S1:E5 Extended John Spencer on "The Human-Centered Classroom — Learning With AI, Not From It" John Spencer on

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What does it mean to build a classroom where students learn with AI instead of just from it? In this bonus episode, Dr. John Spencer presents ideas to explore how human-centered teaching strategies can help students reflect more deeply, think more critically, and engage more creatively—even as AI tools become part of everyday learning. We talk about project-based learning, prompt engineering, and what happens when we treat AI as a creative companion, not a shortcut.

This is a practical, reflective listen for anyone thinking about how to keep learning meaningful in an age of machine-generated answers.

Follow the EduByDesign Blog to explore the podcast topics, further.

And please let Phil know what resonates with you, in the comments.

Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Thank you for listening to Education by Design
Extended Edition.
In episode five, I got to talkto John Spencer about
creativity, teaching in beta,and the way project-based

(00:21):
learning really gets to theheart of what kids are
interested in and how it reallyhelps them engage in deeper
learning.
In this extension episode, wetake teaching in beta a step
further.
We're going to be thinking aboutapproaches to teaching that help
us to think of AI as a tool tohelp us nurture curiosity and
activate skill development inthe classroom.

(00:48):
John reminds us of some reallyessential basics around what it
means to be a teacher whoengages students in their own
learning.
And that actually means being anauthentic creative alongside
students.

SPEAKER_00 (01:01):
Let's go back to where we left off.
And then it wasn't until thenext year when I was unpacking
stuff and reorganizing myclassroom that I saw that new
teacher card and, you know,noticed that at the bottom she
put expires and then never.
Right.
And it was this reminder of likeevery year is a new year.

(01:21):
Every group is a new group ofkids, but also every day is a
new year.
day to try new lessons that mayor may not work.
To me, I think that's whatteaching in beta is.
It's the recognition that wewill very rarely get 100 percent
engagement.
We will very rarely haveprojects that are grand slams.

(01:42):
We're going to have a lot ofswings and misses we're going to
have a lot of singles anddoubles we're going to have a
lot of moments that don't workperfectly and that is okay
because our imperfection ourhumanity is exactly what our
students need is it's themindset of, yes, we have those

(02:05):
permissions.
It also means we give ourstudents that permission and
like a true beta cycle, wegather student feedback, right?
We listen to our students, wegain empathy with them, and we
revise based on this humbleapproach of saying, hey, what
can I do to improve this?
And then listening to ourstudents.

SPEAKER_01 (02:35):
I think that that's something that Richard Hood said
in the very first episode of thepodcast that I did, that that's
sort of my job is to listen toyou.
It's to listen to what it isthat you're interested in, what
it is that you need, and to, bythe end of the year, you know, I
want to be able to say to youthat you have the skills that
you didn't have before.
I've seen you develop and growthose skills and that you

(03:00):
matter, you know.
Like that, you know, when yousay what kids need from their
teachers is just that presenceof I see you and I understand
that right now you need to takea walk.
Go for it.
Take a break, you know.
Take a moment.
But I think for me teaching inbeta has never been more

(03:20):
important than, you know, atthis time, you know, the way
that education is evolving andnow– artificial intelligence is
just creating so muchpossibility for what we can do.
I feel like in my life, I'mtalking to it as a companion, as
a thought partner.
It's a companion for my inquiry.

(03:42):
It's a companion for helping meto think about how I might
organize things differently.
And I don't always agree.
I interrogate what it gives tome, obviously, but There's
still, you know, an element offear.
It's early days.
And I'm sort of, you know, I'veheard in one of your episodes

(04:04):
you were talking about kidsstill need to learn how to
write.
You know, how does teaching inbeta perhaps give us the license
and the permission to sort oflower the threat a little bit
when it comes to integratingtechnologies?

SPEAKER_00 (04:16):
Yeah, I mean, I think it just gives you the
permission to say, yeah, Let'sfigure out what works.
Let's play around with this.
Let's see if this thing isvaluable.
And then with that, sometimes wesay, look, the lo-fi option is
what I'm going with, thevintage.
I remember trying acomputer-based, this was years

(04:39):
ago, a computer-based conceptmap program.
And five minutes into it,saying, kids can't figure out
how to use it.
This is not better.
Why not just use paper andpencil?
And they made their concept mapswith paper and pencil, and we
busted out colored pencils, andit was amazing.
And the core concept was, in theend, I look at it and I go, what

(05:03):
in all likelihood would lead tohigher attention doing this by
hand or on a computer?
When we are in that beta mode,we have the permission to look
honestly at what's going on andmodify on the fly.
And I think that if I felt tiedto the technology, I would have
just felt like I had to.

(05:25):
You know, we did a Wonder Dayproject.
We call it Wonder Day, but itwas a two class period project
where they just pursued anyquestion they wanted related to
the social studies topic,engaged in research, and then
did this podcast when it wasdone.
And it had gone really wellbefore.
And so he was saying, you know,I would love to to try using a

(05:45):
chatbot for this.
My students have an option ofusing a chatbot on our AI
platform, and it was anightmare.
The students just copied andpasted from the chatbot.
They just asked questions, tookeverything at face value, and
they were moving so quickly thatthey weren't paying attention.
Well, that process, althoughfrustrating, led to developing a

(06:07):
slower, what we call the factcycle, prompt engineering
process.
That failed lesson led to a newframework that we could use that
we then introduced two weekslater that turned out to be
really helpful, that turned outto work.
And I think on the tech side, ifwe had just accepted the tech on
face value or we had justrejected it and said the
technology didn't work, period,we wouldn't have been able to

(06:30):
develop a cool solution to it.

SPEAKER_01 (06:32):
It's interesting that this little...
example is what's illuminatinghow we're not quite ready for
where we're going you know likethe like the kids are going to
revert to the routines thatthey've that have become normal
normalized for them in terms ofhow they're going to and whether
or not it was copying from theinternet straight up or copying
from a book back in like i meanwe copied from books when we

(06:54):
were sort of like still figuringout what we were supposed to
really do i

SPEAKER_00 (06:57):
remember i mean it's so funny because people said you
know complaining about studentscopy i remember turning in an
essay And it was word for wordverbatim from the Encyclopedia
Britannica.
We had this giant set.
And that was like the eliteencyclopedias.

(07:18):
That was considered the goodstuff, right?
But, I mean, that's not new,right?
Kids have been doing that for along time.
And honestly, I didn't even knowbetter.
I was in fourth grade.
I thought this is what it meantto do research and write an
essay.
When I think about AI, I thinkthere's going to be these deeply

(07:41):
human things that are done.
There's going to be theseaspects where we use AI to do
the repetitive work we hate,jump cuts and editing.
There's going to be an emphasison the human side.
There's going to also be timeswhere we use it to do things
that are deeply human and we'reusing it as a tool, but as a
thought partner.

(08:01):
That's really exciting.
I think about Ethan Mollick'snotion of the cyborg and the
centaur.
We're going to use it in a verycyborg type way.
And then we're also gonna justabandon it completely for a
while and do something justsolely solo in the same way that
someone who handcrafts furnitureis now more valuable than ever,

(08:21):
right?
And then we're gonna use it inbizarre ways where we transform
the learning altogether.
So I think about it in thiscontinuum of, we're gonna resist
it at times, we're gonnaintegrate it at times, we're
gonna have times where it isoffsetting what we do, and
separate, and then we're goingto have times where we use it to

(08:42):
really transform the learning.
And that, to me, is exciting.
It's at times terrifying.
There's moments where Idefinitely have ethical concerns
with AI.
But I think we're going to enterinto a really interesting space
where it's not either or, right?
We're going to have to be all ofthe above.

(09:04):
So what happens is it's the samething.
New art forms come out.
because of the technology thatare unexpected.
Hyper-realism is the way peoplepaint because of mirrors.
The Dutch masters, people don'tthink about the technology made

(09:26):
them better at their art form.
But when photography comes out,we end up with impressionism.
We end up with surrealism, withthe Dada art movement, with
cubism and all these modern art.
All these art forms emerge thatare, to me, really exciting.
So the technology is going topush us to do these things that

(09:48):
humans do very well differentlyand that's exciting and then the
other thing that happened withthe drum machine is it then also
created new genres that use thedrum machine right so the
assumption was it's used toreplace a drummer but the
reality is it leads to theexplosion of hip-hop electronic

(10:12):
music i mean that's that'sultimately it i mean that's
ultimately the bottom line likeyou know when when i mentioned
earlier the the goal of PBL, youknow, it's not, it's not the
finished project.
It's not the finished product.
You know, those are all going tofade that they're, you know,
very few products last.
Like the reality is it's, it'swho you become.

(10:35):
And, you know, I think about meteaching in this, you know, it
was a low income school and itwas a mixed group of, I had the
gifted group that we talkedabout this before, but you know,
the gifted group and the, theELL group and the special ed
group, And to me, the long-termvalue in what I see is, where

(10:57):
are they now?
What are they doing now?
How are they using those coreskills that they learned?
And that, to me, is what'sexciting.
In the moment, there weremoments where I remember being
frustrated or being sad for akid that they tried something
and it didn't work.
And now I can look back on thatand say, okay, well, let's look

(11:19):
at who they've become as adults.
And that's pretty exciting.

SPEAKER_01 (11:26):
You've been listening to the Education by
Design podcast.
I've been your host, Phil Evans.
If you like this episode, pleasehit subscribe or follow and join
me for my next episode.
Keep on learning.