May 21, 2026 • 36 mins
On Episode 265, Josh, Chris, and Mark discuss the end‑of‑year scramble in K‑12 technology and a growing cultural moment - the Class of 2026’s strong reaction to AI at college commencements.
The guys dive into several stories affecting schools - cybercriminal deep‑fake sextortion attacks using student photos from public sites; a public GitHub repository that exposed highly privileged CISA credentials; and the ongoing fallout from the Instructure Canvas breach.
The main topic explores why recent commencement speakers have been booed when addressing AI. Josh, Chris, and Mark unpack students’ resentment, perceived academic hypocrisy (banning AI in coursework while urging graduates to use it in the workforce), fear over job displacement, and the pedagogical shifts already appearing in syllabi and assessment methods.
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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
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(00:00):
On this week's episode of the K-12 Tech Talk podcast, we talk about how the class of 2026
(00:06):
is responding to AI as they enter the working world, and we highlight some commencement
speakers who found out the hard way.
Thanks for listening.
Live from the NTP studios, this is the K-12 Tech Talk podcast.
This is episode 265, Got It Right This Week.
(00:27):
My name is Josh, tech director here in mid-Missouri.
Down the street from me, celebrating all of the graduations, is Chris.
What's up?
What was that supposed to be?
That's a celebration.
Is your chair squeaky?
That's me dancing and stuff.
My son graduated.
(00:47):
And on the East Coast, where they go to school for another three months.
Hello, Mark.
Hello.
We still have over a month of school left.
That's crazy.
Well, it is end of the school year season.
We are in...
Chris, you're already out, right?
Yeah.
Today was first day of no students.
No teachers.
Oh, wow.
(01:08):
Your teachers are already gone, too?
They gone.
They checked out end of day yesterday.
I had to bug some of them today because I was doing that AI lesson that all middle school
and high school teachers had to take before they could check out.
Somehow we had like six teachers not complete it.
They got to go home.
So I was like that villain guy today that they had to work on their stuff today.
(01:32):
Gotta come back to work or I'm calling the cops.
We have a half day tomorrow with students.
Tonight is graduation.
Had to be moved due to weather.
We have a half day with students tomorrow and then food truck Friday as a celebration
to the end of the school year for all of our staff on Friday.
And then it's Monday.
We're rocking and rolling with summer projects.
(01:54):
Do you have to stream graduation?
Our PR guy is doing it.
Do your teachers have like PD at the end of the school year or is it all in the beginning?
It's a day at the beginning and then two more days throughout the year.
The end of the school year is more or less packing their rooms up, which they start three
weeks before school ends.
Yeah.
(02:15):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we've okay.
This was meant to be a discussion about end of the year.
Like what do you do housekeeping wise?
But I will tell you the last two days we have been running around like chickens with our
head cut off doing bios updates on all of our machines so they can take the stupid new
secure boot certificates because the old ones expire in June sometime from Microsoft.
(02:39):
The twenty twenty eleven or twenty eleven certs expire next month.
You have to get the new twenty twenty three certs.
No one really knows what happens if you don't get the new certs, but worst case scenario
could Bork BitLocker if you have BitLocker turned on.
So anyway, long story short, we've been running around doing firmware work.
(03:00):
It's a lot of work because most firmwares can't take the twenty twenty three certs without
our most bios can't take the twenty twenty three certs without an update.
So we're updating hundreds of machines bios and you talk about being nervous.
I'm nervous in general.
But bios updates.
I think I've done before this in my twenty five, almost 30 year career, less than ten
(03:23):
bios updates intentionally.
And now I'm doing several hundred in two days.
So anyway, if you haven't, if that's not on your radar, if you want to scare yourself,
make yourself nervous, look up the new twenty twenty three secure boot certificates for
Windows.
One of my techs was out doing those and came back yesterday afternoon and goes, man, there's
(03:45):
a whole lot of movie watching take place.
Yeah, it's it's your three days before the end of school, man.
Apparently, teachers were a little indignant for him getting on their computers while they
were showing movies.
That's funny.
Hmm.
That's mean.
Mm hmm.
I asked about streaming because we just did streaming of our graduation and we always
get a little stressed out about that work, especially when they're calling the names.
(04:09):
And then I just saw a Facebook post of a neighboring school district and it was like a superintendent
letterhead official letter apologizing to the community because they're streaming messed
up.
And that's the worst for a tech to have to go through that, because I'm sure that was
felt.
I'm sure the heart hurts when the stream went down.
Oh, that's so end of the year.
(04:31):
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(04:55):
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All right.
So end of the year housekeeping.
Before you go on vacation at the after the end of the school year, what is on your radar
to complete?
I know for us, we disable our like our clever interface gets disabled before summer school
starts.
(05:15):
We go through at the end of June.
We disable all of our senior email accounts.
We delete the last year's graduating seniors out of Google staff accounts that are departing.
And you know what?
It was funny.
I was told not to say departed staff members the other day because it makes it sound like
they're dead.
They're not dead.
They're just retired or they quit somewhere else.
(05:37):
But we disable on June 30.
We disable all of those teachers that have left us for a better place.
Their email accounts.
Chris, what is on your radar the weeks after school gets out?
Well, so this is our second year with Infinite Campus.
And I had made myself a note that I didn't do a good job of the description in that note
(06:03):
that I needed to be concerned about my seniors before they leave because we let our seniors
be off through summer, actually through some of the next school year.
Our counselor department still reaches out to them kind of thing.
So in campus and how things work and we use level data to sync accounts.
Well, the last day of school is when a senior becomes inactive and that wasn't how our old
(06:28):
system worked.
So my day after the last day, all my senior accounts were instant off and I had myself
a little bit of pickle to undo some work that was automated.
And I had made myself a note in my Google Calendar like two weeks prior to check on
that, but I didn't do a good job of documenting what I was supposed to be looking at.
So I kept putting that off until the thing happened that I had made myself a note to
(06:53):
worry about.
So we go in, we change up some of our syncing scripts.
Again, we use level data that syncs basically campus to Active Directory and to Google.
And we make some things that will make kids stay active that need to stay active for the
summer school file set that we don't want our accounts to get turned off automatically.
(07:13):
And then we turn off a lot of our syncs as well on campus, you know, things to like Destiny
and our transportation system.
So I made myself good notes for next year, early May, I'm going to prep.
Things are great that are automated when you want them to be automated, but not so
great when some data changes.
(07:33):
But yeah, a lot of account stuff.
And we let our faculty staff that are leaving, we do that more towards like mid-July when
we turn those things off.
So we give them a little bit of time.
They're out of contract.
They're not employees.
They shouldn't have accounts.
Well, I was going to say we're the opposite.
Our teacher contracts go until the end of the summertime.
So really?
(07:53):
Yeah, that's when the big flip happens.
It kind of makes sense for them because then they can get pay and health insurance through
the summertime if they're going to another district.
So it works out better for the teachers that way.
But that just means in August, there's usually a big flip when everything is deactivated.
Our biggest challenge though is I mentioned a few minutes ago that we go to the end of
(08:16):
June.
So come the end of the school year, everybody is gone.
They just take off because you go right into the 4th of July.
So we basically go from the last day of school straight into vacation.
And then it's this slow trickle back in July when central office is coming back.
You're trying to get all your projects done.
You're also trying to get the end of school year reporting done.
(08:37):
And you can't do that because everybody's gone.
And I just, I hated the end of school year because of that reason.
Because there was this like, just the faucet was turned off of like suddenly everybody
is gone out of the office, but you still have a lot of work to do.
We just had a thing today.
It was a student not showing up in a system.
And again, this is just the day after the last day of school, a student not shown up.
(09:01):
And it's this whole thing where like an ID wasn't filled out correctly in campus.
There's a reason it wasn't showing up.
But the reason it's not in there is because that person's not contracted for today.
They're not, they're not in the office anymore.
So then it became a tech problem.
And I'm like, this isn't a tech problem.
This is, you know, this lady's job and she's, she's at home chilling already.
I think a lot of woes that I have over summer are typically trying to work with, trying
(09:25):
to figure out how to fix problems with people that don't, they're not contracted to be there
for the summer.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Speaking of chilling, you going anywhere fun on vacation this summer?
I know where I'm going with you guys.
Was that, were you, were you, were you doing this for me to hype this thing up?
Do it.
That's awesome.
Well, I had a self-serving question, but go for it.
(09:47):
Well, we are going to go to Gamus in Savannah, Georgia, and you can check that.
We want you guys to come with us.
It's not just a Georgia tech conference.
So you can go to gamus.org.
It is July 7th, which is my birthday, by the way.
Talk about giving out social stuff.
I did not know that.
Yeah.
And I try to, I use all my passwords, have my birthday in it too.
So you can, you can use that as your thing.
(10:09):
July 7th through 10th.
That's a joke.
No, it's not.
Maybe it's not.
July 7th through 10th, Gamus, a great conference for tech leaders to come together.
We will be there hanging out.
They actually have a booth for us, like walls in a booth that we're going to be hanging
out with folks and recording an episode.
But it's four days of learning, networking, vendor engagement, all for K-12 tech.
(10:33):
So check out Gamus at gamus.org.
I really like the location of the Gamus conference.
Beautiful.
on the other side of the river from Savannah.
It is beautiful.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
It is Savannah in July, but it is still a beautiful, beautiful place.
Yeah.
My wife is excited because hopefully the big fountain, the big historical fountain when
(10:55):
we were there last summer was down for repair and she's excited.
It's supposed to be back up and operational this summer.
So she's going to be down there.
Love it.
Where else are you going, Josh?
Well, I was going to ask listeners.
So send us an email, k12techtalk at gmail.com.
If you have been on a Virgin Voyages cruise, because my wife and I are going and I need
(11:16):
some I need some pointers.
This will be a new experience for us.
So that that's the only question I had.
Love it.
Mark, do you want to get into some of the news or some pretty wild news stories?
All right.
Our first story comes out of the UK, but this is a story that definitely impacts all school
districts.
The deep fake sextortion scams are hitting school walls where you've got cybercriminals
(11:41):
who are scraping ordinary photos of students from school websites and then turning those
into deep fake images using AI.
This is a horrific issue that's hitting some school districts.
And in the UK, cybercriminals have targeted an unnamed UK secondary school and created
150 fake images, which the Internet Watch Foundation did say it didn't classify these
(12:02):
as CSAM, triad sexual adult material.
The UK's National Crime Agency, the Internet Watch Foundation, the advisory group have
advised schools in the UK.
And I would say, let's take this to the United States as well.
Be very careful with posting images online.
We understand that schools need to do that for certain reasons.
(12:22):
But if you can avoid close up identifiable images of students, you know, thinking about
group images where you, you know, you're just showing the headshots of students from
a distance, blurring photos, you know, showing students from behind.
Avoid putting yourself out there in a position to do this or use confidential ways of communicating
(12:42):
photos to parents.
Just avoid putting pictures of children, of students on social media, I would say in general.
But now you have one more unfortunate reason to avoid that as well.
Yeah, when I when I read this originally, my whole website, what district puts pictures
on their website of their kids and, you know, most districts have those, you know, feel
(13:03):
good photos, kids doing something fun, whatever.
But man, you take a step further and go Facebook photos because what district doesn't have
a public facing Facebook page in there?
I guarantee like our high school, Chris, probably your high school, your elementary or elementary.
They're posting pictures out of classrooms that that's utterly frightening to me.
(13:29):
It is.
It's it.
Well, even talking about the graduation streaming, like it's just going to make a school rethink
anything they're posting or streaming or anything, because does the school want to put itself
out there to endanger kids to get this kind of trash posted?
Yeah, there's some bad apples that are really bad apples that are really messing up some
stuff for kids.
And in the most extreme examples, the cyber criminals are sending these photos back to
(13:53):
the school in order to ransom them for for further extortion.
So it's it's a horrific crime in the first place.
And then to be able to turn that into a an extortion attempt is it's sad that that's
the place where the world that we're in.
Yeah.
And so do you move more to a like walled garden where the district shares those types of photos
(14:16):
in Parent Square or School Messenger or whatever your private teacher to parent communication
app is?
Maybe that's the new destination of all of that stuff, because really, what does it need
to be on Facebook for?
What does it need to be on the public facing website for?
Right.
Right.
I'm I'm against that in general.
This is just one more reason to be against posting images of students on social media.
(14:41):
I'm not as big of a fuddy duddy as Mark is.
I wasn't there yet, but I might be there.
Well, one more reminder, though, is for schools to make sure that they have consent forms
from parents to post images in public places and to be a little bit more explicit about
the reasons why you may not want to do that.
All right.
(15:02):
Speaking of things posted on the public Web, this was very unfortunate to see a public
GitHub repository inadvertently exposed highly privileged credentials from the Cybersecurity
and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA.
This was probably one of the worst breaches that we have seen from a government agency
(15:25):
just simply in how simplistic it was.
A public agency or a news agency found a GitHub repository called Private-CISA, and that contained
different spreadsheets called important AWS tokens, usernames and passwords in plain text.
(15:45):
And it was taken down pretty quickly.
CISA has said that they are not aware of any instances of this information being used inappropriately,
but it was traced back to an employee of an agency called Nightwing, which is a cybersecurity
division of Raytheon.
This company has had issues in the past.
Nightwing was ordered to pay $8.4 million to resolve allegations by the DOJ in the last
(16:09):
year that they had failed to comply with cybersecurity requirements in contracts and subcontracts.
This is just one more nail in the coffin for Nightwing's history in cybersecurity.
So we'll see what happens.
I really hope that this does not lead to any further compromise or any issues.
But again, cybersecurity experts are saying this is one of the worst breaches of trust
(16:33):
that they've seen from a federal agency.
Well, and this is on the heels of, was it the assistant director, because there is no
current seated director of CISA, the assistant director was posting or feeding confidential
and protected or secret information into one of the AI models, right, Mark?
(16:53):
I don't remember which model it was.
Yeah, I think it was Chad GPT.
But I remember that story, yeah.
So not a good six months or so or more for CISA.
For sure.
And finally, the story that we've talked about for the last few weeks, and I think we can
probably close the books for our coverage of the Instructure Canvas breach.
(17:15):
But if you do take a look at Instructure's website, they have updated it, they have posted
a technical webinar for customers.
You can attend the webinar, you can watch the recording from the website.
There's also a very detailed frequently asked questions.
I say detailed because there's still a lot of questions that are unanswered.
But as we know with cybersecurity breaches and attacks, oftentimes you're not going to
(17:39):
find the most detailed information that you do want to see.
But Instructure has made a pledge to provide the CrowdStrike technical forensic summary
to customers.
So if you are an Instructure customer, if you are the admin, please keep an eye out
for that link.
Again, they are saying that this is for their customers, their Canvas admins.
(17:59):
We really highly recommend not posting anything in public forums or private forums.
If you are looking for more information, we ask you to kindly go to the Instructure website
and look at their instant update page.
Yeah, it'll be interesting if we ever really get a full debrief out of that.
Or if anyone ever replies to Chris from Instructure about coming on the pod.
(18:26):
It's an interesting question.
I mean, what should we expect from a breach of this?
What kind of information do you expect to hear from the company in terms of the detailed
forensics and how it happened?
Or is that too much of a risk to expose that information and we just need to accept the
fact that a lot of companies are going to have very, very high level talking points
(18:47):
when they have a breach?
Yeah.
And I mean, part of that, okay, here we go.
You're going to have to lean on or is spelled out in your data privacy agreement if you
have one with that provider.
So you can't really expect them to go beyond that with any sort of disclosure or action
(19:07):
steps or responsibility.
That's why those are important.
That is it for the news.
Although where our main topic is a little bit more of a news headline, but we'll hold
off on that one for a second.
Chris, you want to take a sponsor break?
Yeah.
Check out Incident IQ.
If you are leading a K-12 district right now, and we assume you are, if you're listening
(19:28):
to this thing, your job isn't getting simpler, you have a bunch of devices, you're juggling
support tickets, you're thinking about summer plans, all that kind of stuff.
And you're still expected to be very strategic.
That's where Incident IQ comes in.
They are a service management platform built for schools.
They can do your help desk, your asset tracking, your workflows, and more.
(19:49):
So check out Incident IQ.
All right, Mark, you were texting us the other day, I'm kind of not laughing at this, but
you were making comment on what was taking place at some university commencement speeches.
Yeah.
So it's graduation season, obviously, as we've talked about for high schools and for colleges.
(20:09):
The theme of this year's graduation ceremonies has been graduates booing commencement speakers,
mainly because they start talking about technology.
And it's not the way you might think, they're booing every time these commencement speakers
start discussing AI.
So we have seen at least three or four different stories.
Well, first off, Glendale Community College had a little bit of an AI blunder when they
(20:34):
tried to use AI to read names.
Did not go so well.
Congratulations.
Derek Martinez.
Eliza Laila.
Here's what's happening.
We're using a new AI system as our reader.
(20:59):
So that is a lesson learned for us.
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google.
Let me play a clip of his commencement ceremony speech.
And you can hear how students responded to his remarks about AI.
Last December, Time magazine selected its person of the year for 2025.
And it was this time, it was the architects of artificial intelligence.
(21:23):
Interesting.
Oh, that's similar to data center meetings in my town.
This is the start of another technological transformation.
One that will be larger, faster, and more consequential than what came before.
It will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person,
(21:49):
and every relationship you have.
I know what many of you are feeling about that.
I can hear you.
There is a fear.
There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written,
that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating.
(22:14):
This one goes on.
There was another graduation speaker out of the University of Central Florida.
Her speech went viral after she talked about AI being the next industrial revolution.
And the graduates immediately went into booing her.
The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.
(22:44):
What happened?
Okay.
I struck a chord.
May I finish?
And even Jonathan Haidt, the author of Anxious Generation,
was booed when he began to talk about technology's influence on students and on learners.
(23:05):
He was speaking at NYU.
It's fascinating to see graduates are responding in this way,
and it's happening at multiple colleges and campuses.
So let's take a step back.
Why are we seeing this trend?
Why is this happening?
And what are we seeing at the K-12 level that might indicate what the response is at the high school level?
So first off, Josh Krish, any responses to that video or any of the other videos you've seen?
(23:33):
I love it.
It is interesting, and a little personal story here.
My son graduated from local junior college over the weekend
and has since started taking even more college classes because he's transferring to a four-year in the fall.
But he started Psych 101 Monday, and he was reading through the syllabus,
(23:56):
and he goes, Dad, come here, look at this.
And he was showing me a paragraph in the syllabus that a number of the assignments in this course
will be required to be handwritten on notebook paper,
and then a photograph taken and uploaded into Canvas.
And the rationale was directly related to generative AI and that type of tool.
(24:18):
So it is interesting to me that we've been saying there will need to be a pedagogical change,
and I'm literally seeing it with my son.
How quickly are we going to see that trickle down to K-12?
Because I was talking to a tech director today, Chris, in our area,
that caught a kid cheating on one of their finals using AI prompts.
(24:45):
So, again, I think we are in the heat of or the very early cusp of pedagogical change in K-12,
especially at the high school level of how you're measuring understanding and development for assessment.
That has to change.
(25:06):
Are we going back to the blue book, Mark?
I mean, it is getting more and more popular at colleges to do so, yeah.
Chris, has your daughter or your son said anything about this?
I know my kids just use AI left and right.
I think I may have mentioned this already.
So we started doing that lesson with middle school and high school kids just as the year was ending,
(25:29):
where we're going over AI ethics and use because we're introducing our first district-supported AI thing for students.
And I got to sit in on one of those lessons that was being given.
And through our committee, there's been all these concerns from the teachers and from just adults in general
about all the bad things that kids are going to do with it.
(25:51):
And really interesting to me was with our student lesson,
the librarian would give a question about what are your concerns,
and they mostly were concerned about the adults because they want that human connection of did the human read my essay?
Did the human create that worksheet that they're giving me?
So that tension that you see when Google guy is trying to talk to some college kids,
(26:14):
I think that's just scaled up from what I experienced sitting in the library because both sides are seeing the pros and cons.
And there's a lot of cons, and there's a lot of bad things in the cons column.
Yeah.
You guys hit both of the points that a lot of folks are saying is the reason why people are booing these speakers about this,
(26:36):
especially at college graduations.
The first one, to your point, Josh, academic hypocrisy in that college kids are prohibited from using AI in most circumstances.
They're going back to blue books.
They're being forced to write things by hand.
And so then to graduate and have a graduation speaker saying you should learn how to use AI when you're looking at job applications and saying we need to make sure that you know how to use AI,
(26:58):
you're going to be collaborating with AI in this job.
They're finding it hypocritical for colleges to both praise AI as you leave and graduate into the working world while banning students from using it on assignments.
I don't have an answer for that one.
I think they're very right, and they're in the right to say, do you want us using AI or not?
(27:19):
If this is what you're going to put in front of us for a graduation ceremony speaker, why are you telling us not to use it on assignments?
I'm not saying that you should, but it's definitely one of the hypocrisies that students are seeing.
That's a really good point, Mark, because the conversations that I've had with my son about using AI, because I'm a little bit more liberal when it comes to that or willing to push the envelope a little bit more than what my son is.
(27:47):
I'm like, man, if you're not using AI to at least proof whatever paper you're writing or help you come up with a prompt to start a paragraph, you're wasting your time.
He's like, no, they'll fail me.
They'll flunk me.
I'm like, they're not going to know, but whatever.
He has gone the opposite direction of avoiding it like the plague, where I think there's some loss there.
(28:11):
There are tools, notebook LM, just because that's what I've used, as a study resource, not as a generative AI resource to complete assignments, but as a study resource to help you understand the material.
Are we scaring some of these kids off of valid study resources or valid resources for deeper understanding to help them improve their grade?
(28:34):
I'm not saying to write the paper.
I'm saying that tutor resource or that deeper understanding, however you want to put that.
Are we scaring kids or students away from those?
You raise a good point.
I know of somebody who did not get a job because their final submission for that job had some selling and grammar mistakes.
(28:58):
And the employer just said, we need a higher level of review for any sort of working work.
And for your job application to have these mistakes was no deal for us.
So you're right.
There are certain things that AI can do to help a student out.
But that's very, very different to say, can you spell check this?
(29:21):
Can you error check this?
Agree.
Compared to write it from the ground up.
Agree.
The other issue, why graduates are booing, why people assume graduates are booing, is because they now need to find a job in a job market that is the hardest market to find a job.
And this is coming from a Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics showing that 70% of college students view AI as a threat to their job prospects.
(29:48):
They're finding this to be such a huge challenge as they need to find entry level jobs that are being gobbled up by AI bots and people with AI.
And find it to be very disrespectful and disconnected to have corporate executives like Eric Schmidt come in and say, you need to use AI.
Right.
When it's people like Eric Schmidt who are also gobbling up these entry level jobs using AI.
(30:13):
So it is an interesting thing to see the entire what feels like the graduating class of 2026 saying to the corporate world, F you.
We're not going to use AI because you're just going to use it against us.
So.
Yeah.
That's why I just keep calling Eric Schmidt like Google guy because I'm refusing to respect him all that much.
(30:35):
That Google guy that talked to those kids.
I think it's another example, too.
Like we've got K-12 techs have gotten riled up about Google just continues to add AI into its stuff.
Yeah.
The Google Google search being one of those where we're battling against the AI overview and the AI search results and the AI mode.
(30:56):
And we're you know, they're not putting particular things in Google Admin Council for us to decide on our own what we're going to do.
And this is this bigger picture thing where Google and other big companies are just deciding whether society is ready for it or not.
Or college kids are ready or workforce is ready.
Yeah.
(31:17):
I mean, they're they're punching in AI.
They're saying no AI is changing this and AI is taking away these jobs.
But you're going to get these new jobs.
Yeah.
These big corporations are just making that decision for all of us.
I think that's what that resistance and that tension is about.
These kids these I mean, I'm I'm pumped for these kids.
Let's let's do it, man.
Yeah.
(31:38):
Well, I mean, this week was the Google I.O. conference.
I still haven't had a chance to even digest it.
Everything that was even announced.
But then you open up Google search and you're like you're using AI mode now.
So you're right.
We are feeling like AI is being thrown at us, not given to us as an option.
And it's it's it's not going in the same direction that we might think.
(31:59):
So I really do feel bad for for a college graduate right now.
They changed the icons for Google Drive, too.
Let's talk about that.
I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't find calendar.
I couldn't find calendar for a couple of seconds today.
I couldn't find sheets.
I had a tab open with a sheet in it.
(32:20):
I'm like, I'm looking at my tab like, nope, that's not the icon.
That's not where my sheet.
Guys, yeah, we're talking about college graduates trying to find jobs.
And Chris is saying he was delayed by two seconds finding his calendar.
I'm a 40 year old.
Can't find my damn sheet that I had open five seconds ago.
Talk about first world problems.
(32:43):
Boo.
Get him off the stage.
Anyways, I will be really interested to see, you know, where this is.
The graduate class of 2026 was also the graduate class that started college
when ChatGPT was launched.
So they saw the progression of AI over the last few years.
I'll be really interested to see what happens four years from now
(33:07):
when high school students who have gone through high school and college
begin to graduate into a working world that is dramatically,
dramatically transformed by AI.
As Josh chugs his bourbon.
Yeah, it's been a couple weeks.
AI, man.
It's going to be interesting, that's for sure.
(33:28):
Well, Chris, do we have a final sponsor to hit?
I mean, I got all kinds of things to talk about.
Are we wrapping this bad boy up?
Anyway, check out Visor, visor.cloud.com.
They can do your IT asset management for your school and more.
A great company.
If you're on K-12 Tech Pro, you can get a discount on Visor
if you check them out.
Check out visor.cloud.com.
(33:51):
We do want to thank you for listening and thanks to our sponsors
for making episodes like this happen
and travel speaking events that we get to do possible.
Here's a little bit about what's on our calendar.
June 16th through 17th, Jason over at K-12 Tech Pro
will be at the Summit LTC conference.
And that's thanks to Fortinet Podcast at fortinet.com.
(34:13):
Get your Forta on.
SysCloud.
SysCloud, they can back up your Google Workspace and your Office 365 data
so that you have a second copy in case the bad thing happens.
And then Lightspeed.
We'll be interviewing Amy with Lightspeed soon,
talking about screen time.
We already mentioned Gamus, but Gamus is July 6th through the 10th.
Check out gamus.org.
(34:34):
And then finally, July 19th through the 21st is Midwest Tech Talk.
The three of us will be there.
We're doing two sessions.
We're going to hang out, have a great time at Midwest Tech Talk.
Check that out at midwesttechtalk.com.
Our friends, ProVision Data Solutions will be at Midwest Tech Talk.
They can help you with your networking with your servers and more.
(34:55):
That's at provisionds.com.
Josh, we've known Ryan and Jeff and Derek and the gang with ProVision.
Since I've been at K-12, yeah, since I've been in it.
We're actually going to highlight them a little bit at Midwest Tech Talk.
They've been around since before Midwest Tech Talk was a thing.
I told Ryan, like, hey, we're going to start a conference.
Could I borrow a couple bucks?
(35:17):
And he gave us some of that starter money to get us going.
Great guys, great company.
They do great work.
So check out ProVision Data Solutions.
PDS is what we call them.
But anyway, thanks for listening.
♪♪♪
(35:41):
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 talk about how the class of 2026
(00:06):
is responding to AI as they enter the working world, and we highlight some commencement
speakers who found out the hard way.
Thanks for listening.
Live from the NTP studios, this is the K-12 Tech Talk podcast.
This is episode 265, Got It Right This Week.
(00:27):
My name is Josh, tech director here in mid-Missouri.
Down the street from me, celebrating all of the graduations, is Chris.
What's up?
What was that supposed to be?
That's a celebration.
Is your chair squeaky?
That's me dancing and stuff.
My son graduated.
(00:47):
And on the East Coast, where they go to school for another three months.
Hello, Mark.
Hello.
We still have over a month of school left.
That's crazy.
Well, it is end of the school year season.
We are in...
Chris, you're already out, right?
Yeah.
Today was first day of no students.
No teachers.
Oh, wow.
(01:08):
Your teachers are already gone, too?
They gone.
They checked out end of day yesterday.
I had to bug some of them today because I was doing that AI lesson that all middle school
and high school teachers had to take before they could check out.
Somehow we had like six teachers not complete it.
They got to go home.
So I was like that villain guy today that they had to work on their stuff today.
(01:32):
Gotta come back to work or I'm calling the cops.
We have a half day tomorrow with students.
Tonight is graduation.
Had to be moved due to weather.
We have a half day with students tomorrow and then food truck Friday as a celebration
to the end of the school year for all of our staff on Friday.
And then it's Monday.
We're rocking and rolling with summer projects.
(01:54):
Do you have to stream graduation?
Our PR guy is doing it.
Do your teachers have like PD at the end of the school year or is it all in the beginning?
It's a day at the beginning and then two more days throughout the year.
The end of the school year is more or less packing their rooms up, which they start three
weeks before school ends.
Yeah.
(02:15):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we've okay.
This was meant to be a discussion about end of the year.
Like what do you do housekeeping wise?
But I will tell you the last two days we have been running around like chickens with our
head cut off doing bios updates on all of our machines so they can take the stupid new
secure boot certificates because the old ones expire in June sometime from Microsoft.
(02:39):
The twenty twenty eleven or twenty eleven certs expire next month.
You have to get the new twenty twenty three certs.
No one really knows what happens if you don't get the new certs, but worst case scenario
could Bork BitLocker if you have BitLocker turned on.
So anyway, long story short, we've been running around doing firmware work.
(03:00):
It's a lot of work because most firmwares can't take the twenty twenty three certs without
our most bios can't take the twenty twenty three certs without an update.
So we're updating hundreds of machines bios and you talk about being nervous.
I'm nervous in general.
But bios updates.
I think I've done before this in my twenty five, almost 30 year career, less than ten
(03:23):
bios updates intentionally.
And now I'm doing several hundred in two days.
So anyway, if you haven't, if that's not on your radar, if you want to scare yourself,
make yourself nervous, look up the new twenty twenty three secure boot certificates for
Windows.
One of my techs was out doing those and came back yesterday afternoon and goes, man, there's
(03:45):
a whole lot of movie watching take place.
Yeah, it's it's your three days before the end of school, man.
Apparently, teachers were a little indignant for him getting on their computers while they
were showing movies.
That's funny.
Hmm.
That's mean.
Mm hmm.
I asked about streaming because we just did streaming of our graduation and we always
get a little stressed out about that work, especially when they're calling the names.
(04:09):
And then I just saw a Facebook post of a neighboring school district and it was like a superintendent
letterhead official letter apologizing to the community because they're streaming messed
up.
And that's the worst for a tech to have to go through that, because I'm sure that was
felt.
I'm sure the heart hurts when the stream went down.
Oh, that's so end of the year.
(04:31):
Actually, Chris, you want to hit a sponsor real quick?
Yes.
So meter meter dot com slash K-12 tech talk.
They can they do your networking so they can help you design hardware.
They have great software and optimize your operations of your networking, and they can
do that to scale.
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So check out meter.
You can kind of think of them as like subscription based networking for your school district.
(04:55):
You can check out meter dot com slash K-12 tech talk.
All right.
So end of the year housekeeping.
Before you go on vacation at the after the end of the school year, what is on your radar
to complete?
I know for us, we disable our like our clever interface gets disabled before summer school
starts.
(05:15):
We go through at the end of June.
We disable all of our senior email accounts.
We delete the last year's graduating seniors out of Google staff accounts that are departing.
And you know what?
It was funny.
I was told not to say departed staff members the other day because it makes it sound like
they're dead.
They're not dead.
They're just retired or they quit somewhere else.
(05:37):
But we disable on June 30.
We disable all of those teachers that have left us for a better place.
Their email accounts.
Chris, what is on your radar the weeks after school gets out?
Well, so this is our second year with Infinite Campus.
And I had made myself a note that I didn't do a good job of the description in that note
(06:03):
that I needed to be concerned about my seniors before they leave because we let our seniors
be off through summer, actually through some of the next school year.
Our counselor department still reaches out to them kind of thing.
So in campus and how things work and we use level data to sync accounts.
Well, the last day of school is when a senior becomes inactive and that wasn't how our old
(06:28):
system worked.
So my day after the last day, all my senior accounts were instant off and I had myself
a little bit of pickle to undo some work that was automated.
And I had made myself a note in my Google Calendar like two weeks prior to check on
that, but I didn't do a good job of documenting what I was supposed to be looking at.
So I kept putting that off until the thing happened that I had made myself a note to
(06:53):
worry about.
So we go in, we change up some of our syncing scripts.
Again, we use level data that syncs basically campus to Active Directory and to Google.
And we make some things that will make kids stay active that need to stay active for the
summer school file set that we don't want our accounts to get turned off automatically.
(07:13):
And then we turn off a lot of our syncs as well on campus, you know, things to like Destiny
and our transportation system.
So I made myself good notes for next year, early May, I'm going to prep.
Things are great that are automated when you want them to be automated, but not so
great when some data changes.
(07:33):
But yeah, a lot of account stuff.
And we let our faculty staff that are leaving, we do that more towards like mid-July when
we turn those things off.
So we give them a little bit of time.
They're out of contract.
They're not employees.
They shouldn't have accounts.
Well, I was going to say we're the opposite.
Our teacher contracts go until the end of the summertime.
So really?
(07:53):
Yeah, that's when the big flip happens.
It kind of makes sense for them because then they can get pay and health insurance through
the summertime if they're going to another district.
So it works out better for the teachers that way.
But that just means in August, there's usually a big flip when everything is deactivated.
Our biggest challenge though is I mentioned a few minutes ago that we go to the end of
(08:16):
June.
So come the end of the school year, everybody is gone.
They just take off because you go right into the 4th of July.
So we basically go from the last day of school straight into vacation.
And then it's this slow trickle back in July when central office is coming back.
You're trying to get all your projects done.
You're also trying to get the end of school year reporting done.
(08:37):
And you can't do that because everybody's gone.
And I just, I hated the end of school year because of that reason.
Because there was this like, just the faucet was turned off of like suddenly everybody
is gone out of the office, but you still have a lot of work to do.
We just had a thing today.
It was a student not showing up in a system.
And again, this is just the day after the last day of school, a student not shown up.
(09:01):
And it's this whole thing where like an ID wasn't filled out correctly in campus.
There's a reason it wasn't showing up.
But the reason it's not in there is because that person's not contracted for today.
They're not, they're not in the office anymore.
So then it became a tech problem.
And I'm like, this isn't a tech problem.
This is, you know, this lady's job and she's, she's at home chilling already.
I think a lot of woes that I have over summer are typically trying to work with, trying
(09:25):
to figure out how to fix problems with people that don't, they're not contracted to be there
for the summer.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Speaking of chilling, you going anywhere fun on vacation this summer?
I know where I'm going with you guys.
Was that, were you, were you, were you doing this for me to hype this thing up?
Do it.
That's awesome.
Well, I had a self-serving question, but go for it.
(09:47):
Well, we are going to go to Gamus in Savannah, Georgia, and you can check that.
We want you guys to come with us.
It's not just a Georgia tech conference.
So you can go to gamus.org.
It is July 7th, which is my birthday, by the way.
Talk about giving out social stuff.
I did not know that.
Yeah.
And I try to, I use all my passwords, have my birthday in it too.
So you can, you can use that as your thing.
(10:09):
July 7th through 10th.
That's a joke.
No, it's not.
Maybe it's not.
July 7th through 10th, Gamus, a great conference for tech leaders to come together.
We will be there hanging out.
They actually have a booth for us, like walls in a booth that we're going to be hanging
out with folks and recording an episode.
But it's four days of learning, networking, vendor engagement, all for K-12 tech.
(10:33):
So check out Gamus at gamus.org.
I really like the location of the Gamus conference.
Beautiful.
on the other side of the river from Savannah.
It is beautiful.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
It is Savannah in July, but it is still a beautiful, beautiful place.
Yeah.
My wife is excited because hopefully the big fountain, the big historical fountain when
(10:55):
we were there last summer was down for repair and she's excited.
It's supposed to be back up and operational this summer.
So she's going to be down there.
Love it.
Where else are you going, Josh?
Well, I was going to ask listeners.
So send us an email, k12techtalk at gmail.com.
If you have been on a Virgin Voyages cruise, because my wife and I are going and I need
(11:16):
some I need some pointers.
This will be a new experience for us.
So that that's the only question I had.
Love it.
Mark, do you want to get into some of the news or some pretty wild news stories?
All right.
Our first story comes out of the UK, but this is a story that definitely impacts all school
districts.
The deep fake sextortion scams are hitting school walls where you've got cybercriminals
(11:41):
who are scraping ordinary photos of students from school websites and then turning those
into deep fake images using AI.
This is a horrific issue that's hitting some school districts.
And in the UK, cybercriminals have targeted an unnamed UK secondary school and created
150 fake images, which the Internet Watch Foundation did say it didn't classify these
(12:02):
as CSAM, triad sexual adult material.
The UK's National Crime Agency, the Internet Watch Foundation, the advisory group have
advised schools in the UK.
And I would say, let's take this to the United States as well.
Be very careful with posting images online.
We understand that schools need to do that for certain reasons.
(12:22):
But if you can avoid close up identifiable images of students, you know, thinking about
group images where you, you know, you're just showing the headshots of students from
a distance, blurring photos, you know, showing students from behind.
Avoid putting yourself out there in a position to do this or use confidential ways of communicating
(12:42):
photos to parents.
Just avoid putting pictures of children, of students on social media, I would say in general.
But now you have one more unfortunate reason to avoid that as well.
Yeah, when I when I read this originally, my whole website, what district puts pictures
on their website of their kids and, you know, most districts have those, you know, feel
(13:03):
good photos, kids doing something fun, whatever.
But man, you take a step further and go Facebook photos because what district doesn't have
a public facing Facebook page in there?
I guarantee like our high school, Chris, probably your high school, your elementary or elementary.
They're posting pictures out of classrooms that that's utterly frightening to me.
(13:29):
It is.
It's it.
Well, even talking about the graduation streaming, like it's just going to make a school rethink
anything they're posting or streaming or anything, because does the school want to put itself
out there to endanger kids to get this kind of trash posted?
Yeah, there's some bad apples that are really bad apples that are really messing up some
stuff for kids.
And in the most extreme examples, the cyber criminals are sending these photos back to
(13:53):
the school in order to ransom them for for further extortion.
So it's it's a horrific crime in the first place.
And then to be able to turn that into a an extortion attempt is it's sad that that's
the place where the world that we're in.
Yeah.
And so do you move more to a like walled garden where the district shares those types of photos
(14:16):
in Parent Square or School Messenger or whatever your private teacher to parent communication
app is?
Maybe that's the new destination of all of that stuff, because really, what does it need
to be on Facebook for?
What does it need to be on the public facing website for?
Right.
Right.
I'm I'm against that in general.
This is just one more reason to be against posting images of students on social media.
(14:41):
I'm not as big of a fuddy duddy as Mark is.
I wasn't there yet, but I might be there.
Well, one more reminder, though, is for schools to make sure that they have consent forms
from parents to post images in public places and to be a little bit more explicit about
the reasons why you may not want to do that.
All right.
(15:02):
Speaking of things posted on the public Web, this was very unfortunate to see a public
GitHub repository inadvertently exposed highly privileged credentials from the Cybersecurity
and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA.
This was probably one of the worst breaches that we have seen from a government agency
(15:25):
just simply in how simplistic it was.
A public agency or a news agency found a GitHub repository called Private-CISA, and that contained
different spreadsheets called important AWS tokens, usernames and passwords in plain text.
(15:45):
And it was taken down pretty quickly.
CISA has said that they are not aware of any instances of this information being used inappropriately,
but it was traced back to an employee of an agency called Nightwing, which is a cybersecurity
division of Raytheon.
This company has had issues in the past.
Nightwing was ordered to pay $8.4 million to resolve allegations by the DOJ in the last
(16:09):
year that they had failed to comply with cybersecurity requirements in contracts and subcontracts.
This is just one more nail in the coffin for Nightwing's history in cybersecurity.
So we'll see what happens.
I really hope that this does not lead to any further compromise or any issues.
But again, cybersecurity experts are saying this is one of the worst breaches of trust
(16:33):
that they've seen from a federal agency.
Well, and this is on the heels of, was it the assistant director, because there is no
current seated director of CISA, the assistant director was posting or feeding confidential
and protected or secret information into one of the AI models, right, Mark?
(16:53):
I don't remember which model it was.
Yeah, I think it was Chad GPT.
But I remember that story, yeah.
So not a good six months or so or more for CISA.
For sure.
And finally, the story that we've talked about for the last few weeks, and I think we can
probably close the books for our coverage of the Instructure Canvas breach.
(17:15):
But if you do take a look at Instructure's website, they have updated it, they have posted
a technical webinar for customers.
You can attend the webinar, you can watch the recording from the website.
There's also a very detailed frequently asked questions.
I say detailed because there's still a lot of questions that are unanswered.
But as we know with cybersecurity breaches and attacks, oftentimes you're not going to
(17:39):
find the most detailed information that you do want to see.
But Instructure has made a pledge to provide the CrowdStrike technical forensic summary
to customers.
So if you are an Instructure customer, if you are the admin, please keep an eye out
for that link.
Again, they are saying that this is for their customers, their Canvas admins.
(17:59):
We really highly recommend not posting anything in public forums or private forums.
If you are looking for more information, we ask you to kindly go to the Instructure website
and look at their instant update page.
Yeah, it'll be interesting if we ever really get a full debrief out of that.
Or if anyone ever replies to Chris from Instructure about coming on the pod.
(18:26):
It's an interesting question.
I mean, what should we expect from a breach of this?
What kind of information do you expect to hear from the company in terms of the detailed
forensics and how it happened?
Or is that too much of a risk to expose that information and we just need to accept the
fact that a lot of companies are going to have very, very high level talking points
(18:47):
when they have a breach?
Yeah.
And I mean, part of that, okay, here we go.
You're going to have to lean on or is spelled out in your data privacy agreement if you
have one with that provider.
So you can't really expect them to go beyond that with any sort of disclosure or action
(19:07):
steps or responsibility.
That's why those are important.
That is it for the news.
Although where our main topic is a little bit more of a news headline, but we'll hold
off on that one for a second.
Chris, you want to take a sponsor break?
Yeah.
Check out Incident IQ.
If you are leading a K-12 district right now, and we assume you are, if you're listening
(19:28):
to this thing, your job isn't getting simpler, you have a bunch of devices, you're juggling
support tickets, you're thinking about summer plans, all that kind of stuff.
And you're still expected to be very strategic.
That's where Incident IQ comes in.
They are a service management platform built for schools.
They can do your help desk, your asset tracking, your workflows, and more.
(19:49):
So check out Incident IQ.
All right, Mark, you were texting us the other day, I'm kind of not laughing at this, but
you were making comment on what was taking place at some university commencement speeches.
Yeah.
So it's graduation season, obviously, as we've talked about for high schools and for colleges.
(20:09):
The theme of this year's graduation ceremonies has been graduates booing commencement speakers,
mainly because they start talking about technology.
And it's not the way you might think, they're booing every time these commencement speakers
start discussing AI.
So we have seen at least three or four different stories.
Well, first off, Glendale Community College had a little bit of an AI blunder when they
(20:34):
tried to use AI to read names.
Did not go so well.
Congratulations.
Derek Martinez.
Eliza Laila.
Here's what's happening.
We're using a new AI system as our reader.
(20:59):
So that is a lesson learned for us.
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google.
Let me play a clip of his commencement ceremony speech.
And you can hear how students responded to his remarks about AI.
Last December, Time magazine selected its person of the year for 2025.
And it was this time, it was the architects of artificial intelligence.
(21:23):
Interesting.
Oh, that's similar to data center meetings in my town.
This is the start of another technological transformation.
One that will be larger, faster, and more consequential than what came before.
It will touch every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person,
(21:49):
and every relationship you have.
I know what many of you are feeling about that.
I can hear you.
There is a fear.
There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written,
that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating.
(22:14):
This one goes on.
There was another graduation speaker out of the University of Central Florida.
Her speech went viral after she talked about AI being the next industrial revolution.
And the graduates immediately went into booing her.
The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.
(22:44):
What happened?
Okay.
I struck a chord.
May I finish?
And even Jonathan Haidt, the author of Anxious Generation,
was booed when he began to talk about technology's influence on students and on learners.
(23:05):
He was speaking at NYU.
It's fascinating to see graduates are responding in this way,
and it's happening at multiple colleges and campuses.
So let's take a step back.
Why are we seeing this trend?
Why is this happening?
And what are we seeing at the K-12 level that might indicate what the response is at the high school level?
So first off, Josh Krish, any responses to that video or any of the other videos you've seen?
(23:33):
I love it.
It is interesting, and a little personal story here.
My son graduated from local junior college over the weekend
and has since started taking even more college classes because he's transferring to a four-year in the fall.
But he started Psych 101 Monday, and he was reading through the syllabus,
(23:56):
and he goes, Dad, come here, look at this.
And he was showing me a paragraph in the syllabus that a number of the assignments in this course
will be required to be handwritten on notebook paper,
and then a photograph taken and uploaded into Canvas.
And the rationale was directly related to generative AI and that type of tool.
(24:18):
So it is interesting to me that we've been saying there will need to be a pedagogical change,
and I'm literally seeing it with my son.
How quickly are we going to see that trickle down to K-12?
Because I was talking to a tech director today, Chris, in our area,
that caught a kid cheating on one of their finals using AI prompts.
(24:45):
So, again, I think we are in the heat of or the very early cusp of pedagogical change in K-12,
especially at the high school level of how you're measuring understanding and development for assessment.
That has to change.
(25:06):
Are we going back to the blue book, Mark?
I mean, it is getting more and more popular at colleges to do so, yeah.
Chris, has your daughter or your son said anything about this?
I know my kids just use AI left and right.
I think I may have mentioned this already.
So we started doing that lesson with middle school and high school kids just as the year was ending,
(25:29):
where we're going over AI ethics and use because we're introducing our first district-supported AI thing for students.
And I got to sit in on one of those lessons that was being given.
And through our committee, there's been all these concerns from the teachers and from just adults in general
about all the bad things that kids are going to do with it.
(25:51):
And really interesting to me was with our student lesson,
the librarian would give a question about what are your concerns,
and they mostly were concerned about the adults because they want that human connection of did the human read my essay?
Did the human create that worksheet that they're giving me?
So that tension that you see when Google guy is trying to talk to some college kids,
(26:14):
I think that's just scaled up from what I experienced sitting in the library because both sides are seeing the pros and cons.
And there's a lot of cons, and there's a lot of bad things in the cons column.
Yeah.
You guys hit both of the points that a lot of folks are saying is the reason why people are booing these speakers about this,
(26:36):
especially at college graduations.
The first one, to your point, Josh, academic hypocrisy in that college kids are prohibited from using AI in most circumstances.
They're going back to blue books.
They're being forced to write things by hand.
And so then to graduate and have a graduation speaker saying you should learn how to use AI when you're looking at job applications and saying we need to make sure that you know how to use AI,
(26:58):
you're going to be collaborating with AI in this job.
They're finding it hypocritical for colleges to both praise AI as you leave and graduate into the working world while banning students from using it on assignments.
I don't have an answer for that one.
I think they're very right, and they're in the right to say, do you want us using AI or not?
(27:19):
If this is what you're going to put in front of us for a graduation ceremony speaker, why are you telling us not to use it on assignments?
I'm not saying that you should, but it's definitely one of the hypocrisies that students are seeing.
That's a really good point, Mark, because the conversations that I've had with my son about using AI, because I'm a little bit more liberal when it comes to that or willing to push the envelope a little bit more than what my son is.
(27:47):
I'm like, man, if you're not using AI to at least proof whatever paper you're writing or help you come up with a prompt to start a paragraph, you're wasting your time.
He's like, no, they'll fail me.
They'll flunk me.
I'm like, they're not going to know, but whatever.
He has gone the opposite direction of avoiding it like the plague, where I think there's some loss there.
(28:11):
There are tools, notebook LM, just because that's what I've used, as a study resource, not as a generative AI resource to complete assignments, but as a study resource to help you understand the material.
Are we scaring some of these kids off of valid study resources or valid resources for deeper understanding to help them improve their grade?
(28:34):
I'm not saying to write the paper.
I'm saying that tutor resource or that deeper understanding, however you want to put that.
Are we scaring kids or students away from those?
You raise a good point.
I know of somebody who did not get a job because their final submission for that job had some selling and grammar mistakes.
(28:58):
And the employer just said, we need a higher level of review for any sort of working work.
And for your job application to have these mistakes was no deal for us.
So you're right.
There are certain things that AI can do to help a student out.
But that's very, very different to say, can you spell check this?
(29:21):
Can you error check this?
Agree.
Compared to write it from the ground up.
Agree.
The other issue, why graduates are booing, why people assume graduates are booing, is because they now need to find a job in a job market that is the hardest market to find a job.
And this is coming from a Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics showing that 70% of college students view AI as a threat to their job prospects.
(29:48):
They're finding this to be such a huge challenge as they need to find entry level jobs that are being gobbled up by AI bots and people with AI.
And find it to be very disrespectful and disconnected to have corporate executives like Eric Schmidt come in and say, you need to use AI.
Right.
When it's people like Eric Schmidt who are also gobbling up these entry level jobs using AI.
(30:13):
So it is an interesting thing to see the entire what feels like the graduating class of 2026 saying to the corporate world, F you.
We're not going to use AI because you're just going to use it against us.
So.
Yeah.
That's why I just keep calling Eric Schmidt like Google guy because I'm refusing to respect him all that much.
(30:35):
That Google guy that talked to those kids.
I think it's another example, too.
Like we've got K-12 techs have gotten riled up about Google just continues to add AI into its stuff.
Yeah.
The Google Google search being one of those where we're battling against the AI overview and the AI search results and the AI mode.
(30:56):
And we're you know, they're not putting particular things in Google Admin Council for us to decide on our own what we're going to do.
And this is this bigger picture thing where Google and other big companies are just deciding whether society is ready for it or not.
Or college kids are ready or workforce is ready.
Yeah.
(31:17):
I mean, they're they're punching in AI.
They're saying no AI is changing this and AI is taking away these jobs.
But you're going to get these new jobs.
Yeah.
These big corporations are just making that decision for all of us.
I think that's what that resistance and that tension is about.
These kids these I mean, I'm I'm pumped for these kids.
Let's let's do it, man.
Yeah.
(31:38):
Well, I mean, this week was the Google I.O. conference.
I still haven't had a chance to even digest it.
Everything that was even announced.
But then you open up Google search and you're like you're using AI mode now.
So you're right.
We are feeling like AI is being thrown at us, not given to us as an option.
And it's it's it's not going in the same direction that we might think.
(31:59):
So I really do feel bad for for a college graduate right now.
They changed the icons for Google Drive, too.
Let's talk about that.
I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't find calendar.
I couldn't find calendar for a couple of seconds today.
I couldn't find sheets.
I had a tab open with a sheet in it.
(32:20):
I'm like, I'm looking at my tab like, nope, that's not the icon.
That's not where my sheet.
Guys, yeah, we're talking about college graduates trying to find jobs.
And Chris is saying he was delayed by two seconds finding his calendar.
I'm a 40 year old.
Can't find my damn sheet that I had open five seconds ago.
Talk about first world problems.
(32:43):
Boo.
Get him off the stage.
Anyways, I will be really interested to see, you know, where this is.
The graduate class of 2026 was also the graduate class that started college
when ChatGPT was launched.
So they saw the progression of AI over the last few years.
I'll be really interested to see what happens four years from now
(33:07):
when high school students who have gone through high school and college
begin to graduate into a working world that is dramatically,
dramatically transformed by AI.
As Josh chugs his bourbon.
Yeah, it's been a couple weeks.
AI, man.
It's going to be interesting, that's for sure.
(33:28):
Well, Chris, do we have a final sponsor to hit?
I mean, I got all kinds of things to talk about.
Are we wrapping this bad boy up?
Anyway, check out Visor, visor.cloud.com.
They can do your IT asset management for your school and more.
A great company.
If you're on K-12 Tech Pro, you can get a discount on Visor
if you check them out.
Check out visor.cloud.com.
(33:51):
We do want to thank you for listening and thanks to our sponsors
for making episodes like this happen
and travel speaking events that we get to do possible.
Here's a little bit about what's on our calendar.
June 16th through 17th, Jason over at K-12 Tech Pro
will be at the Summit LTC conference.
And that's thanks to Fortinet Podcast at fortinet.com.
(34:13):
Get your Forta on.
SysCloud.
SysCloud, they can back up your Google Workspace and your Office 365 data
so that you have a second copy in case the bad thing happens.
And then Lightspeed.
We'll be interviewing Amy with Lightspeed soon,
talking about screen time.
We already mentioned Gamus, but Gamus is July 6th through the 10th.
Check out gamus.org.
(34:34):
And then finally, July 19th through the 21st is Midwest Tech Talk.
The three of us will be there.
We're doing two sessions.
We're going to hang out, have a great time at Midwest Tech Talk.
Check that out at midwesttechtalk.com.
Our friends, ProVision Data Solutions will be at Midwest Tech Talk.
They can help you with your networking with your servers and more.
(34:55):
That's at provisionds.com.
Josh, we've known Ryan and Jeff and Derek and the gang with ProVision.
Since I've been at K-12, yeah, since I've been in it.
We're actually going to highlight them a little bit at Midwest Tech Talk.
They've been around since before Midwest Tech Talk was a thing.
I told Ryan, like, hey, we're going to start a conference.
Could I borrow a couple bucks?
(35:17):
And he gave us some of that starter money to get us going.
Great guys, great company.
They do great work.
So check out ProVision Data Solutions.
PDS is what we call them.
But anyway, thanks for listening.
♪♪♪
(35:41):
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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