January 6, 2025 • 33 mins
In this episode, we dive into the world of artificial intelligence in education with Victor Lee, a Professor at Stanford University and a leading voice in AI research. Victor takes us on a journey through the myths and realities of AI in schools, from concerns about cheating to its potential as a teaching tool. Whether you're an educator or a parent, this conversation will provide clarity on how AI can empower both students and teachers. Tune in to learn how embracing AI, when used ethically, can open up new doors for personalized learning and future-ready classrooms.
Resources From this Episode:
- Stanford Accelerator for Learning: A platform for AI research and initiatives in education.
Website: acceleratelearning.stanford.edu - Teach AI: A partner group focused on teaching AI in schools and providing resources for districts and teachers.
Website: TeachAI.org - C.R.A.F.T. (Crafting Relevant, Authentic, Future-Facing Technology in Education): This is a project where educators co-develop short lessons that integrate AI into various subject areas. Website: Craft.stanford.edu
- Cheating in the age of generative AI: A high school survey study of cheating behaviors before and after the release of ChatGPT. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Welcome back to all of our listeners. Today, we're joined by Victor Li, a professor at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and Faculty Lead for the Stanford Accelerator for Learning's Initiative on A.I. and Education. Lee is coauthored multiple national reports for the National Research Council related to computing and data and education. His work has been featured in the New York Times, CNN forms Politico and other national media outlets. He has written and coauthored two books about the integration of technology at schools Needless to say, Victor is a big deal and I have no doubt that today's conversation will be insightful. Victor, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Matt. I have been looking forward to this conversation for quite some time now. I am so interested in the topic of artificial intelligence and specifically how it's being integrated in schools. But before we get into all of that good stuff, let's start by just having you tell us a little bit about your background and career. I'd love to hear how you first got introduced to AI and what sparked your interest in this field? Certainly. Well, what I think is an important background piece is to know that when I was in college, I was studying a field called Cognitive Science, and it was effectively the take on artificial intelligence that had developed following all of the work from the 1950s onward. And back at that time, they're having the debates on is it possible we could have something called a neural network that takes lots of data and could behave intelligently? And the consensus of the time was, no, not really. I mean, it's cute as a trick, but there just wasn't enough data. Anyway, fast forward a few decades and that has changed really dramatically. But as you can tell somebody who is studying topics related to cognition, read that as human learning and artificial intelligence, this has been near and dear to my heart ever since young adulthood. That career trajectory has taken me to Pitstops at Microsoft in after school tutoring education centers into graduate study, completed my doctorate at Northwestern University and then have been a professor of education and technology at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. And since 2019 at Stanford University, where I have been really focusing a lot on what I think are essential future facing digital competencies that all students will need, both as just part of a civic imperative and an economic imperative because the world is changing. And, you know, as the naysayers back in my undergraduate days said, neural networks and all this data stuff is just not feasible pathway that's changed and that's really part of our reality. And so a lot of my work is focused on research and design, which really means talking with students, talking with teachers, really systematically going over all that data and finding out what we can disseminate is useful knowledge for educators. I appreciate sharing about yourself, Victor, and like you said, I mean, the world has evolved significantly, you know, is such a multifaceted topic. I mean, at this point, I think A.I. affects about every person, whether you're using it for chat t googling something with Gemini or making up A.I. generated photos of your pet in a ballerina costume, word prediction, you name it. I think in some capacity everyone is utilizing A.I., whether they know it or not. And I think that's very fascinating. But I also recognize and know that some people find it frightening. overall, we just want to learn more about it. So thanks again for joining us today. Let's start with what are some of the current applications, A.I. being used in education? Well, I think part of that question about applications in education is going to depend on how broadly you view education. So you were mentioning, for example, the range of uses that are beyond just the chat bot technology that chatbot represents or the new pattern of ballerina costume images that we can render. However, you know, we're certainly seeing an interest in the chat CBT type technology, which would probably be chat bot generative AI, and that's the kind where you type something and you can have what feels like a very realistic conversation or a very skilled helper at producing text. And we're seeing also some movement towards really thinking about how to help teachers potentially streamline some of their work. There is a lot of repetitive writing, a lot of have they come up with many novel examples that are going to work well in the classroom for students. And so this is a way that teachers might be able to get back some of the time so they can get back to what it is that brought them into teaching, which is really working with students and really bringing the human touch. These other activities are important, but they've gotten really numerous in the past couple of decades. You know, the paperwork that teachers are doing is just, just astounding. So we are seeing places like Khan Academy, Magic School and others that are online services that are really focusing on helping teachers as another way to help students. In addition to that, you have tools like photo math that have been around that use computer vision and can help students see how math problem that they don't know how to start can be solved step by step. And there's a variety of other things that are popping up on the market, oftentimes with a tutoring type emphasis or a streamlined. The work type of emphasis. Yeah, you know, actually in Jeffco, within my division, we're starting to think about how we might utilize A.I., like you said, to streamline and create efficiencies for educators so that they can maximize the time spent with students rather than focused on, you know, administrative burdens like writing lesson plans and things of that nature, which are critically important, but something that takes a significant amount of time. So shifting over to the student focus, how have you seen some of these tools like enhance their learning experience? You've kind of touched a little bit on this notion of personalized learning. Can you expand on that a little bit? Certainly. You know, personalized learning is something that has been kind of a golden goose that we've been chasing for education in education technology, with the idea that students come in with different backgrounds, interests, prior knowledge, and that students can be at different places with respect to the material, in terms of the the progress that they're making, how well they understand different content. And the idea that I could help to amplify the ability to differentiate for students and that can take the form of adjusting the content of the curriculum to whatever is the appropriate next challenge for the student or making the content more relatable or more relevant You may have students who are at different places with their English proficiency. You may have students who don't know certain references to experiences or topics, but could certainly get a good grasp on the idea that the class is engaging with if it's represented in another way. So personalized learning basically speaks to any of the ways that we can really honor the uniqueness of a individual student and adjust the content and still aim for the ambitious learning. But make sure that it's really building on what students know and helping them get to the destination in a way that's familiar and comfortable. Very interesting. So since A.I. has come out, it sparked plenty of debate. Are you are you seeing or hearing about students using it to cheat? Are we adopting it too quickly before fully understanding its impact? Is it collecting data? You know, these are the types of questions that frequently come up in conversations with parents and community members that they're most concerned about. What's your what's your take on that? These are all valid concerns because the leap that we've seen in broad availability of AI and what some of the AI capabilities are since 2022 when Chatty Betty had gone out for public release is really substantial. I mean, it is a non-trivial jump forward. And when there's a big change, we can be a bit wary and we may have a lot of questions. And that's that's completely normal. There are a few things that I would caution with respect to how we react to that, and I'll speak to in a second how that relates to some of these education specific things. But for one is that when we think, oh, my goodness, A.I., artificial intelligence, what does that look like? What is this next powerful version going to look like? And unfortunately, we get images like The Terminator or something like that that makes it seem like the robots are going to come and get us. And to some extent, the hype of that is really good clickbait. But there is not going to be a robot overlord or a takeover, nor a 17th living being talking to you via AI. It is a amazing magic trick. It is a illusion that keeps on giving, but it is ultimately an illusion. But it's just the same way that we would have thought. There's no way anybody could have gotten information from any source besides going to a book and going to the library. And then the Internet, you know, blossomed. And now we can get information from the library and also from the broader world in digital form and a whole bunch of digital forms. And and that's effectively what we're looking at. So I would caution in thinking AI is going to replace teachers, I'm going to caution against thinking that AI is going to turn us into the heavy, uninvolved humans in the Wall-E, Disney, Pixar world instead. But some of the questions are, Oh, have we adopted this too quickly? Is this going to be a major privacy risk? Is this students cheating? Let me speak to the cheating part first. And this has been and it continues to be an active research area. Few distinctions going to make is that there's certainly cheating that's going on, but cheating has been going on for as long as cheating research has been done and it's really high and has been persistently high. So going back into the eighties and onward, it's consistently from like 70 to 80% of high school students, regardless of where in the United States you're sampling, have engaged in cheating in the prior month. And that's a really robust finding. So that's even before we were worried about artificial intelligence in schools. And now what people are really worried about, especially with things like chat CBT, is that, hey, it can write my essay or give the short answer response to the homework question and just get copied and pasted into whatever it is that you're supposed to submit. And so in the research that we've done and are continuing, the question is, are we seeing students do blatant plagiarism at a higher rate now than what has been done prior to the release of CBT? And what we're seeing is it's staying about the same on the blade and copy paste. So you're seeing that students who likely would have copied it from Wikipedia and pasted it are now switching to copying it from A.I. and pasting it. there is also a really dramatic discrepancy in how teachers view what is cheating and what students view what is cheating. And students are finding really creative ways to use generative AI and chat bot technology. To help them with their work, but stopped short of doing their work fully for them. So sometimes they don't understand what a question or reading passage is telling them in their textbook or from an assignment. And they're getting more clear explanations for what it is that is being asked of them. Sometimes they don't understand the feedback or recommendations a teacher is giving and are asking for examples from the generative eye for what does that look like? So that way they know what it is that they're supposed to do. Sometimes they're asking it to generate practice quizzes for them to go over some of the content in preparation for the test so that they're not using the AI during the test, but they're using the AI and a lot of preparation for it. Now, there's a good segment of those that teachers feel very uncomfortable with and they would consider to be cheating, and the students don't consider that to be cheating. And so ultimately, that means there needs to be a real conversation and clear communications about what are responsible uses and what are the learning goals for any given activity and why. And with respect to things such as too rapid of adoption, I've tended to see the opposite right now for schools and school districts. And so by and large, schools have been doing a minimal policy just saying we'll treat it like any other digital aid or just don't use it or ask your teacher and they'll make their decision on that. But the teachers themselves aren't completely sure what their schools are, districts policies are, or how they themselves should feel about it, since it's a new technology to them as well. So I don't think it's been too rapid of an adoption, but I do think that there has been an uptake and a lot of overt ways from students and this is an important opportunity for us to respond to a number of the questions that are emerging that students have about what's okay to use, what's not okay to use, what should I be careful about? How much can I trust the information that comes out of I? And this is something that while I know schools are incredibly busy, that we're going to need to create some time and space for and create the conditions so that schools and districts have the time and space for thinking about that. I do think that, you know, there's going to be some push for some common sense type of regulations. However, it's going to still raise a lot of questions. So we might say, okay, well, we just want to make sure that we're protecting students private information. But that's going to start to get really messy when you get down to various details, such as things that are covered by fur or things that may have just never been thought to be information that would be recorded or used. And how do we do that? Well, Victor, that you know, this is all very interesting. You know, currently in Jeffco Public Schools, we have what's called an academic leadership team. And as an academic leadership team, we've been really trying to narrow in our vision for what I and the air landscape is going to look like here and Jeffco. And right now, we're very much committed to leveraging it as an innovative technology that facilitates an extraordinary student experience and outcomes for all kids. And we truly believe that air presents an opportunity to responsibly transform our president, to prepare students for their future. And where we've gone with that vision is really started to identify what is it that we believe AI is and isn't. So, for example, we believe that the eye should help. You think not think for you. It's a tool. It's not a replacement in terms of critical thinking, so on and so forth. But it can certainly enhance those skills. And then, you know, we're also diving into, you know, how do we use A.I. in an ethical, inclusive way with integrity, right? We want our students to see the benefit of the tool and not it and not use it in a way that is harmful in any way to themselves or to others. You know, we're really trying to think through what might we need to teach students that they're good stewards of the eye tools that they choose to use. Right. So they're 100% responsible for their final product. Right. We know that sometimes the accuracy, originality or even integrity of the content that generative A.I., for example, produces, isn't always accurate and original and so on and so forth. So how do we really teach kids to be good digital citizens, for lack of a better description? And then we certainly have outside of the alty, we have kind of a broader stakeholder group that's giving us input along the way, which includes some of our parents, some of our students so on and so forth. We know that students and our teachers are already utilizing this technology in the classroom. We want to ensure that we're taking a more standardized approach across the board so that we're doing that in safe and productive ways that benefit kids and also our community. So I don't know, Victor, if you have any advice for us, if we're on the right track. Certainly this is new to us. We've not been down this path before, but we're very interested in it. So what have you seen? What would you advise us on? And I'll just let you pick it up from there. Yeah, it's really exciting, Matt, to hear about the refreshing approach that Jeffco is taking towards this and thinking ambitiously and future facing, but also trying to approach this with appropriate caution and wisdom in terms of how to use it. So some of the things that you described are key values that you want to make sure are instilled in all Jeffco students with respect to A.I.. And, you know, this is something that you can think about as schools actually have a lot of tools at their disposal in terms of how to promote certain dispositions or values. And this is exists in various programs outside of AI, but this can involve making really consistent messages and signage about, you know, what is the expectation for how accountable we are for our different products and materials, how we see ourselves as ultimately responsible for the work that comes out or, you know, simple slogans like Think twice when you use A.I. and to think twice is really about think twice about what's the content. That is generating, of course, with something like that. You also want to think about accompanying it with tools for teachers to introduce into their classrooms. Like what are the two questions or the three questions that you always want to ask until it becomes automatic? When you start using A.I. or evaluating its output, for example, you know, part of the educational effort around digital literacy in social media education is to look at click restraint and lateral reading. Meaning if you see something that sounds a bit out there, pop open one or two more tabs and look up some additional information and know what are the actual trusted sources to help you vet that as opposed to just saying click share on whatever it is that you see. It's those sorts of strategies that we can see and imagine would be really valuable for how we think about students using AI that we can get them to think about. You could look at it just in the same way as when we teach our young children to look both ways before crossing the street to the point that it just becomes automatic. And that's the same kind of approach and the same simplicity, I think, that you can encourage, but it does need to be a consistent, widespread effort. And there are ways that this is done in really explicit ways and some that are a bit more tacit. I do think that this is something that needs to be represented across all disciplines and subject areas and grade levels and school types, because it's very easy to feel like this is compartmentalized as technology and future staff and it doesn't really relate to me if I just want to go study social studies or it doesn't really relate to me if I privacy concerns don't relate to me, if I just mostly want to focus on PE or my professional sports. When there are privacy concerns in our society with data that could come from some of the technologies that are used there. So, you know, I'd say making sure that all the subject areas and subject area specialists are equipped to have thoughtful conversations as these relate to the things that they're trying to teach is going to be really important. I also really like just how much you're thinking about the parents in the community, as well as the students and staff, and opening up conversations, having leadership teams or task forces meet that can really clearly and openly engage with the many stakeholders to hear about their concerns and to figure out what are the bits of information that are going to be most helpful to get out to the community based on where everyone's understanding is is going to be really important as well. So, you know, I commend you on having the directional aim and some of the initial first steps. You know, something you said earlier that I want to circle back to you had said that A.I. is not going to replace teachers. And I actually was at a conference a while back where someone said something similar and they added to that line. They said, I won't replace teachers. It will replace teachers who don't use A.I.. So I'm curious to know your thoughts on that. And then what might be one piece of advice that you can give educators on integrating A.I. tools into their teaching practices, whether they're a brand new teacher or a teacher who's been in the field for 20 plus years? Yeah, it's been a common refrain that, you know, the use of AI, the ability to use A.I., is going to be so essential that if you don't catch up with it some, you're not going to be current and able to offer the same things to whoever is your client or patron or community that you're serving. So with, you know, teachers who know how to use AI, replacing teachers who don't, in some respects that may just end up being a demographic thing with time happening. But, you know, I think the real message is it's a value to learn a bit about how can you advance some of the work or stay up to date just as much as all we hope our professional development programs will do for teachers regardless. So we think about, you know, some practical advice for a new teacher that's coming in to work at Jeffco or somebody who's been teaching for quite a long time. I do want to say that the education system in terms of human history is really a relatively new invention. It's only a few hundred years old, and humans have been around for much longer than a few hundred years. And we have been teaching and learning really well to survive and thrive during that time. And the reason why I mention that is we have good senses of what really good teaching looks like and good teaching with air being present is still good teaching and we know how to do good teaching. It means focusing on the learning goals. It means. Speaking about where students are coming from and where are the connections and where they will need to go next will involve thinking about thoughtful, useful assessment that gives good information in there. And so, you know, as I feels like it's changing everything in the world. The core of good teaching and good teaching practice is still the core of the teaching. And good teaching practice is just that I is introducing some additional tools to use. But just as much as new tools don't replace a outstanding craftsperson, it just helps them to do their work in new ways or with some additional precision. That's that's what we want to be looking at here. So don't feel discouraged or overwhelmed as part of your life as this large worldwide change. But there's been so many that you can even look at in your own life span, whether it was social media, Internet, you know, mass transit or various forms of connectivity that that we've had. So it's just to be part of that and just. Stick to your guns with respect to the things that we know are really important and and that make for a good teaching learning interaction. Well said, Victor. you mentioned teachers in all subjects should talk about A.I. where what teachers start in doing that. That's a great question, Matt. You know, teachers have a lot of different things they have to think about in terms of what a day to day lesson is going to be in their classroom. And a lot of it is going to be subject specific. And if I is going to be subject specific, we want to make sure teachers can find things easily. And so I'll talk about one of the projects I'm doing, but I'm seeing a lot more places across the country I started to follow. This is to build out a short lesson in resources that are really situated in the subject matter. So my particular project is called Craft Craft. So craft short stand for Edu. And what we do is we work with teachers across the country to co-develop short lessons such as how is AI being used in medicine, which may be really applicable to the human biology class or you know, is I the new industrial revolution, which can be a one or two day add on to the Industrial Revolution. The unit is part of U.S. history. And so what's been exciting for that is for us to see ourselves the really cool overlaps that exist in these subjects, but for teachers to be able to go and find things that other teachers had helped to make that, you know, could be done in half of a lesson or brought in just on that Friday before Thanksgiving or the, you know, two days before spring break as kind of a fun current lead in to show what does this subject have to do with the things that we're learning about in this class? And it's awesome. And Victor, did I understand you earlier that these resources are readily accessible and free to anyone who might want to explore them further? Absolutely. You know, we are completely nonprofit in this respect. It is a freely available go to craft art, Stanford, Edu. And we know a lot of teachers prefer to have Google Docs and slides that they can copy and modify on their own. So we keep it in those forms so completely free we want to keep it absolutely that way. Knowledge is power and we're giving it out for free. Awesome. And close us out. You know, do you have any final thoughts before we go? And where could people find out more information or what are some resources for our audience, whether those are our families or students or educators or leaders within our organization? Yeah. You know, one thought I'd say in terms of facing the future and one of the privileges of being able to be at Stanford University and get to talk with folks like yourself, Matt, and to be able to go to many places in the country is to also chart out where where we could go next in an exciting way. And right now, I has been really focused on tutoring and efficiency. And what it hasn't focused on is, in my mind, some of the fun stuff. Being creative. Making something neat and cool. Showing things in wildly interesting new ways. And we have a chance to have a renaissance there. And so at Stanford, we're really emphasizing that by pushing new initiatives and convenings and getting the conversation to shift so that it's not strictly tutoring centric, but rather also what new capabilities, what amazing future author or creator can we help to develop and make the tools work? Because that's a big part of powerful learning as well. For anyone who is curious about the developments that are happening in AI, especially as they relate to education, please do feel free to look at the work that we do at the Stanford Accelerator for learning, which is accelerate learning dot Stanford dot edu. And another great resource that exists is Teach AI Dawg, and that is a more Thai partner group that is really focused on how can we think about teaching with and about AI in schools and bringing together a lot of stakeholders, helping to put together guides for districts and for teachers, and to point out to resources of good quality that are freely available on the Internet. So those would be two that I'd recommend, starting with I'd say, look to the trusted entities that have been thinking about this for a long time and who have real professional experience at the intersection of education and technology to get the information that you want and ask questions, you know, to the best information comes from the answers you get when you ask the questions that you genuinely have. And it can be about whether A.I. is going to take over all of humanity or if it's going to end up being just a handy recommender tool for all things that we will laugh at at times and find super useful at other times. Victor, this has been an awesome conversation. You've been awesome. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk about this particular topic with me. I know I benefited from it and I have no doubt our audience will as well. So thank you so much for being on our show today. Thanks for having me, Matt. Thanks all listeners out there, you know, stay involved in this education system in Jeffco. I think there's really good things that we can make happen.
Welcome back to all of our listeners. Today, we're joined by Victor Li, a professor at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University and Faculty Lead for the Stanford Accelerator for Learning's Initiative on A.I. and Education. Lee is coauthored multiple national reports for the National Research Council related to computing and data and education. His work has been featured in the New York Times, CNN forms Politico and other national media outlets. He has written and coauthored two books about the integration of technology at schools Needless to say, Victor is a big deal and I have no doubt that today's conversation will be insightful. Victor, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Matt. I have been looking forward to this conversation for quite some time now. I am so interested in the topic of artificial intelligence and specifically how it's being integrated in schools. But before we get into all of that good stuff, let's start by just having you tell us a little bit about your background and career. I'd love to hear how you first got introduced to AI and what sparked your interest in this field? Certainly. Well, what I think is an important background piece is to know that when I was in college, I was studying a field called Cognitive Science, and it was effectively the take on artificial intelligence that had developed following all of the work from the 1950s onward. And back at that time, they're having the debates on is it possible we could have something called a neural network that takes lots of data and could behave intelligently? And the consensus of the time was, no, not really. I mean, it's cute as a trick, but there just wasn't enough data. Anyway, fast forward a few decades and that has changed really dramatically. But as you can tell somebody who is studying topics related to cognition, read that as human learning and artificial intelligence, this has been near and dear to my heart ever since young adulthood. That career trajectory has taken me to Pitstops at Microsoft in after school tutoring education centers into graduate study, completed my doctorate at Northwestern University and then have been a professor of education and technology at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. And since 2019 at Stanford University, where I have been really focusing a lot on what I think are essential future facing digital competencies that all students will need, both as just part of a civic imperative and an economic imperative because the world is changing. And, you know, as the naysayers back in my undergraduate days said, neural networks and all this data stuff is just not feasible pathway that's changed and that's really part of our reality. And so a lot of my work is focused on research and design, which really means talking with students, talking with teachers, really systematically going over all that data and finding out what we can disseminate is useful knowledge for educators. I appreciate sharing about yourself, Victor, and like you said, I mean, the world has evolved significantly, you know, is such a multifaceted topic. I mean, at this point, I think A.I. affects about every person, whether you're using it for chat t googling something with Gemini or making up A.I. generated photos of your pet in a ballerina costume, word prediction, you name it. I think in some capacity everyone is utilizing A.I., whether they know it or not. And I think that's very fascinating. But I also recognize and know that some people find it frightening. overall, we just want to learn more about it. So thanks again for joining us today. Let's start with what are some of the current applications, A.I. being used in education? Well, I think part of that question about applications in education is going to depend on how broadly you view education. So you were mentioning, for example, the range of uses that are beyond just the chat bot technology that chatbot represents or the new pattern of ballerina costume images that we can render. However, you know, we're certainly seeing an interest in the chat CBT type technology, which would probably be chat bot generative AI, and that's the kind where you type something and you can have what feels like a very realistic conversation or a very skilled helper at producing text. And we're seeing also some movement towards really thinking about how to help teachers potentially streamline some of their work. There is a lot of repetitive writing, a lot of have they come up with many novel examples that are going to work well in the classroom for students. And so this is a way that teachers might be able to get back some of the time so they can get back to what it is that brought them into teaching, which is really working with students and really bringing the human touch. These other activities are important, but they've gotten really numerous in the past couple of decades. You know, the paperwork that teachers are doing is just, just astounding. So we are seeing places like Khan Academy, Magic School and others that are online services that are really focusing on helping teachers as another way to help students. In addition to that, you have tools like photo math that have been around that use computer vision and can help students see how math problem that they don't know how to start can be solved step by step. And there's a variety of other things that are popping up on the market, oftentimes with a tutoring type emphasis or a streamlined. The work type of emphasis. Yeah, you know, actually in Jeffco, within my division, we're starting to think about how we might utilize A.I., like you said, to streamline and create efficiencies for educators so that they can maximize the time spent with students rather than focused on, you know, administrative burdens like writing lesson plans and things of that nature, which are critically important, but something that takes a significant amount of time. So shifting over to the student focus, how have you seen some of these tools like enhance their learning experience? You've kind of touched a little bit on this notion of personalized learning. Can you expand on that a little bit? Certainly. You know, personalized learning is something that has been kind of a golden goose that we've been chasing for education in education technology, with the idea that students come in with different backgrounds, interests, prior knowledge, and that students can be at different places with respect to the material, in terms of the the progress that they're making, how well they understand different content. And the idea that I could help to amplify the ability to differentiate for students and that can take the form of adjusting the content of the curriculum to whatever is the appropriate next challenge for the student or making the content more relatable or more relevant You may have students who are at different places with their English proficiency. You may have students who don't know certain references to experiences or topics, but could certainly get a good grasp on the idea that the class is engaging with if it's represented in another way. So personalized learning basically speaks to any of the ways that we can really honor the uniqueness of a individual student and adjust the content and still aim for the ambitious learning. But make sure that it's really building on what students know and helping them get to the destination in a way that's familiar and comfortable. Very interesting. So since A.I. has come out, it sparked plenty of debate. Are you are you seeing or hearing about students using it to cheat? Are we adopting it too quickly before fully understanding its impact? Is it collecting data? You know, these are the types of questions that frequently come up in conversations with parents and community members that they're most concerned about. What's your what's your take on that? These are all valid concerns because the leap that we've seen in broad availability of AI and what some of the AI capabilities are since 2022 when Chatty Betty had gone out for public release is really substantial. I mean, it is a non-trivial jump forward. And when there's a big change, we can be a bit wary and we may have a lot of questions. And that's that's completely normal. There are a few things that I would caution with respect to how we react to that, and I'll speak to in a second how that relates to some of these education specific things. But for one is that when we think, oh, my goodness, A.I., artificial intelligence, what does that look like? What is this next powerful version going to look like? And unfortunately, we get images like The Terminator or something like that that makes it seem like the robots are going to come and get us. And to some extent, the hype of that is really good clickbait. But there is not going to be a robot overlord or a takeover, nor a 17th living being talking to you via AI. It is a amazing magic trick. It is a illusion that keeps on giving, but it is ultimately an illusion. But it's just the same way that we would have thought. There's no way anybody could have gotten information from any source besides going to a book and going to the library. And then the Internet, you know, blossomed. And now we can get information from the library and also from the broader world in digital form and a whole bunch of digital forms. And and that's effectively what we're looking at. So I would caution in thinking AI is going to replace teachers, I'm going to caution against thinking that AI is going to turn us into the heavy, uninvolved humans in the Wall-E, Disney, Pixar world instead. But some of the questions are, Oh, have we adopted this too quickly? Is this going to be a major privacy risk? Is this students cheating? Let me speak to the cheating part first. And this has been and it continues to be an active research area. Few distinctions going to make is that there's certainly cheating that's going on, but cheating has been going on for as long as cheating research has been done and it's really high and has been persistently high. So going back into the eighties and onward, it's consistently from like 70 to 80% of high school students, regardless of where in the United States you're sampling, have engaged in cheating in the prior month. And that's a really robust finding. So that's even before we were worried about artificial intelligence in schools. And now what people are really worried about, especially with things like chat CBT, is that, hey, it can write my essay or give the short answer response to the homework question and just get copied and pasted into whatever it is that you're supposed to submit. And so in the research that we've done and are continuing, the question is, are we seeing students do blatant plagiarism at a higher rate now than what has been done prior to the release of CBT? And what we're seeing is it's staying about the same on the blade and copy paste. So you're seeing that students who likely would have copied it from Wikipedia and pasted it are now switching to copying it from A.I. and pasting it. there is also a really dramatic discrepancy in how teachers view what is cheating and what students view what is cheating. And students are finding really creative ways to use generative AI and chat bot technology. To help them with their work, but stopped short of doing their work fully for them. So sometimes they don't understand what a question or reading passage is telling them in their textbook or from an assignment. And they're getting more clear explanations for what it is that is being asked of them. Sometimes they don't understand the feedback or recommendations a teacher is giving and are asking for examples from the generative eye for what does that look like? So that way they know what it is that they're supposed to do. Sometimes they're asking it to generate practice quizzes for them to go over some of the content in preparation for the test so that they're not using the AI during the test, but they're using the AI and a lot of preparation for it. Now, there's a good segment of those that teachers feel very uncomfortable with and they would consider to be cheating, and the students don't consider that to be cheating. And so ultimately, that means there needs to be a real conversation and clear communications about what are responsible uses and what are the learning goals for any given activity and why. And with respect to things such as too rapid of adoption, I've tended to see the opposite right now for schools and school districts. And so by and large, schools have been doing a minimal policy just saying we'll treat it like any other digital aid or just don't use it or ask your teacher and they'll make their decision on that. But the teachers themselves aren't completely sure what their schools are, districts policies are, or how they themselves should feel about it, since it's a new technology to them as well. So I don't think it's been too rapid of an adoption, but I do think that there has been an uptake and a lot of overt ways from students and this is an important opportunity for us to respond to a number of the questions that are emerging that students have about what's okay to use, what's not okay to use, what should I be careful about? How much can I trust the information that comes out of I? And this is something that while I know schools are incredibly busy, that we're going to need to create some time and space for and create the conditions so that schools and districts have the time and space for thinking about that. I do think that, you know, there's going to be some push for some common sense type of regulations. However, it's going to still raise a lot of questions. So we might say, okay, well, we just want to make sure that we're protecting students private information. But that's going to start to get really messy when you get down to various details, such as things that are covered by fur or things that may have just never been thought to be information that would be recorded or used. And how do we do that? Well, Victor, that you know, this is all very interesting. You know, currently in Jeffco Public Schools, we have what's called an academic leadership team. And as an academic leadership team, we've been really trying to narrow in our vision for what I and the air landscape is going to look like here and Jeffco. And right now, we're very much committed to leveraging it as an innovative technology that facilitates an extraordinary student experience and outcomes for all kids. And we truly believe that air presents an opportunity to responsibly transform our president, to prepare students for their future. And where we've gone with that vision is really started to identify what is it that we believe AI is and isn't. So, for example, we believe that the eye should help. You think not think for you. It's a tool. It's not a replacement in terms of critical thinking, so on and so forth. But it can certainly enhance those skills. And then, you know, we're also diving into, you know, how do we use A.I. in an ethical, inclusive way with integrity, right? We want our students to see the benefit of the tool and not it and not use it in a way that is harmful in any way to themselves or to others. You know, we're really trying to think through what might we need to teach students that they're good stewards of the eye tools that they choose to use. Right. So they're 100% responsible for their final product. Right. We know that sometimes the accuracy, originality or even integrity of the content that generative A.I., for example, produces, isn't always accurate and original and so on and so forth. So how do we really teach kids to be good digital citizens, for lack of a better description? And then we certainly have outside of the alty, we have kind of a broader stakeholder group that's giving us input along the way, which includes some of our parents, some of our students so on and so forth. We know that students and our teachers are already utilizing this technology in the classroom. We want to ensure that we're taking a more standardized approach across the board so that we're doing that in safe and productive ways that benefit kids and also our community. So I don't know, Victor, if you have any advice for us, if we're on the right track. Certainly this is new to us. We've not been down this path before, but we're very interested in it. So what have you seen? What would you advise us on? And I'll just let you pick it up from there. Yeah, it's really exciting, Matt, to hear about the refreshing approach that Jeffco is taking towards this and thinking ambitiously and future facing, but also trying to approach this with appropriate caution and wisdom in terms of how to use it. So some of the things that you described are key values that you want to make sure are instilled in all Jeffco students with respect to A.I.. And, you know, this is something that you can think about as schools actually have a lot of tools at their disposal in terms of how to promote certain dispositions or values. And this is exists in various programs outside of AI, but this can involve making really consistent messages and signage about, you know, what is the expectation for how accountable we are for our different products and materials, how we see ourselves as ultimately responsible for the work that comes out or, you know, simple slogans like Think twice when you use A.I. and to think twice is really about think twice about what's the content. That is generating, of course, with something like that. You also want to think about accompanying it with tools for teachers to introduce into their classrooms. Like what are the two questions or the three questions that you always want to ask until it becomes automatic? When you start using A.I. or evaluating its output, for example, you know, part of the educational effort around digital literacy in social media education is to look at click restraint and lateral reading. Meaning if you see something that sounds a bit out there, pop open one or two more tabs and look up some additional information and know what are the actual trusted sources to help you vet that as opposed to just saying click share on whatever it is that you see. It's those sorts of strategies that we can see and imagine would be really valuable for how we think about students using AI that we can get them to think about. You could look at it just in the same way as when we teach our young children to look both ways before crossing the street to the point that it just becomes automatic. And that's the same kind of approach and the same simplicity, I think, that you can encourage, but it does need to be a consistent, widespread effort. And there are ways that this is done in really explicit ways and some that are a bit more tacit. I do think that this is something that needs to be represented across all disciplines and subject areas and grade levels and school types, because it's very easy to feel like this is compartmentalized as technology and future staff and it doesn't really relate to me if I just want to go study social studies or it doesn't really relate to me if I privacy concerns don't relate to me, if I just mostly want to focus on PE or my professional sports. When there are privacy concerns in our society with data that could come from some of the technologies that are used there. So, you know, I'd say making sure that all the subject areas and subject area specialists are equipped to have thoughtful conversations as these relate to the things that they're trying to teach is going to be really important. I also really like just how much you're thinking about the parents in the community, as well as the students and staff, and opening up conversations, having leadership teams or task forces meet that can really clearly and openly engage with the many stakeholders to hear about their concerns and to figure out what are the bits of information that are going to be most helpful to get out to the community based on where everyone's understanding is is going to be really important as well. So, you know, I commend you on having the directional aim and some of the initial first steps. You know, something you said earlier that I want to circle back to you had said that A.I. is not going to replace teachers. And I actually was at a conference a while back where someone said something similar and they added to that line. They said, I won't replace teachers. It will replace teachers who don't use A.I.. So I'm curious to know your thoughts on that. And then what might be one piece of advice that you can give educators on integrating A.I. tools into their teaching practices, whether they're a brand new teacher or a teacher who's been in the field for 20 plus years? Yeah, it's been a common refrain that, you know, the use of AI, the ability to use A.I., is going to be so essential that if you don't catch up with it some, you're not going to be current and able to offer the same things to whoever is your client or patron or community that you're serving. So with, you know, teachers who know how to use AI, replacing teachers who don't, in some respects that may just end up being a demographic thing with time happening. But, you know, I think the real message is it's a value to learn a bit about how can you advance some of the work or stay up to date just as much as all we hope our professional development programs will do for teachers regardless. So we think about, you know, some practical advice for a new teacher that's coming in to work at Jeffco or somebody who's been teaching for quite a long time. I do want to say that the education system in terms of human history is really a relatively new invention. It's only a few hundred years old, and humans have been around for much longer than a few hundred years. And we have been teaching and learning really well to survive and thrive during that time. And the reason why I mention that is we have good senses of what really good teaching looks like and good teaching with air being present is still good teaching and we know how to do good teaching. It means focusing on the learning goals. It means. Speaking about where students are coming from and where are the connections and where they will need to go next will involve thinking about thoughtful, useful assessment that gives good information in there. And so, you know, as I feels like it's changing everything in the world. The core of good teaching and good teaching practice is still the core of the teaching. And good teaching practice is just that I is introducing some additional tools to use. But just as much as new tools don't replace a outstanding craftsperson, it just helps them to do their work in new ways or with some additional precision. That's that's what we want to be looking at here. So don't feel discouraged or overwhelmed as part of your life as this large worldwide change. But there's been so many that you can even look at in your own life span, whether it was social media, Internet, you know, mass transit or various forms of connectivity that that we've had. So it's just to be part of that and just. Stick to your guns with respect to the things that we know are really important and and that make for a good teaching learning interaction. Well said, Victor. you mentioned teachers in all subjects should talk about A.I. where what teachers start in doing that. That's a great question, Matt. You know, teachers have a lot of different things they have to think about in terms of what a day to day lesson is going to be in their classroom. And a lot of it is going to be subject specific. And if I is going to be subject specific, we want to make sure teachers can find things easily. And so I'll talk about one of the projects I'm doing, but I'm seeing a lot more places across the country I started to follow. This is to build out a short lesson in resources that are really situated in the subject matter. So my particular project is called Craft Craft. So craft short stand for Edu. And what we do is we work with teachers across the country to co-develop short lessons such as how is AI being used in medicine, which may be really applicable to the human biology class or you know, is I the new industrial revolution, which can be a one or two day add on to the Industrial Revolution. The unit is part of U.S. history. And so what's been exciting for that is for us to see ourselves the really cool overlaps that exist in these subjects, but for teachers to be able to go and find things that other teachers had helped to make that, you know, could be done in half of a lesson or brought in just on that Friday before Thanksgiving or the, you know, two days before spring break as kind of a fun current lead in to show what does this subject have to do with the things that we're learning about in this class? And it's awesome. And Victor, did I understand you earlier that these resources are readily accessible and free to anyone who might want to explore them further? Absolutely. You know, we are completely nonprofit in this respect. It is a freely available go to craft art, Stanford, Edu. And we know a lot of teachers prefer to have Google Docs and slides that they can copy and modify on their own. So we keep it in those forms so completely free we want to keep it absolutely that way. Knowledge is power and we're giving it out for free. Awesome. And close us out. You know, do you have any final thoughts before we go? And where could people find out more information or what are some resources for our audience, whether those are our families or students or educators or leaders within our organization? Yeah. You know, one thought I'd say in terms of facing the future and one of the privileges of being able to be at Stanford University and get to talk with folks like yourself, Matt, and to be able to go to many places in the country is to also chart out where where we could go next in an exciting way. And right now, I has been really focused on tutoring and efficiency. And what it hasn't focused on is, in my mind, some of the fun stuff. Being creative. Making something neat and cool. Showing things in wildly interesting new ways. And we have a chance to have a renaissance there. And so at Stanford, we're really emphasizing that by pushing new initiatives and convenings and getting the conversation to shift so that it's not strictly tutoring centric, but rather also what new capabilities, what amazing future author or creator can we help to develop and make the tools work? Because that's a big part of powerful learning as well. For anyone who is curious about the developments that are happening in AI, especially as they relate to education, please do feel free to look at the work that we do at the Stanford Accelerator for learning, which is accelerate learning dot Stanford dot edu. And another great resource that exists is Teach AI Dawg, and that is a more Thai partner group that is really focused on how can we think about teaching with and about AI in schools and bringing together a lot of stakeholders, helping to put together guides for districts and for teachers, and to point out to resources of good quality that are freely available on the Internet. So those would be two that I'd recommend, starting with I'd say, look to the trusted entities that have been thinking about this for a long time and who have real professional experience at the intersection of education and technology to get the information that you want and ask questions, you know, to the best information comes from the answers you get when you ask the questions that you genuinely have. And it can be about whether A.I. is going to take over all of humanity or if it's going to end up being just a handy recommender tool for all things that we will laugh at at times and find super useful at other times. Victor, this has been an awesome conversation. You've been awesome. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk about this particular topic with me. I know I benefited from it and I have no doubt our audience will as well. So thank you so much for being on our show today. Thanks for having me, Matt. Thanks all listeners out there, you know, stay involved in this education system in Jeffco. I think there's really good things that we can make happen.
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