January 29, 2026 • 46 mins
Episode 248 has a listener poll of viral snow-day announcement songs from districts around the country. Check out the videos below and tell us your favorite by emailing us at info@k12techtalkpodcast.com:
Option 1: Benson Boone - Ozarks Schools (MO)
Option 2: Extraordinary - Novi Community School District (MI)
Option 3: Code Red - Montgomery County Public Schools (MD)
The second half of this episode is an interview with Dr. Richard Charles, CIO for the Denver Public Schools. Dr. Charles discusses Denver’s decision to block ChatGPT for students and staff over privacy, safety, and compliance concerns, explains the district’s AI governance and procurement changes, and outlines criteria for safe vendor adoption (data privacy agreements, visibility and guardrails). He also shares alternatives being evaluated, plans for an AI whitelist, and district AI initiatives like knowledge management and partnerships.
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Disclaimer: The views and work done by Josh, Chris, and Mark are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions or positions of sponsors or any respective employers or organizations associated with the guys. K12 Tech Talk itself does not endorse or validate the ideas, views, or statements expressed by Josh, Chris, and Mark's individual views and opinions are not representative of K12 Tech Talk. Furthermore, any references or mention of products, services, organizations, or individuals on K12 Tech Talk should not be considered as endorsements related to any employer or organization associated with the guys.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
On this week's episode of the K-12 Tech Talk podcast, we listen to the best snow day announcement
(00:05):
songs from around the country before interviewing Dr. Richard Charles, the CIO for Denver Public
Schools about their recent decision to block chat GPT out of concerns for student privacy
and safety.
Thanks for listening.
Live from the NTP studios, this is the K-12 Tech Talk podcast.
This is episode 248.
(00:26):
My name is Josh, Tech Director here in snowy mid-Missouri, and we'll get into all sorts
of snow content here in a minute.
Down the road from me is a gentleman who just, you heard, shiver, and I am unsure if he has
made it out of the house for the last week.
Hello, Chris.
It's so cold.
(00:47):
Hey, what's up?
And Chris, you had, what, 10 inches of snow?
Sure.
I'd say 10, 10 and a half.
What'd you get?
Probably a half an inch more is what I got.
We have a third gentleman.
Everybody knows him by Mark, but I think it's important to point out, Mark had twice as
much snow as Chris and I, and I think he was out walking his dog the next day.
Well, yeah, because the dog's got to pee sometime, right?
There he is.
He's barking in the background.
Yeah, we had, I think we had 24 inches, 22 to 24 inches.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(01:08):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah, we had 22 to 24 inches.
In what span of time, 48 hours?
Yeah.
There was the Sunday to Monday storm and then Monday night, we got another storm.
(01:29):
So, when I looked out, I think I sent you the picture of my car.
The only thing I could see that was recognizable from my car was the mirror, the side mirror.
Other than that, the entire car was one giant bank of snow.
Crazy.
That's a lot of snow.
So, Chris, since you've been on snow days, what have you been doing?
Let's unpack this for a second.
(01:51):
So, I just said 22 to 24 inches.
We had two snow days.
Chris, you had 10 inches of snow.
What's today?
Today, we're recording this on a Thursday.
I haven't had school Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and we're not having school tomorrow.
What is wrong in your town?
10 inches, man.
(02:12):
That's a lot of snow.
No, that's not.
10 and a half.
Dirt roads, Mark, is the problem.
It is the dirt roads, those little side roads and whatnot.
Are people stuck in their houses?
Oh, no, they can get out and go shopping and go sleigh riding.
They just can't go to school.
It's the buses, man.
Yeah, it really is a bus transportation conversation.
(02:35):
Yeah.
Hmm.
Because like some streets are open, but there's only one like one lane.
Well, if kids are standing at the bus stop, are they standing in neck deep snow?
We were out Monday, Tuesday.
We made a post Tuesday afternoon that we were having school Wednesday.
That by far was the most popular post we have ever made.
(02:57):
For all the right reasons, right?
With over 200 comments.
Let's just say there might have been three positive comments out of the 200.
The best one, though, was there was a student that commented, I can't get out of my driveway.
The roads are still covered.
Our SRO commented and said, dude, I've seen you driving around town the last two days.
(03:22):
You can just fine.
It was hilarious.
This is the view outside my house.
And by the way, do you see all those trash barrels?
Because it was trash day and we still had to get our trash out for it to be picked up.
So the snow looks as tall as the trash cans is as tall as the trash cans.
And we still were able to get to school.
(03:44):
There's piles of snow that you can tell are actually cars.
Yes, we would not be going for a month in Missouri with that much.
But listen, let me tell you.
Let me tell you about my week.
OK, yeah, let's let's let's let's catch you guys up.
Yeah, I'll listen to this story.
And by the way, this is going to be called what's going on with Chris brought to you by Rise Vision.
(04:06):
They do digital signage on one platform.
They can do your school signs in hallways, libraries, classrooms and more screen sharing,
emergency alerts, all that good stuff.
Keep your folks informed and engaged.
So check out Rise Vision.
OK, I love that your life is sponsored, by the way.
But yes, he has a sponsor that is totally on brand with you.
I think I love it, too.
(04:29):
So I think last two episodes, when I really think back, I've been complaining a lot.
No, trying to know what just you know, we had that tech that left.
I got an update on that.
We had some things not working.
Let me just unpack this.
So a week or two ago, I talked about we got this custom transcript thing in Infinite Campus.
(04:50):
It was CIC.
If you're a school of our size, you have CIC attached to you that they help you with your
Infinite Campus stuff and some weird stuff with some shared accounts, yada, yada, yada.
That is completely fixed and it is beautiful.
It is embedded.
It's all great and good.
That's done.
Number one.
Chris, who do you have to thank for listening to the podcast?
(05:12):
I think I have Infinite Campus to thank.
Infinite Campus, if you're listening, we still don't want you as a sponsor.
We're just, I can't do it, right?
We can't do that, guys.
But if you did listen and somehow you helped me get that problem fixed, I really do appreciate
you.
We know they listened.
OK.
Hey, let's just chug.
So OK, we had Versatrans and SpedTrack down in campus as well.
(05:36):
Those things weren't working.
Those are now working.
And then I had this big issue with my Wi-Fi.
We had the DHCP scope that was screwed up.
I did some DHCP stuff to get things reconciled and both of our DHCP servers in sync.
We had laptops down.
You remember, I had like 60, 80 laptops down.
(05:58):
Over my snow break, the, let's see, ClearPass, Aruba ClearPass, Conductor, the controllers,
all the access points, all upgraded.
Firmware, all better.
Everything's been rebooted.
We got laptop figured out to a BIOS and Wi-Fi driver issue combined.
That's wild.
(06:18):
We think, yeah, it was just it ended up being just two buildings.
And then we dug deeper.
It's just a particular laptop model, but different generations.
And then we got it down to, oh, both of those laptop model and those generations had the
exact same Wi-Fi card in them.
And then we got that down to, oh, it's depending upon what driver they have on them.
(06:43):
And then Lenovo support said, can you also do a BIOS update?
And we think that's going to help with that problem.
I mean, we haven't been back to in session to like know that it's fixed, like know that
we know that we know that it's fixed, but we're feeling pretty good about that.
And finally, NewTek hired.
(07:04):
He starts on Monday.
Yay.
Unless we don't have school.
It's amazing how productive you can be when you don't have children in the buildings.
Yeah.
No teachers like there's just nothing like it's beautiful.
Chris hasn't gotten dressed in a week.
Like he's doing all this shirt.
T-shirt.
Fixing problems, man.
(07:25):
Fixing problems, not learning, but fixing problems.
Learning is secondary at this point.
Thank you, Infinite Campus.
Thank you, Aruba.
Thank you, Lenovo.
The next time you see Chris, ask him the backstory to that story, because it's hilarious.
I'll tell you the scoop.
(07:46):
Mark, we have, you know, it's been snow days here in Missouri for the last week.
And we started sharing a couple of days ago.
We started sharing these no school announcement videos.
Chris, do you want to say who the sponsor is for this real quick?
Yeah, I got a sponsor for this.
It's Pfizer.
(08:06):
We're going to call this segment Snow Day Songs, brought to you by Pfizer.
Pfizer.cloud slash K-12 Tech Talk.
They can do your IT asset management, help you with your inventory, check in, check out
barcode stuff, track repairs, and more.
Pfizer.cloud slash K-12 Tech Talk.
So we're going to do a little poll here.
We're going to have a competition.
We have three school cancellation songs.
(08:31):
You're going to have to email us.
Chris, email.
Info at k12techtalkpodcast.com.
Info at k12techtalkpodcast.com.
Tell us who your vote is.
We have three songs.
I have a clear favorite.
Mark.
Yeah.
So there was a lot of school districts that announced a snow day with a song or a creative
(08:55):
video.
We're going to play three of my favorites.
There was many.
These three songs are produced by the school district.
They're actually created by the school district.
And in some of the cases, they're students.
The video quality on these, by the way, is top notch.
So we'll link the original videos in the show notes so you can see what they look like.
(09:15):
But here we're going to play the audio.
We'll start with the local one for Josh and Chris.
This is from the Ozarks school district.
If you like this one, you're going to vote one.
Yeah.
This is the most scientific poll ever.
You're going to email the number one.
You're going to email us as many times as you want.
(09:39):
Yeah.
Secure.
Secure.
And you're going to vote one, two, or three.
And all of your emails will be personally read by Chris because he has nothing to do
tomorrow with his school district being closed.
We're going to count the votes.
Yeah.
Chris doesn't have school.
He doesn't have school.
So he has nothing to do but count.
All right.
This is school of the Ozarks.
Is it school of the Ozarks?
(09:59):
I think just Ozark.
Ozark schools.
Okay.
Down in southwest Missouri.
(10:29):
Stay home still.
That's according to Ozark school's Facebook post.
(10:52):
And this video is on Facebook.
That's how we found it.
It's been shared over 300,000 times.
I think that's a fifth grader that sang that song.
You got to go.
We'll link it.
You got to go check it out.
It's a wonderfully shot video.
He's standing in the snow playing guitar and singing this cover of Benson Boone's.
I love the line about like playing the snow if your mom says it's okay.
(11:15):
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Yes.
Yes.
All right.
Option number two.
Again, you're just going to write the number one or two.
This one is number two.
This is the Novi Community School District in Michigan.
I'll play that song now.
Here we go.
(11:41):
They say the forecast is breaking down and the roads aren't okay.
The buses aren't safe apparently.
So if the plows are so behind, we might find a way to make this snow day a masterpiece.
(12:05):
I take one look outside.
The snow day feels kind of extraordinary.
Snow is covering the ground looking like it's buried.
That's pretty good.
I know that this is the life.
No buses are gonna arrive.
The students down in the south are jealous.
No one.
We found something so extraordinary.
(12:28):
Getting the culture beyond is legendary.
God is cheering around.
Scream like we're on the playground.
So if this was The Voice, 10 seconds into that song, I'm hitting the button.
I'm turning my chair around.
I didn't watch that video.
(12:48):
So that was real.
Those were kids singing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, I assumed it was teachers.
I think it's a little bit of both.
I think it starts out with the student playing the guitar.
So that one reminded me.
It had like the slow start, which I think is proper.
Like I'm gonna assume and maybe I'm wrong, but maybe they sent that out with the phone call too.
You know, you could listen to it.
(13:10):
That's what we do typically.
That would be fun.
A previous assistant super.
I'm gonna try to do this and I hope I don't blast out the mic.
Imagine you look down at your caller ID and you see it's the school calling.
You're anticipating a snow day.
And then this is what noise came out.
And it was like at night.
It was like a later call.
And it was our assistant super.
(13:32):
No music in the background, just him.
He went, ow!
And then he started singing, I feel good.
But we got complaints from parents.
Because, you know, you're like picking up the phone, not expecting.
I feel good.
It was crazy.
(13:53):
And it sounded so terrible, you know, over the phone as well.
So high class is what we just heard.
All right, Mark, give us number three.
And option number three.
This is out of Montgomery County Schools in Maryland.
Now, I've got to say, you've got to watch the video for this one.
We're going to I'm going to cut it right at the song itself.
But there is a whole buildup and the video quality for this one.
(14:15):
I mean, it's almost like they had a month to prepare for this one.
It's so good.
(14:42):
With the school systems going to close.
So I'm checking the roads, talking to my crew.
Transportation director saying what we going to do.
Instagram blowing up, kids losing their calm.
They're staring out the windows with pajamas on.
I'm weighing every angle, trying hard to be fair.
But the storm hit heavy, snow thick everywhere.
Call up the ops team to help me decide.
(15:02):
Up county looking icy like a slip and slide.
Suits don't sleep when there's ice on the street.
I said now's not the time to have cold feet.
So I grabbed my case.
Time to let them all know that the button's been pushed and CPS is closed.
We out.
The video on that is really good.
(15:24):
He's carrying around like this, the football, like what the president carries around.
And he opens it up and there's the big red button and he pushes it.
And the notification goes out.
That that was well done.
Well done.
Yeah, that was number three.
That was number three.
So again, number one, Benson Boone out of Ozarks.
Number two was Extraordinary out of Michigan.
(15:45):
And number three, Dr. Dre out of Montgomery County, Maryland.
So send us an email.
That email address again, Josh or Chris?
Info at k12techtalkpodcast.com.
And again, Chris will read every single one of your comments as he sits at home
on his fifth snow day in a row.
But he doesn't wake up till about 10 or 11.
So don't expect a reply until like one.
(16:08):
That's completely correct.
But I'm I am.
That's not no, that's not true at all.
I still get up same time.
I'm in the office every like I'm just I'm going to go with number one
just because he's the Missouri kid and he's awesome.
Awesome video.
I agree with you.
(16:28):
I don't know.
I liked Montgomery.
It was.
We'll see.
We'll see.
I'm going to go with the East Coast.
That's why I'm going to go with the audience.
Go with the audience pick.
How about you get your own opinion, Mark?
Pick one.
Lame.
All right.
That's it should notify Mark.
We should notify these schools and tell them that there are polls
(16:51):
with their snow day cancellation videos.
Well, listen, each one of those videos got probably 50 times
the amount of listens that we that our podcast will give them.
So they are.
Hey, the one from Missouri got 300,000, Mark.
OK, so.
Three hundred times.
(17:12):
That's a that's a real lot.
All right.
We jump it into the interview.
Yeah, let me plug a sponsor before we jump into the interview, though.
Check out meter meter dot com slash K-12 tech talk.
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(17:33):
That's all.
It's all I had, guys.
All right.
Mark, you want to you want to intro this since this is a friend of yours?
Sure.
This next interview is one we've talked about for a couple of weeks now.
This is Dr. Charles from the Denver Public Schools to talk about their decision to block
OpenAI's chat GPT for students and staff.
And we'll talk about the reasons why they did that.
And what is next in store for the Denver Public Schools?
(17:56):
All right.
We are here with Dr. Richard Charles, the CIO for Denver Public Schools.
Dr. Charles, we've talked about your explosive decision a couple of weeks ago to block chat
GPT, and we wanted to have you on the show to talk a little bit more about it.
Let's start with just an overview of yourself, your role and what's going on in Denver Public
Schools.
Sure.
Thanks for having me on the podcast.
(18:17):
This is a lot of fun.
Heard a lot of great things about this podcast and hear that the audience is growing rapidly.
So I'm happy to support your efforts there.
I think the work that you all are doing is critically important.
Thank you.
Just a little bit of background.
Education is a second career for me.
I was in private industry for a number of years, came out to work on AI stuff back in
(18:40):
1992 in Colorado from New York City and never looked back.
And so Colorado is a wonderful state.
Denver is a wonderful town.
Currently, my work in Denver is in the capacity of chief information officer for the district.
And that role comes with a lot of responsibility.
We have a staff of close to 200 folks who are just working on all of the things that
(19:06):
are technology required in a district, right?
Making sure the compliance and legal and all of the various things are in place and secure.
For a student population of about 90,000 kids, we're faced with a lot of challenges
as is every other school district in the nation right now around federal funding and state
(19:27):
funding and trying to make things work for us while keeping students safe.
So that's been primarily my focus.
And just to give you some background, I have a bachelor's, master's and PhD in mathematics
bachelor's, master's and PhD in mathematics.
And so that's why I was into AI very early on in its development.
(19:53):
Interesting.
So tell us about the last few years of AI in Denver Public Schools.
When did it get introduced and what's been your trajectory so far?
Yeah, so we got into AI pretty early on when we went through the process of being one of
four school districts nationwide in the co-creation of the K through 12 generative AI readiness
(20:21):
checklist and subsequent rubric.
And that was in collaboration with COSIN, Council of Great City Schools and AWS at the time.
And so we understood pretty quickly that AI had to be owned by the entire organization
rather than just owned by the technology team.
(20:43):
And in that document, we started putting in a whole lot of details about here are the
things you all should be thinking about.
And I know that there's been some great subsequent work focused on how to effectively leverage
that with that rubric to talk about what next steps need to be with COSIN.
(21:04):
And so very excited to be early in on that work.
And then shortly after that, we formed our cross collaborative team, identify ways in
which we can truly give teachers what they need in terms of training and professional
development and understanding while understanding that, you know, kids are going to be surrounded
(21:30):
by AI.
We are preparing kids for a world that we know absolutely nothing about, right?
The kindergartners today are the graduating class, I think, of 2037, which is crazy, right?
And so our ability to predict what that world is to look like is really limited more so
(21:53):
than any other time in the history of education because of how rapidly things are changing.
I read a report recently that said that every 5.7 months or so, AI is doubling in power.
And so what that means is we're going to have some serious challenges in closing that gap
(22:14):
between what we think the future is going to look like given where we are and what the
kids who are graduating in 2037, 2038 would experience.
So, Dr. Charles, operationally, do you have an adopted product for your staff?
Do you have an adopted product for your students?
Where are you in that process of rolling out AI usage for your users?
(22:40):
Josh, thanks for that question because adoption was a huge issue when I took over the helm.
This is my third year in the role.
I think we had something like over 1,000 software products running in our system.
And so pretty quickly, we had to determine how do we pare this down?
Do we have data privacy agreements with each of them?
(23:02):
So we revamped the entire procurement process for software technology.
And what that looks like is now that it's a cross-functional collaboration where legal
is involved, procurement is involved, academics is involved, and we're getting to a point where
(23:23):
we're asking the question, is this truly a product that would support the increasing
student achievement in some ways?
It's research-based and all of those details.
So ultimately, that was the goal that we were shooting after.
And I'm happy to say that that revamp resulted in us now coming down to about 300 software
(23:46):
products, right?
And many of those 1,000 products that we had prior had one or two users.
They were a really great pilot program that a teacher saw at a conference.
And Mark, you and I have had conversations about this.
And they come back, and they load it on your system without you knowing.
And so we put all of that structure in place.
(24:08):
That being said, we do have any software product that has gone through that process.
And passes with flying colors, then becomes part of our approved technology menu.
And so we have an ATM menu of products that we use.
And you'll find about 300 or so products there.
(24:32):
When it comes to AI, the products that we looked at initially, we were very reluctant
to do any sort of adoption, given the fact that some of the tools that were on the market
were just doing these API calls to the early products, like ChatGPT and Cloud, and so on
and so forth.
And we said, well, should we be paying for something that's readily available for folks?
(24:56):
But we also are driven by data privacy.
It's really important for us as a district to not have our student data out there, and
that these models not use our student data to train their models, all right?
And so those companies that decided to sign and comply with our data privacy agreement
(25:18):
right now are Google.
I think Canva is on that list.
Magic School is on that list.
And in part, Magic School is probably the one that has been one of the first software,
AI software applications that we brought on board because there was so much usage by teachers
initially, and they really depended on it for some efficiencies around lesson planning
(25:43):
and a host of other areas.
And the other items, we started off with basically a blacklist of products that did not satisfy
our requirements.
And so we are going through the process right now of converting that to a whitelist as things
continue to mature and get to a better state.
(26:05):
So right now, we have a few that are, and I think it's posted online as well, that you
can go online and look for the AI handbook, and you'll see all of the AI software products
that we are subscribed to.
So that's kind of how we came to this point with you today.
There was a letter that came out from your district that I believe went public because
(26:30):
I found it not that long ago about your recent shutdown of chat GPT for, I believe it was
staff use, or no, student use, I'm sorry.
Can you walk us through that decision?
What red flags were you guys tipped off to that led to that?
What was that internal discussion like?
Was there much heartburn from the powers that be in your district to say, we are removing
(26:55):
this tool from use?
Walk us through that.
How did you guys get there?
Yeah, great question.
So we heard in October that chat GPT was going to release their adult content to the masses
on their application and had some serious concerns.
Although it was not a sanctioned product on our devices, it was still something that could
(27:22):
be used on our network, on private devices and things of that nature, right?
So we felt that that was pretty challenging for us to overcome.
And so we were waiting to hear details about how that was going to work.
I found out, I guess a couple of days ago, they released the algorithm.
(27:44):
It's on their website now on January 20th, our approach to age prediction.
And if you're familiar with AI, you know that many of these large language models can be
bypassed pretty readily.
So they're saying that, and they have documented that they're very rigorous in their ability
(28:05):
to predict the age of a student or a user so that they can allow access or not to the
adult content.
Well, in that process, you'll find that all the data that it's relying on is data, student
data that they, OpenAI has not signed our data privacy agreement with, right?
(28:27):
So it kind of flies in the face of that.
In addition, so it's not just the adult content.
We also had a challenge around when we don't have a data privacy agreement, we certainly
we certainly can't see the things and the prompts and all of the details of what's
happening in the usage of these devices, of these applications.
(28:48):
And so when we don't have that, and then couple that with the fact that we, there's this new
feature called collaborative chat, which is a great idea, right?
It's a great chance for students to collaborate on in levels that they probably never had
in the past.
And as a result of that access to this new tool, there's some concern around hazing,
(29:13):
you know, a team of students can be great initially, and the student who creates that
collaborative chat can then exclude other students and then use AI within that setting
to be able to bully or what have you.
And so we do have an acceptable use policy for students.
But in addition to the fact that there's no data privacy agreement, we have no insight
(29:39):
into what those conversations are about.
And so we felt it would be the responsible thing for us to do and the prudent thing for
us to do to start making some decisions about what is allowed and what's not allowed.
And I also, thanks for that question, Josh, because the other thing I forgot to mention
is we were one of the first districts to establish some policies around the use of generative
(30:04):
AI and AI as a whole.
When you look at ChatGPT's approach to content and moderation, was this a concern that, hey,
I'm going to be liable for CIPA, Children's Internet Protection Act, and I'm not sure
if I can stay in compliance, or is this more of a concern that ChatGPT's approach basically
(30:26):
is a breach of contract or a breach of privacy to then determine if a child is above 18 or
not?
Is it more of a proactive or is it a reactive approach?
It's a proactive approach.
CIPA compliance, COPA compliance is a challenge.
And we cannot afford to be responsible in a setting like this where I think you've heard
(30:54):
me talk, Mark, on all of these panels where I share information and little anecdotes about
how easy it is to get by these systems to do things that make absolutely no sense, or
the information is biased in some way.
So you can, the web is just full of all of these jailbreak tools that are available now.
(31:18):
And so, yeah, we wanted to be proactive.
But as a state, we're also looking at AI legislation, right?
And what's happening now is that you have these software companies that are using these
platforms to develop code.
And I think the last session of the legislature had them submitting some legislation that
(31:43):
indicated that school districts would be considered the distributors of this software,
right?
So if something goes wrong, it's the responsibility of the distributor
to take on the liability and the software developer, right?
Not the company that's manufactured it with all of the flaws and lack of guardrails and
(32:07):
those sorts of things.
So that's been our challenge.
And we're trying to stay ahead of it.
As I said, things are moving so quickly that it's tough to keep track of everything.
Just two days ago, they talked about the release of the age prediction algorithm.
We anticipate that this is in anticipation of the subsequent release sometime in late
(32:29):
January or early February.
It's definitely the first quarter.
And so we're just being proactive about it.
I want to talk about what Chad Chappetee can do differently or change to earn Denver's
trust back.
But first, you announced this about two weeks ago.
What has been the response from the community?
What has been the reaction or basically where have patterns of behavior moved?
(32:53):
Yeah.
We have about 68% of the responses that we received on this as positive.
Thank you for making this decision, DPS.
Great.
We're really concerned about all of the details and implications of this work and of these
tools.
And so we had very few folks who said, you know what, you should block everything.
(33:20):
And then you had one person who said, you know, you should not block a thing.
We should allow students to use all of these products, these large language models, so
that we can get some insight into how they're not using it safely, which is a valid point
if you had access through a data privacy agreement of all of the data.
(33:44):
And that is not the case here.
Yeah.
You shared at the beginning the link to the age prediction stuff.
And while you've been talking, I've been trying to skim through it quickly.
And, you know, there's nice sentences in here about they're trying to do the right
thing and do teen safety.
And in order to do that, they have to learn.
But on our last episode, we were just talking about some of the banter about, I mean, we're
(34:11):
here to protect kids and we're here to make sure kids are learning.
So kids aren't the guinea pigs in how that is.
So I understand that they have to collect data.
And you have to do that work.
But to just expect schools to sign up without any guardrails, as that word we're throwing
around, that's a crazy thing that none of us will sign up for.
(34:35):
You will not talk to a to a CTO or to a tech director.
And you shouldn't be able to talk to any administrator in a school or a teacher.
Yeah.
Right.
That will just be OK with, yeah, let my kids sit at that computer and just type for a while.
And let's see if he can get to the bad stuff.
And let's see if let's see what he says.
(34:56):
No one's going to say, say, do that.
If this if this were a drug trial, Chris, we'd be giving the patient a whole lot of
drugs and crossing our fingers.
Right.
And in the case of this situation, it's kids that we're giving the drug to.
Right.
It's not really the prudent thing to do.
So, Mark, you asked what would I recommend?
(35:18):
I think OpenAI and these large language model companies absolutely need to have
some educators on their staff who are leaders in their fields, certainly some tech technology
leaders, but you need some instructional leaders who would be willing and able to serve on
(35:39):
any sort of any sort of committees that they have or any sort of roles that they have to
make sure that they're thoughtful in their approach.
This is not a shoot first, ask questions later.
And this is exactly what it feels like.
Well, if you were to ask me what AI platforms would you block, given the recent headlines
(36:00):
of Grok and what's happened on Twitter over the last few weeks, why not start with the
more obvious ones like Grok and some of the more dangerous LLMs?
Yeah, we are reviewing all of them.
In fact, Mark, as you can imagine, the challenge with us with Chad GPT is that the usage was
(36:21):
just through the roof.
Got it.
Grok and DeepSeek and some of the other ones are smaller.
However, since the adult content has been released on Grok, we are seeing an increase.
But we are going through, we have a committee that we are meeting on this upcoming Monday
as well, an AI committee, governance group and an operations separate group.
(36:43):
And in the governance group, we talk about all of these things to say what's our next
decision point for us around what replaces some of the usage by students of Chad GPT?
Well, in our case, it's going to be Gemini.
Gemini signed the data privacy agreement.
We also look at other sources.
Common Sense Media has some wonderful resources, if you've not looked at those, on recommendations
(37:08):
on where the shortcomings are of all of these large language models and applications.
And in some cases, you'll see that they say that, you know, Gemini has some challenges.
And for us, many of those challenges are tied to not having controls to be able to address
(37:32):
content for younger children or middle school kids.
Well, because they signed the data privacy agreement with DPS, we do have access to those
controls and we manage all of that on our end.
And so, yeah, it's just a matter of staying ahead of the curve.
And Grok and, you know, there's probably close to a thousand of these large language models
(37:54):
now and many of them creep up on our network.
So that's why we're thinking of shifting to the whitelist rather than a blacklist of
software applications.
So in order for a platform to get on that whitelist, should Chad GPT make some changes
in the next few months to get back on your good side?
Yeah.
What would at a high level, what would that criteria be?
(38:14):
So I think the criteria is anchored in students first, student data privacy first, right?
All of the compliance, SIPA compliance, COPA compliance.
When you have these tools getting into adult content, you know that that community tends
(38:35):
to be the ones where hackers are just waiting in the wings to be able to look for opportunities
to emerge.
And so it is a draw for hackers.
And school districts, I think a couple of years ago in 2023 from 2022, there was an
(38:57):
823% increase on attacks in school districts.
All that with the fact that the current administration has, because of the DOJ effort,
limited some of the access and support for CISA and for MS-ISAC and some of these really
(39:21):
important organizations across state lines to give us some flags when things are happening
and give us some guidance around that.
So school districts that have the resources, and in our case, we do have the resource,
need to rely now on Kroll and other companies to defend and stay ahead of the curve.
And so it's not a game for us.
(39:45):
Suicidal ideations are real at the teenage level and at elementary school levels.
And this is pretty serious stuff.
And so when we're talking about being responsible as a corporation in rolling these things out,
I understand.
I've been in AI for many years, as I mentioned at the beginning.
(40:09):
I understand the possibilities and the beauty that can emerge from all of this work and
the fact that we can get to a space where we're solving some really hard problems.
My preference would be solving hard problems in mathematics, but it's going to solve some
serious problems around science and technology and a host of other fields, curing cancer
(40:32):
and so on.
But with that comes the responsibility of how do we manage those, the lack of guardrails
around.
Visibility, guardrails, data privacy, those are the things that Denver is saying that
this is important to us.
If you're going to be in our environment, you need to meet this criteria.
Absolutely.
(40:53):
I did ask, not necessarily OpenAI, but I did ask ChatGPT about your decision.
And, you know, they had some things to say about your decision.
And you'd be surprised.
They actually did agree with the decision that you made and did recommend alternatives
like Google Gemini, Microsoft Teams for Education and Magic School.
Yeah, straight from ChatGPT.
(41:14):
They're on board with your decision and they're saying, move over to Magic School and Gemini.
Those are the safe platforms for Denver.
So kudos to you for that.
Well, thank you, Mark.
Yeah, it's just, these tools are wonderful tools, right?
But with it comes the added responsibility that the kids are not going to be able to
(41:35):
do it and they will be surrounded by adults.
So we don't want to curb their usage of these tools in any way that would impact their ability
to get jobs, right?
Vibrating is awesome.
It is.
And all the other things we can do with it, right?
So let's take it on.
I would also say that Claude, Anthropic, has been doing a great job with putting safety
(42:00):
first, right?
And invest, putting dollars in that direction.
So I continue to monitor them and I continue to penetration test a lot of these systems.
What is the last thing or what are you currently building with AI?
Are you vibe coding right now in your own time?
So lots of stuff.
(42:20):
Let's see.
So I'll give you a couple of examples from the district side, then one personal one.
From the district side, we are very, very interested in the use of AI to manage district
knowledge.
And I think you all have heard me talk about this before.
Knowledge management is a huge window of opportunity for us to leverage these tools.
(42:41):
And so we've seen some great examples in the medical arena.
I think open evidence is one of them.
And so we're trying to build out a similar solution to that for DPS.
And we're collaborating with researchers at the University of Denver here and hopefully
working with the Gates Foundation to try and really get excited about this work as well.
(43:06):
So that's one area.
With that, what that means is all of the practices, processes, procedures, the knowledge
of the organization is accessible with a large language model overlay.
And when someone leaves the organization, you know exactly what's leaving.
(43:27):
You don't have to worry about the job description because it already knows exactly what
information is needed.
There is no repository of high quality interventions.
And that's why we're working with researchers to try to develop that because that's sorely
needed in the field of education.
And if any of the companies are listening to this podcast, if you would like to really
(43:51):
explore that with us, we'd be open to it.
We've been working with a number of companies and trying to solve it.
It's a hard problem to solve.
I do think that open evidence is a great example of how to do that well.
On the personal level, I'm a Kaggle geek.
And so I go on Kaggle every now and then and look at competitions and try to get into some
vibe coding on that.
(44:12):
Kaggle is a platform for data scientists originally, but now everyone joins.
Where you can hop on there and enter a competition and see how you rank up against other folks
in the solution.
And some of these solutions are by big research teams and making some significant progress.
So that's how I keep things going.
(44:34):
Interesting.
I've never heard of that platform, but there goes my weekend.
It looks cool.
Well, thank you so much for coming on.
This is great.
I think districts who are watching your lead have definitely learned a whole lot more and
will hopefully be able to take action from what you guys are doing.
So thank you for leading the charge.
Well, thank you all for having me and I'll be listening the next time.
(44:57):
All right.
Thanks for listening.
And thanks to our sponsors for hanging out with us as well.
A couple of little announcements.
We're hitting the road.
We're going to be at some different places coming up.
Mark's going to be in Colorado at the Calais Conference.
That's February 18th through the 20th.
On February 20th here in Missouri, down at Cape Girardeau, we're doing the K-12 Next
event.
And then we'll be at K-12 Six in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
(45:19):
That's February 24th through the 26th and far off.
But we'll come up quick as the Midwest Tech Talk Security Symposium, March 12th through
the 13th.
There'll be some links in the podcast description to those events.
And again, those are made possible by our sponsors.
A few shout outs of sponsors.
That's Incident IQ.
They can help with your K-12 operations with your support requests, your district workflows,
(45:42):
facilities management, HR, and more.
Shout out to Fortinet.
You can email fortinetpodcast at fortinet.com.
And last but not least, Manage Methods.
They can help you with your Google environment, Microsoft environment, monitor your stuff,
your files, your activity in your district, help you with protecting your students.
Thanks for listening.
(46:14):
The views and opinions expressed on the K-12 Tech Talk podcast are the personal opinions
of Josh, Chris, and Mark, and do not represent the views or opinions of our sponsors or other
organizations that we're affiliated with.
The material and information presented here is for general information and entertainment
purposes only.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.
On this week's episode of the K-12 Tech Talk podcast, we listen to the best snow day announcement
(00:05):
songs from around the country before interviewing Dr. Richard Charles, the CIO for Denver Public
Schools about their recent decision to block chat GPT out of concerns for student privacy
and safety.
Thanks for listening.
Live from the NTP studios, this is the K-12 Tech Talk podcast.
This is episode 248.
(00:26):
My name is Josh, Tech Director here in snowy mid-Missouri, and we'll get into all sorts
of snow content here in a minute.
Down the road from me is a gentleman who just, you heard, shiver, and I am unsure if he has
made it out of the house for the last week.
Hello, Chris.
It's so cold.
(00:47):
Hey, what's up?
And Chris, you had, what, 10 inches of snow?
Sure.
I'd say 10, 10 and a half.
What'd you get?
Probably a half an inch more is what I got.
We have a third gentleman.
Everybody knows him by Mark, but I think it's important to point out, Mark had twice as
much snow as Chris and I, and I think he was out walking his dog the next day.
Well, yeah, because the dog's got to pee sometime, right?
There he is.
He's barking in the background.
Yeah, we had, I think we had 24 inches, 22 to 24 inches.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(01:08):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah, we had 22 to 24 inches.
In what span of time, 48 hours?
Yeah.
There was the Sunday to Monday storm and then Monday night, we got another storm.
(01:29):
So, when I looked out, I think I sent you the picture of my car.
The only thing I could see that was recognizable from my car was the mirror, the side mirror.
Other than that, the entire car was one giant bank of snow.
Crazy.
That's a lot of snow.
So, Chris, since you've been on snow days, what have you been doing?
Let's unpack this for a second.
(01:51):
So, I just said 22 to 24 inches.
We had two snow days.
Chris, you had 10 inches of snow.
What's today?
Today, we're recording this on a Thursday.
I haven't had school Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and we're not having school tomorrow.
What is wrong in your town?
10 inches, man.
(02:12):
That's a lot of snow.
No, that's not.
10 and a half.
Dirt roads, Mark, is the problem.
It is the dirt roads, those little side roads and whatnot.
Are people stuck in their houses?
Oh, no, they can get out and go shopping and go sleigh riding.
They just can't go to school.
It's the buses, man.
Yeah, it really is a bus transportation conversation.
(02:35):
Yeah.
Hmm.
Because like some streets are open, but there's only one like one lane.
Well, if kids are standing at the bus stop, are they standing in neck deep snow?
We were out Monday, Tuesday.
We made a post Tuesday afternoon that we were having school Wednesday.
That by far was the most popular post we have ever made.
(02:57):
For all the right reasons, right?
With over 200 comments.
Let's just say there might have been three positive comments out of the 200.
The best one, though, was there was a student that commented, I can't get out of my driveway.
The roads are still covered.
Our SRO commented and said, dude, I've seen you driving around town the last two days.
(03:22):
You can just fine.
It was hilarious.
This is the view outside my house.
And by the way, do you see all those trash barrels?
Because it was trash day and we still had to get our trash out for it to be picked up.
So the snow looks as tall as the trash cans is as tall as the trash cans.
And we still were able to get to school.
(03:44):
There's piles of snow that you can tell are actually cars.
Yes, we would not be going for a month in Missouri with that much.
But listen, let me tell you.
Let me tell you about my week.
OK, yeah, let's let's let's let's catch you guys up.
Yeah, I'll listen to this story.
And by the way, this is going to be called what's going on with Chris brought to you by Rise Vision.
(04:06):
They do digital signage on one platform.
They can do your school signs in hallways, libraries, classrooms and more screen sharing,
emergency alerts, all that good stuff.
Keep your folks informed and engaged.
So check out Rise Vision.
OK, I love that your life is sponsored, by the way.
But yes, he has a sponsor that is totally on brand with you.
I think I love it, too.
(04:29):
So I think last two episodes, when I really think back, I've been complaining a lot.
No, trying to know what just you know, we had that tech that left.
I got an update on that.
We had some things not working.
Let me just unpack this.
So a week or two ago, I talked about we got this custom transcript thing in Infinite Campus.
(04:50):
It was CIC.
If you're a school of our size, you have CIC attached to you that they help you with your
Infinite Campus stuff and some weird stuff with some shared accounts, yada, yada, yada.
That is completely fixed and it is beautiful.
It is embedded.
It's all great and good.
That's done.
Number one.
Chris, who do you have to thank for listening to the podcast?
(05:12):
I think I have Infinite Campus to thank.
Infinite Campus, if you're listening, we still don't want you as a sponsor.
We're just, I can't do it, right?
We can't do that, guys.
But if you did listen and somehow you helped me get that problem fixed, I really do appreciate
you.
We know they listened.
OK.
Hey, let's just chug.
So OK, we had Versatrans and SpedTrack down in campus as well.
(05:36):
Those things weren't working.
Those are now working.
And then I had this big issue with my Wi-Fi.
We had the DHCP scope that was screwed up.
I did some DHCP stuff to get things reconciled and both of our DHCP servers in sync.
We had laptops down.
You remember, I had like 60, 80 laptops down.
(05:58):
Over my snow break, the, let's see, ClearPass, Aruba ClearPass, Conductor, the controllers,
all the access points, all upgraded.
Firmware, all better.
Everything's been rebooted.
We got laptop figured out to a BIOS and Wi-Fi driver issue combined.
That's wild.
(06:18):
We think, yeah, it was just it ended up being just two buildings.
And then we dug deeper.
It's just a particular laptop model, but different generations.
And then we got it down to, oh, both of those laptop model and those generations had the
exact same Wi-Fi card in them.
And then we got that down to, oh, it's depending upon what driver they have on them.
(06:43):
And then Lenovo support said, can you also do a BIOS update?
And we think that's going to help with that problem.
I mean, we haven't been back to in session to like know that it's fixed, like know that
we know that we know that it's fixed, but we're feeling pretty good about that.
And finally, NewTek hired.
(07:04):
He starts on Monday.
Yay.
Unless we don't have school.
It's amazing how productive you can be when you don't have children in the buildings.
Yeah.
No teachers like there's just nothing like it's beautiful.
Chris hasn't gotten dressed in a week.
Like he's doing all this shirt.
T-shirt.
Fixing problems, man.
(07:25):
Fixing problems, not learning, but fixing problems.
Learning is secondary at this point.
Thank you, Infinite Campus.
Thank you, Aruba.
Thank you, Lenovo.
The next time you see Chris, ask him the backstory to that story, because it's hilarious.
I'll tell you the scoop.
(07:46):
Mark, we have, you know, it's been snow days here in Missouri for the last week.
And we started sharing a couple of days ago.
We started sharing these no school announcement videos.
Chris, do you want to say who the sponsor is for this real quick?
Yeah, I got a sponsor for this.
It's Pfizer.
(08:06):
We're going to call this segment Snow Day Songs, brought to you by Pfizer.
Pfizer.cloud slash K-12 Tech Talk.
They can do your IT asset management, help you with your inventory, check in, check out
barcode stuff, track repairs, and more.
Pfizer.cloud slash K-12 Tech Talk.
So we're going to do a little poll here.
We're going to have a competition.
We have three school cancellation songs.
(08:31):
You're going to have to email us.
Chris, email.
Info at k12techtalkpodcast.com.
Info at k12techtalkpodcast.com.
Tell us who your vote is.
We have three songs.
I have a clear favorite.
Mark.
Yeah.
So there was a lot of school districts that announced a snow day with a song or a creative
(08:55):
video.
We're going to play three of my favorites.
There was many.
These three songs are produced by the school district.
They're actually created by the school district.
And in some of the cases, they're students.
The video quality on these, by the way, is top notch.
So we'll link the original videos in the show notes so you can see what they look like.
(09:15):
But here we're going to play the audio.
We'll start with the local one for Josh and Chris.
This is from the Ozarks school district.
If you like this one, you're going to vote one.
Yeah.
This is the most scientific poll ever.
You're going to email the number one.
You're going to email us as many times as you want.
(09:39):
Yeah.
Secure.
Secure.
And you're going to vote one, two, or three.
And all of your emails will be personally read by Chris because he has nothing to do
tomorrow with his school district being closed.
We're going to count the votes.
Yeah.
Chris doesn't have school.
He doesn't have school.
So he has nothing to do but count.
All right.
This is school of the Ozarks.
Is it school of the Ozarks?
(09:59):
I think just Ozark.
Ozark schools.
Okay.
Down in southwest Missouri.
(10:29):
Stay home still.
That's according to Ozark school's Facebook post.
(10:52):
And this video is on Facebook.
That's how we found it.
It's been shared over 300,000 times.
I think that's a fifth grader that sang that song.
You got to go.
We'll link it.
You got to go check it out.
It's a wonderfully shot video.
He's standing in the snow playing guitar and singing this cover of Benson Boone's.
I love the line about like playing the snow if your mom says it's okay.
(11:15):
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Yes.
Yes.
All right.
Option number two.
Again, you're just going to write the number one or two.
This one is number two.
This is the Novi Community School District in Michigan.
I'll play that song now.
Here we go.
(11:41):
They say the forecast is breaking down and the roads aren't okay.
The buses aren't safe apparently.
So if the plows are so behind, we might find a way to make this snow day a masterpiece.
(12:05):
I take one look outside.
The snow day feels kind of extraordinary.
Snow is covering the ground looking like it's buried.
That's pretty good.
I know that this is the life.
No buses are gonna arrive.
The students down in the south are jealous.
No one.
We found something so extraordinary.
(12:28):
Getting the culture beyond is legendary.
God is cheering around.
Scream like we're on the playground.
So if this was The Voice, 10 seconds into that song, I'm hitting the button.
I'm turning my chair around.
I didn't watch that video.
(12:48):
So that was real.
Those were kids singing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, I assumed it was teachers.
I think it's a little bit of both.
I think it starts out with the student playing the guitar.
So that one reminded me.
It had like the slow start, which I think is proper.
Like I'm gonna assume and maybe I'm wrong, but maybe they sent that out with the phone call too.
You know, you could listen to it.
(13:10):
That's what we do typically.
That would be fun.
A previous assistant super.
I'm gonna try to do this and I hope I don't blast out the mic.
Imagine you look down at your caller ID and you see it's the school calling.
You're anticipating a snow day.
And then this is what noise came out.
And it was like at night.
It was like a later call.
And it was our assistant super.
(13:32):
No music in the background, just him.
He went, ow!
And then he started singing, I feel good.
But we got complaints from parents.
Because, you know, you're like picking up the phone, not expecting.
I feel good.
It was crazy.
(13:53):
And it sounded so terrible, you know, over the phone as well.
So high class is what we just heard.
All right, Mark, give us number three.
And option number three.
This is out of Montgomery County Schools in Maryland.
Now, I've got to say, you've got to watch the video for this one.
We're going to I'm going to cut it right at the song itself.
But there is a whole buildup and the video quality for this one.
(14:15):
I mean, it's almost like they had a month to prepare for this one.
It's so good.
(14:42):
With the school systems going to close.
So I'm checking the roads, talking to my crew.
Transportation director saying what we going to do.
Instagram blowing up, kids losing their calm.
They're staring out the windows with pajamas on.
I'm weighing every angle, trying hard to be fair.
But the storm hit heavy, snow thick everywhere.
Call up the ops team to help me decide.
(15:02):
Up county looking icy like a slip and slide.
Suits don't sleep when there's ice on the street.
I said now's not the time to have cold feet.
So I grabbed my case.
Time to let them all know that the button's been pushed and CPS is closed.
We out.
The video on that is really good.
(15:24):
He's carrying around like this, the football, like what the president carries around.
And he opens it up and there's the big red button and he pushes it.
And the notification goes out.
That that was well done.
Well done.
Yeah, that was number three.
That was number three.
So again, number one, Benson Boone out of Ozarks.
Number two was Extraordinary out of Michigan.
(15:45):
And number three, Dr. Dre out of Montgomery County, Maryland.
So send us an email.
That email address again, Josh or Chris?
Info at k12techtalkpodcast.com.
And again, Chris will read every single one of your comments as he sits at home
on his fifth snow day in a row.
But he doesn't wake up till about 10 or 11.
So don't expect a reply until like one.
(16:08):
That's completely correct.
But I'm I am.
That's not no, that's not true at all.
I still get up same time.
I'm in the office every like I'm just I'm going to go with number one
just because he's the Missouri kid and he's awesome.
Awesome video.
I agree with you.
(16:28):
I don't know.
I liked Montgomery.
It was.
We'll see.
We'll see.
I'm going to go with the East Coast.
That's why I'm going to go with the audience.
Go with the audience pick.
How about you get your own opinion, Mark?
Pick one.
Lame.
All right.
That's it should notify Mark.
We should notify these schools and tell them that there are polls
(16:51):
with their snow day cancellation videos.
Well, listen, each one of those videos got probably 50 times
the amount of listens that we that our podcast will give them.
So they are.
Hey, the one from Missouri got 300,000, Mark.
OK, so.
Three hundred times.
(17:12):
That's a that's a real lot.
All right.
We jump it into the interview.
Yeah, let me plug a sponsor before we jump into the interview, though.
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They can help you plan, install and manage your network.
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(17:33):
That's all.
It's all I had, guys.
All right.
Mark, you want to you want to intro this since this is a friend of yours?
Sure.
This next interview is one we've talked about for a couple of weeks now.
This is Dr. Charles from the Denver Public Schools to talk about their decision to block
OpenAI's chat GPT for students and staff.
And we'll talk about the reasons why they did that.
And what is next in store for the Denver Public Schools?
(17:56):
All right.
We are here with Dr. Richard Charles, the CIO for Denver Public Schools.
Dr. Charles, we've talked about your explosive decision a couple of weeks ago to block chat
GPT, and we wanted to have you on the show to talk a little bit more about it.
Let's start with just an overview of yourself, your role and what's going on in Denver Public
Schools.
Sure.
Thanks for having me on the podcast.
(18:17):
This is a lot of fun.
Heard a lot of great things about this podcast and hear that the audience is growing rapidly.
So I'm happy to support your efforts there.
I think the work that you all are doing is critically important.
Thank you.
Just a little bit of background.
Education is a second career for me.
I was in private industry for a number of years, came out to work on AI stuff back in
(18:40):
1992 in Colorado from New York City and never looked back.
And so Colorado is a wonderful state.
Denver is a wonderful town.
Currently, my work in Denver is in the capacity of chief information officer for the district.
And that role comes with a lot of responsibility.
We have a staff of close to 200 folks who are just working on all of the things that
(19:06):
are technology required in a district, right?
Making sure the compliance and legal and all of the various things are in place and secure.
For a student population of about 90,000 kids, we're faced with a lot of challenges
as is every other school district in the nation right now around federal funding and state
(19:27):
funding and trying to make things work for us while keeping students safe.
So that's been primarily my focus.
And just to give you some background, I have a bachelor's, master's and PhD in mathematics
bachelor's, master's and PhD in mathematics.
And so that's why I was into AI very early on in its development.
(19:53):
Interesting.
So tell us about the last few years of AI in Denver Public Schools.
When did it get introduced and what's been your trajectory so far?
Yeah, so we got into AI pretty early on when we went through the process of being one of
four school districts nationwide in the co-creation of the K through 12 generative AI readiness
(20:21):
checklist and subsequent rubric.
And that was in collaboration with COSIN, Council of Great City Schools and AWS at the time.
And so we understood pretty quickly that AI had to be owned by the entire organization
rather than just owned by the technology team.
(20:43):
And in that document, we started putting in a whole lot of details about here are the
things you all should be thinking about.
And I know that there's been some great subsequent work focused on how to effectively leverage
that with that rubric to talk about what next steps need to be with COSIN.
(21:04):
And so very excited to be early in on that work.
And then shortly after that, we formed our cross collaborative team, identify ways in
which we can truly give teachers what they need in terms of training and professional
development and understanding while understanding that, you know, kids are going to be surrounded
(21:30):
by AI.
We are preparing kids for a world that we know absolutely nothing about, right?
The kindergartners today are the graduating class, I think, of 2037, which is crazy, right?
And so our ability to predict what that world is to look like is really limited more so
(21:53):
than any other time in the history of education because of how rapidly things are changing.
I read a report recently that said that every 5.7 months or so, AI is doubling in power.
And so what that means is we're going to have some serious challenges in closing that gap
(22:14):
between what we think the future is going to look like given where we are and what the
kids who are graduating in 2037, 2038 would experience.
So, Dr. Charles, operationally, do you have an adopted product for your staff?
Do you have an adopted product for your students?
Where are you in that process of rolling out AI usage for your users?
(22:40):
Josh, thanks for that question because adoption was a huge issue when I took over the helm.
This is my third year in the role.
I think we had something like over 1,000 software products running in our system.
And so pretty quickly, we had to determine how do we pare this down?
Do we have data privacy agreements with each of them?
(23:02):
So we revamped the entire procurement process for software technology.
And what that looks like is now that it's a cross-functional collaboration where legal
is involved, procurement is involved, academics is involved, and we're getting to a point where
(23:23):
we're asking the question, is this truly a product that would support the increasing
student achievement in some ways?
It's research-based and all of those details.
So ultimately, that was the goal that we were shooting after.
And I'm happy to say that that revamp resulted in us now coming down to about 300 software
(23:46):
products, right?
And many of those 1,000 products that we had prior had one or two users.
They were a really great pilot program that a teacher saw at a conference.
And Mark, you and I have had conversations about this.
And they come back, and they load it on your system without you knowing.
And so we put all of that structure in place.
(24:08):
That being said, we do have any software product that has gone through that process.
And passes with flying colors, then becomes part of our approved technology menu.
And so we have an ATM menu of products that we use.
And you'll find about 300 or so products there.
(24:32):
When it comes to AI, the products that we looked at initially, we were very reluctant
to do any sort of adoption, given the fact that some of the tools that were on the market
were just doing these API calls to the early products, like ChatGPT and Cloud, and so on
and so forth.
And we said, well, should we be paying for something that's readily available for folks?
(24:56):
But we also are driven by data privacy.
It's really important for us as a district to not have our student data out there, and
that these models not use our student data to train their models, all right?
And so those companies that decided to sign and comply with our data privacy agreement
(25:18):
right now are Google.
I think Canva is on that list.
Magic School is on that list.
And in part, Magic School is probably the one that has been one of the first software,
AI software applications that we brought on board because there was so much usage by teachers
initially, and they really depended on it for some efficiencies around lesson planning
(25:43):
and a host of other areas.
And the other items, we started off with basically a blacklist of products that did not satisfy
our requirements.
And so we are going through the process right now of converting that to a whitelist as things
continue to mature and get to a better state.
(26:05):
So right now, we have a few that are, and I think it's posted online as well, that you
can go online and look for the AI handbook, and you'll see all of the AI software products
that we are subscribed to.
So that's kind of how we came to this point with you today.
There was a letter that came out from your district that I believe went public because
(26:30):
I found it not that long ago about your recent shutdown of chat GPT for, I believe it was
staff use, or no, student use, I'm sorry.
Can you walk us through that decision?
What red flags were you guys tipped off to that led to that?
What was that internal discussion like?
Was there much heartburn from the powers that be in your district to say, we are removing
(26:55):
this tool from use?
Walk us through that.
How did you guys get there?
Yeah, great question.
So we heard in October that chat GPT was going to release their adult content to the masses
on their application and had some serious concerns.
Although it was not a sanctioned product on our devices, it was still something that could
(27:22):
be used on our network, on private devices and things of that nature, right?
So we felt that that was pretty challenging for us to overcome.
And so we were waiting to hear details about how that was going to work.
I found out, I guess a couple of days ago, they released the algorithm.
(27:44):
It's on their website now on January 20th, our approach to age prediction.
And if you're familiar with AI, you know that many of these large language models can be
bypassed pretty readily.
So they're saying that, and they have documented that they're very rigorous in their ability
(28:05):
to predict the age of a student or a user so that they can allow access or not to the
adult content.
Well, in that process, you'll find that all the data that it's relying on is data, student
data that they, OpenAI has not signed our data privacy agreement with, right?
(28:27):
So it kind of flies in the face of that.
In addition, so it's not just the adult content.
We also had a challenge around when we don't have a data privacy agreement, we certainly
we certainly can't see the things and the prompts and all of the details of what's
happening in the usage of these devices, of these applications.
(28:48):
And so when we don't have that, and then couple that with the fact that we, there's this new
feature called collaborative chat, which is a great idea, right?
It's a great chance for students to collaborate on in levels that they probably never had
in the past.
And as a result of that access to this new tool, there's some concern around hazing,
(29:13):
you know, a team of students can be great initially, and the student who creates that
collaborative chat can then exclude other students and then use AI within that setting
to be able to bully or what have you.
And so we do have an acceptable use policy for students.
But in addition to the fact that there's no data privacy agreement, we have no insight
(29:39):
into what those conversations are about.
And so we felt it would be the responsible thing for us to do and the prudent thing for
us to do to start making some decisions about what is allowed and what's not allowed.
And I also, thanks for that question, Josh, because the other thing I forgot to mention
is we were one of the first districts to establish some policies around the use of generative
(30:04):
AI and AI as a whole.
When you look at ChatGPT's approach to content and moderation, was this a concern that, hey,
I'm going to be liable for CIPA, Children's Internet Protection Act, and I'm not sure
if I can stay in compliance, or is this more of a concern that ChatGPT's approach basically
(30:26):
is a breach of contract or a breach of privacy to then determine if a child is above 18 or
not?
Is it more of a proactive or is it a reactive approach?
It's a proactive approach.
CIPA compliance, COPA compliance is a challenge.
And we cannot afford to be responsible in a setting like this where I think you've heard
(30:54):
me talk, Mark, on all of these panels where I share information and little anecdotes about
how easy it is to get by these systems to do things that make absolutely no sense, or
the information is biased in some way.
So you can, the web is just full of all of these jailbreak tools that are available now.
(31:18):
And so, yeah, we wanted to be proactive.
But as a state, we're also looking at AI legislation, right?
And what's happening now is that you have these software companies that are using these
platforms to develop code.
And I think the last session of the legislature had them submitting some legislation that
(31:43):
indicated that school districts would be considered the distributors of this software,
right?
So if something goes wrong, it's the responsibility of the distributor
to take on the liability and the software developer, right?
Not the company that's manufactured it with all of the flaws and lack of guardrails and
(32:07):
those sorts of things.
So that's been our challenge.
And we're trying to stay ahead of it.
As I said, things are moving so quickly that it's tough to keep track of everything.
Just two days ago, they talked about the release of the age prediction algorithm.
We anticipate that this is in anticipation of the subsequent release sometime in late
(32:29):
January or early February.
It's definitely the first quarter.
And so we're just being proactive about it.
I want to talk about what Chad Chappetee can do differently or change to earn Denver's
trust back.
But first, you announced this about two weeks ago.
What has been the response from the community?
What has been the reaction or basically where have patterns of behavior moved?
(32:53):
Yeah.
We have about 68% of the responses that we received on this as positive.
Thank you for making this decision, DPS.
Great.
We're really concerned about all of the details and implications of this work and of these
tools.
And so we had very few folks who said, you know what, you should block everything.
(33:20):
And then you had one person who said, you know, you should not block a thing.
We should allow students to use all of these products, these large language models, so
that we can get some insight into how they're not using it safely, which is a valid point
if you had access through a data privacy agreement of all of the data.
(33:44):
And that is not the case here.
Yeah.
You shared at the beginning the link to the age prediction stuff.
And while you've been talking, I've been trying to skim through it quickly.
And, you know, there's nice sentences in here about they're trying to do the right
thing and do teen safety.
And in order to do that, they have to learn.
But on our last episode, we were just talking about some of the banter about, I mean, we're
(34:11):
here to protect kids and we're here to make sure kids are learning.
So kids aren't the guinea pigs in how that is.
So I understand that they have to collect data.
And you have to do that work.
But to just expect schools to sign up without any guardrails, as that word we're throwing
around, that's a crazy thing that none of us will sign up for.
(34:35):
You will not talk to a to a CTO or to a tech director.
And you shouldn't be able to talk to any administrator in a school or a teacher.
Yeah.
Right.
That will just be OK with, yeah, let my kids sit at that computer and just type for a while.
And let's see if he can get to the bad stuff.
And let's see if let's see what he says.
(34:56):
No one's going to say, say, do that.
If this if this were a drug trial, Chris, we'd be giving the patient a whole lot of
drugs and crossing our fingers.
Right.
And in the case of this situation, it's kids that we're giving the drug to.
Right.
It's not really the prudent thing to do.
So, Mark, you asked what would I recommend?
(35:18):
I think OpenAI and these large language model companies absolutely need to have
some educators on their staff who are leaders in their fields, certainly some tech technology
leaders, but you need some instructional leaders who would be willing and able to serve on
(35:39):
any sort of any sort of committees that they have or any sort of roles that they have to
make sure that they're thoughtful in their approach.
This is not a shoot first, ask questions later.
And this is exactly what it feels like.
Well, if you were to ask me what AI platforms would you block, given the recent headlines
(36:00):
of Grok and what's happened on Twitter over the last few weeks, why not start with the
more obvious ones like Grok and some of the more dangerous LLMs?
Yeah, we are reviewing all of them.
In fact, Mark, as you can imagine, the challenge with us with Chad GPT is that the usage was
(36:21):
just through the roof.
Got it.
Grok and DeepSeek and some of the other ones are smaller.
However, since the adult content has been released on Grok, we are seeing an increase.
But we are going through, we have a committee that we are meeting on this upcoming Monday
as well, an AI committee, governance group and an operations separate group.
(36:43):
And in the governance group, we talk about all of these things to say what's our next
decision point for us around what replaces some of the usage by students of Chad GPT?
Well, in our case, it's going to be Gemini.
Gemini signed the data privacy agreement.
We also look at other sources.
Common Sense Media has some wonderful resources, if you've not looked at those, on recommendations
(37:08):
on where the shortcomings are of all of these large language models and applications.
And in some cases, you'll see that they say that, you know, Gemini has some challenges.
And for us, many of those challenges are tied to not having controls to be able to address
(37:32):
content for younger children or middle school kids.
Well, because they signed the data privacy agreement with DPS, we do have access to those
controls and we manage all of that on our end.
And so, yeah, it's just a matter of staying ahead of the curve.
And Grok and, you know, there's probably close to a thousand of these large language models
(37:54):
now and many of them creep up on our network.
So that's why we're thinking of shifting to the whitelist rather than a blacklist of
software applications.
So in order for a platform to get on that whitelist, should Chad GPT make some changes
in the next few months to get back on your good side?
Yeah.
What would at a high level, what would that criteria be?
(38:14):
So I think the criteria is anchored in students first, student data privacy first, right?
All of the compliance, SIPA compliance, COPA compliance.
When you have these tools getting into adult content, you know that that community tends
(38:35):
to be the ones where hackers are just waiting in the wings to be able to look for opportunities
to emerge.
And so it is a draw for hackers.
And school districts, I think a couple of years ago in 2023 from 2022, there was an
(38:57):
823% increase on attacks in school districts.
All that with the fact that the current administration has, because of the DOJ effort,
limited some of the access and support for CISA and for MS-ISAC and some of these really
(39:21):
important organizations across state lines to give us some flags when things are happening
and give us some guidance around that.
So school districts that have the resources, and in our case, we do have the resource,
need to rely now on Kroll and other companies to defend and stay ahead of the curve.
And so it's not a game for us.
(39:45):
Suicidal ideations are real at the teenage level and at elementary school levels.
And this is pretty serious stuff.
And so when we're talking about being responsible as a corporation in rolling these things out,
I understand.
I've been in AI for many years, as I mentioned at the beginning.
(40:09):
I understand the possibilities and the beauty that can emerge from all of this work and
the fact that we can get to a space where we're solving some really hard problems.
My preference would be solving hard problems in mathematics, but it's going to solve some
serious problems around science and technology and a host of other fields, curing cancer
(40:32):
and so on.
But with that comes the responsibility of how do we manage those, the lack of guardrails
around.
Visibility, guardrails, data privacy, those are the things that Denver is saying that
this is important to us.
If you're going to be in our environment, you need to meet this criteria.
Absolutely.
(40:53):
I did ask, not necessarily OpenAI, but I did ask ChatGPT about your decision.
And, you know, they had some things to say about your decision.
And you'd be surprised.
They actually did agree with the decision that you made and did recommend alternatives
like Google Gemini, Microsoft Teams for Education and Magic School.
Yeah, straight from ChatGPT.
(41:14):
They're on board with your decision and they're saying, move over to Magic School and Gemini.
Those are the safe platforms for Denver.
So kudos to you for that.
Well, thank you, Mark.
Yeah, it's just, these tools are wonderful tools, right?
But with it comes the added responsibility that the kids are not going to be able to
(41:35):
do it and they will be surrounded by adults.
So we don't want to curb their usage of these tools in any way that would impact their ability
to get jobs, right?
Vibrating is awesome.
It is.
And all the other things we can do with it, right?
So let's take it on.
I would also say that Claude, Anthropic, has been doing a great job with putting safety
(42:00):
first, right?
And invest, putting dollars in that direction.
So I continue to monitor them and I continue to penetration test a lot of these systems.
What is the last thing or what are you currently building with AI?
Are you vibe coding right now in your own time?
So lots of stuff.
(42:20):
Let's see.
So I'll give you a couple of examples from the district side, then one personal one.
From the district side, we are very, very interested in the use of AI to manage district
knowledge.
And I think you all have heard me talk about this before.
Knowledge management is a huge window of opportunity for us to leverage these tools.
(42:41):
And so we've seen some great examples in the medical arena.
I think open evidence is one of them.
And so we're trying to build out a similar solution to that for DPS.
And we're collaborating with researchers at the University of Denver here and hopefully
working with the Gates Foundation to try and really get excited about this work as well.
(43:06):
So that's one area.
With that, what that means is all of the practices, processes, procedures, the knowledge
of the organization is accessible with a large language model overlay.
And when someone leaves the organization, you know exactly what's leaving.
(43:27):
You don't have to worry about the job description because it already knows exactly what
information is needed.
There is no repository of high quality interventions.
And that's why we're working with researchers to try to develop that because that's sorely
needed in the field of education.
And if any of the companies are listening to this podcast, if you would like to really
(43:51):
explore that with us, we'd be open to it.
We've been working with a number of companies and trying to solve it.
It's a hard problem to solve.
I do think that open evidence is a great example of how to do that well.
On the personal level, I'm a Kaggle geek.
And so I go on Kaggle every now and then and look at competitions and try to get into some
vibe coding on that.
(44:12):
Kaggle is a platform for data scientists originally, but now everyone joins.
Where you can hop on there and enter a competition and see how you rank up against other folks
in the solution.
And some of these solutions are by big research teams and making some significant progress.
So that's how I keep things going.
(44:34):
Interesting.
I've never heard of that platform, but there goes my weekend.
It looks cool.
Well, thank you so much for coming on.
This is great.
I think districts who are watching your lead have definitely learned a whole lot more and
will hopefully be able to take action from what you guys are doing.
So thank you for leading the charge.
Well, thank you all for having me and I'll be listening the next time.
(44:57):
All right.
Thanks for listening.
And thanks to our sponsors for hanging out with us as well.
A couple of little announcements.
We're hitting the road.
We're going to be at some different places coming up.
Mark's going to be in Colorado at the Calais Conference.
That's February 18th through the 20th.
On February 20th here in Missouri, down at Cape Girardeau, we're doing the K-12 Next
event.
And then we'll be at K-12 Six in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
(45:19):
That's February 24th through the 26th and far off.
But we'll come up quick as the Midwest Tech Talk Security Symposium, March 12th through
the 13th.
There'll be some links in the podcast description to those events.
And again, those are made possible by our sponsors.
A few shout outs of sponsors.
That's Incident IQ.
They can help with your K-12 operations with your support requests, your district workflows,
(45:42):
facilities management, HR, and more.
Shout out to Fortinet.
You can email fortinetpodcast at fortinet.com.
And last but not least, Manage Methods.
They can help you with your Google environment, Microsoft environment, monitor your stuff,
your files, your activity in your district, help you with protecting your students.
Thanks for listening.
(46:14):
The views and opinions expressed on the K-12 Tech Talk podcast are the personal opinions
of Josh, Chris, and Mark, and do not represent the views or opinions of our sponsors or other
organizations that we're affiliated with.
The material and information presented here is for general information and entertainment
purposes only.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.
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