know we're big fans of, um, Todd has their, um,

tutors out now, right?

I think I know they were working on it. Yes, they do.

Yeah, so they have something similar.

Um, Flint, who's another big, um,

Atlas fan has something similar.

Um, but I haven't,

I haven't specifically used Magic Student.

Jamie, are y'all using the, um, the title?

Yeah, we are just transitioning over to Tattle

and, um, we are, we did some exploration.

We have a, a sandbox site until our school is built

and, um, we used a lot of the tools

and they do, they have a debate partner,

they have teach another students something.

There are about six different options within title, um,

in addition to just help me out with this lesson

or build my rubric,

or I want 10 questions on, um, DNA

or something, some lesson.

Um, so all of those are great teacher tools,

but they do have some good stuff for students as far as,

you know, being able to test their knowledge

or, um, think about, um, building some,

uh, expertise around certain things.

So yeah, it's, it's pretty nice.

Yeah, I'm happy to share it if you want me to.

I can share a screen of course, if anybody wants

to get a little sneak preview. Yeah,

Please do. Hang on just a

second. Let me change the permissions here.

One moment.

Oh, that's alright. Let me get it. Good to go.

Um, in here

and sorry, I have teachers that just drop in.

Hey, while you're getting that pulled up, one thing

that um, I think is a cool little tool that, um,

magic School has is where you can look at at your assignment

and see how AI resistant it is.

Um, so I put a link to that one specifically.

I think that's a neat one to play around with.

Oh, I like that.

Hey, while Jamie's getting this pulled up, Erica,

I wanna pick on you next if you want

to share anything about, um, how you're using.

Um, you had mentioned you've got a couple of tools like the,

that you're using for yourself.

If you wanna share how you're using those,

we'd love to hear about it.

Can you all hear me okay? Yes. Okay.

Um, I think I mentioned that I've been using, um,

notebook lm and I've been using Claude.

So I, I mean I've been sort of experimenting

with a different, um, you know, AI chat bot started off

with GPT and then tried Bard before it turned into Gemini.

Um, and I was, I'm, I tend to lag behind folks.

Like I let other people explore and find tools first,

and then they talk about them for a while

and then I'm like, okay, I'll go try it now.

So I was a little late to the Claude party,

but um, I found that I really liked it.

And what I've been using these two things for has been,

um, we're in the process.

Like I know many schools are of trying to figure out

what our policies are gonna be around AI

and, um, despite the fact that I, it's not entirely my job

to draft a policy, somehow it's becoming

my job ish, you know,

or at least to not to, not to draft them,

but to manage the process or to help manage the process,

which is not something that I know how to do.

So, um, I've been using like Claude

and sometimes bouncing into another one as a thought partner

and being like, so if I need to, you know, we,

if we're trying to draft some policies here,

this is the kind of school we are, what are the kinds

of questions that, um,

people might want AI policies to answer?

And so that was like one initial brainstorm and,

and then I asked it to do it for like,

all the different departments that we have at our school.

Say like, what are some of the, what are like the top five

or top 10 questions you think folks might have about this?

Um, I've been working really hard

to also be really transparent when I'm communicating

with the faculty when I'm using ai.

So when I send something out and I'm just like, Hey,

here's a bunch of questions

and here's the link to my Claude transcript if you wanna see

like what my interaction was with that.

'cause right now we don't have any

set policies at the school.

Um, and, uh,

and then Notebook LM has been something I've been using

to help make sense of

some of the data that I'm getting back.

So, um, I will, like, if we take a survey, I ask it

to help me analyze the data.

I've been playing around with some of the tools in it,

like the podcast tool,

which is a little creepy, but kind of cool.

Um, and they just added like a mind mapping feature to it

as well, um, which is another, a nice way

to visually represent some

of the data that you're looking at.

So, um, me using these tools kind of helps me be able to

share or promote it with, um, with other faculty.

And then as far as the, the process

of drafting the policies is concerned, I also said, okay,

well then what would be a good like, steps to take

to draft the policy if I only have like x number

of weeks to get this spun out?

Okay. You mentioned some kind of communication plan.

Can you give me a draft of a communication?

'cause I don't know what that is. So like, like,

so basically it's like as my assistant, so that if

I end up having to be more in control of some

of these different aspects, I can also hand somebody

and say, Hey, here's a punch list

or here's a this that you can start working off of.

And then, um, we can modify that as we need.

So that's, that's been my most recent use of things.

I know there are other folks at the school

who are using different tools

and Right, we just got back from spring break today, um,

right before spring break I was sharing with the faculty

a list of all the, um, software tools that we subscribe to

that currently have some sort of Gen I tool embedded in it.

Um, because I wasn't certain if everybody was aware that,

and also indicated on that list, like of those tools,

which are ones that some of our students

also have have that access.

So part of it was like, Hey, we subscribed to some

of these things and you as a,

as a adult might be able to use it.

Um, and then, uh,

but the other thing was like, oh, we have some,

some students that, because they also have accounts here,

you may not realize that there's a, a, a, a function

or a feature that we can't turn off, um, that is in there.

So if you are thinking that they don't have access

to something that a school provided, you are wrong.

Um, we haven't intentionally provided it,

but it's like, well, everything is decided

to put the features in there,

so we can't necessarily take our,

our leisurely measured reflective deeply, you know,

communicative process about how we access somebody's things.

So, um, it's leaving a lot

of us feeling like the cart is coming

before the horse in many ways,

but I'm trying to help navigate those things.

I think I feel I, I've been talking for a while.

I'm gonna go on mute now. Appreciate

You sharing. No, that's, that's

great to kind of hear where y'all are.

Okay, so I'll show a quick bit of title.

I do have a job candidate coming here shortly, so I'm kind

of watching my phone to see when she arrives.

Um, but, so I'm just in, we created a bunch of department,

um, courses called departments

and um, just so you can see within,

I'm just in the classroom section here

and the assignments page basically for the classroom section

of, um, for teacher in the science department.

And when you just go up to create new,

and you can do this a variety of places in ta,

there's this option here for the AI tutor.

Um, and when you come in here,

these are the options you can create, choose from like any

of these that are here or choose a template.

And then down below if you have a temper template library,

maybe science has a temper template library

or sixth grade science

or whatever, those can be housed within title.

But you can choose something like, um, mastery building,

which is basically, um, it allows you to just, um,

give them a topic to explore and you get to preview it.

So let me pick something like, um, uh, interview an expert

debate partner, um, build understanding in a topic,

which is one of the things we did that.

But, um, I just clicked on Interview an Expert.

So you could put like, um, role play as

Shakespeare, maybe, um, an expert in,

um, Hamlet, I don't know.

Um, so you can put anything you want,

help students understand, oh, actually an expert in

literature and I can't remember what era,

but, um, on Hamlet,

the play, I don't know.

And basically it'll put together something,

you can also configure it.

So you can go in here and tweak it as you need to.

Um, and it starts off with, it's actually really kind

and thoughtful in all of the things that we did.

I worked with a science teacher

and you could also change the analysis scale,

but you will see each student's transcript in addition to

where they're placed, and it will tell them at the end.

You can also say, this can be 10 minutes, this can be,

um, 30 minutes.

It doesn't mean the students are stopped

and they have to quit immediately in 10 minutes.

It just shows them a button to say, you know, um, submit

or finish or, and um, at that 10 minute mark

or that 30 minute mark or whatever,

because I'm sure students could spend hours in here

chitchatting with someone.

Um, so you can put things in here, um, and ask questions

and walk through it yourself.

It'll allow you to play mode beginning, emerging, developing

or mastery so you can see what

that looks like for a student.

And then you can come over here

and change this to whatever you want.

You wanna edit that scale.

You can configure

and make edits to any portion of this that you want to.

So, and then the student at the end, when it's done

and they submit it and they finish it,

they get a thing saying, you know, it's so great.

It looks like you're just beginning at the beginning level

to learn about blah, blah, blah.

Here's some things you could do to learn more.

And then it comes up with two or three different options.

Um, so that's the talk with an expert

and it kind of goes down here, but you can go

and just play here and say, you know, beginning

and it'll start a sample conversation,

tell you what it looks like.

That's very cool. And then the teacher gets that transcript

and can understand where the student went with it.

If they want to, they can also change

and say, actually, I think they were more

emerging than beginning.

And so they can edit those things

and decide what that looks like,

or one that's at a higher level.

The conversation changes a little bit.

It also bases it on the grade level that you're working at,

unless you say it's for another grade level.

That's very cool. And you can attach materials, like this is

what they read or whatever.

Um, and you can save them, you keep them in here.

You can create tons of different ones.

You can have it create a worksheet for you.

I'm actually gonna go back here, sorry,

get the list back up really quick.

And so we had the, we did a demo with the teachers,

created a, um, quiz, teach a new student was

interesting in that, um, it's for them to sort

of teach a student something.

So we tried to do that in a language, um,

like help a student with verbs in, you know,

Spanish language.

And it went back and forth and they had to kind of explain,

and it was pretty good because I don't speak Spanish.

So it was great at like, just letting 'em, um, sort

of give them a little bit more information at a

time and build on it.

So, and then the debate partner was great.

It asked you what you, you know,

where you stand, what do you wanna debate?

And we said climate change. And it said, great.

Do you think it's created by humans

or do you think humans aren't involved in this?

You know, it's not their fault or whatever.

And then it walked through based on your point of view.

So it's been, yeah, it's nice

and it gives you a lot of options to configure.

And I like the idea that teachers can create templates

and save those for themselves

and share them with other teachers, things like that.

So that's it in a nutshell.

But it'll also do a lot of things for you as a teacher

as far as creating materials.

Super easy. I was really worried

'cause we were going from, um, Schoology to, um,

to, to, and I was really concerned

because the teachers had a lot of test quiz things

and Schoology and those aren't like easy to export

and create necessarily.

So I was concerned,

but then I watched it, like put them together,

like it was pretty amazing.

Very quick and easy.

And so I'm feeling a little bit better about this heavy lift

after 10 years with Schoology. So.

Nice. Yeah, we'll see.

Awesome. Um,

I I, oh, go ahead,

You first. Okay.

Um, I did a webinar.

I know we've got about 10 minutes left.

I did a webinar a couple days ago with, um, PlayLab ai.

I don't know if you, y'all have seen that.

Um, but they let you create

your own chatbots.

They're, they're a nonprofit

and, um, they're, they're just now starting

to like open it up and roll it out.

So if you sign up for one of their webinars,

um, they let you get in there.

And I like, I created one.

Um, we use the Orton-Gillingham approach here at Fletcher,

um, and people know that it's mostly like reading based,

but then there's also like a whole philosophy around it.

Um, so I created a very rudimentary chat bot to, um,

help teachers got, um,

do, um, Orton-Gillingham and technology.

Um, so that was really cool.

Um, I put the link in there

and they're, like I said, they're offering like

the sessions like every day almost.

So if you, if you can sign up for one of those, it's,

it's very cool.

Um, and they want like kids to be able to create their own.

So I think that'd be a great way to get kids, um,

started creating their own stuff in ai.

Okay, so I wanna piggyback off that.

Um, hang on,

I'm submitting the little wait list form here for Play Lab.

Thank you. Um, so we are getting into planning season

for the summer Atlas AI workshop.

So I've been doing a lot of research head's really in it,

all that, um, Ken Khan and the Learners Apprentice,

or ai, the Learners' Apprentice

and the amplification of Human Creativity is the best book

that I have read in a long time.

And it very much talks about students as creators.

And so it's talking about how you can use AI to do models,

simulations, interactions like build web apps,

really, really cool stuff.

You don't have to be very sophisticated in coding

and he kind of walks you through how to do some of that.

Um, so I'm also gonna just again, show

and tell with my screen here for just a second with you.

Um, this is one if you haven't seen Hagen,

it is not designed for education,

but you can use their avatars

or you can actually upload yourself if

you are okay doing it.

I don't, I'm not saying students, I'm talking about adults,

but watch this, think

Perfectly to match Welcome to the world.

Okay, so I wanna step back for a second.

You can upload a video of yourself in your voice

and it will change your language

and sync the, the motions to your mouth.

Um, and then again, replicate that.

Um, so some interesting things to think about.

Uh, you were talking about how, uh,

reading in in different voices, um, and,

and humans reading, that'll be fascinating to see.

Like, could we do that with AI

and generally, you know, give it the text that we want,

but then actually have like decent stuff coming out of it.

Um, this is a website.

I'm gonna drop this in a, in the chat.

I can't remember if I found this on LinkedIn

or at a webinar, but this is kind of a cool one.

Again, wouldn't recommend putting any kind

of sensitive data in here,

but this is really fun to play with.

So I was down the rabbit hole of building web apps, um,

right from chat GPT,

where you can like instantly build something

that you can then showcase.

And this site, um, you do have to have an API for this,

but it, it'll even walk you through how to do it.

It's very simple. Um,

but it basically can take your content

that you get at a chat GPT

and put it into something

that looks like this, like instantly.

It's really, really cool.

Um, here is an example of one I, I took some transcripts

of a, a webinar and then placed it in there.

And here it's pulling out like key themes.

And this is a Google site

that I embedded it into just to play with it.

This is just testing. Um, so that was kind of neat.

And then, um, the Google

Docs and it's creation tool.

Have you guys been playing with that lately?

Like that has improved drastically.

So look, when you go in

and you're telling it like you open up a new Google doc,

this create a document, it's been there for a while.

I've, I've ignored this button.

Have y'all been playing with this? Okay, so watch this.

So, um,

Uh, visual layout

for the following content, right?

And then I'm just gonna go grab one of my other documents

that I've got open here.

Oh, Joe, sorry, hang on.

Well I didn't mean to grab Joe's, my bad.

I'll grab my own document here. Right?

So here's some of my AI workshop planning

that I'm doing in the background.

I'm just gonna drop that in here.

And it was in a clunky format.

I'm gonna paste it in here, give it a couple of seconds.

I've been getting some decent results, um, from this,

which has been really exciting.

It applies like all the headers,

all the formatting to the text.

It creates, um, different like layouts and graphs.

It puts in a visual. Um, so again, it's not perfect.

One of the things that I don't like about it is

that I can't go back and, and give it any more details

or edit it after the fact.

At least I, I haven't seen that option.

Correct me if I'm wrong, if that's possible.

But again, here it went through applied bullets,

applied headings, so not bad

for throwing it in there for two seconds.

So those are my shares of the day.

Anybody else show and tell time?

You wanna share tool share process?

I've got one more I'll share.

Um, thinking about, uh, it's very similar.

It's called Gamma. Um, it was, have you seen that?

Yeah, it's really cool.

I had we're, we're doing a t uh,

session in a couple of, uh, in a week or so.

Um, here. Oh, nope, that's not it.

Um, I had my little outline

and I asked that it make slide presentations

and they're pretty beautiful.

Thank you. I've been looking for a tool

that actually works with this 'cause I keep seeing them,

but then great, like they're hit

or miss on like what they actually produce. Cool. Yeah,

This one's really cool.

Gamma Gamma app.

Yeah, so I was impressed.

I just saw it yesterday and I think you can also make

sites and stuff like that too.

Um, yeah,

I'm good.

I've been playing with the tool, um,

it's called, um, duck Toys.

I'm in the process of creating an asynchronous, uh,

professional development course for my, uh, colleagues

and it has embedded AI in it so you can drag

and drop, um, YouTube videos or slide decks or,

and, and create an interactive,

uh, learning pathway.

Um, and it's been, it's been fun learning a new tool,

but also as I went, I'm like, oh, let me try,

I was ignoring the AI buttons.

Okay, let me try the AI button.

And it's like, oh, I shouldn't have

been ignoring the AI button.

Um, so it makes, you know, that interactivity overlay on,

um, learning activities, uh, pretty, pretty seamless

with just a little bit of tweaking. Thank you. Heather,

Is that, are you using the paid version of this?

Um, you can go pretty far with the free version.

I opted to use the paid version

and it is not outrageous.

It's a hundred dollars a year per user.

Nice. The, the deck toys has been around for a while.

Um, I like I used this years ago, I'd forgotten all about.

It's so cool that they've, um, grown.

Excellent. Heather, I mean, is anything else?

I'm good. This has been great. I've gotten

some new things, so thank you all.

Well, we really appreciate you stepping in

and facilitating for us today.

Um, we're gonna have another session in July, just a meetup.

So another meetup that's coming up on July 15th.

Um, in the meantime, a couple of things happening.

We are collaborating with, um, the Association

for Learning Disabilities.

And so if you would like to participate on, on,

and we're specifically looking at it through the lens

of kind of some of the things we talked about today.

Um, accessibility, tech tools, things like

that at independent schools.

So if you would like to be a part of that, um,

please drop me an email

and, uh, we have of course the conference coming up,

so be sure to register for that as well.