Khushali Narechania: K-12 education in the age of AI

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, a (00:05):
Hey , I'm Alex.
I'm the CEO of aiEDU and thisis another early episode of
aiEDU Studios.
For this conversation, I'msitting down with Khushali
Narachania, the Director ofLearning at aiEDU.
SKhushali and I work together.
We're in lots of meetingstogether.
We were just in San Diegotogether for a conference.
She lives in the East Bay, sowe're even local but this was

(00:31):
really a rare opportunity for meto sit down with her for a long
period of time and just nerdout together.
This started out as aconversation about a specific
set of curricular products thatwe had just released elementary
explorations but ended up beinga much broader, wide-ranging
conversation, including somediscussion about what's coming
next.
So I'm very pleased that all ofyou will get the chance to meet
one of the amazing leaders onour team.

(00:52):
Kashali is not just superknowledgeable, but also just
very cool and, yeah, hope youenjoy.
So, yeah, let's get startedwith.
Why don't you tell me who areyou?
Who is Khushali?
Khushali?

Khushali Narechania (Direc (01:04):
yeah I am, in my current role, the
director of learning here ataidu, but I think more broadly.
I think of myself as aneducator first and foremost.
I started my career as a highschool math teacher and then was
in teacher prep um at relaygraduate school of education for
several years, leading thecontent programming there, and

(01:27):
beyond that I'm a wife, mother,hiking and cooking enthusiast as
well.
Yeah, Bay Area resident.
Bay Area resident.
Yes, K , ensington, , so justnorth of Berkeley.

Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, (01:39):
Okay , that's very esoteric.

Khushali Narechania (Direct (01:40):
Yes , most people are just like oh,
Silicon Valley, yeah, exactly,and they don't realize that
that's actually like two hoursaway from where you are.

Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, ai (01:46):
Um , so when you were in maybe not
middle school, but high school,like, did you know you wanted to
be a teacher?

Yes , there's some great stories
that my parents can share of mein, like second grade, playing
teacher in school, and so thatum was very clear from an early
age that I wanted to be inteaching and in education in
some way, and I think what Iwanted to teach, where I wanted
to teach that all evolved as Igot older, but I was always in

(02:14):
the mentality of wanting to be apart of people's learning
journeys.

Yeah , so I mean, I think it's
interesting working with so manyeducators there's there is a
sort of interesting commonthread of people who just were
drawn to it even though it's areally tough job.
Yeah, doesn't pay well.
Actually, in many cases itrequires quite a lot of
education.
Yeah, what was the drivingforce?

(02:40):
Was it just the that, that ideaof driving knowledge to this
next generation, or just likebeing around young people?

yeah , I think it's like I've always
had a curiosity about lots ofthings, so I've always liked
learning um myself and likefiguring things out and having
those light bulb moments thatare just like one of my favorite
things to experience myself.
And then when I started beingable to kind of experience that
with other people and realizinglike you can be a part of other

(03:09):
people having these light bulbmoments by having experiences
that they can have um, wherethey figure something out for
the first time, it's it's kindof incredible Um, and and I
think, as I got older, also,just realizing what joy it is to
see in young people's faceslike them figuring out the world
around them and getting to be apart of that process and making

(03:32):
it unique to them is prettymagical, and so that, I think,
is what it is it's.
Being able to make sense of theworld with kids is pretty
awesome.

Yeah Well, making sense of the world
also, something that's muchmore difficult, seemingly, these
days yes, Way more complicated,yeah, and I suppose the job of
teaching has gotten more.
Oh, would you, would you saythat?
I mean I, it seems like it'sharder than ever.
Um, and there's obviouslyissues with teacher retention
and burnout.
Um, you know, you, you sort ofleft, left the classroom.

(04:04):
When year did you leave theclassroom to go to?

was that 2011, 2012, 2012, so?

it was almost like that was kind
of right at the cusp.
I mean facebook had been.
I mean, I remember when I firstgot my Facebook account, when
it sort of opened up and it was2007, yep.
So I guess 2011 was sort of thematuration of the new media
like social media and you know,sort of like this digital age
where you know online bullyingprobably wasn't really a thing

(04:33):
prior to 2007.

Yeah , and definitely not in the
scope it is now or like the rateat which it can happen now.
I think, yeah, I think teachinghas become harder in so many
ways because there are actuallymore demands of teachers, both
from state or districtrequirements and policies, and
so there's a lot more than justteaching really that happens in
the classroom and I think that'soften overlooked in the role

(04:59):
People often think it's you'rein the classroom, you're
teaching kids, that's the end.
There's so much beyond that andwhat teachers have to do.
And then I think, like theenvironment that kids are in has
changed a lot and it is.
There's so much that's onlinethat used to be physical and
trying to kind of navigate thatwith kids is really, really

(05:20):
challenging.
So, yeah, I think it's gotten alot harder.
There's oftentimes fewerresources allocated towards
teachers as well, uh, and thatcan make it more challenging.
And, um, we are figuring outnew technology as adults that
our kids are kind of justimmersed in from the beginning,
and I think that that is notnecessarily new new, but the

(05:43):
rate at which it's changing foradults too, is pretty rapid.

So we're in a state of learning
alongside our, our students, um,in in a different way now so
this is interesting, this, thisphenomena of students
experiencing technology inparallel and in many cases even
before teachers.
I mean I can remember when thatwas actually not the case, like

(06:09):
when I was in middle school wehad computer lab before we had a
computer at home.
We had internet access at school, I mean, we had dial up, but it
wasn't very good, yeah, and sothere was a period of time in
our memories where adultsactually could be the arbiters
of technology and we couldthoughtfully sort of roll it out
, and you had these structuredenvironments, computer lab,

(06:31):
where students got to learn howto use the internet, and, um,
and the internet was actuallyquite a scary place.
It was a lot less guardrailsand filters, I mean maybe to a,
to a fault actually, um, so theysaid that we have those today,
but, um, but yeah, things have,things change, and it was around
the time that you were gettinginto teaching and even and

(06:51):
obviously since you've movedinto sort of like training
teachers, that's only gottenmore and more profound, um, but
I am curious if there's like anyspecific stories or memories
that come to mind where, likeyou know, a student kind of was
showing you something abouttechnology or you felt like you
were like a few steps behindyour students, whether that's

(07:12):
like the internet or socialmedia or anything else.

Yeah , I think, um it's.
I feel like when I was still inthe classroom I had a handle on
most of the things that werekind of in my students sphere
with technology.
It was actually when I wasworking with graduate students
and we were doing a lot of likefilming.
They were filming theirclassrooms and getting feedback

(07:35):
on their teaching and whatnot.
That was a moment where I waslike I don't actually understand
a lot of what is possible byway of how you record, how you
get transcriptions of recordings, the ways in which you can edit
.
I had like very, you know youneed a video camera to do this

(07:56):
and whatnot.
It's like no, you couldprobably do it on your phone or
there's another device you canget.
And here are all these toolsand apps that you can use to
kind of support with buildingthe clips that you might want
for video.
And so I think that's where Istarted having these moments of
oh wait, a second.
I actually have, I mean, likeblind spots.
I think of like what is possible, just because I've been doing

(08:18):
things a certain way, or havelike a schema that kind of
supports one way of doing thingswith the technology, and that
was, I think, just a greatlearning moment of like what
else could we do, how else couldwe leverage these tools that
are available online thatactually help us better share
our practice with one anotheracross space so we don't

(08:38):
actually have to be in physicalclassrooms to see teachers
teaching, but we can watch themfrom these videos and give give
feedback pretty quickly.
And so that, like that, reallystruck me and I think it just
really helped me be able to seelike I have learning to do and I
should be listening to what mystudents are.
The people who are doing thiswork like regularly are kind of

(09:00):
experiencing to understand whatthey might be interacting with
and how I could be using it aswell.

Yeah , I mean even even in the
process of setting up.
You know, getting all theequipment for for AIEDU studios,
I guess is the placeholder namethat we're using for whatever
this project is.
Is it a show?
I'm not sure.
If it's a podcast, I guesswe'll see, but I mean in the you
know, cause I used to shootprofessional photography, did

(09:26):
some video, and that was likeabout seven years ago, and I
mean I saw the outcome of theoutputs, of the improving
technology and the like, thedecreasing sort of barriers to
access just through YouTube,because YouTube has obviously
flourished in the sort of thecreator economy.
But I didn't realize it likehow easy it was to get.

(09:47):
I mean, even just listening tosome of like the early
recordings on these microphones,it's like it sounds like radio
quality.

Yeah .

And these mics have been around,
but the, it was reallycomplicated to interface it into
your computer and like thereweren't that many, and even,
frankly, they just like thetutorials yeah, you know, it was
a lot of like written tutorials, like very sort of arcane, and
now there are millions, maybenot millions, tens of thousands

(10:15):
of people on YouTube walking youthrough step by step, exactly
how to do this, and so it waskind of eye-opening just how
easy.
And now I understand, like sortof why this creator economy is
such a big deal, becauseactually, you know, now there's
like the only thing standing inthe way of somebody creating, I
think, really high qualitycontent is just the content
itself.
You know, whereas before, and Ithink even now, like a lot of
the, the podcasts and um, andlike some of the youtube

(10:36):
channels that I see, it's likethey're part of the reason
they're falling behind isbecause they just they're.
They're still in sort of themindset of like, oh, like you
know, I can just use sort oflike my webcam, um, but there
are sort of increasingexpectations that go along with,
yeah, these technologies and soand we're seeing that in to
bring us to um, to artificialintelligence.
I think that's one of the bigquestion marks is, as ai unlocks

(10:58):
more and more capabilities,let's say um, will or should
that actually change theexpectations that we have of
students?
Um, because the internetcertainly has.
I think, like in many cases,you know, having one or two
sources from the library wasprobably enough for a research
project back in the day.
And now I think teachers,rightfully, are like you should
have, you know, 10 plus sources,because it should take you, you

(11:20):
know, 10 minutes to go and findthose things yeah um and but
which brings us to like what?
what do we need to ensure is inplace so students have like
understand what's possible rightfrom the technology?

Khushali Narechania (Di (11:34):
there's , um, I think so much of it is
just clarity, both from teachers, students, on like how you can
use these tools to create orsupplement the work that you are
doing, and it's and and notreplace the thinking that needs
to happen, right, um, forstudents.

(11:55):
And so, um, I think similar towhen the internet became more
readily available and you could,you know, search for anything,
get a bunch of information, andthen you ended up with a lot of
copy and pasted responses tothings there had to be some work
done to kind of help figure out, like, how do you actually use

(12:16):
these sources?
There isn't, it isn't just areplacement for your own writing
, necessarily, but you can useit to help you kind of think
through a lot of differenttopics together.
And I think with artificialintelligence, with AI, I think
similar learnings need to happenof where do we use it, how do
we use it, how do we actuallyuse it to enhance the work that

(12:38):
we're doing or to help you getunstuck, but not completely
replace the work that you'redoing.
And I think that means, liketeachers, and across all levels,
are probably gonna have torethink what kind of assignments
they're having students do andthe purpose behind them and
being really explicit about thatwith students and being able to
say, if you put this into achat bot, you're probably going

(12:59):
to get this kind of responseback.
That's not what we're lookingfor.
What we're actually looking foris some deeper thinking and
like what you are kind ofbringing out from this and so
and I don't think that's a badthing Like there's a lot of
information that my kids willask me about.
I'm like I don't know theanswer, but I can look it up and
then we can have a discussion,a really interesting discussion,

(13:20):
about all the things that wefind when we look up.
But I don't need to necessarilyretain all that information in
my brain anymore, because wehave tools that'll help us kind
of access that and then havemore interesting discussions
about what we find.
And so that's what I see kindof being really important in the
next few years is how do wereally get schools and teachers

(13:43):
comfortable thinking about whereto be using these tools, if to
be using these tools and makingit really explicit to students
so that they can startdeveloping those skills around,
how to use it, how to make itsomething that really enhances
their work instead of replacingtheir work because, it's not

(14:04):
going to so we're going to getto that cheating top of
everybody's mind and I think forgood reason, and I actually I
had this whole diatribe and Iwas just doing a presentation
for a bunch of vcs and I waslike people are too quick to
dismiss this question ofcheating it's

like just oh, it's you know, it's
just something that luddites areworried about and they need,
and everybody needs, to get withthe program and sort of move
past this question of cheating.
I think it's actually for theeducators that I talk to and I
know that, the ones that you'vebeen working with at AIDU I mean
it is very legitimate.
They are onto something.
Their spidey senses aretingling, for good reason, and

(14:41):
I'm remiss at sort of how quicksome folks are to dismiss those
teachers as just not beingtechnology, technology,
technology literate.
And in some cases they're notright.
In some cases teachers don'treally know what to make of
language models, chat, gpt, etcetera, um, but they are experts
in learning, they're experts inum, you know, knowledge

(15:02):
transfer, and I think there'ssomething quite profound about
there are some legitimate alarmbells, I think the idea that
it's so easy to get answers toquestions now, okay.
So a fun game that I've beenplaying recently is, if I'm at a
party, you'll be having aconversation with somebody and

(15:23):
someone will ask a question.
I've been trying to think of theexample.
Specifically, it was, um, Ithink we were talking about the
steam engine and the loom and wewere trying to decide like, oh,
what was the?
What was the start of the firstindustrial revolution?
Was it the steam engine, or theloom, or you know something
else, the cotton gin?

(15:45):
And I couldn't quite get theanswer.
And someone was like, oh, I'lljust like pull it up.
And I was like no, no, no, weshould actually let's do this
old school.
Let's go and like try to findsomebody at this party who might
know the answer, and it wasactually really hard because
nobody could remember their.
You know their their uh, socialstudies class Um, but so
there's, there's power in that,but there's also actually there

(16:07):
was a lot of I.
you know I found myself flexingsome interesting muscles, not
just with myself, but with thefolks that I was talking to as
we were trying to explore andfind the answer to these
questions and people were sortof recalling different, you know
books that they have read.
It was.
It was a really, uh, vibrantexperience and, even though we

(16:28):
maybe didn't quite get to thefinal right answer, we were also
generating a lot of interestingideation and also recalling
other facts.
Um, and even though we didn'tget to the final answer, the the
sum total of my learning fromthat was actually greater than
going into Google or chat GBTand just almost immediately

(16:49):
getting the answer.
And then it's like okay, done,and it almost it feels like
almost like a real or you'regetting some cool fact, but then
it kind of just immediatelyfloats into the ether yeah, um,
so okay.
So we have a lot to talk about.
I want to start with why you'rehere.
Um, besides being super smartand having, I think, some good
insights about this topic ofcheating that I want to talk
about a bit more.

(17:10):
Um, your team at AIDU recentlylaunched, uh, a new, uh sort of
suite of curricular products.
Right before Christmas, we sortof buried the lead there and
put it all out and then, likeyou, know peaced out for the
holidays.
Yeah, just tell us about, like,what is it that y'all put out
and just if you can give us kindof like a rough overview of

(17:32):
what folks can, because it's onthe website now, right, yeah
it's on the website.

Khushali Narechania (Directo (17:35):
So there were a few things that we
released.
First was kind of a revisedversion of our AI snapshots,
which are intended to be kind offive to 10 minute activities
that you can do with high school, middle school students, that
are meant to kind of engagestudents in dialogue around

(17:56):
topics related to AI, literacyand readiness.
For example, one of the reallypopular ones is about using AI
to generate book cover art andkind of who has ownership of
that art then, and discussion toensue by content area for math,
ela, social studies, scienceand a couple of general ones,

(18:30):
and these have been really wellreceived because, they are very
easy to kind of implementwithout a lot, of, a lot of
extra kind of internalizationthat needs to happen and kind of
fit right in with warmups, withclosing activities is a good
transition between betweendifferent kind of learning
experiences as well.
So that's up and running and Ithink have been really really

(18:51):
really well received by all thefolks that have tried them out,
for us as well.
So that's one big one.
The other big product that wereleased were projects
specifically geared to the APcomputer science classroom, and
so these are aligned to thecollege board standards for AP

(19:12):
computer science principles andexplore again ethical ideas in
AI readiness and literacy andrange from, you know, a couple
hours of instruction to up to, Ithink, six hours for students
to produce at the end of somesort of either presentation or

(19:32):
conversation on these topics aswell.
And along with that we have asmart teach manual which is kind
of quick ideas for how to thinkabout integrating AI literacy
and readiness to an AP computerscience principles classroom as
well.
And so those are kind of thebig things that have come out,

(19:54):
and prior to all of that therewas also the readiness framework
which kind of is helping usanchor all of the content that
we're building on, kind ofnaming some of the key skills
and concepts that we would wantstudents to kind of master and
have in their have in theirarsenal as they graduate from

(20:17):
from k-12 schools and into intocareer yeah, I feel like you're
giving short thrift to thereadiness framework, because I
think it's actually a really bigdeal.

It's interesting because snapshots
were that was one of the firstproducts we released.
What you inherited when youjoined AIDU was a much bigger
corpus of snapshots.
I think it was like 180, yes,snapshots, which was way too
many, um, but I think it's in insort of in keeping with the
approach that we had early onwas we can't go to teachers and

(20:55):
say here is sort of a newcurriculum, that's ai.
In fact, we actually tried that.
We built a class.
It was like a quarter long, Ithink, maybe even a semester,
long course 10 week 10 weekcourse called introduction to ai
, and you know, we found as,unsurprisingly, there were very
few teachers that had theflexibility to say, oh, I'm just
going to completely scrapeverything that I'm doing and

(21:16):
plug in an entirely new course.
Um, so we went almost theopposite end of the spectrum
with these sort of like verybite size, easy to integrate,
sort of like between classes orlike as bell ringers.
And I think what we found andI'm curious if you have any
examples of this with our likeprofessional learning
communities or like fellowships,you know, while they were
designed to be five minuteactivities, we, I feel like

(21:37):
there's a lot of examples whereteachers would say, oh yeah, you
know, this started out as afive minute classroom discussion
, and it was.
Would say, oh yeah, you know,this started out as a five
minute classroom discussion andit was.
The students were so engagedthat we ended up creating an
entire sort of module around it,or it extended into an entire
class period, and I think, um,but yeah, can you just tell me
more about like, is thatsomething that you implicitly
are expecting teachers to do, oris that more just sort of like
a happy accident?

It's I mean, I I think they were one
of the things in this newrelease of them is we explicitly
call out that they take around10 minutes, not just five
minutes.
I think some are doable in fiveminutes, but realistically to
have students engage inconversation and and kind of
really think critically aboutthe questions being asked, you
need more time for that, so.

(22:19):
So I think we've moreexplicitly named that these
should be deeper conversationsand you can do it in 10 minutes.
And we've had our fellowswho've kind of tested out the
new snapshots.
We've watched them do it in 10minutes and we've watched some
that take 20, because they haveactually integrated it into

(22:40):
their lesson and have brought insome of their content to the
snapshot and and like kind ofbuilt out the discussion a bit
as well.
And so are there's two ways togo with it, and I think we want
as many people as possible usingthese, and so the easiest entry

(23:01):
is say we have everything foryou to facilitate it in 10
minutes and here's what it canlook like, and then, if you're
interested in doing more, thatkind of becomes unique to what
your class is, who your studentsare, and so there's all these
other ways that you can thinkabout having a multi-day
discussion or building it out,and there is like appetite for

(23:21):
that and I think there's likegreat like community amongst the
teachers who have been usingthis to kind of share how
they've been using it as well to, to, to personalize for their
classrooms.
So I think that's that's likean exciting new place to look as
we kind of build out moreresources of how can this look
in different formats beyond the10 minute warmup.

Yeah , yeah, the.
I mean I think it's a testamentto.
We are not.
You know, our goal is, ourvision is never it has never
been to be the sole arbiter ofAI curriculum, yeah, or for
there to be some sort of likereference curriculum that, like
all AI literacy, is accomplishedthrough the AIED curriculum

(24:04):
package.
But I think so.
One of the early schooldistricts that we engaged with
as part of our learning processwas Gwinnett County Public
Schools.
They were probably one of thefirst districts in the country
to roll out AI literacy in theflavor of how we think about it,
which is all students havingaccess, not just something that
gets slotted into STEM orcomputer science pathways.

(24:26):
And they have this sort of, Ithink, very clever way of
thinking about this, which isthe swim, snorkel, scuba
metaphor, and it's likeeverybody should learn how to
swim, and then some studentswill want to snorkel and a
smaller group will actually goscuba diving, and I feel like

(24:47):
snapshots is almost like we'regoing to sort of a desert where
there aren't even like wadingpools, and so the first thing is
like, if you want students toswim, like they have to have a
place where they can actuallyget in the water, and I think
right now teachers are sort oflooking around.
They're saying like I don'teven know how to get their feet
wet, let alone how to teach themyou know, uh, freestyle and

(25:08):
like, put you know the snorkelgear on.
I'm belaboring the analogy,perhaps a bit too much, um, but
I think there is.
You know, once you build thepools and again I'm going to
really belabor this analogy onceyou build the pools, you know
we don't necessarily have to goand show everybody exactly every
single stroke.
There are going to be someteachers that are going to take.
Take that as sort of a blankcanvas and run with it, but I
think you know, until you canactually sort of lead them to

(25:30):
the water and sort of help themget their feet wet.
It's just like really it'sunclear where to start.

Yeah , I think that's right and I
think that's part of what wewanted to do in these updated
materials was like build morefor teachers to have, like
building their own confidenceand kind of facilitating these
discussions, and so there's alot of notes for the teacher on,
like here are some possiblemisconceptions, or here are the
ideas that you might want tokind of hone in on, which I
think is intended to help sparkfor them, like here's what I

(25:58):
might want to know more about,and being able to create more of
those spaces and comfort forthemselves and being able to
lead the discussions, cause I dothink a lot of times teachers
will potentially shy away fromengaging in the topic because
they themselves want to learnmore or want to have, um, kind
of more of an understanding.
And so, uh, our, our desire andkind of upgrading these

(26:21):
materials was to build in someof that like learning within the
materials so they can have that, as they're trying to
facilitate, with their studentsas well, and so I think they
serve as a great space for boththe teachers and students to do
kind of that swimming in the AIreadiness content.

Alex Kotran (Founder/CE (26:41):
Because you did some.
One of the first things you did, besides sort of overhaul the
content in fact I think it was aprecursor to overhauling the
content was doing some researchwith teachers and so is that
something that came up this sortof like, this sort of
confidence?
Yes, sort of roadblock wherethey were just weren't feeling
like they had the mastery andthat.
And teachers do feel likethey're supposed to master a
subject, and that's generally.

(27:01):
The model is like they becomeexperts in whatever it is
they're teaching and then theykind of sort of structure the
class.
This is a very tough subjectfor teachers to become, you know
gain mastery over.

Yeah , it's so new.
We are still learning so muchabout what LLM technology is,
how it applies, how it actuallyworks, and that was like very
clear in our research.
Actually, it was one of the bigheadlines to come out of it
that, like, educators have a lotof uncertainty and like into

(27:32):
fear in some ways around whatthis technology is and how they
should be using it or addressingit or learning about it.
And I think one of the thingsthat we can do is help
disseminate more informationthat is, uh, digestible and
appropriate for teachers andstudents so that they can build

(27:53):
their knowledge, and then Ithink, very much do.
The thing that we're we'resaying is important is like
think about this critically anddecide on when to use it, how to
use it, um, what to do withyour students?
Cause, at the end of the day,teachers are the ones who know
their students the best, and sothey are the ones that should be
making the decisions about howto implement this, any of these

(28:14):
curricular resources, for theirstudents, and we just want them
to have everything to help themfeel confident about how they're
implementing it.
And that was again drivenlargely by what we heard from
teachers that they don't knowenough and they want to learn
more, and so we can.
We can help provide some ofthat and some guidance on that.

Yeah .
So like I'm going to keepbeating this analogy.
So you build the pools and youmaybe it's not just a wading
pool, but there's like you cango a little bit deeper.
It's not necessarily like adiving chamber yet.

Yeah .

But also you need to build the
roads to the pools, to havelocker room.
I mean, like you need, like youcan't just put something out
there, and I think that was oneof the things that we saw, you
know, really early on is there'sactually there are curricula
that address artificialintelligence and certainly, if
you are looking for self-guidedlearning, youtube is maybe the
best and worst example, becausethere's just so much and it's

(29:10):
just a ton of noise.
But how do you navigate that?
What is actually quality versusnot quality?
Sometimes you can actually getoverwhelmed with the amount of
information.
I think that's the issue withwhere we are today, where
there's certainly not a lack ofdiscussion about AI so like or a
lack of awareness at this point, and that's actually changed

(29:31):
our you know cause.
When we were, you know, beforeyour time at AIEDU, before
ChatGPT, you know, ai literacyfor us was really introducing
the topic to people for the veryfirst time and for most people
they hadn't even connected thedots with like, oh, I'm using AI
in my phone when I use GoogleMaps, or AI is making content
recommendations to me, and sothere was some low-hanging fruit

(29:52):
there of just sort of liketrying to build comfort level.
But this is not actually sciencefiction anymore.
This is something that's sortof quietly creeping into our
lives.
But now we have ChatGPT andevery education conference is an
AI conference now.
So it's not so much a lack ofawareness, but there's still, I
think, teachers are.
They don't know really where toattack this problem, because

(30:16):
for most teachers which bringsus back to this question that
you kind of led with which iswell, what do I do about?
How should I be using ChatGP,gbt?
That's actually their firstinstinct, is?
It's not so much like how do Iteach students about ai more
broadly, but how do I use this,and then how do I deal with my
students using it?
yeah um, and so this is a way oftalking with the framework,

(30:39):
because I think when we weregoing about thinking about, okay
, what does the new curriculumthey want to build, I remember
having these discussions andthere was a big sort of fork in
the road, I think for us, andeven thinking back to some of
our early conversations, therewas this question of you know,
should we be basically teachingstudents to prompt engineer?

Khushali Narechania (Dire (30:55):
Right .

And to become power users of AI
technology, which is differentfrom the framework that your
team published.

Khushali Narechania (Di (31:03):
Because the framework.

Alex Kotran (Founder/C (31:04):
Actually it addresses AI literacy as one
of three buckets.
Can you just spout the threeoff?
Ai literacy is the first domain.

Know the basics.
Know the basics so it's how touse the AI, and then being a
critical thinker is the next one, and then the third is knowing
the kind of human advantagegoing into it.

Yeah , so mastering ChatGPT fits, I
guess, certainly the firstdomain and then also the second.
I think you can argue thatprompt engineering in the
abstract is actually askingcritical questions, or knowing
how to ask the right questionsand then also sort of like
critically evaluate the outputs.
Um, but it is.
It is a far cry from what Ithink other other folks may be

(31:50):
expected from us, but I itbrings me to sort of this
question of, like, how to dealwith cheating Um, because there
is, there's a school of thoughtthat, like, the way that you
deal with cheating the studentsusing chat GPT is, it's a
technical challenge.
We need to come up with policiesand academic integrity

(32:12):
procedures and we need toidentify the perfect detector
tools Right, and we need todesign foolproof assignments
that can't, where students can'tuse chat gpt to cheat um.
And it's actually, which is avery different question from, I
think, the way that theframework really addresses this,

(32:33):
which is, what should your,what should your learning be
oriented to?
Yeah, like, what are theoutcomes that we want from
students to be able to um, tohave the knowledge they need to
succeed in a world where theyare going to be able to go home
and use these tools to generatecontent and answer questions and
write essays, and it seems likethe place where you've planted

(32:54):
the flag is durable skills,communication and collaboration
and creative problem solving,self-agency and then so the
answer to how do I deal withcheating is more like well, how
do you adapt your assignments tofocus on building those durable
skills?

It's , it's and it's not.
And I hesitate to say like thisdoesn't all fall on the teacher
changing their entirecurriculum Cause I think that is
a really daunting thing to hear, that I have to rethink
everything that I'm havingstudents do.
But it is really about, I think, like a great counter example,
or not a counter example.
Another example of this in asimilar kind of vein is when a

(33:37):
calculator technology becamereadily available and we went
from a time when, like, doingany sort of computation was very
like labor intensive and therewas no quick way to do it and so
a lot of math, where you're sofocused on arithmetic, to now
you have a device that can do alot of the arithmetic for you so

(34:12):
that you can do more complexproblems.
Right, and I think theeducation community really
grappled with like, what do wedo?
Are we banning calculators?
Do we focus only on arithmeticor how do we integrate it into
curriculum so that it's a partof the learning experience where
they actually have to?
Students have to learn how touse the calculator, how to use
it effectively, and uh, whatdoes that mean for what we can

(34:35):
actually ask students to bedoing and focusing on?
And I think, overall, like Ithink we can all agree,
calculators are a part of ourlife.
We use them, students know howto use them, we have, you know,
state tests adapted to it.
There's calculators aregenerally allowed on almost all
portions of testing and ifthey're not, it's very explicit
and there's, you know, rationaleprovided for why.

(34:57):
And so I think of that and Ithink we can learn a lot from
that, like we've done this as asociety where we've kind of

(35:31):
welcomed this technology andthat's kind of opened a lot of
access and doors to what we cando and how we focus.
And so, similarly with, I think,ai tools, it's, I think, if we
try and close the door to it andsay this is not allowed and we
should not be using it, weshould just have really strict
policies in place.
I'm just inviting peoplefiguring out how to work around
that, instead of it becomingsomething that we welcome into
learning spaces as a tool and weteach students how to be using
it, how to think about usingthem effectively, and for
teachers to then be thinkingabout like, what do we need to
do in our coursework?
Um, that needs to change.
Potentially, that can stay thesame.
Uh, that leverages this tool,just like in math, we have a

(35:53):
shift, like there is adistinction, I think you can see
, in what was taught um beforecalculators and what was taught
after calculators and so um,yeah, so I think that's just
like how do we think about, whatis it that we want students
walking away with and how do weuse AI as a tool to help us get
there?
And that will take somethinking, and I think it's

(36:14):
thinking with teachers andstudents and communities on what
those skills need to be andwill be most effective for the
set of students that any onecommunity is working with as
well.
Skills need to be and will bemost effective for, for the set
of students that you know anyone community is working with as
well.

Yeah , I might, um, I actually want
to, I want to, I want to push alittle bit on on this and it's
it's almost a sort of pull backthe curtain on an internal I
don't know if I'd call it adebate, but certainly like a
vibrant discussion that we'rehaving, um, within our
organization about what does itmean?
What does it look like for usto say, okay, teachers should

(36:51):
embrace the tools.
Where is it maybe notappropriate or just not quite
the right moment for that to bethe guidance?
Yeah, um, because some of thequestions that I'm grappling
with is, if we're going to goand say, well, we need to build
around these tools in the sameway like we use the calculator
example, um, well, if you'regoing to make assignments that

(37:13):
are implicitly or explicitlyrequiring calculator, we have to
make sure every student hasaccess to a calculator.
And I think that's we're notquite there yet, you know, in
schools, and so it's like that'sa conversation we have to have
sooner or later.
But my worry is that for manyschools they're actually not
even there yet.
They kind of need to sort ofoperate a few steps earlier.

(37:37):
And then there's also thisquestion of, while the
calculator, I think, is an aptanalogy for many reasons.
There's something aboutlanguage models and I think this
is why it's had this zeitgeistmoment, way bigger than the
calculator.
I mean the calculator, I think,was a very big moment for
educators, but most peopleoutside of education probably
didn't realize or couldn't eventell you what a TI-89 is.

(37:58):
Everybody's paying attention toChad GBT.

Yeah .

And that's because there is
something just in our guts.
It's like when you see it writeessays and press releases and
marketing memos and poems andsongs, um, and emails and and
love letters and, um, you know,uh, wedding plans and

(38:25):
itineraries, like there's,there's a breadth of application
that, um, yeah, I just I Iwonder if, if we, we might need
to preserve the experience ofnot being able to do something,
because if, if we, if we, if, ifthe learning, if the, if the
learning in school is basically,how do I use these tools to

(38:48):
basically make everything easy?
And then, if everything becomeseasy, um, there is, I mean, I
feel like part of the point ofschool is also just sort of like
the process of, you know,creative struggle and productive
struggle, and it seems to methat there's more to education
than just how do we make yourlife as efficient as possible.

Oh yeah, 100%, and I think that's
that goes back to what you'resaying.
It's like what are the outcomesthat we're driving towards with
being in school and forstudents to have Right?
And I think there's there'sjust like a lot of work to be
done around continuing to fostercuriosity and problem solving,

(39:30):
and so I don't like in no way dowe, I think, do I ever advocate
for like schooling shouldrevolve around how to like
integrate AI tools andeverything that we do.
But it's actually like the stepabove that, which is, how do we
think about when we want to usethis and why we want to use it,

(39:50):
and is it aligned to the kindof goals that we have as a
school and for our community andfor our students?
And being really thoughtfulabout that process before even
bringing anything in front ofstudents.
And I think it's reallyimportant to actually,
especially for our older grades,older students, like they

(40:11):
should be a part of theconversation.
They are experiencing itoutside of school.
Like they should be a part ofthe conversation.
They are experiencing itoutside of school most
definitely and um, and and solike how do we actually be
really transparent about it withwith students and um, have them
partake in the solution making,because that is actually the
thing that we are wanting toprepare them for, and here we
have an opportunity to reallyhave their voice be centered

(40:35):
also in kind of like how wethink about solutions around
this yeah, which actually thatbrings us to something we're
working on, um, which is tryingto create like a workshop or a
learning experience that, eitherdirectly or implicitly,
includes sort of the studentperspective on how how would?

you like, rather than trying to
figure out how do you preventstudents from using ai tools.
Help teachers understand howwould you like, rather than
trying to figure out how do youprevent students from using AI
tools.
Help teachers understand howwould students use.
Ai tools to get around yourassignments.
And you know, to me the firststep in addressing cheating is
you have to get into the mind ofthe cheater and for the most
part they're not evil conniving,you know.

(41:14):
And for the most part they'renot evil, conniving, mischievous
people.
They are enterprising kids whohave soccer practice or band or
friends, and this assignmentwhere they have to write a book
report about someone that theydon't really care about, yes
they're not going to want to doit.
And it feels like they just haveto go through the motions and
it doesn't feel like relevant towhat they're interested in and

(41:36):
so sure they're gonna.
It's and it's also just, Ithink it's unfair to, um, you
know the idea that, like, youcan literally type in a sentence
and press enter and get anentire assignment, like, so now
we are basically.
It's like I the the analogyI've used once with somebody,
which maybe resonates witheducators, is vaping, and so if

(42:03):
someone's like, addicted tonicotine and we're trying to,
we're telling them, okay, well,we don't want you to use
nicotine.
But then they are in this worldwhere in front of them is, like
you know, a whole matter of youknow vapes, right in front of
them, yeah, and and their flavor, their candy flavored and, um,
you know, even very uh, uh,disciplined adults struggle with

(42:24):
quitting nicotine, as,unfortunately, a lot of high
school students these days aswell.
Um, but it strikes me as likeit's really hard to expect a
student to like be able toresist the tantalization, the
tantalizing opportunity of likeyou know one sentence, press
enter Um, and so you know it'sof like you know one sentence,
press enter yeah, and so youknow it's.
To me there's like actuallysome a sense of almost respect,
of like this is not a valuejudgment on.
You know you're a bad person fortrying to get around the

(42:46):
assignment, but actuallydesigning an assignment that's
like where they can't just typeone sentence and press enter is
almost like it's helping themget to the right approach to
learning without sort ofexpecting them to sort of be
holier than thou, right, one ofthe things I want to do on the
show or podcast or whatever thisis is kind of like get into

(43:08):
real world experiences ofeducators, and so one of the
things that I came across Ifollow a lot of like the
educator subreddits.
I'm going to paraphrase, butone of the sub, one of the
subreddits that I found, um,there was a marketing professor,
so he's at a community collegeand he was posting, he's he's
figured out his way around toget around chat, gbt, yeah, and
so basically he says oh, youknow, I figured out, basically

(43:30):
you know how to get around thisand the way I structure my sign,
one of my assignments is, it'sbasic, it's I think he has a
lecture about how to write likea marketing a good marketing
email.
And so he, he says, well, what Ido is I just assume that
students are going to use chatGPT, and so what I tell them is
I want you to use chat GPT towrite a marketing email, yeah.

(43:50):
And then I want you to critiqueit.
And um, and then one extralayer.
He says, and then in thecriticism uh, reference like
specific slides in my lecturethat they have access to um as
part of the critique.
And I'm curious uh, I have myown opinions, but I'm curious
from your perspective like is isthat an example of a chat GPT
proof assignment?
Like has he solved the problem?

yeah , I think it's a.
It's a good first attempt.
Um the, the, our chat modelshave increased their ability so
you could actually feed thespeed chat, gpt the slides and
pose the question.
Now go back and critique theresponse you just gave me and

(44:35):
use the slide deck for somecitations, and you've just used
ChatGPT to do the critique,which is the thing that I think
the professor was trying to nothave students do, and so I think
they're like.
Adding the additional layer ofcritique is, I think, is a good
direction to go.
But again, you can use ChatGPTCloud to kind of do that

(44:59):
critique.

So the prompt would basically go
so first you say, okay, write amarketing email about whatever
the topic is, and then you wouldcopy and paste, maybe create a
new chat and say, okay, yourassignment is you're supposed to
now critique this marketingemail and chat.
Gpt allows you to uploadmaterials and so you upload a
PDF file of the PowerPoint andyou say reference this

(45:24):
PowerPoint and in your critiquesite, the specific slides um as
part of your critique.
Yes, exactly, and that wouldtake all of maybe five minutes,
I mean.
I think in total maybe eightminutes, and then let's just add
another 15 minutes for a littlebit of massaging to make it
look and feel a little bitauthentic and you can even say
like oh, you know, make somegrammar mistakes.

(45:46):
I don't think that's a good, Idon't think that's a solution.
I think that's actually it's anexample of just why it's so
important for educators to justcome to peace with the fact that
they are always going to be afew steps behind their kids,

(46:18):
these young, enterprising Gen Zand Gen Alpha kids who are
steeped and immersed in not justwhat this technology is, but
also, like you know, like how touh content is like one of the
most sort of common forms ofcontent on um on TikTok, on
Instagram.
Um, so, so yeah, I guess what is.
Could we help this?
Uh, you know well-intentionedcollege professor.

What would?

it look like to adapt the
assignment a little bit.

So I think I come back to like,
what's the purpose of thisassignment?
Is the purpose for students tobe able to draft a really strong
, like marketing campaign email?
Is it for them to be able toidentify, like, the key
components of a strong marketingcampaign?
To be able to identify, likethe key components of a strong
marketing campaign, or maybemore like, is it for them to be

(47:03):
able to actually draft somethingthat they then test and see if
it's actually effective withlike a, with the demographic
that they're trying to reachRight and so um, the last one I
mentioned, cause I think that'swhere you can do some
interesting things where it'slike have chat, gpt, write your
campaign.
Now you actually have to take itout to like three or four
different people, have them readit?
Did it resonate in the way thatyou thought it would?

(47:26):
And like, haven't have somesort of dialogue or interaction
with other people outside theclass or even within the class,
or bring it to class live.
We're going to look at ittogether.
Where do we see it meeting thecriteria that we've talked about
in class?
Where do we see it not meetingthe criteria?
How do you know?
And you can do live polls withstudents to kind of assess it,
and so that's another way ofkind of bringing I think it's

(47:47):
like and both of those things Ithink it's thinking about, like
what's the human connection backto this?
How are we bringing otherpeople in, how are we talking
about this together, instead ofit continuing to be an
individual assignment that iscompleted and turned into the
professor?
That's one way that I wouldthink about kind of doing more

(48:10):
to make more out of thatassignment.

Yeah , okay, so let me try to
abstract this.
So one of the things I'mhearing is um, you know, I think
teachers, educators areincreasingly going to have to
treat in-class time as one ofthe most important moments of
their, uh, their educatoreducational toolkit, and they
need to use that time to really,um, uh, uh, try to build the

(48:37):
skills that they where.
They need to just be be surethat students are actually doing
it themselves.
And so I feel the same aboutlike writing an essay, like I
don't think you know.
I often will say, like the ageof the take home essay is dead,
and I do think that's the case.
Um, but I don't think thatstudents don't no longer need to
learn how to write essays.
It's just that I think thetake-home essay is dead.
That's probably something thatneeds to.
You need to spend more classtime having students write, yeah

(48:58):
, um, so I like this, and so youcould imagine, yeah, I guess
the kids could come in.
They've used chat gbt to write,you know, try to write the best
marketing email, and so, andmaybe what I would, even, the
one thing I would also do is Iwould, uh, before any assignment
, I would do a share screen andI'm going to, I'm going to pull
up chat GPT and I'm going toshow you what I know, all of you

(49:22):
.
The first thing you're all goingto do, I'm going to copy and
paste the assignment, plug itinto chat GPT and press enter
and so, like that is thebaseline.
Obviously, I expect somethingbetter than that, and so it's up
to you, first of all, to cometo class with something that's
clearly better than whatever thebase.
You know, the basic thing thatchat gbt is yeah, um, and, and

(49:43):
then using that clean class time, and then for what happens out
of class, yeah, what are thelike basically trying to hone in
and what are things that justchat gbt can't do.
It can't go and have aconversation with um, with
people, right, and, and you knowwhat, if a student and I think
there's a certain point you getto a place where, if a student
is really savvy, they could havechat gpt, create different
personas of people and then likehave the conversation and like

(50:04):
use 11 labs to, like, you know,create the um, uh, you know, uh,
like voice, like real, likesynthetic voices that are
actually sort of like responding, and you know what you might.
just you might, at a certainpoint, say, you know, if a
student is going that far, I'm,I'm either, like it's just it's
going to be a small subset ofkids and so I'm not going to
like overpronate towards that.
And also maybe there's actuallythat student is demonstrating,

(50:28):
you know, a lot of sort ofenterprise, entrepreneurial
spirit and skill that I I'm justgoing to sort of agree to look
the other way, um, but but whatyou've also pointed to is sort
of thinking back to thecalculator and what the
calculator unlocked is um thedepth and the complexity of what

(50:48):
we can do in a math classincreases.
And so maybe the same applies tothis marketing class, where you
know what you can actually goway beyond.
You know the assignments thatyou had before.

Yeah .

And so, yeah, I think that works.
I think it's easier said thandone, because I think what often
teachers will say is well, butthere's other stuff I need to
get done in class.
Yeah, so it's.
I never want to, and I thinkthis is important is like there
is no sort of quick fix.
Right, I never want to, and Ithink this is important is like
there is no sort of quick fix tothese questions.
But I think we can actually atleast get directionally on the

(51:21):
right path and certainlyidentify where.
You know, I think the worstcase is that a teacher thinks
they have designed a foolproofassignment, yes, and they're
blind to the fact that they'vejust you know, they've just
added one more extra step.
That might not be, you know,the challenging students, the
way that they think.

Khushali Narechania (Dire (51:36):
Right , and I exactly, and I think
like the more and more I've beenin the world outside of like my
own school, the more I realizethere's so little that I
actually that anybody reallyactually does in isolation in
like a take home assignment kindof way that I did so much of in
my especially high schoolexperience.

(51:58):
And I think there is somethingaround like how do you build in
more of those collaborativeexperiences which I think
reflects what life will be likefor ever after school, which is
you're going to be working withgroups of people and completing
the assignments like together,right Projects together and I

(52:19):
know group work is notoriouslychallenging to do with kids, but
also, I think, some of the mostmeaningful work and like skill
building for kids as well.
And I think that there is aopportunity here to figure out
and think about how do you usethis new technology to kind of

(52:41):
help pull out those skills moreof like what does it mean to
actually work on somethingacross people and across
contents?
And I think that's reallyexciting because I think that's
reflective of what most ofcareer and life readiness means
as well.

Yeah , this is the.
At the end of the day, beingable to write a good marketing
email by itself is actually evenif.

(53:36):
Even if you were able, even ifthere was a perfect chat GPT
detector and what you were ableto do was get around students
and force them to go home andjust write the email themselves.
The problem is writing a goodmarketing email is not that that
skill is not going to commandeconomic value in the way that
it did two years ago.
And which brings me to actuallythis is so.
I mentioned my little anecdoteabout this nerdy discussion that
my friends and I were havingabout the cotton, gin and the
loom and the beginning of thefirst industrial revolution.

(53:57):
It was because I was basicallykind of.
I was talking about I justwatched this lecture from David
Autore at MIT and he was talkingabout some of the research that
they had done with languagemodels and sort of the way that
they're impacting people inworkplaces that have actually
started to implement them,things like customer service,
and one of the insights that hehad was it's not actually the.

(54:20):
He was like I'm less concernedabout AI destroying, like about
jobs disappearing, like therewill be jobs that disappear.
There's going to be more newjobs, but the bigger challenge
that we're going to have to faceis that the economic value of
certain types of expertisedecreases, and so, while there
might be lots of jobs, um, theyaren't necessarily going to
command the same, uh, wages thatthey did before.

(54:44):
Yeah, you know.
So, like sure, uh, you might beable to write more marketing
emails, and there's going to bepeople at companies that need to
sort of be at the wheel andusing chat, gbt, but the skill
of using ai tools is going to becommoditized.
Yeah, um, and so and this andso.
This is like, I think, to methe the meta takeaway there is

(55:04):
um, what is the heart?
What are the hardest skills tocommoditize?
It's those durable skills.
Yeah, um, and that was like andsam altman, actually he was,
this was like actually threeyears ago yeah, he was.
You know the jobs that arereally going to disappear.
People are going to spend lesstime in front of their computers
.
Yeah, and he was.
It was very apt and I think theand that actually sort of

(55:26):
marries with one of the waysthat I would talk and people ask
me, like well, what is my jobat risk?
You know it's hard to say whatspecific job is at risk, but I
think if someone wants to knowwhether they are equipped to
succeed or maybe fall behind inthe age of AI, I think it's like

(55:46):
open up your calendar and lookat how many meetings you have
yeah.
And if your workday consistsmostly of time by yourself
sitting in front of a computer,whether it's writing code or
writing advertising copy orpress releases, whatever it is,
if you're content generating ordoing research, you know that
that should give you some someconcern, right, because I think

(56:07):
that's the type of work that isgoing to be automated.
Yeah, what's harder to automateis, you know, having a
conversation face to face with aclient, a customer, a colleague
, yeah, and.
And then that brings you to OK,well, if that's, if that's
where we're heading, wherestudents need to be able to have
more of this or, like, do moreof the human aspects of work,

(56:28):
well, what are the skills theyneed to have?
To be able to engage withcolleagues, or really annoying
colleagues, or annoying clients.
Yeah, because that's reallywhere this push comes to shove.
I mean, like a great colleagueis a great colleague, but some
colleagues are.
We don't have any difficultcolleagues, but obviously many
people do and and you know thatexperience of also just like

(56:50):
dealing with, like you talkedabout, like group assignments as
being some of the hardestthings that students deal with,
but actually even when you fail,as part of a group, you learn a
lot about like why did you fail?
What was your role in thesuccess or failure?

of that.
Yeah, I mean, I think it, Ithink that's it and it's like I
was just.
We were just having aconversation with our eight year
old about, um, some of thethings she was experiencing with
, like some of her friendshipsand people that she likes, and
we had to explain to her it'slike people aren't like math Um,
what you do with one personmight warrant one reaction one

(57:26):
day and another reaction anotherday, and it hasn't like you
haven't changed or done anythingdifferently, but something in
their world has and you have tobe aware of that, and what you
do with one person might bedifferent than what you do with
another person because they needsomething else.
And I mean, there's so much ofthat social learning that
happens so young, right, but Ithink that's what we're trying

(57:48):
to instill with, I think, all ofour kids.
It's like, how do you actuallyinteract and interface with
others such that you are able todo the best kind of work you
want to do and bring out thebest kind of work from others?
And that requires being able tounderstand and like read cues
and not take things personally,and, um, being able to like

(58:10):
confront head on and somethingisn't going well, and how do you
do that effectively?
And, um, I think we have a lotto learn from our younger
classrooms, because they do alot of that work explicitly,
because it's so much a part ofwhat younger like.
What the younger kids areworking on in school is just
understanding how to interactwith one another, and I think we

(58:32):
can bring some more of thatback to our upper grades too.

Yeah , yeah, and that's why.
That's why I it gives me pausewhen some of the excitement
around AI tutoring gives mepause because I think it it
assumes that the most importantthing in education is just sort
of like the knowledge transferand like learning the things.
But I worry about a world wherestudents are all just sitting in
front of their computer, evenif, even if, like, scores go up.

(58:56):
Yeah, there, there is, there issomething to be said about,
just like, especially now thatkids are, we know, they're going
home and they're interactingwith companions and we can't
necessarily stop that, yeah, orteachers can't, right, they
don't have any control over it.
So the school, I thinkincreasingly, is going to be the

(59:23):
place where we can ensure oneplace where we can guarantee the
students are like buildingthose, those soft skills, yeah,
um, and of course, the hard partis, you know, it's easy for us
to say that to the teacher, whois measured not on soft skills
but rather on the hard skillsand the standards, yeah, and I
think that kind of brings usback to, like, the curriculum
that we've been building there's.
You know we have we've beenpaying a lot of attention to how
do we align this to thestandard so that it can check

(59:45):
both boxes, and we're not.
This is not some crazyinsightful thing.
Like there's a lot of otherreally high quality curriculum
out there that does both, yeah,and project-based learning,
while we utilize it throughoutour curriculum is also not new,
right, like we didn't invent theidea of project-based learning,
but this is something thatschools have talked about for a
long time, haven't necessarily,you know, mixed results, in

(01:00:06):
terms of which schools are doinga really good job implementing
it at scale.
I think they actuallyoftentimes really struggle.

Khushali Narechania (Directo (01:00:18):
So okay, to close things off.

Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, aiE (01:00:18):
I just want to like you're,
you're not done, unfortunatelylike the treadmill sort of
continues as a, as a curriculumdeveloper um, what?
What are you excited about?
That's coming next.
You know, I know that you don'thave to without sharing too
much, but maybe like one thingthat you can sort of share with
our um small but but loyalaudience that that they can
expect in 2025.

Khushali Narechania (Direc (01:00:37):
Well , I'll share two things because
I think it's really exciting.
I think AIEDU has kind offocused on secondary in the past
and I'm excited to kind ofbring elementary into the mix
and so we'll have actually somecontent um specifically for
elementary teachers on like how,how to kind of bring some of

(01:01:00):
these concepts into theclassroom, which, um, like we
were just talking about, it'sactually skills that they're
already working on um in theirELA and math standards, um and
and so that I'm really excitedabout the other thing that I'm
really looking forward to, withhaving kind of built the AI
readiness framework and thecompetencies for students, we

(01:01:21):
have been mapping kind of whatdo learning experiences look
like across grades or withingrades that kind of can build
around these competencies, andso thinking about packages of
content that address the ethicalimplications of AI for, say,

(01:01:44):
sixth graders, like what aresome warmup activities, some
lessons that you might be ableto use and projects, so a
teacher who is interested inthat topic or their students
have kind of a bigger bank ofresources that they can kind of
pull from um to to support kindof a a learning experience
across, across that arc too.
So more to come on that, but um,really excited for kind of

(01:02:09):
these, uh, these resources thatare kind of going into younger
grades and kind of, uh, deeperlearning as well, that are kind
of going into younger grades andkind of deeper learning as well
.

Alex Kotran (Founder/CEO, (01:02:16):
Yeah , I'm very excited for the
elementary school stuff.
It's something that people askfor all the time, and it's not
that we don't think it'simportant, but it seemed like
the the most important place tostart is like the future workers
who are, like you know, only afew years away from you know,
moving into sort of theirpost-secondary pathways, whether
that's career or college.
But you know, anybody with youngkids will tell you like there

(01:02:39):
is a ripe opportunity to beginconversations and actually start
to orient them.
So that we're not, you know,because a lot of stuff is baked,
especially like I know, likecareer exploration, you know a
lot of the research suggeststhat you know the fundamental,
the most important moments, foryou know people sort of
self-identifying with differentcareers happens like a lot
younger than people often expect.

(01:03:01):
Yeah, excellent, well ell Wellthis was really fun.

Khushali Narechania (Dire (01:03:03):
Thank you f.

This was legitimately the first show
that we recorded.
I think it went pretty well.
Yeah so yeah.
Thank you so much for joiningus.

Khushali Narechania (Director (01:03:13):
Y Than , , Khushali.
Thank you so much for joiningus.
Yeah Director director ofLearning.

Thank you so much, Alex, it was great
as always, and if anybody who'swatching wants to chat with you
, follow up.
How can they get in touch?

Khushali Narechania (Direct (01:03:23):
You can reach me at khushali@aiEDU.
at org org or I f if you wantto reach out to the learning
team more broadly, at aiEDUrg.
rg.
rg.
org.
org.

Okay , amazing.
Thank you so much.

Khushali Narechania (Direc (01:03:33):
Yeah , thanks.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Khushali Narechania: K-12 education in the age of AI

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

All Episodes

Khushali Narechania: K-12 education in the age of AI

Stuff You Should Know