Flipping the AI Classroom with Vibe Coding and Version Control
Presented by:
In this episode, technology leaders discuss the integration of artificial intelligence in K-12 education with educator Douglas Kiang. The conversation examines essential skills for the AI era—including design thinking, close reading, and version control via GitHub—alongside data privacy considerations, the concept of distant writing, and evolving academic assessment models.
Douglas Kiang's Official Blog — The speaker's primary digital publication repository covering classroom workflows, design thinking, and the "AI Forward" series.
AP Computer Science Principles (College Board) — The advanced secondary curriculum framework for which Douglas Kiang served as a materials developer and independent project assessment architect.
GitHub — A software repository and version control platform integrated into the Menlo School curriculum to manage student multi-branching project workflows.
Google Workspace for Education — A secure productivity environment leveraged by school technology departments to keep user data in-house and isolated from external AI training datasets.
Perplexity AI — An information discovery and conversational search engine provided to high school students to enable multi-engine comparative analysis.
Google NotebookLM — A personalized AI research assistant noted for its widespread popularity among students evaluating internal course source documents.
ResearchGate: Distant Writing Paper — The scholarly publication by Professor Luciano Floridi of Yale University detailing the transition of authors into design directors.
Transcript
Peter Frank:
Welcome to Talking Technology with Atlas, the show
Peter Frank:
that plugs you into the important topics and trends for
Peter Frank:
technology leaders all through a unique independent school lens.
Peter Frank:
We'll hear stories from technology directors and other
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special guests from the independent school community and
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provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics.
Peter Frank:
Welcome at everyone. I am Peter Frank, the Senior Director of
Peter Frank:
Certification and Operations at the Association of Technology
Peter Frank:
Leaders in Independent Schools, and I am Bill Stites, the
Peter Frank:
Director of Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in
Peter Frank:
Montclair, New Jersey,
Hiram Cuevas:
and I'm Hiram Cuevas, the Director of
Hiram Cuevas:
Information Systems and Academic Technology at St. Christopher
Hiram Cuevas:
School in Richmond, Virginia.
Peter Frank:
Well, happy summer, guys. Howdy, do
Hiram Cuevas:
happy summer.
Bill Stites:
It's been a while. What's going on? How are you
Bill Stites:
managing? It's funny because everyone thinks, oh, summer
Bill Stites:
hits, everything gets quiet, and everything kind of like, right,
Bill Stites:
ratchets down, and not in it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Bill Stites:
no. Everything ratchets right back up. All the construction
Bill Stites:
starts. All the camps are getting going. Everyone thinks
Bill Stites:
that you have absolutely nothing to do in the summer, decides to
Bill Stites:
come out of the woodwork and throw everything that they had
Bill Stites:
pent up from the year at you all at once, because who's busy in
Bill Stites:
the summer? Not it, not at all.
Hiram Cuevas:
Yeah, no. not to mention, you know, when people
Hiram Cuevas:
are at conferences and they start saying, "Hey, have you
Hiram Cuevas:
seen this? Have you talked about this? Can we think about this?
Hiram Cuevas:
But actually, my spring and summer has been really the
Hiram Cuevas:
spring and summer of Stites.
Peter Frank:
Oh,
Hiram Cuevas:
it seems like since April I have been at some
Hiram Cuevas:
event every month with mr. Bill Stites.
Bill Stites:
I am a luckier man for it,
Hiram Cuevas:
and it's going to continue it through July.
Peter Frank:
I'm very conflicted about that, Hiram. I might go a
Peter Frank:
little crazy from that much time.
Bill Stites:
I'm sure you would, Peter. You most definitely
Bill Stites:
would.
Peter Frank:
Yeah,
Bill Stites:
you got time with me out in Salt Lake a little
Bill Stites:
earlier, a few weeks ago. I think you've probably had
Bill Stites:
enough. You're like, how much more do I have to endure?
Peter Frank:
Nah, it was great. It was great. Well, speaking of
Peter Frank:
Endure, as many of our listeners know, Atlas is going through a
Peter Frank:
significant transition, and guys, there are exciting things
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coming for Atlas here, and with the departure of Atlas' former
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CEO and host of this show, Christina Llewellyn. We're
Peter Frank:
revisiting all things Atlas, including our podcast, and
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things like how often are we going to drop new episodes,
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who's going to run the show here, and so on. We're working
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all that out this summer, and in the meantime, what our listeners
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cannot see because they're in their car or exercising, or what
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have you, listening to this podcast, in addition to today's
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guests, there's another person here. We all agreed we'd like to
Peter Frank:
have more voices on this podcast. We'd like to have more
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of the Atlas community represented here, and we have so
Peter Frank:
many amazing, talented volunteers in our community. And
Peter Frank:
so we're recording all new episodes this summer, and we're
Peter Frank:
experimenting with guest hosts, every so often we've had a guest
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on the show, when afterwards we all kind of look at each other
Peter Frank:
like they were a great guest, like they make a great host.
Peter Frank:
We're embracing that, and it is my pleasure to introduce to our
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listeners our first of three guest hosts. She's a big-time
Peter Frank:
Atlas volunteer, the wonderful Lauren Merrill. How are you,
Peter Frank:
Lauren?
Lauren Marold:
I'm well, thank you so much, Peter. I'm excited
Lauren Marold:
to be here. As many of you all know, I'm Lauren Merrill. I am
Lauren Marold:
the Director of Technology and Innovative Learning at Preston
Lauren Marold:
Hollow Presbyterian School in Dallas, Texas. I am also proudly
Lauren Marold:
displaying on screen my T-LIS certification. I'm a part of the
Lauren Marold:
certification council, so that has been some of my favorite
Lauren Marold:
work. I have worked in educational technology and
Lauren Marold:
technology leadership for the past 20 years, mostly in Dallas,
Lauren Marold:
Texas, and the opportunity to work with Atlas and go through
Lauren Marold:
the original group of ECAD back in the day, before it was the
Lauren Marold:
Ali Institute, and now getting to be on the certification
Lauren Marold:
council for Telos, that's some of my proudest work, and getting
Lauren Marold:
to contribute to this community, but getting to work at my school
Lauren Marold:
and work with K through sixth grade students in a learning
Lauren Marold:
difference environment has been a really unique part of my
Lauren Marold:
career, and that's a really special thing that is unique to
Lauren Marold:
the school that I work at now, and we're expanding through
Lauren Marold:
eighth grade, which is also a really interesting path to be
Lauren Marold:
on, and when I came on the podcast last, I had just
Lauren Marold:
completed the major move into our new campus after a nine
Lauren Marold:
month construction and move project from our old campus, so
Lauren Marold:
that was a really intense thing, but I'm very happy that that's
Lauren Marold:
not what I'm doing this summer. So we are settled, we are home,
Lauren Marold:
and I am not moving schools.
Peter Frank:
Nice,
Lauren Marold:
proud, and happy to be here.
Peter Frank:
Great. Well, again, we are very happy to have you
Peter Frank:
here. So I am going to get out of the way. A and Lauren, the
Peter Frank:
show is yours. Why don't you introduce our guest and take it
Peter Frank:
away?
Lauren Marold:
Yeah, so we are so excited to introduce Douglas
Lauren Marold:
Kyung, and we can't wait to hear more about your illustrious
Lauren Marold:
career in both educational technology and all of your work
Lauren Marold:
in computer science and AI, and just reading all of the work
Lauren Marold:
that you have done is so impressive, and I think this is
Lauren Marold:
going to be a really interesting conversation for our community.
Lauren Marold:
I know that you've already stepped in and introduced
Lauren Marold:
yourself to some of the Atlas community through some of the AI
Lauren Marold:
work this summer through the trainings, but we're so happy to
Lauren Marold:
have you on the podcast, and would love for you to just give
Lauren Marold:
us a full introduction for people that maybe don't know you
Lauren Marold:
yet.
Douglas Kiang:
Thank you so much, and it is such an honor to
Douglas Kiang:
be on this Atlas podcast. Thank you so much for inviting me. So,
Douglas Kiang:
my name is Douglas Key Young. I've been teaching for about 34
Douglas Kiang:
years now, in all different age levels and grade levels. I
Douglas Kiang:
started actually teaching elementary school. I currently
Douglas Kiang:
teach computer science. I taught an English course last year, and
Douglas Kiang:
I teach an AI literacy course, and I do AIPD for teachers at
Douglas Kiang:
Menlo School, which is in Atherton, California. And I've
Douglas Kiang:
had a really stimulating year, just done a lot of crazy things
Douglas Kiang:
with AI, made some mistakes, learned a lot from them, and
Douglas Kiang:
just love to share more about some of the things that we've
Douglas Kiang:
been trying out and hear from other people who are trying
Douglas Kiang:
things too.
Lauren Marold:
One of the questions that I have is
Lauren Marold:
thinking about those essential skills as we're looking at AI,
Lauren Marold:
especially in the K through 12 space. What are you seeing in
Lauren Marold:
the work that you've done, especially with your interesting
Lauren Marold:
intersection between teaching computer science, but also
Lauren Marold:
getting to teach English and literacy to students? What are
Lauren Marold:
you seeing as those essential skills that we should be
Lauren Marold:
teaching to our kids right now?
Douglas Kiang:
We've been working with AI and students in
Douglas Kiang:
lots of different kinds of subjects and I've been fortunate
Douglas Kiang:
to be able to teach in an English classroom with our chair
Douglas Kiang:
of the English department, I've worked with my computer science
Douglas Kiang:
colleagues and seen kids who are using AI to vibe code and create
Douglas Kiang:
all different kinds of things, and what I've been looking for
Douglas Kiang:
are the common skills that I think kids are going to need in
Douglas Kiang:
the AI age, regardless of what subject or discipline they're
Douglas Kiang:
using, and I think from my own perspective, what I think kids
Douglas Kiang:
are going to need is number one, I think is design thinking, I
Douglas Kiang:
think they need to understand in a larger sense systems thinking,
Douglas Kiang:
so understanding the design of the things that they build,
Douglas Kiang:
making sure that what they design is actually solving a
Douglas Kiang:
real problem for real people, because I think the challenge is
Douglas Kiang:
no longer going to be making stuff, it's going to be making
Douglas Kiang:
stuff that's actually useful and serves a purpose. The second
Douglas Kiang:
skill I think kids need more than anything else is probably
Douglas Kiang:
reading, so much more of the output from AI is written and
Douglas Kiang:
kids need to be able to close read and maybe put the same
Douglas Kiang:
prompt into different engines and be able to compare what
Douglas Kiang:
they're getting from all of not just for accuracy but also
Douglas Kiang:
reading for tone and reading for understanding and I think
Douglas Kiang:
reading is a skill that even our kids could get better at and
Douglas Kiang:
it's something that has never been more important than now.
Douglas Kiang:
And the third skill, which I think is kind of a niche skill,
Douglas Kiang:
but it's something that we computer science folks have
Douglas Kiang:
known for a while, is version control, because in a world
Douglas Kiang:
where it's so easy to generate content, I expect that a typical
Douglas Kiang:
workflow is going to be a multi-branching workflow where
Douglas Kiang:
you just try out different things and say, well, what if we
Douglas Kiang:
did it this way, what if we did it this way, what if we did it
Douglas Kiang:
this way, and then have a way to easily compare those branches.
Douglas Kiang:
Works the same way with writing papers, for example, usually by
Douglas Kiang:
the time you come up with a main point in your thesis, you're
Douglas Kiang:
kind of committed, because by the time you put in all the
Douglas Kiang:
sweat equity of building it out, you don't necessarily prototype
Douglas Kiang:
thesis, but I expect that that will change if people are using
Douglas Kiang:
AI to do much of the drafting, they're doing the planning,
Douglas Kiang:
they're working with AI. There's going to be a need to have a
Douglas Kiang:
multi-branching flow, and version history doesn't quite
Douglas Kiang:
cut it. So I tell my kids this is a great opportunity for a new
Douglas Kiang:
product, create something that's like GitHub, but for the masses,
Douglas Kiang:
something that provides ways to branch out. Right now, GitHub
Douglas Kiang:
does the trick. We actually used GitHub in our English class.
Douglas Kiang:
Right now, in our AI literacy course, every freshman gets a
Douglas Kiang:
GitHub account and training on how to use it. And we went
Douglas Kiang:
through the entire year. This year, next year, we're teaching
Douglas Kiang:
it again. So, by the end of next year, over half the school will
Douglas Kiang:
have a GitHub account and training and using it to do
Douglas Kiang:
version control, so those three skills - design thinking,
Douglas Kiang:
reading, version control - those are the three things that I
Douglas Kiang:
think are very important, and is what we built our whole AI
Douglas Kiang:
literacy course around.
Hiram Cuevas:
Douglas, there's so much to unpack there, so the
Hiram Cuevas:
timing of your comment. About vibe coding could not be any
Hiram Cuevas:
more appropriate. I received an email yesterday from a colleague
Hiram Cuevas:
who's at a conference where they're talking about vibe
Hiram Cuevas:
coding, and he wanted to figure out a way to have access to App
Hiram Cuevas:
Script, and as I started thinking about that request, I
Hiram Cuevas:
started going down the cybersecurity rabbit hole of
Hiram Cuevas:
what that means, and of course, one of the first people I ask is
Hiram Cuevas:
Bill. I also asked some other Atlas members, like Shandor
Hiram Cuevas:
Simon and Nicholas Bar Casey, who are really savvy in these
Hiram Cuevas:
spaces, and I'm so grateful that you're here on this, because
Hiram Cuevas:
maybe you can address some of the challenges that schools may
Hiram Cuevas:
not recognize in terms of allowing vibe coding to occur in
Hiram Cuevas:
an unsafe environment within a Google domain, which I think is
Hiram Cuevas:
something that we can all understand, because if you look
Hiram Cuevas:
at how we treated ed tech applications during Covid, we
Hiram Cuevas:
all just started chasing, oh, this is free, we'll use this,
Hiram Cuevas:
we'll use this, but now we've tightened the reins with many
Hiram Cuevas:
tools, and Apps Script is just yet another tool that happens to
Hiram Cuevas:
be part of the Google domain, but what does that mean for the
Hiram Cuevas:
security of data in our schools?
Douglas Kiang:
I think the ramifications are huge, and I
Douglas Kiang:
think we need to be spending a lot of time thinking about
Douglas Kiang:
privacy protection of data, where the student records are
Douglas Kiang:
being stored and where they're held. Very, very important. We
Douglas Kiang:
have a great IT department. Our IT department actually is really
Douglas Kiang:
standardized on Google Workspace for education. None of the data
Douglas Kiang:
is used for training, and everything is stored in house.
Douglas Kiang:
And so my work primarily is with kids, and in fact, I'm doing
Douglas Kiang:
coding with AI course next year. I'm offering a new elective in
Douglas Kiang:
our computer science department. It doesn't have a prerequisite,
Douglas Kiang:
so you don't need to know how to code, but I'm going to have a
Douglas Kiang:
mix of kids, some who know how to code, some who don't. But
Douglas Kiang:
we're basically going to make stuff, and I need to teach them
Douglas Kiang:
that there are certain gradations of what you're
Douglas Kiang:
coding, you know. If you get to the point where you start
Douglas Kiang:
storing user records and user data, then you are bound to a
Douglas Kiang:
different level of security than if you're creating a web app
Douglas Kiang:
that stores everything locally as a cookie, for example, on
Douglas Kiang:
your own browser. No one else is accessing it. Frankly, a lot of
Douglas Kiang:
the things that I'm making for myself are really just
Douglas Kiang:
one-purpose apps, and that's what vibe coding has done. It's
Douglas Kiang:
really shifted the conversation. I used to teach an app design
Douglas Kiang:
course, and it always started with design thinking. Define
Douglas Kiang:
your audience, and we've always thought of apps as something
Douglas Kiang:
that serves not just your purpose but solves a problem
Douglas Kiang:
that lots of people have, we've always been looking at defining
Douglas Kiang:
the audience, but with vibe coding, the audience could be an
Douglas Kiang:
audience of one. You could create a tool or utility that
Douglas Kiang:
only you will use. From that flows a lot of other design
Douglas Kiang:
decisions. You don't necessarily need to build in settings, for
Douglas Kiang:
example, to do preferences if you're not going to have other
Douglas Kiang:
users using it. It's a very interesting time that we're in
Douglas Kiang:
right now, where I can create an app that I'm going to use for
Douglas Kiang:
one class, and kids can create apps that basically help them
Douglas Kiang:
learn in the ways that they best learn, and they're not planning
Douglas Kiang:
to share the app with anyone else, they're not caching
Douglas Kiang:
anybody else's information, and so the concerns are different
Douglas Kiang:
when they design them, so a lot of it is really just sort of
Douglas Kiang:
defining what are the different kinds of apps kids are creating,
Douglas Kiang:
and always paying attention to what are the questions around
Douglas Kiang:
personal data security and privacy that we need to attend
Douglas Kiang:
to.
Bill Stites:
So, hearing that your tech department is kind of
Bill Stites:
bought in on the Google Workspace for domain pieces is
Bill Stites:
one of those things that I take heart in, because it was a
Bill Stites:
decision that we made here at MK as well, and in particular for
Bill Stites:
the point that you brought up, which was that Google has made
Bill Stites:
it clear that they're not using any of that data to train the
Bill Stites:
AI, and then it's made it available across various age
Bill Stites:
levels, which was initially not where they were, so by removing
Bill Stites:
that age restriction by having that baseline protection with
Bill Stites:
regard to training, Google has been a place where we have begun
Bill Stites:
to direct efforts and in support and training and working
Bill Stites:
specifically in that area. You said something earlier, and I
Bill Stites:
want to thank you for what you did for Atlas with the AI summer
Bill Stites:
workshops, I was one of the participants in that and got a
Bill Stites:
lot out of it, but you had said that one of the things was going
Bill Stites:
to be this asking a different model the questions that you
Bill Stites:
were bringing up, and I'm wondering how you balance that
Bill Stites:
out, because one of the big questions that we have is what
Bill Stites:
are the approved tools like what are we saying you can use and
Bill Stites:
what are we saying you can't use and when you want to allow a
Bill Stites:
degree of flexibility with putting something into Gemini,
Bill Stites:
putting something into Claude, something into Chat GPT, but if
Bill Stites:
those aren't approved. How are you navigating that piece of it?
Bill Stites:
We've had conversations here. I've got my thoughts with my
Bill Stites:
school hat on, and then I've got my thoughts in terms of
Bill Stites:
personally how we could work around that, but the two don't
Bill Stites:
really align. So I'm curious as to where you've landed on that,
Bill Stites:
and then what you see.
Douglas Kiang:
Well, we have really decided to level the
Douglas Kiang:
playing field by providing all students access to Gemini Pro,
Douglas Kiang:
and this past year we also gave them access to Perplexity Pro,
Douglas Kiang:
and that was it. We did not give them access to other tools
Douglas Kiang:
through the school. Now, of course, this being, you know,
Douglas Kiang:
where we are in Silicon Valley, a lot of these kids' parents
Douglas Kiang:
work for Anthropic or Open AI or different companies, so kids
Douglas Kiang:
have access to other models. We don't prevent them from
Douglas Kiang:
accessing those models or using those models. I think it would
Douglas Kiang:
not be effective if we attempted to prevent them from using
Douglas Kiang:
things that they basically have on their phones or on their
Douglas Kiang:
laptops, but increasingly the school is moving towards we're
Douglas Kiang:
getting rid of Canvas and going to Google Classroom. We're now
Douglas Kiang:
basically making sure that everybody has access to Gemini
Douglas Kiang:
Pro. All of my teaching materials and student-facing
Douglas Kiang:
instructions are now oriented towards Gemini. So, I'll just
Douglas Kiang:
say, open up Gemini now. The kids know, because I've told
Douglas Kiang:
them a couple of times in the beginning of the year, look, if
Douglas Kiang:
you want to use something else, that's fine, unless I tell you
Douglas Kiang:
specifically, that's okay. But as a teacher, I have a fair
Douglas Kiang:
amount of control over what I promote. We're not a Mac school,
Douglas Kiang:
technically. We don't tell kids what to buy, but 99% of the kids
Douglas Kiang:
have Macs, because all of our teaching materials refer to Mac
Douglas Kiang:
stuff. We have steered it generally in that direction. I
Douglas Kiang:
expect we'll do the same thing with a tool like Gemini Pro, and
Douglas Kiang:
frankly, Gemini Pro and Notebook LM, the kids talk about it, they
Douglas Kiang:
use it, it's been very, very popular. So, no, we don't
Douglas Kiang:
prevent them from using other models, but in practice, kids
Douglas Kiang:
are tending to converge on the ones that we want them to use.
Bill Stites:
So, to that point, I think it's important, and I'm
Bill Stites:
curious as to how you talk to your faculty or employees about
Bill Stites:
this. Is because I think there is a real distinction between
Bill Stites:
students using it with their data, and then employees, and I
Bill Stites:
use the word employees, not just faculty, because my concern is
Bill Stites:
what all areas of the school are using it for, you know,
Bill Stites:
development office, admissions, business, those types of things,
Bill Stites:
is that while we may say, all right, a student can pick and
Bill Stites:
choose and use their own, their data is largely theirs, you
Bill Stites:
know. You can talk to them about what you provide into these
Bill Stites:
models. When we start talking about it from an employee
Bill Stites:
perspective, the data largely is not ours. It's data that is
Bill Stites:
school data, it's student data, it could be financial, it could
Bill Stites:
be all sorts of things. When you have those conversations about
Bill Stites:
choice and model, have you said to your employees, we're here
Bill Stites:
and you need to be here for x, y, and z reasons, or are you a
Bill Stites:
little more free form there and just giving like guard rails
Bill Stites:
around, we want you here, but if you're going to go here, you
Bill Stites:
need to follow these rules. Where do you land on that?
Douglas Kiang:
Right, so I am not part of the IT leadership, I
Douglas Kiang:
am a teacher, I'm not part of admin, so I can only tell you
Douglas Kiang:
from the perspective of being someone who's been told by admin
Douglas Kiang:
there are very specific places where you can and cannot put
Douglas Kiang:
student data, and we are being encouraged to keep everything
Douglas Kiang:
within Google Workspace, because it is no more or less private
Douglas Kiang:
than any of the other student records we keep in Google Drive,
Douglas Kiang:
and I know that there are certain more sensitive
Douglas Kiang:
applications, like development things like that, for which they
Douglas Kiang:
may be using localized models or other kinds of solutions that
Douglas Kiang:
protect the data even more, not 100% sure what they're doing in
Douglas Kiang:
those areas, so my experience has mostly been in the classroom
Douglas Kiang:
with my students, and with that, I believe we are a bit more
Douglas Kiang:
open.
Lauren Marold:
You have a newsletter beyond the prompt,
Lauren Marold:
and I was able to kind of read and subscribe because it's
Lauren Marold:
really exciting in what you're talking about, and your
Lauren Marold:
narrative is really wonderful. You have a theory, I guess you
Lauren Marold:
could say, on close writing. You talk about close writing versus
Lauren Marold:
distant writing, and that connection between close
Lauren Marold:
reading. I just be curious if you could talk a little bit
Lauren Marold:
about that, and where that falls into this AI conversation, and
Lauren Marold:
the impact you've seen in either your English classes or maybe in
Lauren Marold:
some of your AI classes that you're instructing.
Douglas Kiang:
Yeah, absolutely, it's actually something that I
Douglas Kiang:
kind of fell into while I was writing that trashy romance
Douglas Kiang:
novel. Our principal had said spend 10 hours experimenting
Douglas Kiang:
with AI and create stuff, and I'm a writer and a creator, so I
Douglas Kiang:
decided to write a trashy romance novel where I came up
Douglas Kiang:
with the story and the characters and the story beats,
Douglas Kiang:
and then I would have Chat GPT at that time write many of the
Douglas Kiang:
chapters, and in some cases I didn't like how it wrote, so I
Douglas Kiang:
asked it to fix it, and in some cases I just said I can write
Douglas Kiang:
this better, I just wrote it myself. After that, I wrote a
Douglas Kiang:
science fiction novel, then I wrote a steampunk heist
Douglas Kiang:
thriller, I wrote a courtroom drama. You know, and I say I
Douglas Kiang:
wrote all of these. I worked with AI. AI did much of the
Douglas Kiang:
drafting. In some cases, I used different models, and then
Douglas Kiang:
compared which scenes I liked better, and then chose those.
Douglas Kiang:
But these came out to be 450 1000 word novels, and for me it
Douglas Kiang:
was not writing. It was not creative writing in the
Douglas Kiang:
traditional sense. It was not close to writing in the sense
Douglas Kiang:
where we're scrutinizing how to write, how to write each word,
Douglas Kiang:
how to write each sentence. It was not that there had to be a
Douglas Kiang:
term to call what I was doing, and I came across a paper by
Douglas Kiang:
Luciano Floridi from the Center for Digital Ethics at Yale
Douglas Kiang:
University, and he coined this term, distant writing, and the
Douglas Kiang:
idea behind distant writing is you are not writing each word,
Douglas Kiang:
but you are directing, because if you think about it, during
Douglas Kiang:
the Oscars, you know, we give a best director award, but the
Douglas Kiang:
best director is not the person who was behind the camera,
Douglas Kiang:
usually the best director is the person who edited everything
Douglas Kiang:
together and looked at Barry's takes of the same scene, had the
Douglas Kiang:
vision in their head, and you know, if they make all the right
Douglas Kiang:
calls with editing, then they win best director, and so I
Douglas Kiang:
think students are going to become increasingly like
Douglas Kiang:
directors, where they're going to need to exercise their
Douglas Kiang:
judgment and their close reading skills to look at various drafts
Douglas Kiang:
and compare them, and if they learn to do a good job, I think
Douglas Kiang:
some students will be better directors than others. Then they
Douglas Kiang:
will be more or less effective at working with AI. So that's
Douglas Kiang:
this idea of distant writing, but one of the things that
Douglas Kiang:
Fleury talks about is that distant writing only works if
Douglas Kiang:
you have good close reading and close writing skills, so the
Douglas Kiang:
things that we have traditionally focused on -
Douglas Kiang:
reading carefully, word choice, sentence structure - those
Douglas Kiang:
become even more important in an era of AI and distant writing.
Douglas Kiang:
But I don't think that we can just focus solely on those
Douglas Kiang:
anymore, because the reality of the workplace is going to be
Douglas Kiang:
that I think the timeframes are going to become compressed for
Douglas Kiang:
how long people expect someone to create something written. I
Douglas Kiang:
think people are going to start assuming that you're using AI,
Douglas Kiang:
whether you used it or not. And I think we need to find where
Douglas Kiang:
that space comes from in our curriculum. I don't actually
Douglas Kiang:
have the answer to that. I don't know how we cover this
Douglas Kiang:
additional skill in addition to what we're already doing, but I
Douglas Kiang:
think the ratio of what we teach does change.
Lauren Marold:
That's really interesting.
Bill Stites:
If you were to publish those, how would you
Bill Stites:
list the author of that book? Would that be you? Would that be
Bill Stites:
you? Would you acknowledge the use of AI in that? That's the
Bill Stites:
same thing we ask of our students in terms of what
Bill Stites:
they're going to be doing as well.
Douglas Kiang:
I think I would probably have to have a
Douglas Kiang:
disclaimer, at least for now, talking about how AI was used in
Douglas Kiang:
terms of either drafting or outlining or composing, but I
Douglas Kiang:
think the point I would make is that the reason I wrote those
Douglas Kiang:
books was not to publish. There are many other reasons to write.
Douglas Kiang:
I wrote because I had these stories that I wanted to get out
Douglas Kiang:
on the page, and I enjoy the heck out of reading multiple
Douglas Kiang:
versions of these scenes that I had drafted. I usually read a
Douglas Kiang:
lot of books, you know. For the past six months, I've hardly
Douglas Kiang:
read any books that other people have published, because I've
Douglas Kiang:
spent so much time pleasure reading stuff that AI has
Douglas Kiang:
drafted according to my design. It's almost like saying, tell me
Douglas Kiang:
a story, and then it this infinite storyteller tells you a
Douglas Kiang:
story, so it's a new form of entertainment for me. I think
Douglas Kiang:
it's something more than just pleasure reading, because it
Douglas Kiang:
feels more personal. They're my own stories, but you know, I
Douglas Kiang:
think again we're going to have to come up with new terms for a
Douglas Kiang:
lot of these kinds of things, and I will say that in the
Douglas Kiang:
romance genre, that is the one area of creative fiction where
Douglas Kiang:
people seem the most accommodating of AI-drafted
Douglas Kiang:
content. People don't seem to care, because romance novels
Douglas Kiang:
follow a very specific format. People actually don't like it if
Douglas Kiang:
you deviate from that format. They're very formulaic, but
Douglas Kiang:
people read them for a particular reason. They read
Douglas Kiang:
them because they like them. They don't particularly seem to
Douglas Kiang:
care what the provenance of that writing came from, if it's a
Douglas Kiang:
good start,
Lauren Marold:
that's really interesting, and I think about,
Lauren Marold:
you know, research skills and the ability to do a good query
Lauren Marold:
was always kind of the beginning of how we use the internet, and
Lauren Marold:
telling kids, like, if you can ask a really good question, you
Lauren Marold:
can actually get to the answer you're seeking, and so now we
Lauren Marold:
have this opportunity to go even further, where it's like, no,
Lauren Marold:
that wasn't my question, this was my actual question, and
Lauren Marold:
you're getting to go through the editing process in such a
Lauren Marold:
different way, but working in the elementary setting and
Lauren Marold:
working with kids with learning differences, something caught me
Lauren Marold:
in this piece that you wrote about the student that always
Lauren Marold:
struggled to get the words out of them and onto the page, and
Lauren Marold:
the director role was actually really beneficial to them, and I
Lauren Marold:
think about kids with learning differences too. Where these
Lauren Marold:
tools will be really interesting for them, of how do you now take
Lauren Marold:
a child that can't articulate their ideas by writing because
Lauren Marold:
of dysgraphia or something like that, and now they have a tool
Lauren Marold:
that can maybe intercede in a new way. And so we're still so
Lauren Marold:
new to all of this, and I think that Bill's question about the
Lauren Marold:
moral obligation to give credit to something that's not ours,
Lauren Marold:
it'll be really interesting to watch the landscape as it shifts
Lauren Marold:
and as it changes, but I think that challenge of what do we do
Lauren Marold:
in the classroom, what are the ways that we can shift the
Lauren Marold:
classroom space, especially in an English class, where there's
Lauren Marold:
this beholden mindset that the kid must write the paper for it
Lauren Marold:
to be their own, but your exercise is really interesting
Lauren Marold:
too. So, what is your philosophy, and how are you
Lauren Marold:
integrating that into the high school English class?
Douglas Kiang:
Well, I think it's becoming increasingly
Douglas Kiang:
difficult to come up with a piece of writing that you can
Douglas Kiang:
say was entirely 100% me and not influenced by anything else,
Lauren Marold:
right?
Douglas Kiang:
And the question of ownership is an interesting
Douglas Kiang:
one. I would say probably the majority of the kids in my
Douglas Kiang:
class, we surveyed them, felt ownership over the stories where
Douglas Kiang:
they themselves worked completely with minimal use of
Douglas Kiang:
AI, but there were a few kids in the class who said that the
Douglas Kiang:
ownership of the story had less to do with the words on the page
Douglas Kiang:
and more to do with how closely did what was on the page reflect
Douglas Kiang:
the story that I wanted to tell, and I think that's going to be
Douglas Kiang:
an interesting question that we need to sit with. The truth of
Douglas Kiang:
the matter is, with Grammarly and all of these integrated AI
Douglas Kiang:
aids, quite often even a paper that a kid says they wrote
Douglas Kiang:
completely by themselves, there were turns of phrase, maybe in
Douglas Kiang:
the brainstorming process, there are places where AI kind of had
Douglas Kiang:
a hand in suggesting something or making something better, or
Douglas Kiang:
proving it, or clarifying their language. So, where that slider
Douglas Kiang:
goes, it's hard to tell. I think right now we're in an age where
Douglas Kiang:
people expect you to disclose if you used AI, but I think we are
Douglas Kiang:
rapidly moving to a place where you won't need to disclose that
Douglas Kiang:
anymore. In fact, maybe what people will need to disclose is
Douglas Kiang:
the fact that this was completely human-generated, and
Douglas Kiang:
there may be a cache, a certain value associated to something
Douglas Kiang:
almost like the way a craftsman or an artisan would say this was
Douglas Kiang:
completely handmade, but for the bulk of the writing, for the
Douglas Kiang:
bulk of the writing that's done in what we consume for both
Douglas Kiang:
entertainment and for business, it's going to be AI-generated,
Douglas Kiang:
at least in part to the extent that it won't be extraordinary
Douglas Kiang:
anymore, and in fact people will just judge it on the quality of
Douglas Kiang:
the words on the page and how closely it matches what you want
Douglas Kiang:
it to say. So I think this question of ownership is rapidly
Douglas Kiang:
going to shift, and I think we're kind of in a big
Douglas Kiang:
transition phase right now
Bill Stites:
based on the skills that you're talking about, and
Bill Stites:
your history as an early childhood educator. At what
Bill Stites:
level do you see the right time to begin to introduce these
Bill Stites:
skills at earlier levels? Like, have you thought about where
Bill Stites:
that marker is? Is it on a graduating slope, in terms of
Bill Stites:
how you would think about having these conversations, and really
Bill Stites:
starting at what level,
Douglas Kiang:
I think what informs me is my background as a
Douglas Kiang:
computer science person. I mean, we realized that far more
Douglas Kiang:
important than the language or the syntax were the concepts,
Douglas Kiang:
and so I worked with elementary school teachers to teach
Douglas Kiang:
unplugged activities, so nothing to do with the computer, but
Douglas Kiang:
having kids moving their bodies and working through activities
Douglas Kiang:
that taught them about key concepts like abstraction or
Douglas Kiang:
iteration, the concepts I think are the most important ones, and
Douglas Kiang:
so if we say that the important concept here is perhaps one of
Douglas Kiang:
top-down organization, if you're going to build anything with AI,
Douglas Kiang:
you need to have a structural idea of delegation. How are the
Douglas Kiang:
different parts going to work with each other? We can teach
Douglas Kiang:
that at the elementary school levels through activities
Douglas Kiang:
involving cooperation and role play without actually sitting in
Douglas Kiang:
front of a computer and using AI. I think if we abstract those
Douglas Kiang:
particular skills that we know are going to be important, if we
Douglas Kiang:
want kids to be directors once they get to the upper school
Douglas Kiang:
level, and they have those skills to be a director, and
Douglas Kiang:
then I think that's probably a more effective way to do it than
Douglas Kiang:
to have kids trying to direct AI at very early ages, because a
Douglas Kiang:
director only knows the difference between a good shot
Douglas Kiang:
and a bad shot, because most directors were actually behind
Douglas Kiang:
the camera in the day, they actually had to frame up a shot
Douglas Kiang:
themselves, so that they can know how to communicate with the
Douglas Kiang:
film crew. Now they're not the film crew anymore, but they were
Douglas Kiang:
at one point. So I think overall I would lean more towards using
Douglas Kiang:
less AI in the earlier grades, and maybe leaning into the
Douglas Kiang:
concepts, but the kids have to develop the foundational skills,
Douglas Kiang:
they have to learn how to read, they have to learn how to write,
Douglas Kiang:
necessarily, they have to learn how to code, necessarily. A lot
Douglas Kiang:
of that has to take place without AI, because if you have
Douglas Kiang:
AI doing the work, you're not going to learn it. And then you
Douglas Kiang:
get to the place where you know, last year, when I taught the
Douglas Kiang:
English course, we had mostly juniors and seniors, and they
Douglas Kiang:
were able to do an incredible. About using AI as a
Douglas Kiang:
collaborative partner and as a co-drafter, because those kids,
Douglas Kiang:
for the most part, had developed their skills of reading and
Douglas Kiang:
writing in an age that was pre-AI. So, our challenge is
Douglas Kiang:
going to be, how do we find ways to really get kids to stick to
Douglas Kiang:
building those skills first, because we know that you will be
Douglas Kiang:
judged by your ability to use AI, and your ability to use AI
Douglas Kiang:
will itself be influenced by how much you can do those skills
Douglas Kiang:
without AI.
Hiram Cuevas:
So, Douglas, this actually, I think, a really good
Hiram Cuevas:
transition, especially with your work with the College Board and
Hiram Cuevas:
developing some of the College Board materials with the
Hiram Cuevas:
computer science curriculum in mind. Where is that particular
Hiram Cuevas:
test in this conversation? I'm not familiar with that
Hiram Cuevas:
particular AP test. Should students be able to do close
Hiram Cuevas:
writing of code at the AP level, or is the AP exam now designed
Hiram Cuevas:
so that they have access to AI tools in order to produce set
Hiram Cuevas:
product.
Douglas Kiang:
Both actually the students are required to learn
Douglas Kiang:
how to write code, but the College Board doesn't
Douglas Kiang:
differentiate between what language they use. So kids could
Douglas Kiang:
use a block-based coding language, they could use Python,
Douglas Kiang:
they could use Java. The idea is they need to master the concepts
Douglas Kiang:
of abstraction, iteration, conditionals. They need to know
Douglas Kiang:
what that looks like in the language that they're studying,
Douglas Kiang:
and so the mechanics of it. That's a good portion of the
Douglas Kiang:
exam. It tests that ability. Now, a big part of computer
Douglas Kiang:
science principles is also understanding technology's
Douglas Kiang:
effect on society, both the benefits and the harms, and of
Douglas Kiang:
course, AI falls squarely into that category. The effects of AI
Douglas Kiang:
on hiring practices, the implicit bias that's built into
Douglas Kiang:
AI, the harm that can be caused by deep fakes, and you know,
Douglas Kiang:
there are a lot of very current things that are part of that
Douglas Kiang:
course as well, but one of the things that I find most
Douglas Kiang:
interesting, and this just changed in the last few years,
Douglas Kiang:
is the kids have to do an independent project at the end
Douglas Kiang:
and they are told they can use AI if they like to help in that
Douglas Kiang:
project, but they submit their code, and then when they sit for
Douglas Kiang:
the exam, they have half an hour to answer a question about their
Douglas Kiang:
project, about their code, that they don't know in advance what
Douglas Kiang:
that question is going to be, and so you can immediately tell
Douglas Kiang:
the case where kids create something that's very
Douglas Kiang:
sophisticated because they just basically gave it to ChatGPT and
Douglas Kiang:
said build this thing, but then if you ask them some basic
Douglas Kiang:
questions, like if you change this program in this way, what
Douglas Kiang:
would happen? They have no ability to articulate that, and
Douglas Kiang:
so they don't do well on the test. To me, I thought that was
Douglas Kiang:
a very forward-thinking approach, because it says, look,
Douglas Kiang:
it's not about the tool, it's more about the understanding,
Douglas Kiang:
you know, go ahead, use the tools, but if you use the tools
Douglas Kiang:
in such a way that it harms your learning, then
Hiram Cuevas:
you will not be rewarded for that. It's almost
Hiram Cuevas:
as if this is a great blueprint to Bill's earlier question about
Hiram Cuevas:
how early should you use it. It really is following the tenets
Hiram Cuevas:
of what you've been describing. You've got to have that
Hiram Cuevas:
foundation, you have to have those other skills and
Hiram Cuevas:
understand those concepts first before you can actually do that
Hiram Cuevas:
code
Peter Frank:
right.
Bill Stites:
It's also very interesting. I heard a great
Bill Stites:
example from, I forget, whether it was an English class or
Bill Stites:
history class, but it was the idea of a student will submit a
Bill Stites:
piece of writing, a paper that they may have written. The
Bill Stites:
teacher can use AI to create questions from that paper, and
Bill Stites:
those questions become the exam, or like the test of the student
Bill Stites:
based on what they wrote, and the student that has done the
Bill Stites:
writing the way in which you're describing will be able to
Bill Stites:
answer those. The one that has just completely fed it into AI
Bill Stites:
and submitted it won't, so the student knows that, all right, I
Bill Stites:
can submit this, I can put this in, knowing that I fully used AI
Bill Stites:
to do this, but when the assessment comes back to me, if
Bill Stites:
I haven't read what I've done, or if I don't truly know what it
Bill Stites:
is I've created here, whether it's a program, whether it's a
Bill Stites:
paper, whatever the output is, I'm going to be questioned about
Bill Stites:
it. If I can answer those questions, then I'm not going to
Bill Stites:
pass that assessment.
Lauren Marold:
Yeah, I was kind of thinking even back to what
Lauren Marold:
you talked about at the beginning of the three areas
Lauren Marold:
that you feel are really important, and design thinking
Lauren Marold:
was one that you listed as kind of a vital skill, and I think
Lauren Marold:
that if we look at that from an early elementary age group and
Lauren Marold:
start kids going through the design process early, those
Lauren Marold:
skills then lead into better thinking structures around how
Lauren Marold:
to use these tools later. Is that something that you're
Lauren Marold:
seeing in those earlier age groups? And have you deployed
Lauren Marold:
design thinking work with younger students as well?
Douglas Kiang:
Absolutely. And in fact, one of the most
Douglas Kiang:
effective activities that we do with kids is. A design thinking
Douglas Kiang:
activity where they're basically redesigning the gift giving
Douglas Kiang:
experience for another student, so it involves empathy. They
Douglas Kiang:
need to listen. What is it like to give a gift to somebody else?
Douglas Kiang:
What was difficult? What was the time when you gave a gift that
Douglas Kiang:
was really, really appreciated? And they listen, they take
Douglas Kiang:
notes, and then they prototype and iterate on a bunch of
Douglas Kiang:
solutions, and sometimes what they're designing is a process.
Douglas Kiang:
Sometimes kids decide to vibe code an app, but it's an
Douglas Kiang:
activity that really leans hard into empathy. And there are very
Douglas Kiang:
few times in this school day where somebody has to sit and
Douglas Kiang:
just listen to you talk for three to five minutes. It's
Douglas Kiang:
fairly unusual for kids to feel like the words that I say have
Douglas Kiang:
meaning and importance, and this person is listening to me, and
Douglas Kiang:
then making something that reflects back what they heard.
Douglas Kiang:
So, it's a great experience to be on the receiving end of
Douglas Kiang:
empathy, but also to have to try to develop those skills as well.
Lauren Marold:
I am very curious. You've written about
Lauren Marold:
something called the Unseen Unseen. Can you tell us more
Lauren Marold:
about this?
Douglas Kiang:
So we're going through a WASC accreditation,
Douglas Kiang:
and I'm on one of many faculty committees. We were having a
Douglas Kiang:
meeting one afternoon, and we had basically put out a Padlet
Douglas Kiang:
to all the teachers, a big survey, and said talk about all
Douglas Kiang:
of these different aspects of the school, and so we had
Douglas Kiang:
basically taken this whole pad, but all of these things that
Douglas Kiang:
teachers had written, and we threw them into an LLM chat bot,
Douglas Kiang:
and we said, What are the five topics that resonate most with
Douglas Kiang:
teachers about our school? What is it that makes our school
Douglas Kiang:
special? And it came back with a list of five things, things
Douglas Kiang:
like, you know, our personalized block schedule, our faculty to
Douglas Kiang:
student ratio, you know, our college counseling. So, it came
Douglas Kiang:
up with a list of five things, and we all looked at them, and
Douglas Kiang:
they were all accurate. They were all things that we do, and
Douglas Kiang:
things that we're proud of. So, the room kind of nodded and
Douglas Kiang:
said, "Great, that looks great, let's move on. Saved us a lot of
Douglas Kiang:
time, but some teachers kind of raised their hand, and they
Douglas Kiang:
said, "Well, wait a second, what about the things that weren't on
Douglas Kiang:
that list, we don't know what was not included, because we
Douglas Kiang:
haven't looked at the Padlet report, as hundreds and hundreds
Douglas Kiang:
of pages here. But what if there was something that teachers put
Douglas Kiang:
in that should be on that list? We would be skipping over that,
Douglas Kiang:
and we weren't sure exactly why those were on lists. Was it
Douglas Kiang:
because the largest number of people said those things, or is
Douglas Kiang:
it because those are the things that make most schools special?
Douglas Kiang:
It is the thing that is the most probable, and so for that reason
Douglas Kiang:
it kind of rose to the top. We weren't sure, and I've started
Douglas Kiang:
to call this the unseen unseen. We don't know what AI doesn't
Douglas Kiang:
choose to show us. We've just been conditioned to check the
Douglas Kiang:
accuracy, because AI can hallucinate, and let's just make
Douglas Kiang:
sure that everything that it says is good, and I've seen this
Douglas Kiang:
happen with kids too. Kids will brainstorm ideas, and they'll
Douglas Kiang:
say, "Get five brainstorming ideas about my topic, and
Douglas Kiang:
they'll look at it, and they will be good ideas, but we don't
Douglas Kiang:
know if they're the best ideas. Maybe the best idea is some
Douglas Kiang:
half-finished idea they started at the dinner table with their
Douglas Kiang:
parents last night, but they just never had a chance to bring
Douglas Kiang:
it to the forefront. So, what I've started to ask kids to do
Douglas Kiang:
now is brainstorm on a piece of paper before you touch AI, spend
Douglas Kiang:
five minutes jotting down and brainstorming, and then ask AI,
Douglas Kiang:
and then judge. You can compare your ideas against the AI, and
Douglas Kiang:
maybe you still go with the AI ideas, that's okay, but you
Douglas Kiang:
don't have any way to judge it if you haven't given yourself a
Douglas Kiang:
chance to come up with the ideas first.
Lauren Marold:
Yeah, that's really interesting, because I
Lauren Marold:
think also we could end up in this societal place where we
Lauren Marold:
take the status quo, or we kind of take the lowest common
Lauren Marold:
denominator answers, and that could dampen the creativity, so
Lauren Marold:
I think your point about what was said halfway at the dinner
Lauren Marold:
table is really, really important, that we're pushing
Lauren Marold:
creative thoughts still and not just taking those quick answers
Lauren Marold:
from the AI tools. I think even Bill had brought up the concern
Lauren Marold:
about not only how we're talking to students about using AI, how
Lauren Marold:
students are engaging with AI, but how are all of the employees
Lauren Marold:
in a school institution doing it? And I am sure that marketing
Lauren Marold:
departments have started using AI more and building out any
Lauren Marold:
kind of communication that's going out, and it's really
Lauren Marold:
interesting, because I don't know if y'all have seen this,
Lauren Marold:
but the more I look at other schools' social media, you can
Lauren Marold:
tell who is just feeding it into chat versus who is actually
Lauren Marold:
still trying to write it, or they've trained the voice, and
Lauren Marold:
so I'd be curious about just like where do we go from here as
Lauren Marold:
we think about schools as an institution, how do we tell our
Lauren Marold:
stories and not become the same story across every school
Lauren Marold:
because we're using the same AI tools to build the story.
Douglas Kiang:
I actually had an interesting experience. I
Douglas Kiang:
decided to try writing a new story. I had written these
Douglas Kiang:
novels by coming up with the plot and the character. Actors
Douglas Kiang:
and the story beats, but then I was having AI draft it, and I
Douglas Kiang:
was prompting AI to revise it until I was happy with it. Now
Douglas Kiang:
I'm in the midst of writing a new story, which started as an
Douglas Kiang:
activity that I was having the kids do an anthology of short
Douglas Kiang:
stories. Now I try to do a lot of the assignments that I give
Douglas Kiang:
my kids, so I started last semester, and I haven't stopped.
Douglas Kiang:
I continue to write, and I'm doing the writing myself, and I
Douglas Kiang:
flipped the roles. AI now takes a look at their finished draft
Douglas Kiang:
and gives me feedback, but it doesn't write for me. It
Douglas Kiang:
actually says, well, this could be a little sharper here, but
Douglas Kiang:
I've directed it not to tell me, so it's in fact doing the role
Douglas Kiang:
that I did before. And sometimes I'm writing multiple drafts of
Douglas Kiang:
the same scene, and having the AI compare them and say, which
Douglas Kiang:
one do you think is more powerful? And I've never had as
Douglas Kiang:
much fun. I feel more creative, and I feel like the writing that
Douglas Kiang:
I'm doing is truly my own, and it's my own voice, and it
Douglas Kiang:
definitely reads differently than any of the other stories
Douglas Kiang:
where the AI was drafting it, even though I had a hand in
Douglas Kiang:
revising those. So it's been a journey for me, and I think it's
Douglas Kiang:
been a necessary one that I've had to go through the spectrum
Douglas Kiang:
of having AI do most of one role and now flipping the role and
Douglas Kiang:
having me do something else. It's been a really revealing
Douglas Kiang:
look at how I write and how I create, and I think perhaps
Douglas Kiang:
there's something there. Perhaps we need to have enough
Douglas Kiang:
familiarity with AI to understand where is the balance
Douglas Kiang:
where I feel comfortable and where I feel I can be the most
Douglas Kiang:
creative and where I feel that I'm doing the best quality work.
Douglas Kiang:
We need to build a foundational skill so kids recognize quality
Douglas Kiang:
when they see it, but I am not ready to say that there is one
Douglas Kiang:
AI policy or one bright line that no one should cross,
Douglas Kiang:
because I think everybody is different as a creative, and I
Douglas Kiang:
think if there's one thing that we can agree on, which is we
Douglas Kiang:
need to feel proud of the work that we do, we need to feel
Douglas Kiang:
ownership over it, and it needs to look different than the AI
Douglas Kiang:
slop that's normally out there, and perhaps we give more agency
Douglas Kiang:
to the learners about the tools that they use and how they use
Douglas Kiang:
them. Perhaps that's a better way forward.
Lauren Marold:
That's really great. And I do think that as we
Lauren Marold:
work through this, it's all going to be a learning
Lauren Marold:
experience. And I think these kinds of conversations and
Lauren Marold:
getting to talk to folks that are in the classroom every day,
Lauren Marold:
working with students, and then also those managing the data
Lauren Marold:
security and the IT side of the house. I think that is where the
Lauren Marold:
intersection is so important as we move forward, because having
Lauren Marold:
somebody that's in there with students and hearing their
Lauren Marold:
experience, their challenges, it's just so vital and valuable.
Lauren Marold:
We'd love, as we kind of wrap up today, to know what you're doing
Lauren Marold:
this summer. If there's anything that you are working on, or
Lauren Marold:
anything that's exciting for you. It sounds like you're doing
Lauren Marold:
a lot of fun writing, but are there any other things on the
Lauren Marold:
horizon for you before the school year starts?
Douglas Kiang:
Yeah, I'm actually in the process of not
Douglas Kiang:
only finishing my creative anthology, but I'm in the
Douglas Kiang:
process of writing a book for teachers about the AI forward
Douglas Kiang:
classroom, so everything that we learned about getting kids
Douglas Kiang:
invested in the writing that they're doing, or the coding
Douglas Kiang:
that they're doing, it really is going to be intended for
Douglas Kiang:
teachers to teach all different kinds of subjects. I could not
Douglas Kiang:
do what I do without the collaboration that I have with
Douglas Kiang:
Michael Bada, who's the head of our IT department. He has been
Douglas Kiang:
tremendous as an ally and an advocate. I want to write as
Douglas Kiang:
well about the good work that can be done when teachers and it
Douglas Kiang:
collaborate and are on the same side in helping not only to
Douglas Kiang:
empower kids but also to protect them. I'm doing some traveling,
Douglas Kiang:
I'm going to Columbia. I've never been there before, but I
Douglas Kiang:
have a good buddy of mine who moved out there with his wife,
Douglas Kiang:
and so I'm gonna spend a weekend in Colombia visiting him, and
Douglas Kiang:
then we'll see our kids on the East Coast, so it'll be a full
Douglas Kiang:
summer, but I expect they'll return rested and rejuvenated
Douglas Kiang:
and ready to start another AI forward year.
Lauren Marold:
That sounds pretty amazing. I'm hoping that
Lauren Marold:
Hiram and Bill start on their zombie AI anthology sometime
Lauren Marold:
soon for all Atlas listeners. We've
Hiram Cuevas:
already started it.
Lauren Marold:
I think it's going to be amazing. This has
Lauren Marold:
been such a pleasure, Douglas. We're so glad you were able to
Lauren Marold:
join us.
Douglas Kiang:
Thank you.
Peter Frank:
This has been Talking Technology with Atlas,
Peter Frank:
produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in
Peter Frank:
Independent Schools. For more information about Atlas and
Peter Frank:
Atlas membership, please visit the atlas.org If you enjoyed
Peter Frank:
this discussion, please subscribe, leave a review, and
Peter Frank:
share this podcast with your colleagues in the Independent
Peter Frank:
School community. Thank you for listening.
Unknown:
Thank
