Leadership Spotlight: A Reminder of the Power of K-12 Education, with Michael Lomuscio

Narrator 00:02
Welcome to Talking Technology with ATLIS, the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens. We'll hear stories from technology directors and other special guests from the Independent School community and provide you will focus learning and deep dive topics. And now please welcome your host, Christina Lewellen.

Christina Lewellen 00:25
Hello everyone and welcome back to Talking Technology with ATLIS. I'm Christina Lewellen, the executive director of the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools.

Bill Stites 00:34
And I am Bill Stites, the Director of Technology at Montclair Kimberley Academy.

Christina Lewellen 00:40
So we're alone today. This is a sad day.

Bill Stites 00:43
I know I'm very upset. I'm very upset.

Christina Lewellen 00:46
And this time, it's not like Hiram is missing, you know, bombing out on some other activity. He's sick. He's not feeling well, yeah, so he had to cancel at the last minute.

So we're flying solo, or as a duet today.

Bill Stites 00:59
And I do like that, because I know you do well, with duets and other parts of your life, when you're out singing and performing. So I hope I can harmonize as well with you on the podcast today as you do in other parts of your life.

Christina Lewellen 01:12
Hey, that was beautiful. Thank you for that analogy. But it you know, it kind of sparks a question in my head about how as technology directors, we have a lot going on, we have high levels of stress. And we work among the germ factories known as educational institutions. How do you stay healthy? I mean, clearly Hiram caught a bug, probably from his evil little children coming into his space. But how do you stay healthy.

Bill Stites 01:38
Though this may not sound healthy to many people. I'm up at 5am every morning, and I am at the gym shortly thereafter. And I come home and take a literal fistful of multivitamins and vitamins, just to try to keep all of that stuff going. Because it doesn't get any easier as you get older. That is 100%. For sure. The only thing I think helps is after so many years in schools, I've developed the sufficient level of immunity to everything that is walking around because I've had everything that's probably walked around the building at one point in my career, I

Christina Lewellen 02:15
think you're right, I'll plus one the working out. I think that's important, keeping our bodies healthy, our minds healthy. But I also have this little tick, where I sanitize my hands before I touch anything in my car. As soon as I get in the car. It doesn't matter if it's my car or your car, or a rental car. I get in the car, and I sanitized before I touch the steering wheel. And if I've had someone service my car, I have to like wipe down the whole thing like it's a rental. And I don't know why but in my head, that's how one of the ways I stay healthy. I don't let germs into my car. Yeah,

Bill Stites 02:49
I actually go in the complete opposite direction, which is like, I adhere to like the five second rule like a [???] You know, that's only been down for five seconds. I would just pick it up and use it again or do something with it and then go from there.

Christina Lewellen 03:01
Okay, so if I ever drive your car, I just want you to know that that scent of a Clorox wipe. That's me.

Bill Stites 03:07
That's fine. That's fine. Okay, you're good to go. I'll have them in the car for you when you get in. I'm ready.

Christina Lewellen 03:13
The most spotless your car has ever been is after I drive it. All right.

Bill Stites 03:18
That and nothing gluten, so we're good. Right?

Christina Lewellen 03:21
No gluten, none of that either. So we miss our buddy, Hiram Hiram. We're hoping you're feeling better by time you listen to this podcast, and we're certain you will be. But today we have a really cool guest joining us. This guest is from Hawaii. He is at a school in Hawaii. And I visited Hawaii, during my time as executive director of ATLIS have actually been out there a couple of times. And one time, it was really important to me to visit schools when I was there, because there is something that's kind of hard to put your finger on about Hawaii and Hawaiian independent schools. Bill, I know you've been out there a couple times. What's your take on Hawaiian independent schools, they're kind of different and special.

Bill Stites 04:02
I would definitely agree. I mean, I had the good fortune of spending a week at ‘Iolani and was particularly impressed with and hearing about the other schools because they only really got to visit the one really the size and the breadth of who and what they're serving at those schools is incredibly impressive. And just the size of the operation for which they are running is almost always larger than what you will see in a...

Christina Lewellen 04:31
Mainland.

Bill Stites 04:31
Mainland. Thank you. That was the word I was looking for. You look at like in New Jersey, like MKA, Pingry, Newark Academy, a number of those schools were in the 800 to 1000 range. And that's like two of the divisions at a Hawaiian school. It's not even like if you're three divisions. That's not even like all the divisions. So it's particularly impressive, that scale, the scope and just the depths that they go into. And the one thing that I will say in particular about ‘Iolani that I was just incredibly impressed With is the facilities were just absolutely amazing. We talk about what we want to do in like our STEM spaces and our STEM centers. And when I was visiting ‘Iolani, I brought that pictures of it. And I have them in our show notes. And it wasn't just like a space. It was like a building and it was like floors on a building and like what was going on was just so deep and so rich. It was just absolutely incredible.

Christina Lewellen 05:29
Yeah, absolutely. Without further ado, I think let's welcome our guest today. Michael Lomuscio is the dean of studies at ‘Iolani. Michael, thank you for joining us today and Aloha.

Michael Lomuscio 05:42
Aloha, Bella, Christina, it's so great to be here with you. I'm sorry to hear that Hiram is under the weather. But it's a joy to be on the podcast today.

Christina Lewellen 05:51
Michael, when I was out, I did visit ‘Iolani I visited with Dr. Cottrell, your head of school. And he and I have a shared background in Western New York. He did some of his education there. I will say where you are in Honolulu is a long, long way from Western New York. You also have some cold weather background in your life. So tell everybody a little bit about your journey to where you are today. And kind of your journey as it pertains to boarding and independent schools. Yes,

Michael Lomuscio 06:21
I am from the East Coast. I was born in New Jersey, but spent most of my life in Georgia. Bill you're in Jersey. Is that right?

Bill Stites 06:28
Yep. Grew up in South Jersey up in North Jersey. Yep.

Michael Lomuscio 06:32
Yeah. So I was born and raised in Toms River. I noticed that I meet a lot of people from New Jersey all over. And at first I thought, Oh, that's weird. But then I realized it's because everyone's trying to leave New Jersey. But people from New Jersey are awesome. They're all over the place. Yeah.

So I am, like you said the dean of studies at ‘Iolani School. My role here is very much a servant leadership role. I oversee K through 12 all the offices that support teaching and learning. So things like it, which supports the whole school libraries, curriculum, the registrar's office, standardized testing, sustainability, professional development, all the things that would be K through 12. And academic related.

I have, I think, a unique story, I'm sure I'm not the only one with this kind of story. But I think it's at least unique in an independent school space. I haven't run into many folks with the same kind of background, I actually grew up as a homeless homeschooled person, which is unconventional, right? So for most of my childhood, I, for various circumstances grew up homeless. And I didn't go to a physical school for most of my childhood. And so that has profoundly impacted all of my views on education. And I'm happy to talk more about that later.

But I am blessed that I was born very, very curious and passionate about learning, and took every opportunity I could to read everything that was available to me, which ended up being the only reason I was able to get into college because I had no educational background. But I was obsessed as a child with math, physics, philosophy and theology. So I spent most of my time in bookstores and libraries, reading and trying to make sense of what was in books, most of which was over my head most of the time.

Through that I was able to develop enough of an understanding of, I guess, a traditional curriculum to get into a college, it was a little challenging to get into college. My dream school was Princeton, and Princeton rejected me but kindly, I still have my Princeton rejection letter. I don't have it framed or anything, but I still have it. But I found a school in northwest Georgia called Berry College that very much support students with like the kind of background I had. There's a lot of like refugees that Berry takes in and accepts into college, so they're willing to take a chance on people. And it went really, really well. It was an amazing experience. I fell in love with academia while I was in college.

And at that time, I thought, I just want to do this my whole life, I just want to learn, I'd be like a college professor. I went from Berry or I studied math and physics to Western Carolina University where I studied applied mathematics. And then I was gonna go get a PhD, but applied mathematics, a PhD and that's a terminal degree like you really have to know what you want to spend the rest of your life working on. Because once you have a PhD, that's like all you're doing in Applied Maths.

So I, I had fallen in love with teaching. As a TA I was teaching like a bunch of math 101 classes and college algebra courses while I was in grad school. So I thought I'm gonna go teach high school math for a year. And again, a school was willing to take a chance on me I had no teaching background Other than that, right? So Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School in northeast Georgia. They were looking for someone who would help them push their curriculum into an applied learning space and help build a STEM program. And so through talking with their then Upper School Division had David Landis. We hit it off. And, you know, they gave me a job.

And then I ended up spending 11 years there, I fell in love with teaching kids worked at raping gap for a long time. It's a wonderful place and international boarding school that serves over 60 countries at least at that time, and built a STEM program, I had a really good time to do a lot of work at Applied Learning. And then three years ago moved to Hawaii.

Christina Lewellen 10:29
And you eventually did you are Dr. Lucio, you did close that full circle kind of situation.

Michael Lomuscio 10:36
I did. I ended up getting my doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania, which is another crazy story. I commuted from northeast Georgia, which is two and a half hours from the airport. I commuted from there to the University of Pennsylvania, one weekend a month, for four years, in order to get that degree, but totally worth it.

Christina Lewellen 10:57
That's incredible. I mean, you gave us a right turn like a sharp, right turn out of the gate. We got to stop down on this for just a second because obviously your journey’s incredible. You were just born with those brain cells. But your experience in life has to bring a certain empathy that is somewhat unparalleled in terms of the work that you do today. So can you just pause there for a minute and just tell us a little bit about how your experience growing up affects the work that you do now? Yeah,

Michael Lomuscio 11:28
so I think it affects it in a couple of ways. One, just the power of education to transform lives and potentially family trees. Right. I think that is what made me fall in love with K through 12 education, as opposed to continuing on to be like a college professor. I've just seen in my own life. And then in the lives of a lot of students I worked with at Rabun Gap how having a few adults who just unflappably believe in you, and your ability to add value to the world and do something creative, or innovative or meaningful, can totally change someone's life. And so having had a few people who really believed in me and impacted me and helped me get to where I, you know, I am, I think that my experiences have contributed to a belief in children. I think all educators believe in children, or you wouldn't do the job. It's really hard, right? But my experience has just made me feel like there was a lot at stake when you're teaching kids, there's a lot of good that can come from it.

And then I think a second area that my background has impacted, in my own thinking, is a clarity around what's important, and what isn't the facts inside of books, you know, like a history textbook, knowing the dates, things like that, man, I was deficient in those skills. When I got to college, like they'd say, Hey, you remember, you know, around what time did this event happened? And I'd be like, I have no idea. But let me tell you what I think people were thinking about when that happened.

So just a clarity around what are the things that are important to people are important for people to know? And then what are the things people actually need to know how to do right, and so applied learning the ability to teach yourself to learn the ability to engage productively with problems and solve them. I highly value that just because of my own experiences.

So I remember, one of the reasons I think I was able to get into college was, I showed up, I had all of these scribbled notes of like, will probably look like gibberish. I'm a little embarrassed. Now. I wish I still had it. But while I was there, I was like, Hey, I'm going to ask some math professors what they think of these ideas I have. And one of them said, Well, this looks like a jumbled mess. But I'm pretty sure that you have been trained to calculus, you're like, This is calculus? Have you heard of calculus? I was like, No, I haven't heard of calculus, but tell me all about it. Is that a thing? Yeah, so I didn't know what I was talking about.

But with a TI calculator, and like a few years to just mess around with it and think about math, I had stumbled on some cool ideas. And so I just really believe in the power of play and problem solving and curiosity. And I try to focus those and center those and the work that I do.

Bill Stites 14:12
Incredible. As I'm listening to you talk about this and everything that you're describing, I'm like writing down, you know, teaching yourself to “learn playing”, you know, exploring all these things, you know, building this like idea of like, almost like a builders mindset, like, if I want to learn this, I have to construct it and make it on my own. Because, you know, I've got to take the things that I have around me and actually do this. And then the other thing that you said that I think connects to that kind of like mindset is just how early if my math is right on the the timeline, how early it was that you got asked to start a STEM program and build this program at your school knowing what I've seen is at ‘Iolani and being so impressed with that, getting that start, you know what sounds like about 13 years that's when we were starting our one to one program. We weren't even thinking about stuff When we were just thinking about getting computers in the hands of kids, tell us about those early days of developing that program, because that is still so much of what I think schools are talking about, I think schools struggle with to figure out how that program gets integrated into the other like aspects of everyday school life. So wax poetic on that. What was that? Like?

Michael Lomuscio 15:28
At that time? You know, 30 years ago, I was at Rabun Gap, Rabun Gap, at least at that time, right? Like, I haven't been there for a few years, I don't want to speak for them. I'm sure they're still doing amazing work. But Rabun Gap was a place that offered a traditional academic program, but with like, very progressive mindsets. And so it was a great fit. For me, I think a lot of technology was coming out then.

So I know schools, we're still focused on getting one to one laptops, or iPads or whatever. But at the same time, you had Arduino coming out and being mass produced, you had a few years later, like Raspberry Pi. And so the early days of the maker movement, I was like, all in on that. As soon as I saw the first Arduino, microcontroller. This is a tech podcast, I imagine a lot of people know. But if you don't, it's like this tiny little robot brain basically, that you plug wires into, you can connect the wires to things like lights or motors or whatever. And then with code, you can make it think right and do stuff. So as soon as I saw that, I thought, Oh, this is insane. Like, this is amazing. Kids need to mess with this. It's not that hard to control lights, and motors and sensors, or whatever. And so I got a bunch of them, messed around with them, showed them to some kids, kids got really excited. And then, you know, the school was like, Yeah, this is pretty awesome. You should just go all in with this. And and we built what ended up being a massive program.

At the same time, you know, we had all the technology. At the same time, we also were building out frameworks for thinking about what now I think a Rabun Gap is called applied learning. Because it's not just in STEM, it also spans the humanities. But what are the mindsets, you need to be able to say, I know absolutely nothing about this topic, like, for example, like building an RC airplane, or designing like a monument. But I want to do that thing. What do I need to do to get there? And developing a framework like that really aligned with my own story? It was like, Yeah, let's do that.

So we spent a lot of time as faculty, just thinking about what those values and skills and mindsets would be. And then professionally developing folks and talking about it, and integrating it into curriculum, which is a very long, long process, right? Like it takes a good three to 10 years to do that kind of like curricular work at a school. And now I feel like they're at a really awesome place. Again, I haven't been there for three years, but they have what appears to be still a thriving applied learning program, and a really amazing STEM program there. They do some AI stuff, which I'm sure we could talk about later. AI and machine learning.

And ‘Iolani is similar. ‘Iolani has one of the I guess I'm gonna brag on them. But I also think it's true, like one of the most impressive stem centers, some buildings that I've seen anywhere. I mean, it's massive.

Christina Lewellen 18:15
We agree with you on that. That's not bragging. It's breathtaking.

Bill Stites 18:18
100%. Yeah.

Michael Lomuscio 18:20
So that was part of what attracted me here. But not just that we're doing that work in STEM, we're doing that work in humanities and the arts as well. But our STEM building, you know, we have kids doing asking those same kinds of questions. But about like modern genomics, we have a whole genomics lab, where kids are like, hey, what can I learn about DNA that I pulled out of the stream that goes by the school? And what can that tell me about the diversity of animal life that currently is in the ocean and the number of invasive species, just really cool stuff. I love it when schools focus on teaching kids to solve problems on their own, which is a lifelong skill that you can take with you when you leave and STEM programs, I think tend to be really good at that.

Christina Lewellen 19:05
Let's step down on that for a minute. Let's dig in a little bit deeper. I would love to hear a couple more examples of things that happening at ‘Iolani. Because I do think that you guys are doing some really innovative stuff when it comes to the curriculum and also rethinking some of the traditional curriculum and how you present it. So let's live there for a minute and tell us a little bit more give our listeners some inspiration on what they could think about what their own STEM programs.

Michael Lomuscio 19:31
Gosh, yeah, you know, I just mentioned our genomics program, or bioinformatics program, really, but the bioinformatics program is one of the most impressive things to me that we're doing in the STEM world. Right now. There are four major buckets of exponentially emerging technologies, right? There's AI, which is really big right now. There is robotics. There's synthetic biology and there's quantum computing. So those are sort of the four exponential technologies that folks are talking about, we hit on three of those right now, we are fully immersed in robotics, the robotic stuff, if you walked into our robotics lab and you had a robotics program at your school, you would like know what the things are. But an example of something that that team did was they just built an electric airplane that we had to find a test pilot to fly. So they built an electric airplane, I think the goal is to have the first electric slight between islands, which will be very cool.

Christina Lewellen 20:27
That's going to take a very brave pilot, did you find one? There's got to be a lot of insurance policies around that.

Michael Lomuscio 20:35
I'm sure there is. I'm glad we did find a test pilot. But this guy was like, yeah, so you know, we'll just take it up, we'll just kind of like get a little bit off the ground and then go down. But no, he's like, Nah, I'm just gonna keep going. And he just took off and did like a whole loop around the airfield. I was impressed. Like, it actually works, the whole thing worked. And it was a completely student driven project. Unbelievable. It was sort of like a junior senior level project for a couple of students. They were like, I want to build an airplane. And they did. So it's very, very cool.

So robotics, in the area of bioinformatics, and sort of synthetic biology, or bioinformatics program is impressive. We have kids, and I'm not a biologist. So I probably should have prepped a little better for you see the right vocabulary here. But they're sequencing DNA, and learning a lot of the data skills like the big data skills that go into understanding the world of genomics. And so they're doing a lot of data science stuff in bioinformatics, and then our bioinformatics program, through a program called Island informatics, we actually have full time staff that traveled to over 100 public schools in Hawaii, and train their teachers and how to deliver the same lessons. And then we also give the equipment to the schools. So we're pretty heavily invested in bioinformatics right now.

Christina Lewellen 21:59
To stop on that point for just a second to one of the things that really struck me when I was in Hawaii, it's almost hard to put into words, but if I can give it a shot, Hawaii has this interesting dichotomous vibe, where education in Hawaii very much is focused on creating learners for today and tomorrow, creating like some of the best educated students that are going to go off into the world and make a huge difference. So that focus on the future is vibrating in everything that the Hawaiian schools do.

And in addition, there's this commitment to culture and history. And that's something that you know, because of their Polynesian, and their oceanic backgrounds, a lot of the STEM work, there's the seafaring thread that runs through it. And they're interested in learning about how their ancestors and then like the native way of doing things and a lot of native plants and making sure that we're preserving appropriately the resources of the island.

And so it's hard to kind of capture it in just a few sentences. But Hawaii has a very creative and different kind of energy. And so the idea that you just said, that not only do you have the equipment, and not only do you have beyond collegiate level work that you're doing with your students, but you're also sharing it with the public schools in Hawaii, that sometimes are much less resourced. And that is not exclusive to ‘Iolani. Like, it's definitely a Hawaiian thing.

Michael Lomuscio 23:31
Yeah, I think there's a lot to that we could probably do a whole episode on that.

Christina Lewellen 23:35
And maybe we will. But I know that the DEI component of it is important to you to you have an interest in that work. And to me that equity thing, it runs deep through all of what we were just talking about, you know, the fact that you guys are so invested you have full-time staff that teaches other teachers that don't work at your school. That’s incredible.

Michael Lomuscio 23:57
Yeah I’m really proud of the fact that we do that. I think you're right.

So you know, Hawaii, we're on an island right out here. And so I think part of being in a community like this is the necessity to collaborate and to support one another, because we're, you know, in the most remote place on Earth, so you have to be collaborative. And then this is not exclusive to Hawaii. But island communities like Hawaii, are taking climate change very seriously because it's impacting right now, the island. And so if you go to UNH, or University of Hawaii, or different places, and even like landscape architecture, one of the big projects that students in landscape architecture in Hawaii are doing are thinking about, you know, what do we do in 50 years when Waikiki is essentially like Venice, right? Like there's going to be water all over. And so thinking about sustainability, thinking about sustainable food sources, is all very much something that is in the public consciousness. And then with that comes the connection to indigenous practices and values of sustainable living.

So indigenous Hawaiians were very sustainable. They had very complex systems for making sure there was enough food and enough resources. And so going back and studying those, I think is helping people see a path forward, especially for schools in Hawaii. Just to clarify, there are “Hawaiian schools” and “schools in Hawaii”. So I just want to honor the schools that are Hawaiian schools by just making that distinction. ‘Iolani is a school in Hawaii, that is tied to Hawaii, we were founded by the King and Queen, but there are schools like Kamehameha that are Hawaiian schools in a slightly different way.

Bill Stites 25:45
Michael, one thing I want to come back to just very briefly, because he spoke to the third grade teacher that I once was. And that was when we were walking around when you and I and the whole team, they were kind of like walking around and meeting everyone for the week that I was there. One of the things that I was particularly impressed with along the STEM line as well was that it wasn't just in that building, that you had those resources that were in the Lower School as well. What really struck with me with that, and the conversations that I had with the people, there was just really the thought that went into how is this program going to evolve and develop over time. And what that meant a lot of schools that put in these STEM facilities, I'll be frank, it's because it's like the shiny new toy.

I remember, years ago, we had this like distance learning room, and it was on every admissions tour that we ever gave. Because it was like the shiny thing that we could point to and say this is how we're using technology to connect with all these people outside of school before we had zoom before we had all these other things. But in reality, it was only used for like an art class and like the occasional thing. So it never really came to represent what it really could have been and the commandment that you have that even starts with your youngest learners to all the way to these incredibly complicated and things that just blew my mind when I was there. I think that's unique to a lot of schools.

And I'm curious as to how whether it was since you've been there, or whether it was there when you came? How did that culture develop in terms of supporting that from your youngest learners all the way to your seniors?

Michael Lomuscio 27:26
Yeah. I cannot take credit for that. ‘Iolani has had very strong programs that are well aligned for a very long time. Many good people, many smart people have been working on it. But it is something that I appreciate about the school, I think this is probably true about schools in Hawaii, more than on the continent, but ‘Iolani in particular, we're a very collectivistic community. Our motto is “one team”. It's more than just a motto at the school. It is like a value system. We talked about one team values or one team ethos.

And so when we're thinking about program development, you see that sort of one team collectivistic mindset in academic program development as well, where we're thinking about, okay, if we as a group are committed to like, let's say sustainability, and eventually kids being into bioinformatics, then what are we doing kindergarten, first grade, second grade, it doesn't always look like high tech stuff, but it feeds into it. So we have like a very, very, very robust gardening program in the Lower School, where kids are not engaging with robotics, but thinking very deeply about plants, and about genetics and about, you know, soil composition. And in conjunction with that, they're also going into the local streams, and using indigenous strategies for fishing, to fish out invasive species and count and track how many invasive fish species they're pulling out every year.

I look at it over time. And all of this stuff from kindergarten through sixth grade, then feeds into what they're able to do. And the Upper School is STEM is their passion. They have this whole background understanding of ecology and ecosystems in Hawaii by the time they get to the point where they're looking at DNA, right. So that kind of thoughtfulness has been put into multiple areas of our curriculum. And I really do appreciate that. And I think it comes from just a sense of collective responsibility, that if the school says, Oh, this is something we care about, people really circle around that and push it forward.

Christina Lewellen 29:28
And can you tell us a little bit about your thoughts on some of these emerging things? Like let's go to AI for a few minutes, what the school is doing to address that and tackle that.

Michael Lomuscio 29:40
I'm obsessed with AI. It's a problem. I'm a super super into it. And I think part of that harkens back to my childhood.

I feel like AI has the capacity to help people explore in a very powerful way. Anything they're curious about, and I know that There's a whole issue with like hallucinations and making sure you're using it well, and understanding how to check your sources and things like that.

But AI offers people an ability to have access to knowledge and skills that's unlike anything humans have had before. And so I am very, very interested in it at the moment, as a school, the way we're approaching it, I think is probably a little more cautious than how I'm personally approaching it. In my own life. In the same way, like when you're introducing, say, iPads to a school for the first time, there are a lot of feelings about it. And AI is so new, we don't know all of the benefits and all of the risks yet.

I think everybody is looking back at sort of social media and thinking we don't want to we don't want to repeat, like everything that went wrong with social media. So how do we cautiously step forward? ‘Iolani is definitely moving forward with AI, I would say that we're pretty progressive, at least in our state, but probably nationally, in believing that it is going to be part of the future of teaching and learning. But we're moving very slowly, very cautiously. And I hope thoughtfully, we have a lot of opportunities for faculty to engage with AI at their own pace.

For a while we were offering weekly AI thought partner sessions, where people could come in, we have some, you know, like the one percenters the people who are early adopters, who have been using it for everything in their lives. They have been volunteering to sort of talk to people about it onboard people. So we had like, weekly meetings for most of last year. And then we also had a bunch of summer workshops. And so we're offering people the opportunity.

The way that we described this year to folks is, this is kind of a year of grace, like, please, thoughtfully, engage, upskill experiment, try not to do anything super dangerous, but experiment with it and have fun. And I think we're seeing some of the fruit of that with some really creative use cases, for AI.

Christina Lewellen 31:59
What are some of the ways that you use it, like you said, you like it personally, what are some of the things that you tend to incorporate into your everyday life.

Michael Lomuscio 32:06
So I've incorporated it into my everyday life, just in terms of productivity, I think it's a great productivity tool, sorting through email. Like many school leaders, I get somewhere between 50 to 350 emails a day, and probably about a third of them are important, right and actually need to be responded to, there is an app that summarizes in like two lines, every single email in your inbox, and then helps you flag what's important, that has been a game changer in terms of personal productivity.

Having to write any formal documents you're getting a first draft very quickly has been helpful. But the things that I'm personally really excited about, again, go back to the ability to learn and experiment with things in new ways. So, you know, I'll give you two examples.

One, I was working with some physics teachers, and I was really curious, there's some physics equipment that helps you measure the gravitational constant on Earth, the equipment was somewhat expensive, we have other equipment that you can use, like, you know, in a physics classroom to do it. But there's some really expensive physics equipment that does this. So I was curious how AI would maybe help simulate the use of that equipment. And so I found essentially, like the manual that comes along with the equipment, if you purchase it said the manual to AI told it to imagine that, that I actually had that equipment, explained to it the setup that I wanted, and the configuration, told it what I had in the classroom, and then asked it to go ahead and pretend that the machine had run and give me the output. And it was really, really cool. It basically worked.

And so one of the use cases that I'm experimenting with right now is equipment that schools can't afford to have in science labs, AI seems to simulate pretty well, if you give it the instruction manuals for the equipment. And so schools could have access to simulated versions of multimillion dollar pieces of equipment that you would find at universities, and play around with them, including some of the DNA stuff.

Another use case is messing around with. I'm interested in AI itself. So I have an applied math background, I'm really interested in neural networks and how they work. But some of the coding for that stuff can get intense, right. And so what I found is the ability for AI to write and compile its own code. I've been able to create neural networks to do some analysis and predictive analysis on academic data on data that I found in my personal life to create neural networks that can identify handwriting. So you can use AI to create new AI tools, which is really crazy. So I think we're just starting to see the use cases right now.

If you like Google, like AI in education, most of what you see is you can talk to a person from history, right, like you can talk to Ben Franklin. And that's, that's cool. I'm not trying to lessen the importance of something like that. But I think we are just starting to see what some of the real use cases are.

Christina Lewellen 34:58
And what concerns you about AI being tapped into it the way that you are.

Michael Lomuscio 35:02
I think what concerns me about it is right now, it doesn't actually reason it doesn't have reasoning abilities.

There's a professor at Arizona State University who's doing a lot of research about this, he seems pretty salty about AI. But he studies planning. So he's like a professional planner, okay. And that's what he's like PhD is in, he thinks about organizational planning. And he has AI goes through all of these planning tasks, and it fails every one of them, at least so far. So AI looks like it's reasoning, but it's not reasoning.

And so what I'm noticing is to a person with deep knowledge in an area, AI becomes an asset, because it can produce very specialized things for you, like if you know something about a neural network, and you say, hey, create this kind of neural network for me, and here's some data and give me the output. It'll do it because you knew what to ask. But if you ask it to do something, that's nonsense. It'll still do something and give you back something that looks real. And so it feels to me like a dangerous tool, because it's not actually thinking. Right. But it gives you the the impression that it's thinking.

And it's not just a hallucination issue. It's an issue of fundamentally understanding that it's not an informational tool, it is a probability driven word predictor that happens to at large scale mimics human reasoning well. I think the thing that concerns me the most is just people's understanding of what it does and what it does not do.

Bill Stites 36:30
So Michael, to that point, I'm thinking about like, where do you get all the professional development? Where do you get all the knowledge on this? And how do you get that outside of just what you're doing?

And one of the sessions I was at recently about that question like, how do you ask the question to an AI service, to get what you need out of it, the example of your manual, you have to feed it in, you were very specific, you were able to give it the parameters exactly what you want it and it gets to, I see these people talking about, you know, prompt engineers are going to be like the next new job.

But I think about that, in simpler terms, in terms of what do we need to do as educators, to work with our colleagues and work with students to be able to understand how to leverage AI in a meaningful way, so you're not getting gibberish, or that it can be better reasoned, or thought through. And it really comes to this idea of prompt engineering.

And I think back to the early days of like, search engines, and you had to know how to carefully construct a search to really get what you want. So you weren't getting pages of nonsense, you had to really figure that out. And it seems like prompt engineering is one of those areas that if we can talk to people about how to ask AI, for what we want, and understand more about what we get back? And then how to evaluate that.

How do you see the professional development around AI and the work that you have to do with teachers and with students so that they can build and develop that understanding to really use it meaningful ways?

Michael Lomuscio 38:04
That's a great question. I mean, I think that's the million-dollar question right now. Right. But I'll give you some thoughts. I guess I have two thoughts.

One, one of the things I really appreciate about ATLIS right now is that you all have wonderful resources, I started looking for resources very early on, and a lot of the resources out there for teachers or schools to be thinking about AI. A lot of the resources were very half baked, but your community seems to have really come together and produce some high-quality stuff. So I'm not just saying that because I'm on this podcast, we use some of your stuff regularly. So thank you, I would say find the people who are doing good work and follow them. ATLIS being a very prominent one.

But then AI is so new, that I think you have to be cautious about purchasing professional development. Because if anyone comes to you and says, Oh, I'm an AI expert, like they're not.

Christina Lewellen
Absolutely, yep.

Michael Lomuscio
AI experts sound horrendously boring and math-y, probably like me, right? Because the only AI experts that are out there, they weren't thinking about education, they were thinking about like equations, right? So there are no educational AI experts that are lightyears ahead of the rest of us.

Christina Lewellen 39:16
Yeah, we're sort of figuring it all out together.

Bill Stites 39:18
We are. And that was one of the benefits. I think of the AI workshop that ATLIS ran prior to the last conference was that it gathered everyone together. And no one in the room was like the expert, but it was everything that you got from the people in the room that really advanced the understanding of it. And you brought in people that had maybe deeper understandings, but it was like everyone acknowledged that this is so new, there's no way to get around it.

Michael Lomuscio 39:45
Yeah, you know, Bill, something you said a moment ago. So one of the ways that I think about AI is I imagine that I have like, Junior year college student interns, and they're gonna produce okay stuff for me. It's like, I could give AI a task, and it's gonna come back. And it's gonna be like 80%, maybe what I wanted, it's going to be a little confused. But I think the best way to get experience, and what I feel like we're trying to be successful out here and hopefully are, is just get people to use it.

AI is kind of like a personality that's unlike other human personalities you've interacted with. And the only way I think, to get really, really good at it is to use it a whole lot. And that helps you build the intuition around what kinds of prompts will be useful, what kinds won't be, I think that's the way to go, just spend time with it. And you'll get a better understanding of how it works and the quality and what determines quality.

Bill Stites 40:40
So what's interesting, too, is I think, you know, you mentioned physics, and I think there are certain areas in schools that are really going to lean into this a little bit more, we have an in service day. And we're actually bringing Eric Hudson in to talk to some of our school leaders, but really to spend time with our English department to really talk through the use of AI and English, because anytime we go anywhere, it's you know, that's what you hear. It's like the plagiarism factor. It's like, how do we get around this, and you had mentioned earlier, you know, the idea of writing that first draft, I think back to when I taught writing at the third grade level where I don't know whether use AI with third graders just from a developmentally appropriate sense. But you know, where that comes in, like the writing process and how you develop that, and where that comes in.

And I think it's important to think about, okay, not everyone's an expert, but where can you bring people in to maybe address specific concerns that come up in specific departmental areas, were that inside voice, that voice that I might bring here at MKA versus the voice that I bring with me, when I work with ‘Iolani on things, you know, that voice is heard in different ways, because of the familiarity that you've got with that person, for better or worse.

And I think that's the same thing, when it comes to the way in which we move these things forward, you have easy time working with your math and science people, because they've got really concrete ways where they can see it and use it, and they're gonna listen to you on that. But in other areas where you're trying to sell it, because you're seen as the guy that's really into it, and really likes it, you know what I mean? It really wants to push it forward. While those people that might be the skeptics aren't going to maybe listen to you as closely as they might somebody who comes in and talks about it from the outside, because, you know, they don't see an agenda, they don't see something.

And so I think when we think about the way in which we engage in professional development, I think when when we think about the ways in which we work with our faculty move this forward, thinking about where the best resources going to come from, and leveraging that is really important, particularly in these early phases. And it sounds like you're doing a lot of great stuff there. So I commend you for that.

Christina Lewellen 42:45
And that actually, I think gives us a great pivot over to the work that ‘Iolani is doing in rethinking some of your courses, like maybe statistics, using some of these tools. So can you tell us a little bit about how you are rethinking courses in whole?

Michael Lomuscio 43:01
Yeah,well, I would say we're at the early stages of rethinking courses, but the conversations are happening, statistics is a good example. I think this is happening probably all over the place right now. But statistics, I love the subject, it's very, very, very relevant today, it's probably more useful for most people than taking precalculus or calculus.

Christina Lewellen 43:23
Is that your hot take? You're gonna get people riled up if you say that.

Michael Lomuscio 43:27
It is a hot take, but it's also true. Okay? The statistics people need, though, are also probably changing. So the traditional statistics class, you're talking about a lot of theory, right? You're learning a lot about like Gaussian distributions, and t distributions, and a lot of really important topics, but not things people are going to use. Now, especially with AI, people have the capacity to engage in pretty high level data science in high school.

And so I recently worked with a statistics class and actually did this at Rabun Gap too, before I moved on from there, but to teach the students how to use the programming language R, which is a statistical programming language, and use AI to help them write their our code to then analyze data. And what's cool is when you're using real data, so I taught statistics for a really long time. You know, you have like your TI calculator. And a textbook says here, like four data points, use these four data points and try to make some sort of inference about something that's totally unrealistic. In real life, you want 10s of 1000s of data points, and you want to really think deeply about the data. Well, current tools let you do that.

So we were able to scrape Airbnb data for like over 10,000 listings in New York City, for like the square footage, the cost, the number of rooms, the room type, and then have students do an in depth analysis of like, you know, these like 15,000 Airbnb listings, and then present their findings and using code and In AI, this was super, super possible.

And so I think re-envisioning statistics as a course, is super helpful. I also think that a similar thing could happen in a lot of different kinds of courses. It's not just statistics, like AI is given people skills that they did not have before. And so the more time you spend using AI, like Bill mentioned, and you get familiar with it, the more you can trust, your ability to judge if the skills are working correctly. But learning how to use AI to empower you with skills that you did not previously have, I think is a game changer.

Christina Lewellen 45:33
So Michael, one of the reasons that you're so comfortable, like this is incredible. And the information you're sharing is just so easy to mentally process and digest. So thank you. But I think one of the reasons you're so great at this is that you also have your own podcast. Tell us a little bit about your foray into podcasting? And what are some of the things that you talk about on your podcast?

Michael Lomuscio 45:53
Yeah, so when I was in grad school, when I was getting my doctorate in education, I really enjoyed being in that environment, talking to people about ideas, learning a lot, hearing other people's stories from their schools. And so when I was about to graduate, I thought, How do I keep this going? And so I thought, hey, a podcast, people will talk to me for an hour, just because they want to be on a podcast. And so I started reaching out to folks, and people were like, Yeah, I'll talk to you for an hour on a podcast.

The podcast is called Fullstack Educator. And it's focused on equipping new and aspiring independent school leaders. We just find people that I personally think would be really fun to talk to you. And then me and my co host, talk to them for an hour. That's the genesis of it.

Christina Lewellen 46:34
I mean, that's the making of any good podcast, I think right there. That's pretty much what we do to cool people and an hour of time. Do you have plans for the podcast? Is it still active people can go check out your old existing episodes. But what are some of the things that you're thinking about uncovering now,

Michael Lomuscio 46:52
We took a year off, primarily because I moved to Hawaii, and my co host also moved, but we are working on it another season. And a lot of it is actually right now, I think it'd be focused on ai, ai use in schools. And in particular, it seems like people in Australia and in the UAE are really all in on AI right now. So we're probably going to be talking to a lot of folks from those two locations, but then also independent schools in United States. So very AI focused at the moment.

Bill Stites 47:23
One of the last things I actually wanted to ask is along the lines of AI and the work that you and I have done together, meaning with ‘Iolani, around data, information systems, so on and so forth. Have you given any thought to how you might apply AI, to the collection of data that you've got, because I mean, given the process that you've been going through, at least that I've been working with you closely on over the last year thinking about the resources and the people that you have there the ability to get data out of those systems, I'll put my plug in for Steven right now if he listens to this. So you can know that I've mentioned him, but you know, getting data out of the systems and then applying it to make all those decisions. Have you started down that road of using AI to help you make better sense of what you have, so that you can make better informed decisions?

Michael Lomuscio 48:12
Yes, so it's something that I've been thinking about for a long time. But now that so for example, Chat GPT teams now that there are AI tools available that offer like data security, I think more of that as possible, right? I was concerned to even experiment for like the last year because I don't want to dump student data into any system that's going to take our data as part of its training set. But I think that is starting to be possible. So I do have ideas and plans for what we want to do in the future. Nothing I'm ready to probably publicly talk about yet. But I think there's a lot that can be done, especially, you know, talking about how easy it is to have Chat GPT create a neural network for you. Now that that kind of thing is so easy to do, I think you're going to see people with no background in machine learning or data science, able to create some really cool tools pretty soon, that help them view and make sense of all the data that they have in Veracross or Blackbaud or whatever system you're using.

Bill Stites 49:13
So to put in a subtle plug for one of our other episodes, we had Hudson Harper on the podcast a while ago. And when you begin to go down that road, he is doing some really great work some really good thought leadership around how you can leverage AI around the student data piece. So he'd be somebody that I would definitely look into. And he's very thoughtful in that regard.

Michael Lomuscio
Awesome.

Christina Lewellen 49:36
So Michael, what are some of the things that you think, Oh, we've talked a lot about AI, but what other trends and things are you watching in your role? Dean of studies, what are some of the things that you're looking at on the horizon? And what are some of the things that you're trying to either implement at your school or at least kind of thinking about making sure you keep your eye on the ball?

Michael Lomuscio 49:56
You know, like any school leader, I think there's like different kinds of stories of things that I'm watching in the tech world. I think the four categories I mentioned before, I don't know, I feel kind of like a crazy person.

When you talk about like quantum computing and AI, you can start to sound a little nuts, but…

Bill Stites
Skynet.

Michael Lomuscio
Yeah, totally. The average person, you say no, actually, I'm a little concerned that quantum computing might have a breakthrough the next 20 years, and we need to keep up with it. Most people don't know what you're talking about.

But I think quantum computing, AI, robotics, and synthetic biology are all things that independent schools need to be thinking about, because our students are often you know, entering into some of the top programs in the country. And those are the exponentially changing areas of technology at the moment.

Outside of that, I'm really curious about how like the Apple Vision augmented reality system, like, is that going to reignite some interest in augmented reality? What is that going to do? It's insanely expensive. So it's cost prohibitive at the moment. I'm interested in that in the tech area. But I think those are the big things in text that I'm I'm watching right now.

Christina Lewellen 51:09
So we started this podcast talking a little bit about our poor co-host not feeling very well, and how we sort of find wellness for ourselves. So now I'd like to put that question at you now that you've joined us. And as we wrap this up, what are some of the ways that you think about wellness for either yourself or your faculty? How do you stay healthy and happy and thinking these incredible thoughts for your students and for your community?

Michael Lomuscio 51:35
Oh, man, those three categories, you can talk a long time about each of those faculty, students and personal health.

For myself, I love to read. I've loved to read since I was kid, I spent a lot of time reading. And man, I wish I was like Bill and could workout at 5am. But I I can't do that I work out later in the day, but I enjoy hiking, being physically active. So I think like those things have been really key for me, especially through the pandemic and helping me stay sane.

In terms of faculty ‘Iolani, I think has a really special culture. I talked about like the one team culture, one Friday a month, we have what's called a “pau hana,” which is after work, everybody hangs out and eats food. It's a catered meal, it's really great. Like many schools, especially boarding schools, we have a pretty strong community around faculty showing up to you know, athletic events and shows to support their students. So we do all we can to continue to support that culture, which hopefully then results in faculty feeling healthy.

Christina Lewellen 52:36
Yeah, and you know, I don't mean to then bring the plane back up as I was trying to land it. But I will say that some faculty are missing the productivity hacks that AI can bring to their lives to bring more balance, and they're either resisting it or they're not quite experimenting with it. And so there might be a connection there. You know, and I think there is a connection there that if they can use some AI tools to be more efficient in the work they have to do, they could really put their energy not only in caring for themselves, but also investing more of what this special sauces that they bring to their students.

Well this was really great, Michael, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a really great conversation covering a lot of ground. And clearly, you have some really incredible things happening there, you are welcome back anytime to talk about them.

But in the meantime, if people are more interested in learning about your thoughts on these deep dive topics, you have a whole other podcast that they can go listen to, and we encourage them to go check that out. So we'll put all that information in the show notes. Thank you so much for getting up early. And for joining us today on the podcast. I really appreciate it.

Michael Lomuscio 53:41
Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure, Bill and Christina, thank you for your time. And thank you for the work you do at ATLIS and this podcast.

Christina Lewellen 53:49
You're very welcome.

Narrator 53:53
This has been Talking Technology with ATLIS produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools. For more information about ATLIS and ATLIS membership, please visit the atlis.org If you enjoyed this discussion, please subscribe, leave a review and share this podcast with your colleagues in the independent school community. Thank you for listening.