Beyond Digital Natives: Essential Tech Skills for Students

Peter Frank 00:00:02
Phil, welcome to Talking Technology with ATLIS,

Peter Frank 00:00:05
the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for

Peter Frank 00:00:08
technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens.

Peter Frank 00:00:12
We'll hear stories from technology directors and other

Peter Frank 00:00:15
special guests from the Independent School community,

Peter Frank 00:00:17
and provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics.

Peter Frank 00:00:21
And now please welcome your host. Kristina Lewellen,

Christina Lewellen 00:00:25
Hello everyone, and welcome back to

Christina Lewellen 00:00:26
talking technology with Atlas. I'm Kristina Lewellen, the

Christina Lewellen 00:00:29
President and CEO of the Association of Technology

Christina Lewellen 00:00:32
Leaders in Independent Schools.

Bill Stites 00:00:34
And I am Bill Stites, the Director of

Bill Stites 00:00:36
Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New

Bill Stites 00:00:39
Jersey. And

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:40
I'm Hiram Cuevas, Director of Information Systems

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:43
and Academic Technology at St Christopher school in Richmond,

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:45
Virginia.

Christina Lewellen 00:00:46
Hello, gentlemen. How are you today?

Christina Lewellen 00:00:48
Doing? Well, doing a little Cole, but it's all good. A

Christina Lewellen 00:00:51
little chilly at this time of year. We're excited at Atlas, I

Christina Lewellen 00:00:55
think that we're flowing into 2025 really excited about all

Christina Lewellen 00:00:59
the things that are coming up, and we came into the year with a

Christina Lewellen 00:01:03
lot of energy. I love the spring, like we're getting to

Christina Lewellen 00:01:06
where we're engaging with our community. We get to see

Christina Lewellen 00:01:08
everybody soon at our 10th anniversary, annual conference

Christina Lewellen 00:01:12
in Atlanta, coming up in April. We've got a new edition of our

Christina Lewellen 00:01:17
magazine dropping that's really exciting. We've been doing some

Christina Lewellen 00:01:20
partnership with other organizations in our space to

Christina Lewellen 00:01:23
just really talk about things like the certification program

Christina Lewellen 00:01:27
that we run and all sorts of fun stuff. So it's just a really

Christina Lewellen 00:01:30
energetic time of year for the Atlas team and the Atlas

Christina Lewellen 00:01:34
community, the Atlas board deep in the selection process and all

Christina Lewellen 00:01:38
of that with our nominations committee. So it definitely

Christina Lewellen 00:01:41
feels not just like the start of the early days of a new year,

Christina Lewellen 00:01:46
but also just the more energized and exciting part of our year

Christina Lewellen 00:01:49
too. So it's good to see you guys, and I got lots of cool

Christina Lewellen 00:01:52
stuff coming up. Are you guys excited about Atlanta?

Bill Stites 00:01:55
It's funny you mention it because I literally

Bill Stites 00:01:57
just did a tally. Very excited. I think we're actually coming

Bill Stites 00:02:00
with six people, including myself. Wow. What

Christina Lewellen 00:02:03
kind of titles, Bill like, who on your

Christina Lewellen 00:02:06
team are you bringing? We've got

Bill Stites 00:02:07
the three different campuses. We're spread out. So

Bill Stites 00:02:09
we're bringing each of our ed tech focused people at each of

Bill Stites 00:02:13
those campuses. So our primary and middle school person,

Bill Stites 00:02:16
myself, our Director of Academic Technology, who is also at our

Bill Stites 00:02:21
Upper School and does that role at our upper school. We're

Bill Stites 00:02:24
bringing Alek Duba, who's been on the podcast from a data

Bill Stites 00:02:27
perspective, to do the work with the CIRIS track and all of those

Bill Stites 00:02:31
things. And we have a new director of STEM

Christina Lewellen 00:02:35
and innovation, right? I know that's

Christina Lewellen 00:02:37
a big project in your world right now, yep. And we're

Christina Lewellen 00:02:40
bringing

Bill Stites 00:02:40
him along and then myself. So if my math is

Bill Stites 00:02:43
correct, which it often isn't, but if it is correct, we've got

Bill Stites 00:02:46
like, six people coming, and it's one of those things where

Bill Stites 00:02:49
it's like, you want it to come quickly, because everyone's

Bill Stites 00:02:53
getting jazz for it and excited for it. And now we're just,

Bill Stites 00:02:56
we're in this waiting game,

Christina Lewellen 00:02:57
I know. Well, you know what? Art

Christina Lewellen 00:02:59
teacher, math, that's okay, so we can accept that either way,

Christina Lewellen 00:03:02
it's close enough. Yep. So I was just

Unknown 00:03:04
going to ask Bill, are you guys going to drive down as

Unknown 00:03:06
a team? There will

Bill Stites 00:03:07
be no driving. We will be flying. Thankfully,

Bill Stites 00:03:11
Newark to Atlanta is a quick, cheap and easy flight, so no,

Bill Stites 00:03:15
there will be no driving this time you're

Christina Lewellen 00:03:17
proposing a road trip, Hiram, they can stop

Christina Lewellen 00:03:19
and pick you up in Richmond on the way down. Oh, wow, that's a

Christina Lewellen 00:03:23
fun bus.

Unknown 00:03:24
Absolutely pick me up in Richmond. Pick up Lewis to

Unknown 00:03:28
Ravenscraft. Now

Bill Stites 00:03:29
that I didn't think of that would be some quality

Bill Stites 00:03:32
time that I think we'd all enjoy an RV. There you go. I think

Bill Stites 00:03:36
we're just building this out an

Christina Lewellen 00:03:38
RV or a bus, and now I know that we will end

Christina Lewellen 00:03:41
up with new clip art to post on social media of Bill driving a

Christina Lewellen 00:03:44
bus full of people down to the annual conference. This is bad,

Christina Lewellen 00:03:49
bad planning here.

Bill Stites 00:03:50
I'm gonna need a bus just to move people around.

Bill Stites 00:03:53
I know that because Ubers would be really tough when we get down

Bill Stites 00:03:56
there. So we gotta figure all this out.

Christina Lewellen 00:03:58
Awesome. Well, you know, I think that

Christina Lewellen 00:03:59
what's really exciting, as always, is that we spend some

Christina Lewellen 00:04:02
time together, and we get to talk to a lot of different

Christina Lewellen 00:04:04
people on this podcast. And sometimes we go into these

Christina Lewellen 00:04:08
conversations really kind of understanding and knowing where

Christina Lewellen 00:04:11
we're going to go. In this particular case, I sort of love

Christina Lewellen 00:04:15
that our guest is like, what are we going to talk about? And

Christina Lewellen 00:04:17
we're like, you know what? We'll just decide as we go so very

Christina Lewellen 00:04:21
brave soul. Welcome to the podcast. Rachel stock CO, how

Christina Lewellen 00:04:24
are

Rachel Sopko 00:04:24
you today? I'm great, excited to be here with

Rachel Sopko 00:04:26
you guys today. Awesome.

Christina Lewellen 00:04:28
So Rachel, I'm actually going to let you

Christina Lewellen 00:04:30
take some time to introduce yourself, because I think that

Christina Lewellen 00:04:32
you cover a lot of ground. You're an adjunct professor in

Christina Lewellen 00:04:35
the School of Education for the University of New Hampshire.

Christina Lewellen 00:04:39
That's really cool and kind of crazy. I have college age

Christina Lewellen 00:04:42
students, as do the guys, so we have questions that we need you

Christina Lewellen 00:04:45
to answer, but you also are involved in independent schools

Christina Lewellen 00:04:48
as well. So tell us a little bit about your background. Yeah. So

Rachel Sopko 00:04:52
currently, I am the Academic Technology

Rachel Sopko 00:04:54
integrator at Kent School in Connecticut, but I started my

Rachel Sopko 00:04:57
career as an English teacher. I started off. In charter schools

Rachel Sopko 00:05:00
in Washington, DC, and did that for a little while, and then I

Rachel Sopko 00:05:04
moved to Connecticut and taught in Title One schools in

Rachel Sopko 00:05:08
Connecticut, also as an English teacher. But in both of those

Rachel Sopko 00:05:10
roles, I did a lot of work as a tech person where, you know,

Rachel Sopko 00:05:14
Hey, I saw you were using this at tech tool, like, can you show

Rachel Sopko 00:05:17
me how to do that? And, you know, kind of just kept getting

Rachel Sopko 00:05:20
asked to teach teachers how to use tech, and my kids would be

Rachel Sopko 00:05:23
like, hey, the teacher next door is not using Google classroom as

Rachel Sopko 00:05:26
well. Like, can you show them how you use Google Docs or how

Rachel Sopko 00:05:29
you do this? So I was kind of wearing two hats all the time of

Rachel Sopko 00:05:33
teaching tech to teachers and also teaching English. So that

Rachel Sopko 00:05:37
sort of led then to me working with the University of New

Rachel Sopko 00:05:41
Hampshire, they ran a program called I learned New Hampshire,

Rachel Sopko 00:05:44
which started during the pandemic, and they provided

Rachel Sopko 00:05:46
Canvas Cal Perez licenses to any k 12 school that wanted them.

Rachel Sopko 00:05:51
And so with the partnership between UNH and the DOE, we

Rachel Sopko 00:05:54
supported schools all over the state teaching them how to use

Rachel Sopko 00:05:57
Canvas, and we really thought a lot about blended learning, and

Rachel Sopko 00:06:01
what did that look like during the pandemic and then post

Rachel Sopko 00:06:04
pandemic? What could we learn and what is effective ed tech

Rachel Sopko 00:06:07
use look like, and they're still going strong, helping teachers

Rachel Sopko 00:06:10
across the state. But I moved back to Connecticut to be with

Rachel Sopko 00:06:13
my family and landed at the Kent School where I'm now the

Rachel Sopko 00:06:16
Academic Technology integrator. And I continue to adjunct for

Rachel Sopko 00:06:19
the University of New Hampshire teaching research methods and ed

Rachel Sopko 00:06:22
tech courses to pre service and Master's level teachers. That's

Christina Lewellen 00:06:26
really cool. So there's so many paths we

Christina Lewellen 00:06:28
could walk at this moment, but one of the things that strikes

Christina Lewellen 00:06:31
me in what you just said is about the effort that you made

Christina Lewellen 00:06:35
during the pandemic. Do you think having had this background

Christina Lewellen 00:06:39
of being the techie teacher and being good at ed tech tools

Christina Lewellen 00:06:43
before the pandemic, and then now, how things are after the

Christina Lewellen 00:06:46
pandemic. Let's just go straight into that like, how does it feel

Christina Lewellen 00:06:50
to you with that perspective, what has changed, and what are

Christina Lewellen 00:06:54
your observations in that realm? Yeah, so I think

Rachel Sopko 00:06:57
it was kind of funny going into my career, I

Rachel Sopko 00:06:59
was always just really curious and excited to play with

Rachel Sopko 00:07:02
different ed tech tools. And I saw so much potential in how

Rachel Sopko 00:07:06
they could support my students. You know, I was forcing kids to

Rachel Sopko 00:07:08
make copies of Google Docs and share folders with me long

Rachel Sopko 00:07:11
before we had a learning management system or any of

Rachel Sopko 00:07:14
those kinds of things. And so throughout my career, seeing

Rachel Sopko 00:07:17
those things like grow and become real things was really

Rachel Sopko 00:07:19
exciting. And pre pandemic, I think there were a lot of people

Rachel Sopko 00:07:23
who were clinging to kind of very traditional methods, like,

Rachel Sopko 00:07:26
oh, I don't have to learn the tech. It was just for testing

Rachel Sopko 00:07:29
day. There were some kids who are like, my teacher only

Rachel Sopko 00:07:31
wheeled the Chromebook card in on the days we're taking

Rachel Sopko 00:07:33
benchmark assessments or we're doing a research paper, those

Rachel Sopko 00:07:36
are the only times we'll use them. And you know, I did a lot

Rachel Sopko 00:07:39
of work with teachers across the different districts that I've

Rachel Sopko 00:07:42
worked with in trying to train them on how Google Docs, how

Rachel Sopko 00:07:46
Google Drive, or Google classroom or other learning

Rachel Sopko 00:07:48
management systems. I use tools like Ed puzzle. I was showing

Rachel Sopko 00:07:52
teachers how these things could help them assess their students,

Rachel Sopko 00:07:54
to differentiate, personalize instruction, help them speed up

Rachel Sopko 00:07:59
some of their work. Because we all know grading takes forever,

Rachel Sopko 00:08:02
and we don't always get that feedback back to students as

Rachel Sopko 00:08:04
quickly as we would want to. And some teachers were excited to

Rachel Sopko 00:08:07
try that, and others were like, Yeah, that's for the younger

Rachel Sopko 00:08:10
teachers, or that's for the other people. Somebody else will

Rachel Sopko 00:08:13
do that. And then the pandemic hit and the world shut down.

Rachel Sopko 00:08:16
And, you know, we were in class on Monday, Tuesday, it was

Rachel Sopko 00:08:20
teachers only, and everyone's like, what are we going to do?

Rachel Sopko 00:08:22
And I was like, I'm gonna keep posting on my learning

Rachel Sopko 00:08:24
management system, and I'm gonna keep doing what I've been doing

Rachel Sopko 00:08:27
and just do it remotely. And a lot of teachers were like, Wait,

Rachel Sopko 00:08:32
can you show me how to do that? And I was like, I've been trying

Rachel Sopko 00:08:34
to show you to do this for five years, guys. So it was kind of

Rachel Sopko 00:08:37
an I told you so moment of see they are useful.

Christina Lewellen 00:08:41
I mean, it definitely accelerated for many

Christina Lewellen 00:08:44
educators. Oh yeah, the need to kind of walk this path. And now,

Christina Lewellen 00:08:48
do you think they're sort of there, or is there some similar

Christina Lewellen 00:08:50
resistance? I

Rachel Sopko 00:08:52
think that resistance still exists in

Rachel Sopko 00:08:55
different ways. I think there are some people who are like,

Rachel Sopko 00:08:57
Okay, we're back to normal. We're gonna just do those things

Rachel Sopko 00:09:00
and go back to the way we did it, or the kids they all learned

Rachel Sopko 00:09:03
online during the pandemic. So I think part of the struggle is

Rachel Sopko 00:09:07
that sometimes teachers think that absolves them of having to

Rachel Sopko 00:09:10
teach kids how to use some of these tools. They're just like,

Rachel Sopko 00:09:14
Okay, go write a paper, or go do research or use this new

Rachel Sopko 00:09:17
program. And I think that's where the idea of digital

Rachel Sopko 00:09:21
natives has sort of led people astray where they're like, well,

Rachel Sopko 00:09:25
the kids grew up with these tools, like, they know how to

Rachel Sopko 00:09:27
use the internet, they know how to use Word processors, of like,

Rachel Sopko 00:09:31
actually, they don't, you know, I still have kids who hit the

Rachel Sopko 00:09:34
space bar 100 times to center something or forget how to

Rachel Sopko 00:09:37
attach things to emails, or who Need we use Canvas as our

Rachel Sopko 00:09:41
Learning Management System kids who don't know how to attach an

Rachel Sopko 00:09:44
assignment or link their Google Drive so that they can upload

Rachel Sopko 00:09:47
and submit so even some of those basics, there are things kids

Rachel Sopko 00:09:51
are still missing because nobody has instructed them directly,

Rachel Sopko 00:09:56
and we've sort of seen that continue to spiral out, not

Rachel Sopko 00:09:59
just. With tools like word processors or learning

Rachel Sopko 00:10:01
management systems, but into the realms of things like social

Rachel Sopko 00:10:04
media or Internet safety and data privacy, so long kids, and

Rachel Sopko 00:10:10
even people who are adults now are left to their own devices,

Rachel Sopko 00:10:13
literally and figuratively, to figure these things out, because

Rachel Sopko 00:10:17
school said this isn't pedagogically relevant. This

Rachel Sopko 00:10:19
isn't what we do. Parents don't have the skills, so it's sort of

Rachel Sopko 00:10:23
this black hole of nobody taught anyone how to do it, and kids

Rachel Sopko 00:10:28
are going to be kids and make bad choices. And so I think it

Rachel Sopko 00:10:32
has to become a communal responsibility for us to teach

Rachel Sopko 00:10:35
those and I think the pandemic highlighted a lot of those gaps,

Rachel Sopko 00:10:39
and people were eager to get back to normal, but as tech

Rachel Sopko 00:10:43
continues to grow, the emergence of AI, we've seen how important

Rachel Sopko 00:10:47
it is for kids to have all of those skills, not just to keep

Rachel Sopko 00:10:50
themselves safe, but to effectively navigate the world

Rachel Sopko 00:10:53
in which they live. And so I think it's a really complicated

Rachel Sopko 00:10:56
issue that the pandemic really shed a lot of light on and

Rachel Sopko 00:11:00
continues to shed light on post us returning to schools, one

Bill Stites 00:11:04
of the things that you've touched on is something

Bill Stites 00:11:07
that we're struggling with as technology has become more

Bill Stites 00:11:10
ubiquitous, as it's become part of just daily life. There is

Bill Stites 00:11:13
this assumption you mentioned digital natives term been around

Bill Stites 00:11:17
for a while, but there is this assumption that everyone's got

Bill Stites 00:11:20
it, everyone knows how to use it. And I think that's a flawed

Bill Stites 00:11:23
assumption. People do not know how to use it the way in which

Bill Stites 00:11:26
we want them, where we need them to be able to do in the context

Bill Stites 00:11:30
of what we're asking them to do within schools. And I remember,

Bill Stites 00:11:34
I've been at this for quite a while, and our initial

Bill Stites 00:11:38
professional development was largely around the teaching of

Bill Stites 00:11:42
skills, the teaching of how these applications were used,

Bill Stites 00:11:46
and as we thought we reached a certain level of proficiency, we

Bill Stites 00:11:50
kind of switched over into more of like the teaching and

Bill Stites 00:11:53
learning and the Pete logical and all of that skills training

Bill Stites 00:11:56
kind of just went to the side, and we really weren't doing that

Bill Stites 00:12:01
as much, and what we're finding now is really the need to come

Bill Stites 00:12:05
back to that, that you need to have a healthy balance of the

Bill Stites 00:12:08
teaching and learning and the skills training and the number

Bill Stites 00:12:11
of tools complicate that you're in a very interesting situation,

Bill Stites 00:12:16
because you're in a school and you're living and breathing it,

Bill Stites 00:12:19
and you're working at the university level where you're

Bill Stites 00:12:22
actually teaching this. How are you talking at your school? How

Bill Stites 00:12:29
are you talking at these future ed tech people about striking

Bill Stites 00:12:33
that balance and finding a way to leverage both of those things

Bill Stites 00:12:39
within the context of what you're doing on a day to day

Bill Stites 00:12:41
basis, and what these people are going to have to plan to be able

Bill Stites 00:12:44
to do to support both sides of this coin? Yeah,

Rachel Sopko 00:12:48
I think that's a great question. I like the way

Rachel Sopko 00:12:50
that you put it around balance, because I think for a lot of

Rachel Sopko 00:12:54
people, they think of Ed Tech as like something else to learn,

Rachel Sopko 00:12:57
something separate from their content area or separate from

Rachel Sopko 00:13:01
their pedagogy and Atlas, has a really good graphic of the TPACK

Rachel Sopko 00:13:05
framework that they shared early on in the emergence of AI, which

Rachel Sopko 00:13:08
I think sums this up really well, because TPACK as an ed

Rachel Sopko 00:13:13
tech framework, I think is a really great tool, because it

Rachel Sopko 00:13:16
explains the intersections that you have to have technical

Rachel Sopko 00:13:20
knowledge of how to use these tools, which intersects with

Rachel Sopko 00:13:23
your content knowledge of whatever subjects you're

Rachel Sopko 00:13:25
teaching, and it also intersects with pedagogical knowledge, and

Rachel Sopko 00:13:30
you have to have a little bit of all of those things in order to

Rachel Sopko 00:13:33
be an effective teacher. So it's not just, Hey, I love teaching

Rachel Sopko 00:13:37
English, so I'm just gonna wax on about Shakespeare all day

Rachel Sopko 00:13:40
long to my kids, because I love it, and then I'll make them love

Rachel Sopko 00:13:43
it. But rather, how do I think about my content to teach skills

Rachel Sopko 00:13:49
that my kids will need in the world beyond their schooling

Rachel Sopko 00:13:53
experience, and how do I use that content as a vehicle to

Rachel Sopko 00:13:56
also teach them about effectively navigating things

Rachel Sopko 00:13:59
like tech and other things that they'll encounter in their

Rachel Sopko 00:14:03
lives, and then how do I do that in a way that actually resonates

Rachel Sopko 00:14:06
and sticks in their brains? Because I understand how kids

Rachel Sopko 00:14:10
learn, and I think that's a lot to ask of teachers to hold all

Rachel Sopko 00:14:14
three of those things in their head at once when they're trying

Rachel Sopko 00:14:16
to plan their lessons, but they have to think about all of those

Rachel Sopko 00:14:20
things and what they're trying to achieve. And I think that

Rachel Sopko 00:14:23
when we don't use good pedagogy and making our decisions about

Rachel Sopko 00:14:27
tech or anything we do in our classrooms, then we're doing a

Rachel Sopko 00:14:31
disservice to teaching all of the students in front of us. And

Rachel Sopko 00:14:35
so I think that it's really important that we don't just

Rachel Sopko 00:14:38
fall in love with like a tool, right? We've seen that happen

Rachel Sopko 00:14:41
several times, where people are like, I love Jamboard. And

Rachel Sopko 00:14:43
that's like, poop jam boards got it's like, everyone panics, you

Rachel Sopko 00:14:46
know, flip went away. First it was flip grid, and then it

Rachel Sopko 00:14:49
became flip and then it was now Microsoft owns it. And so

Rachel Sopko 00:14:52
everyone who's not at Microsoft school is like, panicking

Rachel Sopko 00:14:55
because they're like, What do I do instead? And it's not about

Rachel Sopko 00:14:57
the tool itself and following them with like that. Out, but

Rachel Sopko 00:15:00
teaching skills that are transferable. How do I go from

Rachel Sopko 00:15:04
word to Google Docs or whatever comes next? Like that's what we

Rachel Sopko 00:15:07
really want both teachers and students to know, is I have the

Rachel Sopko 00:15:11
foundational skills. It doesn't matter what name you put it on,

Rachel Sopko 00:15:14
but I can apply that and move it to different situations. And I

Rachel Sopko 00:15:17
think that's sometimes what's missing in that balance is we

Rachel Sopko 00:15:21
want to get through the tool effectively. We want kids to

Rachel Sopko 00:15:24
know our content, but how do they then take that into

Rachel Sopko 00:15:27
whatever their life is going to lead them to? So

Unknown 00:15:31
Rachel, have you had conversations with colleagues

Unknown 00:15:35
and in your work at the university level, discussing the

Unknown 00:15:38
challenges with learned behaviors by the faculty during

Unknown 00:15:43
COVID and post COVID, and trying to break bad habits of using

Unknown 00:15:48
tech in the COVID world, because I'm still struggling, in some

Unknown 00:15:52
instances, with different folks at other schools as well, where

Unknown 00:15:56
they develop these habits, thinking that there's this magic

Unknown 00:15:59
bullet associated with teaching online, that it's really a bad

Unknown 00:16:04
habit that they've created thinking that they can teach the

Unknown 00:16:06
exact same way online as they did in person. I love the fact

Unknown 00:16:12
that you're emphasizing good pedagogy, because so much of it

Unknown 00:16:16
is different in those two spaces, and I don't think many

Unknown 00:16:20
teachers understand that? Yeah,

Rachel Sopko 00:16:23
I think this might be sort of an unfavorable

Rachel Sopko 00:16:25
opinion on that. I think the pandemic highlighted a lot of

Rachel Sopko 00:16:28
bad teaching practices. It was, this is how I was taught. You

Rachel Sopko 00:16:32
know, someone stood at a podium and they lectured at me with,

Rachel Sopko 00:16:35
you know, no slides, and they were like, take notes and there

Rachel Sopko 00:16:38
will be a test, and that's it. And a lot of people are like,

Rachel Sopko 00:16:41
well, that's how I was taught. I turned out fine. I'm a great

Rachel Sopko 00:16:43
student. It built character and grit and all of that. And then

Rachel Sopko 00:16:47
they keep doing it. And then we went online during the pandemic,

Rachel Sopko 00:16:50
where a lot of universities have shifted to just fully online

Rachel Sopko 00:16:53
classes, or hybrid or high flex classes, for a host of reasons,

Rachel Sopko 00:16:58
but then they took those practices and they just put them

Rachel Sopko 00:17:00
online. And the same way, a kid probably didn't listen to your

Rachel Sopko 00:17:04
45 minute lecture when you they were sitting in front of you,

Rachel Sopko 00:17:07
they maybe looked attentive, then they weren't doing it

Rachel Sopko 00:17:10
online. And we had the data to prove that right. You know, part

Rachel Sopko 00:17:13
of when I was working with UNH, we used Kaltura as our video

Rachel Sopko 00:17:17
software, and we could see the analytics of how long were kids

Rachel Sopko 00:17:20
watching videos, and where were they dropping off, and what were

Rachel Sopko 00:17:23
those points? And it was really eye opening when I would sit

Rachel Sopko 00:17:26
with a professor and look at their classes, or look at their

Rachel Sopko 00:17:29
Canvas engagement, or look at their video engagement, and they

Rachel Sopko 00:17:32
would see that drop off 20 minutes in. And we know from the

Rachel Sopko 00:17:35
pedagogy that kids college kids, too, don't have a super long

Rachel Sopko 00:17:40
attention span. If you're going really more than 10 minutes

Rachel Sopko 00:17:43
without some sort of interaction point, be it in person or

Rachel Sopko 00:17:46
online, you've lost them because they don't know what to grab

Rachel Sopko 00:17:50
onto, what's important, what am I supposed to be getting out of

Rachel Sopko 00:17:53
this? We have to have that give and take of giving those

Rachel Sopko 00:17:57
formative checks along the way to make sure kids are engaged

Rachel Sopko 00:18:00
with what we're teaching. And so I think that when we moved

Rachel Sopko 00:18:03
online, some of it was bad habits that we actually had, pre

Rachel Sopko 00:18:07
COVID, that we really had to grapple with, and that made

Rachel Sopko 00:18:10
people really uncomfortable. I think they were like, Why aren't

Rachel Sopko 00:18:12
they listening to my lecture? You know, they always hang on my

Rachel Sopko 00:18:15
every word. And it's like, how do you know that? What data do

Rachel Sopko 00:18:19
you have to back up that they hung on your every word, other

Rachel Sopko 00:18:21
than your perception of what was happening in front of you. And

Rachel Sopko 00:18:24
so I think that's the power of that shift, was we were able to

Rachel Sopko 00:18:28
actually have data that made us understand better the different

Rachel Sopko 00:18:33
learners in front of us and about their engagement and what

Rachel Sopko 00:18:36
engagement really is and what it really looks like. And I think

Rachel Sopko 00:18:39
that was people thought they could just return to some of

Rachel Sopko 00:18:41
those post pandemic and, you know, I sort of joke even now my

Rachel Sopko 00:18:45
work at the Kent School, when I get teachers who are like, Oh

Rachel Sopko 00:18:48
yeah, I used Canvas in my college, or I use it as a

Rachel Sopko 00:18:50
student. And I'm like, actually, I gotta break you a lot of bad

Rachel Sopko 00:18:53
habits of using that learning management system, like I put

Rachel Sopko 00:18:56
them into a class as a student that is poorly designed. And I'm

Rachel Sopko 00:18:59
like, find your homework. And they're like, I don't know where

Rachel Sopko 00:19:01
it is. Like, what do you want me to do? And I'm like, great.

Rachel Sopko 00:19:04
Imagine you're a kid with eight classes a day, eight different

Rachel Sopko 00:19:06
teachers, eight different setups. What does that feel

Rachel Sopko 00:19:09
like? And that, for me, I think it's usually a turning point of

Rachel Sopko 00:19:12
when you have an adult learner experience something and they're

Rachel Sopko 00:19:16
like, Oh, I thought it was going really well, or I thought it was

Rachel Sopko 00:19:19
the right thing to do when they can actually feel what their

Rachel Sopko 00:19:22
kids or their students are feeling. That's when we can

Rachel Sopko 00:19:24
really have real change, because now we can have a conversation

Rachel Sopko 00:19:27
based in fact, not just vibes. Yeah,

Christina Lewellen 00:19:31
absolutely. I see a lot of head nodding and

Christina Lewellen 00:19:33
thumbs up from the guys. They are with you on that. Let me ask

Christina Lewellen 00:19:37
you about AI tools then. So I'm sure that this is a huge part of

Christina Lewellen 00:19:41
your world and things that you're checking out, and it

Christina Lewellen 00:19:43
obviously is something that kids are using. I've said before on

Christina Lewellen 00:19:47
the pod, but it's a great example. I have a daughter in

Christina Lewellen 00:19:50
school in college who is going to be a teacher, and they're not

Christina Lewellen 00:19:53
talking about AI ed tech tools at all, and so she's using them

Christina Lewellen 00:19:58
because I'm her mom. On, and I talked to her about them, but

Christina Lewellen 00:20:01
like, the school and the professors are not talking about

Christina Lewellen 00:20:05
them. So can you give me a little insight, both, what are

Christina Lewellen 00:20:08
you seeing at your independent school, but are you also now

Christina Lewellen 00:20:11
bringing this into your Adjunct Professor work? That's

Rachel Sopko 00:20:15
such a good question about, how do we

Rachel Sopko 00:20:17
integrate all of these tools? And we've seen that with kids

Rachel Sopko 00:20:20
who are like, everyone's using AI, or I think all my peers are

Rachel Sopko 00:20:23
using AI, and then the kids aren't using it effectively, or

Rachel Sopko 00:20:27
they're not being taught how to use it, or they actually have no

Rachel Sopko 00:20:29
idea what AI is. And so I think that for me, the first step in

Rachel Sopko 00:20:35
working either with my college age students or working here at

Rachel Sopko 00:20:39
Kent is to just help everyone understand what AI is, right?

Rachel Sopko 00:20:44
Like, what is this tool? They've seen all the sci fi movies and,

Rachel Sopko 00:20:48
you know, the Terminator robots and those kinds of things. But

Rachel Sopko 00:20:51
they don't actually understand, what is an LLM, what is a Chat

Rachel Sopko 00:20:55
GPT? How does it work? Versus an image generator? You know, they

Rachel Sopko 00:20:59
think it's a search engine, they think it's googling things like,

Rachel Sopko 00:21:02
they don't understand the pre trained part of it, and that

Rachel Sopko 00:21:05
creates a lot of confusion. So I think, for me, when I think

Rachel Sopko 00:21:09
about this work, it's less about policy and more about figuring

Rachel Sopko 00:21:14
out position, like, what do we actually believe about these

Rachel Sopko 00:21:17
tools, about their place in the world, and what do we want to

Rachel Sopko 00:21:20
equip our college age students, our students in the classroom at

Rachel Sopko 00:21:24
high school level or below, to know and do and effectively

Rachel Sopko 00:21:29
engage with and so once you have your position where you can say

Rachel Sopko 00:21:32
you know what, we're recognizing that these tools exist. We

Rachel Sopko 00:21:35
recognize that our students are going to grapple with them, and

Rachel Sopko 00:21:38
we believe it's part of our duty, our mission at Kenneth to

Rachel Sopko 00:21:41
prepare students to do good in the world beyond their time at

Rachel Sopko 00:21:43
Kent School. Well, then that means that they have to be able

Rachel Sopko 00:21:46
to effectively engage with these tools. Because whether they want

Rachel Sopko 00:21:50
to or not, they're going to come across AI generated content.

Rachel Sopko 00:21:53
They're going to have to figure out if that thing they're

Rachel Sopko 00:21:56
looking at was, you know, real picture. Was it AI generated?

Rachel Sopko 00:21:59
Was that sound that you hear, AI generated or not, those are

Rachel Sopko 00:22:03
things that will happen to them. And if we don't have

Rachel Sopko 00:22:07
conversations about ethical and safe and transparent use, then

Rachel Sopko 00:22:12
we're not doing our job to prepare kids to exist in a world

Rachel Sopko 00:22:16
where the fact of the matter is these tools are here, and they

Rachel Sopko 00:22:18
will continue to be here. And rather than letting the AI tools

Rachel Sopko 00:22:24
themselves, the companies drive that conversation, how do we

Rachel Sopko 00:22:27
empower our learners to think about what these tools are

Rachel Sopko 00:22:32
capable of and how to still be the human in the loop, so that

Rachel Sopko 00:22:36
these tools are something they can use effectively in their

Rachel Sopko 00:22:40
lives, but not allow themselves to be controlled by right?

Christina Lewellen 00:22:45
Human in the loop. That's the Department of

Christina Lewellen 00:22:46
Education, right? We have a podcast dropping where we

Christina Lewellen 00:22:50
interviewed Kristina Ishmael. She and her team did a lot of

Christina Lewellen 00:22:53
that work. I love that image. We use that all the time at Atlas.

Christina Lewellen 00:22:57
Do you have a couple of tools or categories of tools, if you

Christina Lewellen 00:23:01
don't want to name a specific tool that have captured your

Christina Lewellen 00:23:05
attention lately,

Rachel Sopko 00:23:07
when I think about getting teachers engaged with AI

Rachel Sopko 00:23:10
for the very first time, right? When I'm trying to get that buy

Rachel Sopko 00:23:13
in, right? Because everyone kind of feels like, Well, I'm a

Rachel Sopko 00:23:16
science teacher, I'm a math teacher, I'm an art teacher,

Rachel Sopko 00:23:18
it's not my job to teach about AI, right? That's like, Tech's

Rachel Sopko 00:23:20
job, or that's a computer science teacher's job, right?

Rachel Sopko 00:23:22
It's always someone else's job. And I think part of it is first

Rachel Sopko 00:23:26
getting everyone to recognize it's actually everybody's job.

Rachel Sopko 00:23:29
And these conversations can fit into your class in a lot of

Rachel Sopko 00:23:33
different ways. And so what I found in our initial

Rachel Sopko 00:23:35
conversations, you know, when everyone was just talking about

Rachel Sopko 00:23:38
Chat GPT, my teacher sort of stared blankly at Chat GPT, and

Rachel Sopko 00:23:41
they're like, but what do I do with this thing? Right? And they

Rachel Sopko 00:23:43
weren't writing effective prompts or anything like that.

Rachel Sopko 00:23:46
And you're like, Okay, let's back up. We need a tool that's

Rachel Sopko 00:23:49
like training wheels for teachers, that helps them think

Rachel Sopko 00:23:53
about what AI is and what it can do. And so this year we're

Rachel Sopko 00:23:57
piloting magic school, we looked at a lot of different tools to

Rachel Sopko 00:24:00
kind of decide where was the best fit for us, and magic tool

Rachel Sopko 00:24:04
has been a game changer, I think, for us, in a lot of

Rachel Sopko 00:24:07
different ways, because you open up that dashboard and in front

Rachel Sopko 00:24:10
of you is, hey, you can create a UDL choice board. My teacher is

Rachel Sopko 00:24:13
like, wait a what? I would have never thought of asking AI to do

Rachel Sopko 00:24:16
that. Or they're like, I don't know what UDL is. Like, what's a

Rachel Sopko 00:24:19
UDL choice board. And so now we've got that pedagogy coming

Rachel Sopko 00:24:23
into play, and they have an idea so magic school by having all

Rachel Sopko 00:24:28
those choices for them, saying, hey, write a professional email,

Rachel Sopko 00:24:32
or come up with a spiral review for math, or here's a

Rachel Sopko 00:24:35
presentation generator. That's gotten my teachers really

Rachel Sopko 00:24:39
excited to play with these. And even something as silly as the

Rachel Sopko 00:24:43
song generator, they're like, on dorm duty together, and they're

Rachel Sopko 00:24:46
like, let's make a silly song about dorm duty. And then

Rachel Sopko 00:24:49
they're like, oh, wait, I could do this in class with my

Rachel Sopko 00:24:51
content. And so just getting their hands on the tools and

Rachel Sopko 00:24:55
letting them play has gotten them to a point where they're

Rachel Sopko 00:24:58
like, Oh, I do understand. It's possible. And that's when I

Rachel Sopko 00:25:02
start to see my teachers come to me and they're like, Okay, I've

Rachel Sopko 00:25:04
exhausted my magic school options because it's so

Rachel Sopko 00:25:07
scaffolded. They're like, I want to go to Chat GPT now, or I want

Rachel Sopko 00:25:10
to go to perplexity. I want to go to Claude, because I've maxed

Rachel Sopko 00:25:14
out what I can do in magic school, and I have bigger,

Rachel Sopko 00:25:16
better ideas. And so for me, that's been the most fun, is to

Rachel Sopko 00:25:20
just let them play with some of these tools, like magic school,

Rachel Sopko 00:25:25
even the conmigos, right, where it's scaffolded for them, and

Rachel Sopko 00:25:29
then they have all these cool ideas, because they know what it

Rachel Sopko 00:25:32
can do. And so that's my favorite part, is watching them

Rachel Sopko 00:25:34
jump to the Canva magic generator, to straight up image

Rachel Sopko 00:25:38
generators, or whatever the case may be, yeah,

Christina Lewellen 00:25:41
and I think you're right, because there's

Christina Lewellen 00:25:43
not a whole lot of teaching of the tool. It's not another thing

Christina Lewellen 00:25:46
to learn, it's something to experience. Is what I have found

Christina Lewellen 00:25:50
as I travel and as I talk to different schools about this is

Christina Lewellen 00:25:53
like, it really doesn't take a lot of teaching. Let me just

Christina Lewellen 00:25:55
open it up and show you, because you're a smart human and you

Christina Lewellen 00:25:59
will be able to figure this out in fairly short order if you

Christina Lewellen 00:26:02
just open the tool and just play with it. So I love the idea.

Christina Lewellen 00:26:06
Like you said, it's kind of a sandbox. You don't really need

Christina Lewellen 00:26:08
to teach a kid how to make a house in a sandbox. You put them

Christina Lewellen 00:26:11
in the sandbox, and pretty soon they figure it out.

Bill Stites 00:26:14
One question I have for you, something that's come

Bill Stites 00:26:16
up recently. You talked a lot about the ethics and the ethics

Bill Stites 00:26:20
of use, coming off of a lot of college age students coming home

Bill Stites 00:26:25
and a lot of conversations. And on a previous episode, we had a

Bill Stites 00:26:29
conversation about my wife's also a teacher as his hirams,

Bill Stites 00:26:32
and about their feelings around the use of AI as a tool to help

Bill Stites 00:26:37
them with their lesson planning, and thought it was cheating the

Bill Stites 00:26:40
kids, we had to have a long conversation about how that's

Bill Stites 00:26:44
not actually cheating, how you're focusing your time and

Bill Stites 00:26:47
your efforts on the areas where you really need to focus, and

Bill Stites 00:26:51
not so much on the things that you can have ai do for you.

Bill Stites 00:26:54
That's a lot easier. So take that kind of frame, and I'm

Bill Stites 00:26:58
talking to my college Ed senior, we started talking with him and

Bill Stites 00:27:02
his friends and his girlfriend about the ways in which they're

Bill Stites 00:27:05
using AI in college. And it was very interesting, because my

Bill Stites 00:27:11
son, at first, was saying that he doesn't really trust it,

Bill Stites 00:27:14
which I think going in with a level of skepticism or just

Bill Stites 00:27:18
questioning around what you get from AI is not necessarily a bad

Bill Stites 00:27:23
thing, because you want to understand all the biases, all

Bill Stites 00:27:25
the different ways in which it's been developed. And you can use

Bill Stites 00:27:28
it as a starting point, but then jump off from there that

Bill Stites 00:27:32
skepticism exists around the areas where he is taking courses

Bill Stites 00:27:38
for which they relate directly to his major when it comes to

Bill Stites 00:27:43
the general ed requirements, the things that he just has to take

Bill Stites 00:27:48
because the school tells him he has to take, he's using AI more

Bill Stites 00:27:52
because he's like, I don't have time to focus my effort. I want

Bill Stites 00:27:55
to spend more time over here and less time on this, so I'm more

Bill Stites 00:28:00
likely to use AI over here in a way that, let's just say, might

Bill Stites 00:28:06
have some ethical questions about how he's using that. His

Bill Stites 00:28:12
mother and I were talking about how you really shouldn't do that

Bill Stites 00:28:16
regardless. I mean, it shouldn't really matter. But Has this come

Bill Stites 00:28:21
up with you at all in terms of looking at using AI as the

Bill Stites 00:28:26
thought generator for those things that really have meaning

Bill Stites 00:28:29
to you and that are going to help you develop maybe greater

Bill Stites 00:28:32
questions, greater levels of insight, versus those types of

Bill Stites 00:28:36
things that I just need to get this done, and I'm looking for

Bill Stites 00:28:39
An easy out, and how you strike a balance there, if there even

Bill Stites 00:28:43
is a balance, or how you address that, I'm having a really hard

Bill Stites 00:28:47
time even synthesizing. I think, what is the actual question?

Bill Stites 00:28:50
There more just with, like, the shock around the conversation,

Bill Stites 00:28:54
and how do we even talk about this? Because I can see the

Bill Stites 00:28:57
reason for it, but I don't necessarily agree with it, but I

Bill Stites 00:29:01
don't necessarily have a huge degree of fault with it, either.

Bill Stites 00:29:04
So I mean, how are you handling stuff like this? If it even

Bill Stites 00:29:08
comes up,

Rachel Sopko 00:29:09
it comes up a lot. It's something I grapple with in

Rachel Sopko 00:29:12
my own work. You know, what's ethical to use it for? What's

Rachel Sopko 00:29:14
not ethical to use it for? But I think for me, it's been about

Rachel Sopko 00:29:19
taking a step back to really think about the question of what

Rachel Sopko 00:29:24
is worth spending my time on, and where is this enhancing my

Rachel Sopko 00:29:28
work, and how do I check my own bias around AI and what we've

Rachel Sopko 00:29:33
been like conditioned to believe about hard work and effort and

Rachel Sopko 00:29:37
what's okay to do and not okay to do. You know, I think back to

Rachel Sopko 00:29:41
when, you know, Wikipedia was new, and everyone's like, you

Rachel Sopko 00:29:43
can't use Wikipedia for everything. And you know, now,

Rachel Sopko 00:29:46
when we teach students study skills, like we're teaching

Rachel Sopko 00:29:48
them, actually, you should go there, like, you know, do

Rachel Sopko 00:29:50
reverse searching where you're like, where did they get their

Rachel Sopko 00:29:52
sources from? But it took us a long time to get there, for

Rachel Sopko 00:29:55
people to see Wikipedia, not just like anybody can edit it,

Rachel Sopko 00:29:58
but it's a source that was worth. File. And the same with I

Rachel Sopko 00:30:02
was an English teacher. So, you know, everyone freaked out.

Rachel Sopko 00:30:04
English notes and Spark Notes were available online. You know,

Rachel Sopko 00:30:07
kids will read anymore, and now we're like, actually, go ahead,

Rachel Sopko 00:30:09
like, read that, and then let's go to the original text, and

Rachel Sopko 00:30:13
let's do our close read. Like, let's really try to understand

Rachel Sopko 00:30:15
this. Those kinds of things really shook our foundations as

Rachel Sopko 00:30:20
teachers, as they popped up, but then as we got used to them, as

Rachel Sopko 00:30:23
we thought about them, as we reframed our understanding of

Rachel Sopko 00:30:26
what we were doing, we integrated them into our

Rachel Sopko 00:30:29
practice, or even encouraged kids to use them. And so I try

Rachel Sopko 00:30:33
to think about that with AI too, about what am I worried about,

Rachel Sopko 00:30:38
or what am I biased against that I'm not inviting AI to the table

Rachel Sopko 00:30:42
to have the conversation, and where is it actually the easy

Rachel Sopko 00:30:46
out or cheating? And I think that's a question I don't always

Rachel Sopko 00:30:49
have a good answer to. But for me, what it comes back to in the

Rachel Sopko 00:30:53
classroom is, what is my learning outcome. So one of the

Rachel Sopko 00:30:58
teachers that was one of our kind of early adopters of AI.

Rachel Sopko 00:31:01
And we really started these conversations. It was our music

Rachel Sopko 00:31:04
technology teacher, and he did this really cool project where

Rachel Sopko 00:31:08
he's like, listen, part of the work my kids have to do in this

Rachel Sopko 00:31:10
class is they have to effectively put music over a

Rachel Sopko 00:31:15
text, over something spoken. And he's like, all the stories that

Rachel Sopko 00:31:18
are out there, my kids have preconceived notions about

Rachel Sopko 00:31:21
they've heard this story with music attached to it. They heard

Rachel Sopko 00:31:25
it told to them so they think they know the tone and the vibe.

Rachel Sopko 00:31:28
And so what he did was he went to Chat GPT. He had to create a

Rachel Sopko 00:31:32
children's story for him, and then he went to a different AI

Rachel Sopko 00:31:35
tool that generates music, and he had it generate the music. So

Rachel Sopko 00:31:38
it was a totally new score that kids hadn't heard before, a

Rachel Sopko 00:31:41
story they had never read. And then he handed both of those to

Rachel Sopko 00:31:45
the kids and said, Put this music over this story in the

Rachel Sopko 00:31:48
appropriate places, or modify the music to have the right

Rachel Sopko 00:31:50
tone. And where should the crescendos be? Where should the

Rachel Sopko 00:31:53
decrescendos be? How do you do that? And because it was

Rachel Sopko 00:31:56
something entirely new, he was able to really see what the kids

Rachel Sopko 00:32:00
knew he could actually get a sense of what their learning was

Rachel Sopko 00:32:03
on how to use the tool, how to make effective decisions,

Rachel Sopko 00:32:06
something he could not have done quickly or easily without an AI

Rachel Sopko 00:32:09
tool. Because he's not an author. He doesn't have time to

Rachel Sopko 00:32:13
go write a children's story or compose a bunch of new music for

Rachel Sopko 00:32:16
one of his classes. On top of everything else he does, he was

Rachel Sopko 00:32:20
a little nervous to, like, share the story. At first, he's like,

Rachel Sopko 00:32:22
everybody think I'm cheating because I used an AI tool, or

Rachel Sopko 00:32:25
was that unethical? And you know, when we had that

Rachel Sopko 00:32:28
conversation, I was like, No, your learning outcome was not to

Rachel Sopko 00:32:32
have these kids write their own children's stories or have them

Rachel Sopko 00:32:34
compose their own music. It was to effectively use the music

Rachel Sopko 00:32:38
technology and apply it in this situation, and so by using AI,

Rachel Sopko 00:32:43
he was actually able to better assess student learning, but he

Rachel Sopko 00:32:46
couldn't do that unless he had a really clear understanding of

Rachel Sopko 00:32:49
what his learning outcomes are, and that then let him engage

Rachel Sopko 00:32:53
students in much higher order thinking and higher order

Rachel Sopko 00:32:56
learning, which was so much more effective and engaging for the

Rachel Sopko 00:33:00
kids than It would have been had he not done that. And so when

Rachel Sopko 00:33:03
I'm talking to teachers or thinking about my own AI use,

Rachel Sopko 00:33:05
that's what I always come back to, is, what am I trying to

Rachel Sopko 00:33:08
assess here? What is my learning outcome? The same way, again, as

Rachel Sopko 00:33:12
an English teacher, I'm like, I'm really mad at you if you did

Rachel Sopko 00:33:14
not spell check your essay before you sent it to me. Or I'm

Rachel Sopko 00:33:17
mad if you didn't use the grammar check. But if it was a

Rachel Sopko 00:33:19
spelling test, or if it was a grammar test, then, no, it's not

Rachel Sopko 00:33:22
okay to use those tools. And I think what people are really

Rachel Sopko 00:33:26
craving is this black and white. It's okay to use in this, this,

Rachel Sopko 00:33:29
this and this way, but it's not okay ever, and this that the

Rachel Sopko 00:33:32
other way, and that, I think, is the dangerous part of the

Rachel Sopko 00:33:35
conversation, is there is no black and white. It depends on

Rachel Sopko 00:33:39
what we're trying to do. And you know, I've seen that in

Rachel Sopko 00:33:43
different pockets of things around my school, some of my

Rachel Sopko 00:33:46
best adopters of AI tools have actually been my admissions

Rachel Sopko 00:33:48
department, and they're like, listen, it takes me forever to

Rachel Sopko 00:33:53
really synthesize my interview notes, or it really takes me

Rachel Sopko 00:33:57
forever to put these things together. And so with some AI,

Rachel Sopko 00:34:00
they've been able to create like rubrics that align with our core

Rachel Sopko 00:34:03
competencies to think about, okay, these are the things that

Rachel Sopko 00:34:06
we really value. How do I ask questions that align with those?

Rachel Sopko 00:34:10
How do I differentiate those questions for various levels of

Rachel Sopko 00:34:13
students? Right? An incoming ninth grader is really different

Rachel Sopko 00:34:16
than a PG. They need a different kind of question. And it takes a

Rachel Sopko 00:34:20
really long time for someone to be able to come up with all of

Rachel Sopko 00:34:24
those. And that's not the part of our work we want to do. We

Rachel Sopko 00:34:26
want to be with the people, with the kids, or with the people

Rachel Sopko 00:34:29
we're interviewing. And so that, to me, is that cost benefit

Rachel Sopko 00:34:33
analysis of what's going to get me to build those relationships

Rachel Sopko 00:34:36
with whoever it is, whether it's incoming families, the students

Rachel Sopko 00:34:40
in front of me, the pre service teachers I'm working with. How

Rachel Sopko 00:34:44
can we decide when the AI is helping us and furthering our

Rachel Sopko 00:34:49
understanding or getting us to a point where we can get some of

Rachel Sopko 00:34:52
the minutia off our plate so we can do the higher order things

Rachel Sopko 00:34:56
or the more important things? And that's a personal sort of

Rachel Sopko 00:34:59
choice for people to. Think about is, what am I okay

Rachel Sopko 00:35:01
offloading to the AI, and what am I not? And what does it do

Rachel Sopko 00:35:04
well, and what is it not? And so those are the questions I try to

Rachel Sopko 00:35:06
have people grapple with as they think about these tools. So I

Rachel Sopko 00:35:09
don't think it's ever gonna be this is always okay. It's okay

Rachel Sopko 00:35:12
to use in my Gen Ed courses, you know, like you said, Bill or

Rachel Sopko 00:35:15
it's not okay in my content level classes. But again, with

Rachel Sopko 00:35:18
my pre service teachers, when I say, hey, plan a lesson with AI

Rachel Sopko 00:35:22
and see what it does. Well, they're really bad at lesson

Rachel Sopko 00:35:24
planning right now because they're brand new teachers, like

Rachel Sopko 00:35:26
they're baby teachers, and they don't have all the pedagogy, but

Rachel Sopko 00:35:29
now they have something in front of them. They have to think

Rachel Sopko 00:35:31
about the questions. They have to think about, Hey, what is a

Rachel Sopko 00:35:33
way I can get my kids to be metacognitive? What are

Rachel Sopko 00:35:36
different summatives or formatives? But then they have

Rachel Sopko 00:35:38
to apply the pedagogy to be like, actually, know, I wanted a

Rachel Sopko 00:35:41
project based unit, and that's not project based, you know,

Rachel Sopko 00:35:44
here's the theory that's going to let me modify or edit that

Rachel Sopko 00:35:47
lesson, and that engagement of a pre service teacher is really

Rachel Sopko 00:35:50
different than, you know, a teacher who's been around the

Rachel Sopko 00:35:52
block a time or two, who's going to have different questions for

Rachel Sopko 00:35:55
the AI and get something different out of its output. And

Rachel Sopko 00:35:57
so I think it's always going to be about, what do I need from

Rachel Sopko 00:36:01
it, and how can I apply those and push my thinking

Unknown 00:36:04
So, Rachel, let's continue down this disrupted

Unknown 00:36:07
train route. I'm curious what your opinion is on using AI for

Unknown 00:36:12
grading, for writing comments, for writing college

Unknown 00:36:15
recommendations, because what Independent Schools pride

Unknown 00:36:20
themselves on is knowing the child. The relationship is so

Unknown 00:36:25
vastly important. And I've heard conversations where some schools

Unknown 00:36:30
refuse to use AI because we want a genuine comment coming from

Unknown 00:36:35
our faculty. And the same with college recommendations, if

Unknown 00:36:39
you're looking at what the outcome is. In my mind, I have a

Unknown 00:36:43
preconceived notion of what that outcome could be and should be

Unknown 00:36:46
when using AI in these different areas. I'm curious about what

Unknown 00:36:50
your opinion is on that, because that's a slippery slope for a

Unknown 00:36:53
lot of schools. Yeah,

Rachel Sopko 00:36:55
this is one I My thinking has evolved a lot

Rachel Sopko 00:36:58
around over the last year or so, and part of my thinking around

Rachel Sopko 00:37:01
this actually started last year's Atlas conference. Our

Rachel Sopko 00:37:04
friends from nine, you know, hosted a really great pre

Rachel Sopko 00:37:07
conference session on student data privacy, and they talked a

Rachel Sopko 00:37:10
lot about AI in that session and how we make decisions around

Rachel Sopko 00:37:16
when, how and if to use AI tools. And one of the things

Rachel Sopko 00:37:19
that really stuck with me was for them again, it wasn't this,

Rachel Sopko 00:37:24
it's right in these instances and wrong in these instances,

Rachel Sopko 00:37:26
but it's this cost benefit analysis of When have you lost

Rachel Sopko 00:37:31
the human touch and what risks or what data is worth putting in

Rachel Sopko 00:37:36
to get an output that maybe is better than we would have

Rachel Sopko 00:37:39
gotten, and so That, for me, really started a change in my

Rachel Sopko 00:37:42
thinking around some of the ways we use AI and how it can be used

Rachel Sopko 00:37:47
for things like grading and comment writing, which I sort of

Rachel Sopko 00:37:50
separate into two buckets for me, because as a teacher, I'd

Rachel Sopko 00:37:54
had like 140 kids on my caseload. At some points, that

Rachel Sopko 00:37:58
was a lot of it, because I taught all English too. So they

Rachel Sopko 00:38:01
were all due at the same time. I couldn't stagger them, and it

Rachel Sopko 00:38:04
was exhausting to read through all of them and give them

Rachel Sopko 00:38:08
meaningful feedback. But for me, I had to, I had to read through

Rachel Sopko 00:38:12
them, because otherwise I didn't know what student A was

Rachel Sopko 00:38:15
struggling with or what Student B was excelling with. If I had

Rachel Sopko 00:38:18
offloaded that to an AI, I I could not then have made

Rachel Sopko 00:38:22
decisions about my teaching to support where my students were

Rachel Sopko 00:38:25
struggling or not struggling, or give students extensions who had

Rachel Sopko 00:38:28
already mastered those parts of learning, but for things like

Rachel Sopko 00:38:33
comment writing. You know, I was at the Oasis conference. One of

Rachel Sopko 00:38:36
the sessions was on using AI for comment writing and the amount

Rachel Sopko 00:38:41
of work that these teachers had put into using AI for comment

Rachel Sopko 00:38:44
writing was mind blowing, because what they did in this

Rachel Sopko 00:38:48
experimental version of AI for comment writing was they had to

Rachel Sopko 00:38:52
keep copious notes over the course of the term on their

Rachel Sopko 00:38:55
kids. So they had, like a running Google doc where they

Rachel Sopko 00:38:58
would be like, okay, you know, Hiram did this today in class,

Rachel Sopko 00:39:01
and he was really great at this, but, you know, he kept talking

Rachel Sopko 00:39:04
out of turn, or whatever, you know, Hiram had done that day.

Rachel Sopko 00:39:06
And then they would do it about Bill, and then they would do

Rachel Sopko 00:39:08
about Kristina. But then they would also realize, hey, maybe

Rachel Sopko 00:39:11
there's a kid I haven't written a comment about in a couple of

Rachel Sopko 00:39:13
weeks, right? So maybe I should go and pay extra close attention

Rachel Sopko 00:39:17
to that kid this week, because I want to make sure I have data on

Rachel Sopko 00:39:21
them and their performance, and what they found at the end of

Rachel Sopko 00:39:24
that the school did a blind reading of people's comments,

Rachel Sopko 00:39:28
they didn't know which ones were generated with AI, which ones

Rachel Sopko 00:39:30
had been written by a person. And in the end, overall, the

Rachel Sopko 00:39:34
teachers rated that round of comments as the best written

Rachel Sopko 00:39:37
comments that they had ever gotten, and they could not

Rachel Sopko 00:39:40
correctly guess which ones were AI generated and which ones were

Rachel Sopko 00:39:43
person generated. But what they found through that was, as we've

Rachel Sopko 00:39:47
all experienced, is writing comments for kids. When you get

Rachel Sopko 00:39:50
to like the 15th kid of the night, you can only say he's a

Rachel Sopko 00:39:54
good kid so many ways. And so you kind of fall into these

Rachel Sopko 00:39:58
templates, right. Here's your comment. Kid, your middle kid,

Rachel Sopko 00:40:00
your low kid. But what they found then was, then, you know,

Rachel Sopko 00:40:03
I'd say to Christina, Hey, what did Mr. Sykes say about you? And

Rachel Sopko 00:40:06
then we realized we had the same comment. It's like, Wait a

Rachel Sopko 00:40:08
minute. He didn't really put that effort in. So it actually

Rachel Sopko 00:40:11
undermined our relationship. But what this school had found when

Rachel Sopko 00:40:15
they were using comments with AI was they were way more unique

Rachel Sopko 00:40:19
and actually way more tailored to how the students were

Rachel Sopko 00:40:22
actually doing, and those comments were less bias. You

Rachel Sopko 00:40:26
know, it wasn't just this kid is kind of being a paid at the end

Rachel Sopko 00:40:28
of the term. So now my comment is really angry about him, and I

Rachel Sopko 00:40:31
forgot all the good stuff he did. They were much more robust,

Rachel Sopko 00:40:35
and actually did a better job of painting a picture of what that

Rachel Sopko 00:40:37
kid was doing well and what they weren't. And so I tell it anecdo

Rachel Sopko 00:40:42
to kind of say so much more work and data keeping actually went

Rachel Sopko 00:40:45
into the AI generated comments by the teachers, so there was

Rachel Sopko 00:40:49
actually more human input and more thought and more data about

Rachel Sopko 00:40:55
student performance and where they needed to go than there was

Rachel Sopko 00:40:57
when the comments were solely written by a teacher who's

Rachel Sopko 00:41:00
exhausted at the end of the term trying to finish all their

Rachel Sopko 00:41:02
grading and say all the things. And so for me, in that instance,

Rachel Sopko 00:41:07
that actually was a reflective practice that we want teachers

Rachel Sopko 00:41:10
to have, right? We want them to do those things and keep notes

Rachel Sopko 00:41:12
on their students and personalize and individualize.

Rachel Sopko 00:41:15
To go back to your point. Hiram at independent school, we pride

Rachel Sopko 00:41:18
ourselves on that personalization, and if AI is

Rachel Sopko 00:41:21
going to increase our ability to do that, to really connect with

Rachel Sopko 00:41:24
and know our students and to tailor their education to what

Rachel Sopko 00:41:27
they need to be successful and do, well, then that, for me, is

Rachel Sopko 00:41:31
a huge win. This

Bill Stites 00:41:33
is one of the things that I think we're seeing

Bill Stites 00:41:35
a lot of the SIS and LMS tools starting to do. We've had

Bill Stites 00:41:39
conversation with vendors in this space, where you talk

Bill Stites 00:41:42
about, where are you keeping track of your scope and

Bill Stites 00:41:46
sequence? Where are you keeping track of your assessments, your

Bill Stites 00:41:49
rubrics? What's your grade book look like? Where are you putting

Bill Stites 00:41:52
all of those notes in? And AI is assisting with all of those

Bill Stites 00:41:56
pieces along the way. And then when you get to that report

Bill Stites 00:42:00
writing piece, it truly is delivering a much more robust,

Bill Stites 00:42:05
less time consuming, unique comment around the student. And

Bill Stites 00:42:09
this is that hurdle to get over, that same hurdle I was

Bill Stites 00:42:13
mentioning with that Hiram and I were having when we were having

Bill Stites 00:42:15
conversations with our wives about the use of AI. You're

Bill Stites 00:42:19
doing all of this work the final output of that comment is a

Bill Stites 00:42:24
direct result of all of the work that you've done, tracking

Bill Stites 00:42:28
information, putting in your own input, your own observations,

Bill Stites 00:42:32
your own grading, into all of those things that's generating

Bill Stites 00:42:35
this at the end. And you still have the ability to tweak and

Bill Stites 00:42:38
change that, but it's definitely lessening that lift when you get

Bill Stites 00:42:43
to that point in the year where you're having to do this for

Bill Stites 00:42:46
hundreds of students depending on your teaching load,

Rachel Sopko 00:42:49
absolutely, I think lessening that lift is so

Rachel Sopko 00:42:51
important. We know teachers are overburdened and burnt out, and

Rachel Sopko 00:42:55
if we can help them connect with their students and do their jobs

Rachel Sopko 00:42:58
better and really push them to be more innovative, right, not

Rachel Sopko 00:43:02
to lead on that same lesson that they've done 100,000 times. But

Rachel Sopko 00:43:05
you know, what does my kid actually need in this moment?

Rachel Sopko 00:43:08
And I think about one of my teachers I'm working with right

Rachel Sopko 00:43:11
now, he came down to my office one day and he was like, I have

Rachel Sopko 00:43:14
a pitch for you. And I was like, okay, like, what do you want to

Rachel Sopko 00:43:17
try? This sounds great. And he's like, I play Dungeons and

Rachel Sopko 00:43:19
Dragons. And I'm like, Okay, go on waiting for, like, how is

Rachel Sopko 00:43:22
this going to connect to AI? And he's like, you know, I've been

Rachel Sopko 00:43:25
doing this thing for years where I put in all these notes that I

Rachel Sopko 00:43:28
take about, you know, what our Dungeons and Dragons adventure

Rachel Sopko 00:43:30
that day was. And, you know, thinking about, what have we

Rachel Sopko 00:43:33
missed, or What haven't we done, What haven't we explored? He's

Rachel Sopko 00:43:36
like, What if I took that approach and I did that was

Rachel Sopko 00:43:40
curriculum. And I was like, Okay, I'm intrigued. Tell me

Rachel Sopko 00:43:43
more. And so he's like, what I would like to try? I want to put

Rachel Sopko 00:43:46
in my curriculum as I go, right? You know, here he's a math

Rachel Sopko 00:43:50
teacher. He's like, so, but we did a lecture based lesson this

Rachel Sopko 00:43:53
week on, you know, fractions or whatever he was teaching, and

Rachel Sopko 00:43:56
then the next week we did project based or group work. And

Rachel Sopko 00:43:59
he's like, I want to keep all these notes, and I want to put

Rachel Sopko 00:44:02
in, like the tests that I'm giving, and then see, did I

Rachel Sopko 00:44:05
actually assess what I was teaching, or did I actually mix

Rachel Sopko 00:44:09
up my instruction, or where were my kids performing better? And

Rachel Sopko 00:44:13
so for him, similar to the comment rating, he is now doing

Rachel Sopko 00:44:17
exactly what we asked teachers to do, right to be reflective

Rachel Sopko 00:44:20
practitioners on their work, but he's doing it on this much

Rachel Sopko 00:44:24
larger scope than he as a single individual, could have done

Rachel Sopko 00:44:28
himself. And what he's now able to see is, oh, hey, my test was

Rachel Sopko 00:44:32
covering 50% of this one topic, but I only spent one day

Rachel Sopko 00:44:36
teaching that topic. That's not a fair assessment of my kids. So

Rachel Sopko 00:44:40
I either need to change the test, or I need to change what

Rachel Sopko 00:44:43
I'm teaching. And so it's made him go back and think about

Rachel Sopko 00:44:47
that. And then other teachers heard about it. They're like,

Rachel Sopko 00:44:48
Wait, do my test. Do my test. And then they say, wow, like,

Rachel Sopko 00:44:51
I'm not testing on what I thought it was, or I'm only

Rachel Sopko 00:44:54
doing lower order thinking skills. And I think that's where

Rachel Sopko 00:44:58
these tools are super powerful. Powerful and really push us

Rachel Sopko 00:45:01
forward. You know, again, as a teacher, I'd spend all summer.

Rachel Sopko 00:45:03
I'm going to do my curriculum, I'm going to find new things to

Rachel Sopko 00:45:06
do, I'm going to find a new text or a new supplemental to support

Rachel Sopko 00:45:10
that book. But I'm exhausted, right? And I have a life outside

Rachel Sopko 00:45:13
of there, and so these tools are going to help us reach our kids

Rachel Sopko 00:45:17
and grow their understanding and their learning and grow our

Rachel Sopko 00:45:19
practices. Then That, to me, is a huge win,

Christina Lewellen 00:45:23
absolutely. So Rachel, before we run out of

Christina Lewellen 00:45:25
time with you, I want to spend a couple of minutes transitioning

Christina Lewellen 00:45:28
to the ALI program. The Atlas Leadership Institute is a

Christina Lewellen 00:45:32
program that we're really proud of, a year long cohort, and you

Christina Lewellen 00:45:35
have found yourself a part of that cohort. Tell us a little

Christina Lewellen 00:45:38
bit about your experience. Are you guys talking about these

Christina Lewellen 00:45:40
things in your projects and in your leadership challenges.

Rachel Sopko 00:45:44
Yeah, Ali has been awesome. It's really pushed my

Rachel Sopko 00:45:48
thinking, you know, somebody who came from public schools and

Rachel Sopko 00:45:50
then, you know, working at the collegiate level. It's really

Rachel Sopko 00:45:53
helped me open my eyes to a bunch of really independent

Rachel Sopko 00:45:56
school specific needs and challenges, which has been

Rachel Sopko 00:45:59
awesome. It's connected me with a whole network of different ed

Rachel Sopko 00:46:04
tech leaders across the country to see what are they doing. And

Rachel Sopko 00:46:07
so when we're grappling with questions around AI, or we're

Rachel Sopko 00:46:10
trying to think about, you know, what cyber security tool are you

Rachel Sopko 00:46:12
using, or how are you handling this situation? It's been

Rachel Sopko 00:46:16
awesome to have a group of people to lean on. You know,

Rachel Sopko 00:46:19
where my pedagogical background is really strong. My ed tech

Rachel Sopko 00:46:21
background is really strong. But some of the more nitty gritty,

Rachel Sopko 00:46:24
you know, systems management or hardware, things art, I'm able

Rachel Sopko 00:46:29
to then reach out and think about those things with other

Rachel Sopko 00:46:32
partners who can grow my skills and in our different challenges.

Rachel Sopko 00:46:36
It's been really great. Just think about what's going on at

Rachel Sopko 00:46:39
my school. You know, how can I be a better tech leader? How do

Rachel Sopko 00:46:42
I grow my leadership skills, and how do I forge alliances as

Rachel Sopko 00:46:47
somebody who works in the tech department? Sometimes it can be

Rachel Sopko 00:46:50
hard to get into academic spaces. They're like, Oh, you

Rachel Sopko 00:46:52
know, the curriculum doesn't involve tech. And I'm like, I

Rachel Sopko 00:46:55
can't help you choose ed tech tools or help you use Canvas

Rachel Sopko 00:46:58
effectively in your classrooms if I'm not at the table and so

Rachel Sopko 00:47:03
helping think about how to frame those conversations. Those

Rachel Sopko 00:47:07
strategic leaders at my school. How do I support them in my

Rachel Sopko 00:47:10
work? How do we work together? How does data flow? You know?

Rachel Sopko 00:47:13
How do we do things like change management and project

Rachel Sopko 00:47:16
management? How do we learn from each other as independent school

Rachel Sopko 00:47:19
leaders? All of those have been amazing parts of Ali, and we

Rachel Sopko 00:47:23
actually have a session later today that we're going to keep

Rachel Sopko 00:47:26
talking about these things when we'll see each other at the

Rachel Sopko 00:47:28
conference to keep those conversations going. And it's

Rachel Sopko 00:47:31
been really great, even to meet past graduates who have been

Rachel Sopko 00:47:34
like this led me to my job now, or to this project that I'm

Rachel Sopko 00:47:38
working on, or this idea. It's just such a great network, and

Rachel Sopko 00:47:41
I'm so honored and excited to be a part of it and to continue to

Rachel Sopko 00:47:45
grow my skills and learn from this amazing community that

Rachel Sopko 00:47:48
ATLIS has put together. Yeah,

Christina Lewellen 00:47:49
that's the thing we love the most about

Christina Lewellen 00:47:51
Ali, is that now that we've been around for 10 years, I think

Christina Lewellen 00:47:55
Ashley calls it the mega cohort, and then, like the mega cohort

Christina Lewellen 00:47:59
is all of the past Ali graduates, and that network is a

Christina Lewellen 00:48:04
powerful engine of moving and shaking here in the Independent

Christina Lewellen 00:48:09
School technologist realm. So we're really proud of it. It's

Christina Lewellen 00:48:12
so cool to have you be a part of it. Have you guys gotten to the

Christina Lewellen 00:48:15
point in the year where you're looking at your ending project?

Christina Lewellen 00:48:19
Yet? Not

Rachel Sopko 00:48:20
yet. I have a feeling that's we're gonna

Rachel Sopko 00:48:21
actually maybe talk about later today, as we, you know, kick off

Rachel Sopko 00:48:24
this part of the year, in this next phase leading up into the

Rachel Sopko 00:48:26
conference. But already people are talking about, this is what

Rachel Sopko 00:48:29
I want to do. Or even at the past atlases that I've been to,

Rachel Sopko 00:48:32
you know, people would be like, this was my Atlas project, or

Rachel Sopko 00:48:35
this was inspired by my Atlas project, or sessions I've

Rachel Sopko 00:48:38
attended that you guys have hosted have been like, you know,

Rachel Sopko 00:48:40
grown out of someone's or if somebody we were talking about

Rachel Sopko 00:48:43
AI, they're like, Oh, hey. Like, this person did this in their

Rachel Sopko 00:48:46
Ali project last year. Like, let me share it with you. And so I

Rachel Sopko 00:48:49
know there's a ton of possibilities, and our cohorts

Rachel Sopko 00:48:52
already thinking about what we've seen these cool projects,

Rachel Sopko 00:48:54
like, what's mine gonna be? So everybody's excited to really

Rachel Sopko 00:48:56
start thinking about what those will be and how they can

Rachel Sopko 00:48:59
contribute to such a wonderful network and amazing body of

Rachel Sopko 00:49:03
resources. Can

Christina Lewellen 00:49:04
I put a plug in? And you have to keep it a

Christina Lewellen 00:49:06
secret, right? Don't tell Ashley that I fed this into the cohort.

Christina Lewellen 00:49:10
Dr Ashley Cross is our administrator of this program.

Christina Lewellen 00:49:14
So what I would love to see somebody looking into is the

Christina Lewellen 00:49:17
idea of AI as a wellness enabler for a very stressed out and

Christina Lewellen 00:49:23
overburden teaching population. I don't think we always think

Christina Lewellen 00:49:26
about it that way. You know, we had a conversation now about

Christina Lewellen 00:49:29
cheating, not cheating, but it's interesting. I've started

Christina Lewellen 00:49:31
talking to some heads of school and to a lesser extent, some

Christina Lewellen 00:49:36
trustees at independent schools, about their obligation to

Christina Lewellen 00:49:40
embrace AI from a wellness perspective, and how that can

Christina Lewellen 00:49:44
really help teachers, you know, maybe take control of this

Christina Lewellen 00:49:48
profession that has really gotten quite overgrown in terms

Christina Lewellen 00:49:51
of what we ask them to do. So that's my evil little plug, if

Christina Lewellen 00:49:55
anybody wants to look into AI tools as the unlocker of health

Christina Lewellen 00:49:59
and wellness for. Our faculty, that's what I'd love to see. I

Rachel Sopko 00:50:03
love the connection between like AI as

Rachel Sopko 00:50:05
wellness, because I think too often we don't frame enough how

Rachel Sopko 00:50:09
Ed Tech and all of these different tools can be part of

Rachel Sopko 00:50:13
that wellness that we're talking about. We use Canvas. I've been

Rachel Sopko 00:50:15
working with Canvas for a long time now, and at their

Rachel Sopko 00:50:18
conference a couple of years ago, they did a whole thing on

Rachel Sopko 00:50:21
VR, and it was really fascinating to listen to them

Rachel Sopko 00:50:25
talk about VR, not just as something to use in the

Rachel Sopko 00:50:27
classroom, but as a wellness tool. And they were talking

Rachel Sopko 00:50:30
about how when you're in a VR environment, your brain reacts

Rachel Sopko 00:50:34
to that setting the same way it would as if you were really

Rachel Sopko 00:50:37
there. And so they showed us like, you know, people walking

Rachel Sopko 00:50:40
on like balance beams across skyscrapers, and how they were

Rachel Sopko 00:50:43
just as afraid as if they were literally doing it. And so for

Rachel Sopko 00:50:47
me, as somebody in like a New England School, we're very

Rachel Sopko 00:50:50
rural. We're in the middle of nowhere. It's like, hey,

Rachel Sopko 00:50:52
actually, those things can really help with all of our kids

Rachel Sopko 00:50:55
who experience that, like they don't understand the dark and

Rachel Sopko 00:50:58
cold of a New England winter. And that things like VR not only

Rachel Sopko 00:51:03
have, you know, pedagogical purposes of like, let's

Rachel Sopko 00:51:05
transport kids to x place that we're studying, but it actually

Rachel Sopko 00:51:09
can help with wellness. We were talking earlier about formative

Rachel Sopko 00:51:11
assessment, like these things will grade a little bit faster

Rachel Sopko 00:51:14
give us the data we need. Use AI as something to, you know,

Rachel Sopko 00:51:17
lessen that burden, or help us feel less of that burnout, like

Rachel Sopko 00:51:21
there's so much potential once we're willing to put in the work

Rachel Sopko 00:51:24
and to learn them and to think outside the box with what these

Rachel Sopko 00:51:28
tools could be used for. You know, just cycling one more time

Rachel Sopko 00:51:32
back to Bill's comment around ethics too. I think years ago,

Rachel Sopko 00:51:35
Ashley did a session at Atlas about when AI was brand new. It

Rachel Sopko 00:51:39
was like, you know, what do we do about this thing. And she

Rachel Sopko 00:51:41
read us the book The creepy crayon, which is about like a

Rachel Sopko 00:51:44
bunny with a crayon that writes for him, and eventually he's

Rachel Sopko 00:51:46
like, wait, I want to write in color on my my own. And that

Rachel Sopko 00:51:49
really inspired me to think about how children's books can

Rachel Sopko 00:51:52
help people understand some of these complicated concepts. And

Rachel Sopko 00:51:55
the one that's been sticking with me a lot lately is the

Rachel Sopko 00:51:58
Lorax, and thinking about how AI has a goal, right? It's going to

Rachel Sopko 00:52:03
do whatever it's one goal is to the detriment of all other

Rachel Sopko 00:52:06
goals. The same way that feeling the Lorax, the one slur is like,

Rachel Sopko 00:52:09
I'm going to create my need. And it doesn't matter that I cut

Rachel Sopko 00:52:12
down all the trees, driven away, all the animals, there's smog

Rachel Sopko 00:52:15
everywhere. But how do we stay as the humans in a loop to think

Rachel Sopko 00:52:20
about? You know that wellness component, what is worth the

Rachel Sopko 00:52:22
advancement of that goal, what's not worth the advancement of

Rachel Sopko 00:52:25
that goal? And so, how do we take those stories and think

Rachel Sopko 00:52:28
about, you know, when we give as teachers, all of ourselves to

Rachel Sopko 00:52:31
our kids, to our profession, how do we not do that? How do we not

Rachel Sopko 00:52:34
cut everything else out of our lives and not see the AI as

Rachel Sopko 00:52:38
something that will only further that one goal, but instead

Rachel Sopko 00:52:41
actually help us preserve and save the things that matter to

Rachel Sopko 00:52:44
us before it's too late and they're all gone and you know,

Rachel Sopko 00:52:47
it's just you and your sad little building waiting for

Rachel Sopko 00:52:49
somebody to plant your seed. I

Christina Lewellen 00:52:52
love that. I love that analogy. So as we wrap

Christina Lewellen 00:52:55
up with you, I have a couple of more rapid fire questions. Just

Christina Lewellen 00:52:58
because we're getting to know you on this podcast, our

Christina Lewellen 00:53:00
listeners are getting to know you, Bill and Hiram will

Christina Lewellen 00:53:03
probably ask something obnoxious about zombies, but my question

Christina Lewellen 00:53:06
is, so you're up there in the cold, and how do you fight the

Christina Lewellen 00:53:09
sad I grew up in a wintry area, and so I also know that vibe of

Christina Lewellen 00:53:14
like you get to this time of year, you're like, Oh my God,

Christina Lewellen 00:53:16
will I ever feel warm again? Do you have a coffee beverage of

Christina Lewellen 00:53:19
choice? Or how do you stay warm and cozy through these long

Christina Lewellen 00:53:22
winter months? Anything

Rachel Sopko 00:53:24
with coffee in it is my coffee beverage of choice.

Rachel Sopko 00:53:26
I love a cappuccino. I love a good latte. And during the

Rachel Sopko 00:53:28
Christmas season, only in the month of December, I am a

Rachel Sopko 00:53:31
peppermint mocha fan, but the rest of the time I am a coffee

Rachel Sopko 00:53:34
flavored coffee person. I love

Christina Lewellen 00:53:37
that I can get into the holiday peppermint

Christina Lewellen 00:53:39
mocha vibe. My husband calls that the Pepe Moke. I love that.

Christina Lewellen 00:53:43
Do you want a Pepe Moke? Like, not. If you say it like that,

Bill Stites 00:53:48
I'm gonna throw my wife under the bus because we

Bill Stites 00:53:50
bought an espresso. So, like, now we're fancy with our coffee

Bill Stites 00:53:53
at home, but one of her colleagues, they're all

Bill Stites 00:53:56
teachers, gave her a, let's just say, a spiked version of

Bill Stites 00:54:01
peppermint, which he decided to use. So if you really need a

Bill Stites 00:54:07
thing to kind of get you over something a grown up Pepe. MKA,

Bill Stites 00:54:12
exactly. My wife would highly, highly recommend that version of

Bill Stites 00:54:16
it. Rumpelments, yes. Now this was a peppermint alcohol of some

Bill Stites 00:54:23
sort. I'm not sure what exactly it was, but she enjoyed it

Bill Stites 00:54:25
immensely. I

Rachel Sopko 00:54:26
would say, when I'm not working, I'm a hockey

Rachel Sopko 00:54:28
mom, and I manage a seven year hockey team. Oh, so I'm very

Rachel Sopko 00:54:32
familiar with, like, a coffee you had chocolate plus some sort

Rachel Sopko 00:54:36
of flavoring, because it's early and it's cold and the days I

Rachel Sopko 00:54:40
want with a bunch of seven year olds who play hockey. You are a

Rachel Sopko 00:54:43
special breed

Christina Lewellen 00:54:44
that is a special level of momming that

Christina Lewellen 00:54:46
not all moms get to. Mom so well done there. Rachel, it has been

Christina Lewellen 00:54:52
such a pleasure to have you on the podcast with us today. Thank

Christina Lewellen 00:54:55
you so much. You bring such a vibrant and forward looking

Christina Lewellen 00:54:58
approach to Ed Tech, which is why we ask. Test you on we like

Christina Lewellen 00:55:00
to mix things up a bit and not be too techie all the time.

Christina Lewellen 00:55:03
Thank you for coming and talking some pedagogy with us and kind

Christina Lewellen 00:55:06
of living in the space of AI with us for a while too. It's

Christina Lewellen 00:55:09
been really helpful. Thanks so much for having me. It's been

Christina Lewellen 00:55:12
great to hang out with you guys today. Let me know if you end up

Christina Lewellen 00:55:14
getting my project approved at a Li, okay, I will. I'm

Rachel Sopko 00:55:17
already thinking about ideas for that for you, so

Rachel Sopko 00:55:20
I love

Christina Lewellen 00:55:21
it. I've got a minion sending her into the

Christina Lewellen 00:55:23
ALI program undercover. Thank you guys. It's been great to see

Christina Lewellen 00:55:26
you. Thanks so much.

Peter Frank 00:55:29
This has been talking technology with Atlas,

Peter Frank 00:55:31
produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in

Peter Frank 00:55:34
Independent Schools. For more information about Atlas and

Peter Frank 00:55:37
Atlas membership, please visit the atlas.org if you enjoyed

Peter Frank 00:55:42
this discussion, please subscribe, leave a review and

Peter Frank 00:55:45
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Peter Frank 00:55:47
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