December 4, 2024 • 55 mins
How can technology reshape education to cater to every student’s unique learning journey? Join us as we explore this question with Dr. Kristen DiCerbo, the Chief Learning Officer at Khan Academy, who shares her transformative insights into personalized and mastery-based learning. Discover how Khan Academy's new AI tool, "Khanmigo" is revolutionizing learning as it helps educators address the diverse needs of students worldwide, breaking free from the constraints of traditional educational models.
Dr. DiCerbo highlights the challenges teachers face, such as managing large classrooms and addressing special education shortages, and how technology can alleviate these burdens. By leveraging platforms like Khan Academy, educators can provide tailored learning experiences that empower students and nurture creativity. We delve into the ways technology can reduce teacher burnout, foster stronger student-teacher connections, and transform teaching roles to be more focused on creating meaningful educational experiences and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
More About Our Guest
Dr. Kristen DiCerbo is the Chief Learning Officer at Khan Academy, where she leads the content, design, product management, and community support teams. Dr. DiCerbo’s career has focused on embedding insights from education research into digital learning experiences. Prior to her role at Khan Academy, she was Vice-President of Learning Research and Design at Pearson, served as a research scientist supporting the Cisco Networking Academies, and worked as a school psychologist. Kristen has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Arizona State University.
Connect with Khan Academy
khanmigo.ai
khanacademy.org
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
That's the promise of technology.
The technology can help scalethe teacher and help them think
about how can we make sure thatstudents are getting that extra
practice.
The teacher doesn't have tomake up a worksheet with.
You know, make up 30 differentworksheets with different
problems and all that.
The technology can do that forthem.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hi and welcome to the Kindle podcast where we dig
into the art and science behindkindling the motivation,
curiosity and mental wellbeingof the young humans in our lives
.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Together, we'll discover practical tools and
strategies you can use to helpkids unlock their full potential
and become the strongestversion of their future selves.
Today we are talking aboutpersonalized learning and using
(00:57):
online tools and mastery-basedlearning.
Katie, tell me a little bitabout those things.
What do you know?
Oh my gosh my gosh, have youseen that it's been an impact in
your house with your kids?
Because your kids have beenlearning this way from the
get-go right.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, we are going into our sixth year of micro
schooling and doing personalizedlearning.
So typically you know you don'tget personalized learning in
traditional classroom or evenyou can homeschool and
personalize that learning, butthen you have to personalize the
learning for all of your kidsat different levels and it's
very overwhelming.
So we're going to talk to DrKristen DeServo today, who is
(01:32):
the chief learning officer atKhan Academy, and Khan Academy
has been a really interestingplayer in the academic ed tech
world for the last like 20 years, honestly, and they've really
helped pioneer personalizedlearning and access to
personalized learning, causeit's not, you know, in the like
now, of course, like there's allthis AI stuff going on, like
(01:53):
there's there's lots of ed tech,but it really has been over the
last 20 years that it's reallybeen even possible to um provide
a child with a with apersonalized learning experience
that isn't um directly given tothem by a one-on-one tutor.
So lots of research, lots ofstudies have been going on
around this since the 80s and itis a fascinating part of
(02:13):
education.
So super excited to talk to DrDeSerbo today.
She leads at Khan Academy.
She leads the content design,product management and community
support teams.
Dr DeSerbo's career has focusedon embedding insights from
education research into digitallearning experiences.
Prior to her role at KhanAcademy, she was vice president
of learning, research and designat Pearson, served as a
(02:35):
research scientist supportingthe Cisco Networking Academies
and worked as a schoolpsychologist.
I think that's reallyinteresting.
Kristen has a PhD ineducational psychology from
Arizona State University.
Let's go talk to Dr DeServo.
Let's do it, kristen.
Welcome to the Kindle podcast.
We're super excited to have youon today.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Thanks, so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, okay.
So I want to get started bygiving everyone a chance to
understand your background.
You know, tell us your story.
How did you come to the workyou're doing currently in
education?
What's your big, why yourmotivation for doing the work
you do?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
I have been interested in how people learn
and helping people learn for along time.
I can almost point it back tothis experience I had in high
school where I was a tutor andso, as you know, part of I think
was part of National HonorSociety or something we the high
schoolers would go tutor middleschool students and like, to be
honest, school was kind of likehigh school, kind of easy, like
(03:32):
I worked hard but I didn'treally struggle with a lot of
things, and it was such this aneye opener for me to see these
middle school students who werereally trying and were
struggling with math inparticular, and it just, even at
that age, started me thinkingof like, oh, how do different
(03:53):
people learn differently and howcan we help support these
learners that are strugglingwith this content?
And since then, I mean it'sbeen a long and winding path,
but everything has really beenaround that idea of how do we
help more learners learn more,and so that's really the why of
(04:15):
what I do, and I've spent about20 years now in researching and
designing digital learningenvironments for students.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
I love that, and you're also a school
psychologist originally, right.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yes.
So when I first started lookingat graduate programs, didn't
know what I was going to do andthis idea of how do we help
identify students that arestruggling and provide them
support.
School psychologists for thosewho don't know are not the
counselors in the school,they're the folks who work to
evaluate students that arehaving learning difficulties,
(04:50):
working with teachers to helpdevelop their individual
education plans, and doing a lotof that work.
So, yes, after the PhD program,I went to was what they call
research practitioner.
So I did a lot of research intohow people learn, how we
measure learning, but also thendid a, you know, practica and
internships and a lot of work inschools and then worked for
(05:12):
three years in Arizona, whereI'm based, as a school
psychologist.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
That's awesome, and take us through your career a
little bit.
You were at Pearson and nowyou're at Khan Academy.
Tell us your like, take us onthe journey, and now you're at
Khan Academy.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Tell us your like, take us on the journey.
As I was in the schools, startedto really think about the
challenges that we face inschools, including things like
shortages of special ed teachers.
So I was doing this work as aschool psychologist to be able
to, you know, give studentsaccess to these special ed
(05:44):
services, be able to givestudents access to these special
ed services.
And then a lot of the teacherswere just overwhelmed with the
amount of students they had andthe amount of paperwork they had
to do and all of these kinds ofthings and started thinking
about how technology could helpand really reached a kind of
branching point in my careerwhere I was thinking I might go
into academia and be a professorand do research and that kind
(06:06):
of thing but got connected tosome folks that I had worked
with in graduate school who hadgone to work for Cisco Systems,
the networking company of allplaces, which sounds bizarre.
This is like the big leap.
And the Cisco was developingwhat they call networking
academies where they developedcurricula and assessments around
(06:27):
how to teach students computernetworking that they give away
to high schools and communitycolleges to help support
students.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
I was wondering where Cisco played in.
I was like, oh, Cisco.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Thank you for sharing .
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yes.
So it seems you know it's atthat point it was.
People have asked that samequestion You're going to where?
What are you doing next?
But they, you know there were alot of engineers who were
building these curriculums.
It would be great if we hadmore people who knew about
learning so we could help bringthat as well.
And there were a couple ofthings there that were really
(07:04):
transformational too.
The first was we startedworking on a simulation tool,
because these students werepracticing on this networking
equipment and it would break alot, and they were like I don't
know, we don't know how to fixthis.
And schools would be like wedon't know how to fix this.
So we started developing thesesimulations of the networking
equipment, and students thencould say you know what, if I
(07:28):
hooked up 150 computers to thisrouter, what happens then?
And in addition to that, theycould visualize packets of data
moving through the network,which is not something you can
actually see.
But I started to think abouttechnology not just as how can
it help us do what we already dobetter, but can it help us do
(07:49):
things we couldn't do before andhelp improve learning in that
way?
So that was really, I think, aformative piece for me.
And then while we were doingthat, I was doing a lot of
presentations of this work onsimulation-based learning and
all of that out in the world andPearson who, for folks who
don't know, is a major globaleducational publisher saw some
(08:10):
of that work and they werebuilding what they call a
research and innovation networkat the time and basically
recruited me over to do some ofthat more kind of research and
simulations and game-basedassessment and some pieces there
.
And I was lucky enough there toalso get a lot of experience
(08:31):
got through, you know,promotions and things in
learning how to lead people,which is a whole other skill.
When you are in a kind of a PhDtrack and doing research, you
don't get those skills and so Iwas.
I'm grateful for that time ofkind of helping me to and giving
me the support I needed tostart to learn to do that.
(08:51):
Pearson at the time sold offtheir K-12 division and I love
K-12 and wanted to be in K-12.
So that was an impetus for meto start thinking about what's
my next step and I startedthinking about someplace.
So Pearson has 36,000 employeesand I was thinking, gosh, I'd
like to be someplace smaller.
I think that, definitely in theK-12 world.
(09:14):
What might this look like?
And three weeks after I hadkind of described what I thought
I wanted my next role to be,khan Academy posted their first
ever chief learning officerposition and I was like, yes,
this is the thing that I wasdescribing, that I was made for
you, that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I love it.
And tell us more about yourrole as the chief learning
officer.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah, so I lead a bunch of teams at Khan Academy.
So I lead our content team,which is the team when you're on
Khan Academy and you'reengaging in the exercises,
answering questions.
They write all those questions.
They work with Sal to make allthe videos.
They are writing articles,putting the courses together.
So that's the content team, Ourproduct management and design
(09:58):
teams, who are the ones whoreally flesh out.
What does that experience looklike?
What should happen when you'reon Khan Academy?
What kinds of rewards do youget?
How do you move through thewhole experience and what that
looks like.
How do teachers assign things?
What reports do they get whenthey get them back?
All of those folks are all partof my team.
(10:19):
And then, most recently, we'realso building a small assessment
team, because a lot of what wedo isn't what we think of.
We're like, oh, sit down andtake a test, but what we are
doing is getting a lot of dataabout what students know and can
do.
That we can feed back toparents and teachers and help
them understand where studentsare and what they need to work
(10:40):
on and what other things theymay want to focus on.
So that's the big piece of itand so a lot of what I do.
In a traditional technologyorganization I would probably be
a chief product officer, butbecause I bring this whole
learning side of things to mywhat I do and have this
(11:02):
background of how do we buildthese things with learning in
mind, I have achieved learning.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
I love that and what.
Tell us a little bit more aboutKhan Academy as a company and
like the mission of Khan Academy.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I have never been in an organization where everyone
knows the mission and is sodedicated to it.
Our mission is to provide afree, world-class education to
anyone anywhere.
Just a little thing that we'retrying to it.
Our mission is to provide afree, world-class education to
anyone anywhere.
Just a little thing that we'retrying to do.
Why not, sure?
So that's the exciting part oflike.
(11:35):
How do we think about makingsure that any student anywhere
has access to the kinds ofmaterials they need to learn and
practice skills that they needto be successful in their lives?
So that is what we do.
We, a lot of us.
The Khan Academy initially wasvery known for Sal Sal Khan is
my boss, founder of Khan Academy, love him.
(11:56):
He does videos and he just hasthis great way of explaining
things and making itapproachable and all of that,
which certainly launched KhanAcademy.
But we also know that to reallylearn something, you have to
practice it.
You have to engage with thecontent.
You can't just kind ofpassively watch a video.
(12:16):
So we offer both of thosethings, both the instruction
side and then the opportunitiesto practice, and that whole
practice system is based inmastery learning.
So the mastery learning is theidea that you keep working on a
skill until you get to a levelof proficiency that makes it
(12:36):
likely that you'll then be ableto apply that skill in new
situations.
You'll be able to remember itin the long term.
So before you start building onnew skills on top of it and
particularly in math, that'sreally important.
A lot of skills build on top ofother skills and if you're
missing the foundation it getsreally shaky, like if you're
building a house without astrong foundation.
When you start building layerson top of it, it's going to get
(12:59):
pretty rough.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
So how do you see, go ahead, keep going, no, go ahead
.
I'm just interested to knowlike that seems like such a
fundamentally logical idea,right, that we wouldn't like, no
, no, like contractor would belike the foundation 70%, good
yeah, put the next layer on.
Like in no other area ofexistence Do we move forward
(13:21):
without a sure foundation.
But in education it's like well, we're moving on, gotta move on
.
And like, talk, talk about that, cause you've been, I've, I've,
I'm actually I was a speechlanguage pathologist in schools,
like I, it's just so hard toprovide that in the traditional
model.
Like, just talk about that alittle bit and how Khan Academy
(13:41):
is going about solving that andI don't know, just riff on that.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
It's a huge issue because, systematically, we've
got these hundreds of thousandsof kids that we are trying to
get through the system and soand we have, you know, one
teacher for 25, 30 kids.
They it just isn't possible forone teacher to have kids on all
of those pathways and, you know, be at 30 different places in
their learning journey.
They just can't be able tomanage that.
(14:12):
So we've ended up with thissystem where we're covering unit
one for two weeks, we'recovering unit three for two
weeks and when we're done,wherever you are, we're moving
on.
So that's just been, I think,the response to the constraints
of the system of we've had allof these students and only a few
of these teachers.
That's the promise of technology.
(14:34):
The technology can help scalethe teacher and help them think
about how can we make sure thatstudents are getting that extra
practice.
The teacher doesn't have tomake up a worksheet with, you
know, make up 30 differentworksheets with different
problems, and all that.
The technology can do that forthem.
(14:54):
So that's the promise of whatKhan Academy and, you know,
digital learning in general hashad to offer.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Yeah, it allows the teacher to step into a different
role than what hastraditionally been a teacher.
You know I am the holder of allthe content.
I'm going to pour this into,you know, the students.
Instead, they can guide theirlearning and really attune to
the individual needs.
And I was thinking about howKhan Academy can be used and it
(15:24):
is used in so many differentfacets of education, because I
just look at my three kids,they've had a totally different
educational journey started in avery, very traditional charter
school.
I have one in a hybrid schoolActually, he's down by where you
live and they use Khan Academy,so he's using it in a charter
school.
I have another son that used itwhenever he first started
(15:45):
Prenda in a micro school and hehas some cognitive flexibility
challenges.
So it was at the time.
If you got like one or twowrong, you had to start all the
way at the beginning again.
I don't know if it's still thatway and it was really
challenging for him.
Go ahead, I know you want totalk about that.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
No, we heard oh my gosh, we heard so much from
students that they hated that wehad a tweet that we were just
laughing at that we ended uppulling out that said my villain
origin story is having to startover.
So we now have a button where,if you get it wrong, you
(16:23):
actually don't have to go allthe way to the end of the
exercise before you can startover.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
You can start over and write that, okay, so I need
to tell him that because he isterrified of Khan, but it's such
a great tool.
And then, but we have used itin a homeschool setting too.
So it's like you, khan isreally diverse because it can
work with parent educators, withmicro school educators, with
(16:48):
teachers and just kind of likeas a sidekick, to come along and
help these kids have a morepersonalized learning.
So can you define a little bitabout what personalized learning
is and explain why it's reallyimportant in today's educational
landscape?
Speaker 1 (17:03):
So first I'll say we've been talking about
personalized learning.
I think I remember back in2012,.
It was the buzzword and we weregoing to personalize learning
for everyone.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
And here we are, you know all these years later,
Between personalized andmastery-based like, is it
essentially the same thing?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, Well so you can personalize learning in a lot
of different ways.
You could personalize learningby making the experience
relevant to the kids' interests.
So you know, if you'reinterested in space, my math
problems, my math word problemswill be set around space and the
planets and rocket ships andthose kinds of things.
So that's one way topersonalize.
(17:39):
We can personalize by justthinking about the pace that
students go through things with,and sometimes you'll need to go
through some topics slower,some faster.
I know for me, like I was goodat math but man trigonometry, I
needed time because it did notmake sense in my brain.
So having different paces isanother way to personalize.
(18:00):
Personalized and thinking abouthow do we make sure that the
students are getting the rightskills at the right time, that
they need them in order topractice.
So the mastery learning piece,when we talk about it, has two
pieces of that, both the workingon the right skills at the
right time and the pacing pieceof it, and so, but generally, as
(18:24):
we think about personalizedlearning, it's just doing
anything that isn't the setinstructional program that every
student in the class ismarching through in the same way
.
So lots of opportunity to be alittle more flexible and we hope
that, as you said, that KhanAcademy can work in a variety of
(18:46):
settings to bring in some ofthat.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Do you find that there's like a hesitancy towards
incorporating technology,trusting technology, like what's
what's the vibe there?
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Yes.
Let me throw some numbers atyou.
So 12 million students hit KhanAcademy every month.
So that's a lot, but only 1.2million.
So 10% of them get up to twohours of practice on Khan
Academy in the month.
Now, two hours does not soundlike a lot, but only 10% of
(19:20):
students who hit Khan Academyget to two hours.
Why is two hours important?
Because our efficacy studiesthat show whether does Khan
Academy actually help peoplelearn show that if you get to
that two hours, you'll seegreater than expected growth on
lots of external assessments.
So this is two hours a month,two hours a month, 30 minutes a
(19:40):
week Not a lot hours a month, 30minutes a week not a lot.
But to your question of does youknow?
Is there resistance?
It's not even alwaysnecessarily active resistance,
it's just people aren't clearhow to fit technology into the
classroom, into their lessons.
Where does it fit?
What does that look like?
We, you know, we think if wecould get 50% of students to do
(20:05):
two hours, we would see hugegains at scale, you know, at a
state level, a country level.
But it is the hardest part ofwhat we do is not actually
making sure students can learnwhen they use our platform, but
getting people to that level ofusage that's going to be
effective for them.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
That's so interesting because at Prenda we run a
completely flipped model wherewe are like technology is the
primary instructor and then weuse an adult to encourage, coach
, nurture, mentor, tutor whennecessary.
But it's totally flipped and we, I think, going that far into
the extreme, instead of like,okay, we're sticking with the
normal course, like you know,we're going to teach all the
ninth or the all of the fourthgraders about X, y or Z, and
(20:50):
then we're going to use KhanAcademy to augment.
We see crazy amounts of growthbecause they're always at their
learning frontiers, that we callit their zone of proximal
development, right, and there'stons of research to support that
.
But it's like we've really hadto work hard with parents in
Prenda and with our guides tohelp them realize, like, when a
child isn't learning, when youare administering like whatever
(21:13):
the normal program is, there'sonly a handful of kids in that
class that are really trackingwith you.
Right, we have a lot ofvariance in any given group of
25 or 30 kids and you'reessentially saying to a third of
those kids you need to wait,I'll make it harder for you in a
minute and you need to wait,I'll make it easier for you in a
minute and with technology,everyone can be learning at
(21:35):
their what we call theirlearning frontier most of the
time, you know, and when youtake all of those minutes, like
like our kids will get, I don'tknow, like, when you take all of
those minutes, like like ourkids will get, I don't know like
, six hours of digital math,like in a week or so, like like
a lot of it, right, and we see,like these really amazing
results and I just want that foreveryone.
But I experienced thisresistance to this idea because
(21:56):
we have a lot of very wisepeople which I trust, saying
like, hey, we need to be carefulabout screen usage, right, so
we want to be careful abouttechnology.
Can you talk about thedifference in quality in in like
what?
Like how is Khan Academydifferent than Roblox or
Minecraft or social media?
Like it's just not all screensare created equal.
(22:17):
Can we just like address that?
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Or even even other learning tools that are very,
very gamified, because lookingat Khan Academy, it's not as
gamified.
So yeah, can you explain, likethe difference?
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Yes, so I will just repeat not all screen time is
the same.
That's a big lesson for people,and especially coming out of
the pandemic I think a lot ofpeople really just wanted to get
back away from the screenTotally, so I get that reaction.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
So understandable yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, fundamentally kids need opportunities to
practice with feedback, to getto learning.
There's a recent academic paperthat came out that was the
title was the astonishingregularity of learning that
showed that if you just focus ongetting kids opportunities to
practice with the support theyneed to do the work, so you call
(23:11):
it learning frontier, we callit learning edge.
You know, when you're right atthat edge you're probably not
going to be able to doeverything totally independently
.
You're going to need a littlebit of support to get oh, I get
it now, I forgot that.
Oh, yeah, that's how that works.
So the support to do that andthen feedback on what you're
doing.
But if you can get on, say, aparticular math skill, the
average student when they lookedacross hundreds of thousands of
(23:34):
students if you can get aboutseven opportunities to practice
on a skill, you're you know, ifyou're starting at kind of the
average achievement levels,you'll probably get there.
Some kids may need 13, 14opportunities to practice on a
given skill.
Some kids will get it in two orthree.
But the point that the thingthat we are always trying to
drive at Khan Academy is how dowe maximize the opportunities
(23:57):
that students have to practiceand get that feedback.
So a lot of to practice and getthat feedback.
So a lot of you know there'snow if you had to do that eight
hours a day, all day.
That's going to be, you know,too much Exhausting.
Learning is cognitively hardwork, and so we need to
recognize that and give students, you know, breaks,
(24:18):
opportunities to do other things.
Roblox can be great, butthey're not going to have the
opportunities to practice therethat they're going to, but
they're not going to have theopportunities to practice there
that they're going to get asthey're racking up Khan Academy.
So how do we put those togetherto be, you know, a whole system
that we're thinking about forstudents learning?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I want to.
I want to ask you about themagic of immediate feedback, so
we'll put that on the shelf fora second, but how.
It seems like it's just soimportant to create a balanced
learning day where, like, yes,we're using technology, but then
that frees us up, because itseems like what I've seen and my
kids have been learning thisway for the last six years and I
(24:55):
have one son who was in thefirst kindergarten class and
he's going into fifth grade thisyear Like, so we've lived this
right.
What I see is that it's so muchmore efficient that they have
so much more time to go, likemake things with mud and go on
all of these like creativeadventures and read high quality
(25:16):
literature, like they're justfreed up.
Um, so is that what you guyssee as well with kids that are
using Khan Academy?
Like the efficiency.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yes, so we there's.
Also, sal has about a millionideas a day.
Some of them he turns intothings.
So there's a Khan Lab school.
That's an independent school inthe Bay Area.
That's an in-person school.
They actually happen to be onthe first floor of the building
and Khan Academy is on thesecond floor.
So we have a lot of interactionwith them.
(25:46):
Their total K-12 are about.
I think we're at 300 studentsnow, so it's small, you know,
not a huge representative sampleor anything, but we see the
same thing.
So they work on Khan Academyand, of course, work towards
getting master on Khan Academy,but then they do these passion
projects that are amazingbecause they have all this time
(26:09):
in the day and so, yeah, we dofind that if you focus, you
don't have to spend your wholeday doing this, that if we can
get that focus time with thoseopportunities to practice, it
does free you up to do morecreative things and build all
those you know things that weall want our kids to be able to
(26:30):
do and find the things that arereally meaningful to them.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Yeah, but then I would time to yeah and we're not
just freeing up the students,though.
I would think we're freeing upteachers that are utilizing it
too.
Or we just got an email from myson's school.
They can't find a math teacherto hire for high school and
school starts on Monday, so theyare like scrambling to figure
out okay, what are we going todo?
(26:53):
And thankfully they do partnerwith a community college across
the street for advanced math andthey have some resources and
they found a company thatprovides live instruction, but I
would think that a tool likeKhan Academy also helps free up
the teachers as well.
Do you guys find that?
Speaker 1 (27:12):
I know this makes teachers very nervous when they
start thinking about is thisgoing to result in now saying
you can have 50 students in yourclass and you can?
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Okay, and that's not what I'm saying, what we're
saying.
That is not what we we'resaying it should make their
workload manageable, so they arenot working evenings and
weekends, and we're burningteachers out because it's yeah,
and you're collecting the datafor them too, and they're not
having to go through and assessand grade all the grading and
all of that work.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I've heard this.
I used to be in charge atPrenda of choosing all of the
learning tools, the digitaltools that we use for curriculum
, khan Academy being one of them.
But the pitch that every singlecompany starts with is here's
how this doesn't replaceteachers.
There's a lot of conversationabout that and I would say like
(28:04):
you don't have to worry about,like you don't, I don't need
that spiel.
Like I'm, I don't experiencethis risk.
I see it as a promotion wherenow, instead of like being a um,
like frontline, like manager ofof lots of of 30 tiny people,
I'm now like a CEO and I'mhelping them use a tool to
manage.
I'm like curating that suite oftools that is going to help
(28:26):
them manage themselves.
And so I've found that itreally is like what you're
saying, like we're moving fromcomplete burnout, like out of
all of the positions.
Gallup just did this poll a fewyears ago that said, like K-12
educators, the highest rate ofburnout something like 60% of
teachers experiencing actualphysiological health issues due
(28:49):
to stress.
This is the problem.
We're not trying to replaceanyone.
We're trying to create anactual sustainable position
where you can actually have ahealthy life balance and enjoy
being with kids and still befriendly and warm, because so
many of these teachers areburnout that when kids are
trying to interact with themthey're grumpy.
And it's like I know that Iused to my speech language
(29:09):
pathology office used to beright next to like share a door
with the teacher's lounge, likeI know, like it's so hard in
there and I want to make iteasier and more sustainable, so
I just think teachers areamazing.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Okay.
So I think we know that whenkids have a relationship with a
teacher, that they feel likesomeone in that school building
cares about them and theiroutcomes.
They have higher graduationrates.
They have higher post-secondaryschool attendance.
Like that relationship buildingis so important.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
But yeah, so it's not just free.
Go ahead, Katie.
It's hard to ask a teacher todo everything you're doing and
be friendly and have arelationship, right, like, one
of those hats has got to change,and I think technology is that.
Like what you said before, theschool system is the way it is
because of the constraints ofthe day, right?
But hey, we have released oneof those constraints now, right,
(29:59):
we have a new tool.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
And so we don't have to keep pretending that we, that
the constraints are the sameright, we need to incorporate
those.
It's not just freeing up thetime, because that is a big
chunk of it and that I'm surethat leads to burnout, but it's
freeing up the mental capacityand the mental space that these
teachers, like you said thatblows my mind, 60% are
struggling with, just likehealth conditions and, I'm sure,
anxiety and all these things.
So it's freeing up that as well, so that they can get to a
place where they're in theirsocial engagement system and
(30:30):
they can truly connect withthese kids and and help empower
them and get them excited aboutlearning.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
And so just trying to get through the day, the
drudgery of getting through theday, literally.
Just having a conversation witha gal in Arkansas the other day
day who she's going to start afront of micro school, um, but
she said that last year on thefirst day of school, like they
were doing their teacher prep,she was taken to the hospital in
an ambulance due to likeanxiety, panic, uh, and like no
(30:58):
teacher should live with thatand that's not why teachers go
into the profession you knowthey go into because they love
kids and they love learning.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
So how can we be part of that solution to where?
I mean, we talk about studentsa lot around here, but I feel
like there's this whole othercategory of humans that we need
to care for and to help them.
So I feel like both of us,Prenda and Khan Academy, are
part of that solution.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Yeah, and this is probably a good place to drop in
.
For the last year and a half,we've been really working with
generative artificialintelligence.
Yeah, let's talk about that.
As most folks know, you knowchat, gpt, those kinds of things
.
We have been building tools yes, student tutor tools, but also
teacher tools that help teachershave an assistant tools yes,
(31:44):
student tutor tools, but alsoteacher tools that help teachers
have an assistant to again freeup some of their time so you
can use generative AI on KhanAcademy as a teacher, for
example, to help write a lessonplan, start a draft, so you're
not starting with an empty pageof paper and start working
things through.
Help write your class newsletterAll of those kinds of things.
(32:08):
Help brainstorm that lessonhook.
What's that thing you're goingto do to spark students'
curiosity and activate theirprior knowledge right at the
beginning of a lesson, likethose kinds of things that
teachers spend a lot of time andeffort thinking through.
If you have a partner to help,you know brainstorm and give you
ideas, A partner that happensto be like semi quasi omniscient
(32:30):
, like yes, and knows everythingit's pretty valuable, and so
we've been.
We started off with, I think,four things that it could do and
as soon as we started showingit to teachers, they said whoa,
can it help me unpack standardsinto learning objectives?
Could it help me write a rubric, could it help me?
And we said well, let's try.
(32:51):
And so now we have about 25tools for teachers that are all
free for teachers to use and,again, help maybe free up some
of the time that they spend onthose kinds of activities.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Let's get a little bit more into Conmigo, tell us
what it is, what it does, whatyou've seen.
Like you know, this is theforefront of the future of
education right here, and I knowthere's a lot of like fear
around AI and especially AI andkids.
So, like I've been reading umSal's new book, um, brave new
words, brave new word.
Yes, it's wonderful.
So really really powerful stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Um so, so Sal and I, in September of 2022, so
remember that was before most ofus had heard of generative AI
got a sneak preview from one ofthe companies, openai, that
builds these models of what wenow call GPT-4.
(33:44):
They were going to launch thatin March, but were interested in
thinking about educationapplications for it.
And they said, you know, sal iswidely, you know, known in the
arena.
They said maybe Khan Academy isa good place for this and they
asked if we wanted to try it out.
And they gave us access througha chat interface on Slack.
For those of you who know whatSlack is, it's, you know, one of
(34:05):
the messaging features.
And so Sal and I spent theweekend like asking all these
crazy things, everything from,yes, learning things to oh, can
it?
You know, sal was like can itwrite a bedtime story for my
kids?
You know all kinds of things.
We're like this is prettyimpressive.
But one of the things they wereshowing us was how it could
answer AP biology questions, andthis is great, but we don't
(34:28):
want it to answer the questions.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
We want kids to answer the questions.
We want the kids to answer thequestions.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
We want the tutor to help students get to the answer
to those questions.
But we saw what we thought wasthe potential there and so we
said, yes, we'd like to partnerwith you on this, and in March
of 2023, we launched Conmigo,which is an AI powered tutor for
students and an assistant forteachers.
On the student side, whenyou're working on Khan Academy,
(34:56):
if you're, say, working on amath problem, you can bring up
Khanmigo and we feed intoKhanmigo the problem that you're
working on, the answer to thatproblem and also a whole bunch
of instructions to the model ofhow to act like a tutor.
So then, let's say, the studentjust says I'm stuck.
Well, it already knows whatproblem they're working on and
(35:16):
you know how to act like a tutor.
So it might respond withsomething like well, what do you
think the first step is?
And starts walking studentsthrough how to get there, which
is, of course, very much inopposition to like if you just
put the problem in chat, gpt,it'll work it all out and give
you the answer, but not what wewant for students, and so we
started building on that.
(35:38):
We also put in some more safetyguardrails kinds of things, so
teachers and parents can viewthe chats that students have.
So there's always some level ofhuman oversight there.
And we also flag.
We have a moderation systemthat flags any harmful content,
violence and hate and self-harmand things like that to kind of
(36:00):
build in some more safetymechanisms, because we didn't
know what students were going todo when we gave them access to
the ability to chat with an AI.
We found that, overall, studentsare definitely, you know,
understand.
This is an educationapplication and don't, after the
first couple of attempts wherethey try to see what they can do
(36:20):
with it, understand.
Okay, this is for you know,this is for helpful learning, so
you can use it on Khan Academywith Khan Academy content.
But we also have a bunch ofthings.
We have a tutor me math andscience.
So if you're working on, youknow, problems on math homework
or science homework that aren'tKhan Academy, you can, you know,
students can bring those in andhave the same kind of
(36:41):
interaction.
And then we also have launcheda writing coach.
So we have had writing feedbackfor about five months and then
two weeks ago, hot off thepresses, we launched an
end-to-end coach that startswith what's your assignment?
Do you have questions about theassignment.
What do you think you might do?
Let's start with outlining.
What might your paper look like?
(37:03):
And then they draft and then getfeedback on the writing.
Um, and so we've just been,yeah, working through.
What are the things that, if wetake this new technology, what
are some of the problems thatwe've had historically?
One, for instance, beingstudents don't get enough
practice writing because ittakes so long to grade Um.
What are problems that thismight help us solve?
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Yeah, that's great.
Yeah, sal Khan, he had the Tedtalk.
You know how AI could save, notdestroy, education.
That really helped me see it ina different light, because he's
like it's here, you know.
So we're going to use it forgood or, in the wrong hands,
it's going to be used for notgood.
So let's use it for good, andit sounds like what you guys are
(37:47):
doing is using it for really,really good and helping kids
still learn and still engage intheir learning.
But it's more of you know, likeI said, I use the word psychic
earlier, but that's what I keepthinking that you know it's
helping.
And then you mentioned thatteachers can use it too.
So is it helping them withideas and lesson plans and
(38:08):
things like that?
Speaker 1 (38:09):
That's right.
Yes, so I'll put the plug infor teachers.
If you just go to Conmigoai,you can get free access and
you'll get just a screen thathas 25 different activities that
teachers can do, includinglesson plans.
My sister's a high school mathteacher in Massachusetts and
(38:31):
when she looked at it, she also.
We have a help.
You write letters ofrecommendation and she teaches a
ton of high school seniors andevery year has to write so many
letters of recommendation.
So there's a piece there.
There's a help of drafting IEPgoals.
I was talking about as a schoolpsychologist, you know the
amount of paperwork arounddeveloping those individual
(38:53):
education plans.
It can help start drafting someof those, those, those kinds of
things.
So yes, a lot of teacher toolsas well.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
So, when going back to students, when ChatGPT first
came out, like everything in thenews was like this is just
going to make kids cheat, right,so talk about that.
How have we, how have you guys,shifted this to a, a tutoring
tool instead of a cheatingmachine?
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Definitely we see.
So I mentioned the the you knowchat histories before that
students can see, we think withwriting in particular, because
students are writing in thesystem.
Now teachers can see what didthe students write, what did the
AI write, how did the AI, whatfeedback did the AI give and how
(39:44):
did the students respond tothat?
So all of that becomes visibleto the teacher or the parent now
.
All of that becomes visible tothe teacher or the parent now.
And so that's one I think, bigyou know.
Just hey, I'm not going tocheat if it's clearly, you know,
visible to my teacher.
(40:07):
And a lot of the research onstudent cheating isn't that
students, it's almost like anopportunity.
If it's there to take the easyway, students will do it.
But if it's clear what theexpectations are and there's
some systems in place that atleast slightly discourage it,
students won't take theopportunity to do it.
So it's definitely puttingthose kinds of things in place.
But we also saw, for example,we have some activities like
(40:31):
chat with a historical figure.
Well, some you know thinkingstudents said what if I say I
want to talk to Pythagoras andthen get Pythagoras to do my
homework about the Pythagoreantheorem?
That's great.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
And you're supposed to be the one who does the work.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
So we had to do again that you can.
We have found that we can doquite a bit with what they call
prompts, which are how you giveinstructions to the model, and
so we give it a lot ofinstructions about how not to
answer student homeworkquestions or questions that look
like student homework questions, and help it, you know, just
kind of lock down where, wheresome of those things are.
(41:12):
So the system will just say ohyes, that is a question that I
know the answer to.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Why don't you tell me what you know about that?
That's interesting.
I think it's fascinatingbecause, as an adult that has a
job like there, is nothing thatKelly, my boss, the CEO of
Brenda wants more than for me touse AI as much as possible to
do my job right.
So it's like he wants me to mytime and my efforts and thoughts
to be freed up, doing morecreative work, more.
You know, like we want to usethis tool, and so, when I'm
(41:47):
thinking like we want to takekids through, like, use, use AI
as a scaffolding to build askill that can stand on its own
right, like if, if needed, Icould write a 30-page academic
paper, like I've done that,right, without using AI, I can
do that, but um do, is that thebest use of my time in my
practice?
Right?
(42:07):
Like wouldn't it be to to havethat take an hour instead of two
weeks, Right?
So, like then, we want it'slike you use AI to train them to
do it by themselves.
And then, on the other side ofpersonal capability and capacity
is, and now we want to use AIto be to free ourselves up and
to to move humanity forward andnot have humans be doing things
(42:29):
that computers can do right.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Yes, we talk about augmenting human potential
really.
So how can it help us do thingsbetter?
And I think what we may find,and we're working with some
other organizations on this isdefining what AI literacy means.
So, yes, if these are tools thatstudents need to know how to
use to be successful and moveahead in the workplace, how do
(42:55):
we build their understanding ofhow to use the tools, how to be
successful with them, when, whenthey can provide value and what
that looks like?
So I do think there's a wholerole to be played around giving
students the skills to be ableto prepare them for that future.
And, of course, everything'smoving so fast that the other
(43:17):
skill that students need to knowis how to teach themselves
things like learning how tolearn new technologies, because
what we know now is not going tobe what's you know the new
technology in 10 years.
What we know now is not goingto be what's you know the new
technology in 10 years, but youneed the skill of how do you
start to approach a newtechnology and understand what
it can do and understand what itcan't.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
yeah, what do you think those skills are in the
future?
I was just uh doing the.
I think I talked about this ona just a recent episode, but
like what, like kids that aregoing into kindergarten now
they're going to be?
What like kids that are goinginto kindergarten now they're
going to be going into theirlike primary earning years in
like 2065 or something like thatjust sounds like so futuristic.
(43:59):
Like what do you think thoseskills are that the kids are
going to need?
Just spitballing?
Like obviously nobody reallyknows.
But what do you?
What are your hunches?
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Well.
So one of the things I do islook back at my own trajectory.
So when I graduated fromcollege, there's no way I could
have said I want to be the chieflearning officer of Khan
Academy.
We barely had the internet, webarely had email.
Like there was nothing.
Not even just Khan Academydidn't exist, like the idea of
(44:28):
what we do doesn't exist.
But the things the college thatI went to had two things One
was an emphasis on writing andone was an emphasis on speaking
and those kinds of skills thathave, I think, been certainly
contributed to my successthrough my career, and it hasn't
again.
It hasn't necessarily beenwriting a you know five
(44:50):
paragraph essay, but just how tocommunicate well with words, I
think is an important skill,both written and orally, that I
can't imagine is going to goaway because we still have all
of this communication we'redoing.
Another skill that we don'tteach well but I think is really
(45:11):
important is teamwork andworking together, and everyone
hates those group projects inschools.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
But I think I love them, but the reason okay,
listen, you're not normal.
Adrian.
This is why I love them,because I was very controlling
and so if I got in a group, Iwould just be like, just let me
do it and I.
And so if I got in a group, Iwould just be like, just let me
do it and I.
And so, literally, I kid younot.
There is this kid, or I meanhe's like you know, a young
adult in college that would askyou my schedule every single
(45:40):
semester because I was acommunications major and so we
had a lot of projects, and so Ihe just got in the groups with
me and knew he didn't have to doany work, so hopefully he ended
up.
But we're talking about likeConmigo, not being like a team.
You were his Conmigo, adrienneConmigo.
So I'm sorry but go ahead.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Collaboration, teamwork is very important.
It is and we often just setkids free and be like, here's a
group, go do a thing, like wedon't actually teach them how,
how, maybe, to delegate oh, theyhad someone like me that just
ran in the show, right?
And then, if you're like mecause I have a little bit of
that too but then I have theother side of my personality
(46:22):
that's like I can't believe I'mdoing this whole thing and I
like turn into myself, into amartyr, which is no good for
anyone either.
So, um, so anyway, yes,thinking about how do you break
up work, how do you bring itback together, how do you hold
people accountable, like thoseare all really important skills
that last, yeah, and skills thatwe should start teaching when
(46:43):
they're really young, I thinkabout too.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
I had a college class it was called group discussion.
We learned all.
It was such an amazing classbecause he literally would film
us having these discussions andwe would have to solve really
complicated problems and hewould not interrupt us, not tell
us, and then we would watch thereplays and he would talk about
what was happening within ourgroup dynamics and how to better
(47:09):
communicate, and that was sucha life changing class.
But I didn't take it until Iwas 20 years old.
I mean, how powerful would thatbe to start teaching these
skills to five-year-olds andsix-year-olds, especially at
that age where it's veryegocentric and everything is
theirs, and so we can starthelping them have these
(47:30):
collaboration skills?
That would be really amazing.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Absolutely, absolutely and to your point,
katie.
It's not like kids don't needacademic skills in 2060.
You have to know enough to beable to judge the accuracy of
the technology.
To be able to you, it shouldstill be your assistant, not
your, not your boss.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
So you need to have the knowledge and the skills to
be able to you know and also Iwant my kids in 2060 to be the
creators of this, not theconsumers of it.
Right necessarily like that allthe time.
Yeah, creator, not consumer.
So in order to be the personthat is prompting and you know
(48:17):
you like training, that modellike you have to have all of
those skills right, it's notlike sometimes people will be
like, well, no one needs tomemorize anything anymore, cause
you can just Google something.
I'm like, yeah, but you reallywant an internal knowledge store
of like a lot of stuff so thatyou can be the judge of what's
like accurate, and you're gonnabe really easily led to some not
(48:40):
great places if you're justtrying to google everything.
I was literally teaching thisclass the other day with a bunch
of high schoolers and I wasasking them kind of like a I was
asking them the definition of aword so that I could understand
their, their understanding ofit, and they literally totally
just did not understand thatthat's what I was doing and this
girl was just like I got youpulled out her phone and just
(49:01):
like I was like no, no, I knowwhat this word means.
I want to know if you know andlike what it means personally to
you.
I want to know if you know andlike what it means personally to
you.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
But imagine if you had to Google every word you
heard to understand what it likethere.
Yeah, that wouldn't work.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
So yeah, and I really think you can't just Google.
Yeah, and parents can use theseonline tools and resources like
Khan Academy.
Or we had Audrey on the podcastfor episode 22.
To me, or we had Audrey Wish onthe podcast for episode 22.
And so she has a company calledCurious Cardinals and she
matches people, or matchesstudents, with mentors, and so
(49:38):
my son would like to play Robloxall day long and or whatever
you know games that give himlots and lots of dopamine, and
so instead he has thisincredible mentor, and it is all
through online.
So we're using, we're teachinghim how to use the internet and
use zoom as a tool, and he islearning how to create his own
(50:03):
video games from scratch.
He is learning reallycomplicated coding, and that's
why I want him to get back ontoKhan Academy, cause you guys
have a lot of coding on theretoo.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
Like I said, now he has a little bit of PTSD, but I
will tell him he can use it as atool and our Python coding
course is the most creative,actually, of probably all of our
courses.
Yes, our doing Python, doingcoding, doing some projects.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
Yeah.
So instead of being afraid oftechnology, we can really use it
as a tool and, like Katie said,teach our students and teach
our kids how to use it to createand as a tool, not just to
consume and sit and watchYouTube all day long or play
video games, in the same waythat like knowing how to go to
the library and find theencyclopedia and look something
(50:50):
up used to be like.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
That is a skill that we need and we have to train
that it's like well, right now,like knowing how to Google
something and find an likereliable, reasonable answer on
the Internet is a skill, and thenext wave of this is knowing
how to use AI to do that and howto how to use that as a human.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
And how to evaluate the answer AI gives you, because
these answers can be wrong.
They can not Anything you readon the internet can be wrong.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
I think it's really important to look at it because
we had Michael Strong on withSocratic experience, and he
talked about that, how he reallyhelps students read something
and then go, okay, how do youknow that's true?
How do you know it's not true,and really start getting into
debates about it.
I think that's really importanttoo.
So it's not just looking at AI,but anything that we read on
(51:40):
the internet or hear from anyone.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
Yet that's probably one of the things we should put
on our future learning skillslist, right, like the evaluation
piece.
Yeah, okay, let's wrap up, butI have a silly question who I
just want to know?
I want to give this whoeverthought of the, the, the name
Conmigo.
It's such a beautiful pun and Ilove it so much and I just
(52:03):
really love puns.
I just want to know who thoughtof that.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
So there's a whole story.
So naming things is really hardand what we've come to, conmigo
for Spanish speakers Conmigomeans with me and it's a
portmanteau of con and amigo.
So whatever, however you accessit, we really liked that, liked
(52:34):
that had done me.
We had probably, you know, acouple hundred names that we had
brainstormed.
We're trying to figure out.
We had settled on a differentone, which I'm not even sure I
remember at this point what itwas, and we started calling it
that and then, after we starteddoing a deep dive into, like,
all the possible meanings, youknow, oh, that one didn't work
out and other things werecopyrighted and already taken.
But we knew, if we use con thatit's less likely that someone
(52:57):
else has it already, and so Ithink it was actually one of our
designers came up with thissuggestion.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
And they should get a raise and a trophy and a pizza
party.
I just think it's so great.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
And Star Tarts.
I love it Okay, let's wrap up.
Okay.
So this is a question we askall of our guests who come onto
the Kindled podcast.
So who has kindled your love oflearning, motivation, passion,
or like in what you're doingtoday?
Speaker 1 (53:27):
My answer actually fits into much of what we've
been talking about.
I had a fifth grade teachernamed Mrs O'Leary and I was
always a reader to this and bythe time I was in fifth grade
those kind of standard readingbooks were kind of like I knew
what was in them.
I kind of mastered to use ourterminology now mastered that
(53:47):
she for the whole year just hadme read books and every
Wednesday afternoon she and Iwould have book talk and talk
through the books.
And here's what I was readingand read all kinds of things in
different genres and differentyou know, fiction, nonfiction,
(54:07):
all those kinds of things.
You know fiction, nonfiction,all those kinds of things and
really sparked interest in lotsof different areas for me,
because she said you know what?
I see that you are in adifferent place here, you need
something different and I canhelp make that happen for you.
So, mrs O'Leary, fifth grade,it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
I love that.
And how can listeners learnmore about your work or Khan
Academy?
Speaker 1 (54:32):
I mentioned conmigoai , so that's, if you're
interested in the AI pieces, youcan go there.
Khanacademyorg certainly isfree for everyone, so dive in
and just click on the coursesmenu and see all the different
courses that we have.
There's probably somethingthere that will spark your
(54:53):
interest and work your way wherewe are.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
I love that.
Thanks so much for coming onthe Kindle podcast.
This has been such afascinating conversation.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
Thanks for having me.
Thank you so much.
It was nice meeting you,kristen.
That's it for today.
We really hope you enjoyed thisconversation with Kristen as
much as we did.
So if this episode was helpfulto you or you want to dive more
into mastery-based learning orpersonalized learning, please
like, subscribe and follow us onsocial media.
At Prenda Learn Well, you'lleven find Katie doing a really
(55:22):
fun rap about joining andfinding a micro school.
So if you have a question thatyou would like for us to address
on the podcast, all you need todo is email us at podcast at
prendacom, and you can also goto our website and you can
subscribe to our weeklynewsletter.
It's called the Sunday Spark.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
The Kindle podcast is brought to you by Prenda.
Prenda makes it easy for you tostart and run an amazing micro
school based on all the ideasthat we talk about here on the
Kindle podcast.
If you want more informationabout becoming a Prenda,
That's the promise of technology.
The technology can help scalethe teacher and help them think
about how can we make sure thatstudents are getting that extra
practice.
The teacher doesn't have tomake up a worksheet with.
You know, make up 30 differentworksheets with different
problems and all that.
The technology can do that forthem.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hi and welcome to the Kindle podcast where we dig
into the art and science behindkindling the motivation,
curiosity and mental wellbeingof the young humans in our lives
.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Together, we'll discover practical tools and
strategies you can use to helpkids unlock their full potential
and become the strongestversion of their future selves.
Today we are talking aboutpersonalized learning and using
(00:57):
online tools and mastery-basedlearning.
Katie, tell me a little bitabout those things.
What do you know?
Oh my gosh my gosh, have youseen that it's been an impact in
your house with your kids?
Because your kids have beenlearning this way from the
get-go right.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, we are going into our sixth year of micro
schooling and doing personalizedlearning.
So typically you know you don'tget personalized learning in
traditional classroom or evenyou can homeschool and
personalize that learning, butthen you have to personalize the
learning for all of your kidsat different levels and it's
very overwhelming.
So we're going to talk to DrKristen DeServo today, who is
(01:32):
the chief learning officer atKhan Academy, and Khan Academy
has been a really interestingplayer in the academic ed tech
world for the last like 20 years, honestly, and they've really
helped pioneer personalizedlearning and access to
personalized learning, causeit's not, you know, in the like
now, of course, like there's allthis AI stuff going on, like
(01:53):
there's there's lots of ed tech,but it really has been over the
last 20 years that it's reallybeen even possible to um provide
a child with a with apersonalized learning experience
that isn't um directly given tothem by a one-on-one tutor.
So lots of research, lots ofstudies have been going on
around this since the 80s and itis a fascinating part of
(02:13):
education.
So super excited to talk to DrDeSerbo today.
She leads at Khan Academy.
She leads the content design,product management and community
support teams.
Dr DeSerbo's career has focusedon embedding insights from
education research into digitallearning experiences.
Prior to her role at KhanAcademy, she was vice president
of learning, research and designat Pearson, served as a
(02:35):
research scientist supportingthe Cisco Networking Academies
and worked as a schoolpsychologist.
I think that's reallyinteresting.
Kristen has a PhD ineducational psychology from
Arizona State University.
Let's go talk to Dr DeServo.
Let's do it, kristen.
Welcome to the Kindle podcast.
We're super excited to have youon today.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Thanks, so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, okay.
So I want to get started bygiving everyone a chance to
understand your background.
You know, tell us your story.
How did you come to the workyou're doing currently in
education?
What's your big, why yourmotivation for doing the work
you do?
Speaker 1 (03:12):
I have been interested in how people learn
and helping people learn for along time.
I can almost point it back tothis experience I had in high
school where I was a tutor andso, as you know, part of I think
was part of National HonorSociety or something we the high
schoolers would go tutor middleschool students and like, to be
honest, school was kind of likehigh school, kind of easy, like
(03:32):
I worked hard but I didn'treally struggle with a lot of
things, and it was such this aneye opener for me to see these
middle school students who werereally trying and were
struggling with math inparticular, and it just, even at
that age, started me thinkingof like, oh, how do different
(03:53):
people learn differently and howcan we help support these
learners that are strugglingwith this content?
And since then, I mean it'sbeen a long and winding path,
but everything has really beenaround that idea of how do we
help more learners learn more,and so that's really the why of
(04:15):
what I do, and I've spent about20 years now in researching and
designing digital learningenvironments for students.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
I love that, and you're also a school
psychologist originally, right.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yes.
So when I first started lookingat graduate programs, didn't
know what I was going to do andthis idea of how do we help
identify students that arestruggling and provide them
support.
School psychologists for thosewho don't know are not the
counselors in the school,they're the folks who work to
evaluate students that arehaving learning difficulties,
(04:50):
working with teachers to helpdevelop their individual
education plans, and doing a lotof that work.
So, yes, after the PhD program,I went to was what they call
research practitioner.
So I did a lot of research intohow people learn, how we
measure learning, but also thendid a, you know, practica and
internships and a lot of work inschools and then worked for
(05:12):
three years in Arizona, whereI'm based, as a school
psychologist.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
That's awesome, and take us through your career a
little bit.
You were at Pearson and nowyou're at Khan Academy.
Tell us your like, take us onthe journey, and now you're at
Khan Academy.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Tell us your like, take us on the journey.
As I was in the schools, startedto really think about the
challenges that we face inschools, including things like
shortages of special ed teachers.
So I was doing this work as aschool psychologist to be able
to, you know, give studentsaccess to these special ed
(05:44):
services, be able to givestudents access to these special
ed services.
And then a lot of the teacherswere just overwhelmed with the
amount of students they had andthe amount of paperwork they had
to do and all of these kinds ofthings and started thinking
about how technology could helpand really reached a kind of
branching point in my careerwhere I was thinking I might go
into academia and be a professorand do research and that kind
(06:06):
of thing but got connected tosome folks that I had worked
with in graduate school who hadgone to work for Cisco Systems,
the networking company of allplaces, which sounds bizarre.
This is like the big leap.
And the Cisco was developingwhat they call networking
academies where they developedcurricula and assessments around
(06:27):
how to teach students computernetworking that they give away
to high schools and communitycolleges to help support
students.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
I was wondering where Cisco played in.
I was like, oh, Cisco.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Thank you for sharing .
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yes.
So it seems you know it's atthat point it was.
People have asked that samequestion You're going to where?
What are you doing next?
But they, you know there were alot of engineers who were
building these curriculums.
It would be great if we hadmore people who knew about
learning so we could help bringthat as well.
And there were a couple ofthings there that were really
(07:04):
transformational too.
The first was we startedworking on a simulation tool,
because these students werepracticing on this networking
equipment and it would break alot, and they were like I don't
know, we don't know how to fixthis.
And schools would be like wedon't know how to fix this.
So we started developing thesesimulations of the networking
equipment, and students thencould say you know what, if I
(07:28):
hooked up 150 computers to thisrouter, what happens then?
And in addition to that, theycould visualize packets of data
moving through the network,which is not something you can
actually see.
But I started to think abouttechnology not just as how can
it help us do what we already dobetter, but can it help us do
(07:49):
things we couldn't do before andhelp improve learning in that
way?
So that was really, I think, aformative piece for me.
And then while we were doingthat, I was doing a lot of
presentations of this work onsimulation-based learning and
all of that out in the world andPearson who, for folks who
don't know, is a major globaleducational publisher saw some
(08:10):
of that work and they werebuilding what they call a
research and innovation networkat the time and basically
recruited me over to do some ofthat more kind of research and
simulations and game-basedassessment and some pieces there
.
And I was lucky enough there toalso get a lot of experience
(08:31):
got through, you know,promotions and things in
learning how to lead people,which is a whole other skill.
When you are in a kind of a PhDtrack and doing research, you
don't get those skills and so Iwas.
I'm grateful for that time ofkind of helping me to and giving
me the support I needed tostart to learn to do that.
(08:51):
Pearson at the time sold offtheir K-12 division and I love
K-12 and wanted to be in K-12.
So that was an impetus for meto start thinking about what's
my next step and I startedthinking about someplace.
So Pearson has 36,000 employeesand I was thinking, gosh, I'd
like to be someplace smaller.
I think that, definitely in theK-12 world.
(09:14):
What might this look like?
And three weeks after I hadkind of described what I thought
I wanted my next role to be,khan Academy posted their first
ever chief learning officerposition and I was like, yes,
this is the thing that I wasdescribing, that I was made for
you, that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I love it.
And tell us more about yourrole as the chief learning
officer.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah, so I lead a bunch of teams at Khan Academy.
So I lead our content team,which is the team when you're on
Khan Academy and you'reengaging in the exercises,
answering questions.
They write all those questions.
They work with Sal to make allthe videos.
They are writing articles,putting the courses together.
So that's the content team, Ourproduct management and design
(09:58):
teams, who are the ones whoreally flesh out.
What does that experience looklike?
What should happen when you'reon Khan Academy?
What kinds of rewards do youget?
How do you move through thewhole experience and what that
looks like.
How do teachers assign things?
What reports do they get whenthey get them back?
All of those folks are all partof my team.
(10:19):
And then, most recently, we'realso building a small assessment
team, because a lot of what wedo isn't what we think of.
We're like, oh, sit down andtake a test, but what we are
doing is getting a lot of dataabout what students know and can
do.
That we can feed back toparents and teachers and help
them understand where studentsare and what they need to work
(10:40):
on and what other things theymay want to focus on.
So that's the big piece of itand so a lot of what I do.
In a traditional technologyorganization I would probably be
a chief product officer, butbecause I bring this whole
learning side of things to mywhat I do and have this
(11:02):
background of how do we buildthese things with learning in
mind, I have achieved learning.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
I love that and what.
Tell us a little bit more aboutKhan Academy as a company and
like the mission of Khan Academy.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I have never been in an organization where everyone
knows the mission and is sodedicated to it.
Our mission is to provide afree, world-class education to
anyone anywhere.
Just a little thing that we'retrying to it.
Our mission is to provide afree, world-class education to
anyone anywhere.
Just a little thing that we'retrying to do.
Why not, sure?
So that's the exciting part oflike.
(11:35):
How do we think about makingsure that any student anywhere
has access to the kinds ofmaterials they need to learn and
practice skills that they needto be successful in their lives?
So that is what we do.
We, a lot of us.
The Khan Academy initially wasvery known for Sal Sal Khan is
my boss, founder of Khan Academy, love him.
(11:56):
He does videos and he just hasthis great way of explaining
things and making itapproachable and all of that,
which certainly launched KhanAcademy.
But we also know that to reallylearn something, you have to
practice it.
You have to engage with thecontent.
You can't just kind ofpassively watch a video.
(12:16):
So we offer both of thosethings, both the instruction
side and then the opportunitiesto practice, and that whole
practice system is based inmastery learning.
So the mastery learning is theidea that you keep working on a
skill until you get to a levelof proficiency that makes it
(12:36):
likely that you'll then be ableto apply that skill in new
situations.
You'll be able to remember itin the long term.
So before you start building onnew skills on top of it and
particularly in math, that'sreally important.
A lot of skills build on top ofother skills and if you're
missing the foundation it getsreally shaky, like if you're
building a house without astrong foundation.
When you start building layerson top of it, it's going to get
(12:59):
pretty rough.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
So how do you see, go ahead, keep going, no, go ahead
.
I'm just interested to knowlike that seems like such a
fundamentally logical idea,right, that we wouldn't like, no
, no, like contractor would belike the foundation 70%, good
yeah, put the next layer on.
Like in no other area ofexistence Do we move forward
(13:21):
without a sure foundation.
But in education it's like well, we're moving on, gotta move on
.
And like, talk, talk about that, cause you've been, I've, I've,
I'm actually I was a speechlanguage pathologist in schools,
like I, it's just so hard toprovide that in the traditional
model.
Like, just talk about that alittle bit and how Khan Academy
(13:41):
is going about solving that andI don't know, just riff on that.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
It's a huge issue because, systematically, we've
got these hundreds of thousandsof kids that we are trying to
get through the system and soand we have, you know, one
teacher for 25, 30 kids.
They it just isn't possible forone teacher to have kids on all
of those pathways and, you know, be at 30 different places in
their learning journey.
They just can't be able tomanage that.
(14:12):
So we've ended up with thissystem where we're covering unit
one for two weeks, we'recovering unit three for two
weeks and when we're done,wherever you are, we're moving
on.
So that's just been, I think,the response to the constraints
of the system of we've had allof these students and only a few
of these teachers.
That's the promise of technology.
(14:34):
The technology can help scalethe teacher and help them think
about how can we make sure thatstudents are getting that extra
practice.
The teacher doesn't have tomake up a worksheet with, you
know, make up 30 differentworksheets with different
problems, and all that.
The technology can do that forthem.
(14:54):
So that's the promise of whatKhan Academy and, you know,
digital learning in general hashad to offer.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Yeah, it allows the teacher to step into a different
role than what hastraditionally been a teacher.
You know I am the holder of allthe content.
I'm going to pour this into,you know, the students.
Instead, they can guide theirlearning and really attune to
the individual needs.
And I was thinking about howKhan Academy can be used and it
(15:24):
is used in so many differentfacets of education, because I
just look at my three kids,they've had a totally different
educational journey started in avery, very traditional charter
school.
I have one in a hybrid schoolActually, he's down by where you
live and they use Khan Academy,so he's using it in a charter
school.
I have another son that used itwhenever he first started
(15:45):
Prenda in a micro school and hehas some cognitive flexibility
challenges.
So it was at the time.
If you got like one or twowrong, you had to start all the
way at the beginning again.
I don't know if it's still thatway and it was really
challenging for him.
Go ahead, I know you want totalk about that.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
No, we heard oh my gosh, we heard so much from
students that they hated that wehad a tweet that we were just
laughing at that we ended uppulling out that said my villain
origin story is having to startover.
So we now have a button where,if you get it wrong, you
(16:23):
actually don't have to go allthe way to the end of the
exercise before you can startover.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
You can start over and write that, okay, so I need
to tell him that because he isterrified of Khan, but it's such
a great tool.
And then, but we have used itin a homeschool setting too.
So it's like you, khan isreally diverse because it can
work with parent educators, withmicro school educators, with
(16:48):
teachers and just kind of likeas a sidekick, to come along and
help these kids have a morepersonalized learning.
So can you define a little bitabout what personalized learning
is and explain why it's reallyimportant in today's educational
landscape?
Speaker 1 (17:03):
So first I'll say we've been talking about
personalized learning.
I think I remember back in2012,.
It was the buzzword and we weregoing to personalize learning
for everyone.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
And here we are, you know all these years later,
Between personalized andmastery-based like, is it
essentially the same thing?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, Well so you can personalize learning in a lot
of different ways.
You could personalize learningby making the experience
relevant to the kids' interests.
So you know, if you'reinterested in space, my math
problems, my math word problemswill be set around space and the
planets and rocket ships andthose kinds of things.
So that's one way topersonalize.
(17:39):
We can personalize by justthinking about the pace that
students go through things with,and sometimes you'll need to go
through some topics slower,some faster.
I know for me, like I was goodat math but man trigonometry, I
needed time because it did notmake sense in my brain.
So having different paces isanother way to personalize.
(18:00):
Personalized and thinking abouthow do we make sure that the
students are getting the rightskills at the right time, that
they need them in order topractice.
So the mastery learning piece,when we talk about it, has two
pieces of that, both the workingon the right skills at the
right time and the pacing pieceof it, and so, but generally, as
(18:24):
we think about personalizedlearning, it's just doing
anything that isn't the setinstructional program that every
student in the class ismarching through in the same way
.
So lots of opportunity to be alittle more flexible and we hope
that, as you said, that KhanAcademy can work in a variety of
(18:46):
settings to bring in some ofthat.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Do you find that there's like a hesitancy towards
incorporating technology,trusting technology, like what's
what's the vibe there?
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Yes.
Let me throw some numbers atyou.
So 12 million students hit KhanAcademy every month.
So that's a lot, but only 1.2million.
So 10% of them get up to twohours of practice on Khan
Academy in the month.
Now, two hours does not soundlike a lot, but only 10% of
(19:20):
students who hit Khan Academyget to two hours.
Why is two hours important?
Because our efficacy studiesthat show whether does Khan
Academy actually help peoplelearn show that if you get to
that two hours, you'll seegreater than expected growth on
lots of external assessments.
So this is two hours a month,two hours a month, 30 minutes a
(19:40):
week Not a lot hours a month, 30minutes a week not a lot.
But to your question of does youknow?
Is there resistance?
It's not even alwaysnecessarily active resistance,
it's just people aren't clearhow to fit technology into the
classroom, into their lessons.
Where does it fit?
What does that look like?
We, you know, we think if wecould get 50% of students to do
(20:05):
two hours, we would see hugegains at scale, you know, at a
state level, a country level.
But it is the hardest part ofwhat we do is not actually
making sure students can learnwhen they use our platform, but
getting people to that level ofusage that's going to be
effective for them.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
That's so interesting because at Prenda we run a
completely flipped model wherewe are like technology is the
primary instructor and then weuse an adult to encourage, coach
, nurture, mentor, tutor whennecessary.
But it's totally flipped and we, I think, going that far into
the extreme, instead of like,okay, we're sticking with the
normal course, like you know,we're going to teach all the
ninth or the all of the fourthgraders about X, y or Z, and
(20:50):
then we're going to use KhanAcademy to augment.
We see crazy amounts of growthbecause they're always at their
learning frontiers, that we callit their zone of proximal
development, right, and there'stons of research to support that
.
But it's like we've really hadto work hard with parents in
Prenda and with our guides tohelp them realize, like, when a
child isn't learning, when youare administering like whatever
(21:13):
the normal program is, there'sonly a handful of kids in that
class that are really trackingwith you.
Right, we have a lot ofvariance in any given group of
25 or 30 kids and you'reessentially saying to a third of
those kids you need to wait,I'll make it harder for you in a
minute and you need to wait,I'll make it easier for you in a
minute and with technology,everyone can be learning at
(21:35):
their what we call theirlearning frontier most of the
time, you know, and when youtake all of those minutes, like
like our kids will get, I don'tknow, like, when you take all of
those minutes, like like ourkids will get, I don't know like
, six hours of digital math,like in a week or so, like like
a lot of it, right, and we see,like these really amazing
results and I just want that foreveryone.
But I experienced thisresistance to this idea because
(21:56):
we have a lot of very wisepeople which I trust, saying
like, hey, we need to be carefulabout screen usage, right, so
we want to be careful abouttechnology.
Can you talk about thedifference in quality in in like
what?
Like how is Khan Academydifferent than Roblox or
Minecraft or social media?
Like it's just not all screensare created equal.
(22:17):
Can we just like address that?
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Or even even other learning tools that are very,
very gamified, because lookingat Khan Academy, it's not as
gamified.
So yeah, can you explain, likethe difference?
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Yes, so I will just repeat not all screen time is
the same.
That's a big lesson for people,and especially coming out of
the pandemic I think a lot ofpeople really just wanted to get
back away from the screenTotally, so I get that reaction.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
So understandable yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, fundamentally kids need opportunities to
practice with feedback, to getto learning.
There's a recent academic paperthat came out that was the
title was the astonishingregularity of learning that
showed that if you just focus ongetting kids opportunities to
practice with the support theyneed to do the work, so you call
(23:11):
it learning frontier, we callit learning edge.
You know, when you're right atthat edge you're probably not
going to be able to doeverything totally independently
.
You're going to need a littlebit of support to get oh, I get
it now, I forgot that.
Oh, yeah, that's how that works.
So the support to do that andthen feedback on what you're
doing.
But if you can get on, say, aparticular math skill, the
average student when they lookedacross hundreds of thousands of
(23:34):
students if you can get aboutseven opportunities to practice
on a skill, you're you know, ifyou're starting at kind of the
average achievement levels,you'll probably get there.
Some kids may need 13, 14opportunities to practice on a
given skill.
Some kids will get it in two orthree.
But the point that the thingthat we are always trying to
drive at Khan Academy is how dowe maximize the opportunities
(23:57):
that students have to practiceand get that feedback.
So a lot of to practice and getthat feedback.
So a lot of you know there'snow if you had to do that eight
hours a day, all day.
That's going to be, you know,too much Exhausting.
Learning is cognitively hardwork, and so we need to
recognize that and give students, you know, breaks,
(24:18):
opportunities to do other things.
Roblox can be great, butthey're not going to have the
opportunities to practice therethat they're going to, but
they're not going to have theopportunities to practice there
that they're going to get asthey're racking up Khan Academy.
So how do we put those togetherto be, you know, a whole system
that we're thinking about forstudents learning?
Speaker 2 (24:34):
I want to.
I want to ask you about themagic of immediate feedback, so
we'll put that on the shelf fora second, but how.
It seems like it's just soimportant to create a balanced
learning day where, like, yes,we're using technology, but then
that frees us up, because itseems like what I've seen and my
kids have been learning thisway for the last six years and I
(24:55):
have one son who was in thefirst kindergarten class and
he's going into fifth grade thisyear Like, so we've lived this
right.
What I see is that it's so muchmore efficient that they have
so much more time to go, likemake things with mud and go on
all of these like creativeadventures and read high quality
(25:16):
literature, like they're justfreed up.
Um, so is that what you guyssee as well with kids that are
using Khan Academy?
Like the efficiency.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yes, so we there's.
Also, sal has about a millionideas a day.
Some of them he turns intothings.
So there's a Khan Lab school.
That's an independent school inthe Bay Area.
That's an in-person school.
They actually happen to be onthe first floor of the building
and Khan Academy is on thesecond floor.
So we have a lot of interactionwith them.
(25:46):
Their total K-12 are about.
I think we're at 300 studentsnow, so it's small, you know,
not a huge representative sampleor anything, but we see the
same thing.
So they work on Khan Academyand, of course, work towards
getting master on Khan Academy,but then they do these passion
projects that are amazingbecause they have all this time
(26:09):
in the day and so, yeah, we dofind that if you focus, you
don't have to spend your wholeday doing this, that if we can
get that focus time with thoseopportunities to practice, it
does free you up to do morecreative things and build all
those you know things that weall want our kids to be able to
(26:30):
do and find the things that arereally meaningful to them.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Yeah, but then I would time to yeah and we're not
just freeing up the students,though.
I would think we're freeing upteachers that are utilizing it
too.
Or we just got an email from myson's school.
They can't find a math teacherto hire for high school and
school starts on Monday, so theyare like scrambling to figure
out okay, what are we going todo?
(26:53):
And thankfully they do partnerwith a community college across
the street for advanced math andthey have some resources and
they found a company thatprovides live instruction, but I
would think that a tool likeKhan Academy also helps free up
the teachers as well.
Do you guys find that?
Speaker 1 (27:12):
I know this makes teachers very nervous when they
start thinking about is thisgoing to result in now saying
you can have 50 students in yourclass and you can?
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Okay, and that's not what I'm saying, what we're
saying.
That is not what we we'resaying it should make their
workload manageable, so they arenot working evenings and
weekends, and we're burningteachers out because it's yeah,
and you're collecting the datafor them too, and they're not
having to go through and assessand grade all the grading and
all of that work.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I've heard this.
I used to be in charge atPrenda of choosing all of the
learning tools, the digitaltools that we use for curriculum
, khan Academy being one of them.
But the pitch that every singlecompany starts with is here's
how this doesn't replaceteachers.
There's a lot of conversationabout that and I would say like
(28:04):
you don't have to worry about,like you don't, I don't need
that spiel.
Like I'm, I don't experiencethis risk.
I see it as a promotion wherenow, instead of like being a um,
like frontline, like manager ofof lots of of 30 tiny people,
I'm now like a CEO and I'mhelping them use a tool to
manage.
I'm like curating that suite oftools that is going to help
(28:26):
them manage themselves.
And so I've found that itreally is like what you're
saying, like we're moving fromcomplete burnout, like out of
all of the positions.
Gallup just did this poll a fewyears ago that said, like K-12
educators, the highest rate ofburnout something like 60% of
teachers experiencing actualphysiological health issues due
(28:49):
to stress.
This is the problem.
We're not trying to replaceanyone.
We're trying to create anactual sustainable position
where you can actually have ahealthy life balance and enjoy
being with kids and still befriendly and warm, because so
many of these teachers areburnout that when kids are
trying to interact with themthey're grumpy.
And it's like I know that Iused to my speech language
(29:09):
pathology office used to beright next to like share a door
with the teacher's lounge, likeI know, like it's so hard in
there and I want to make iteasier and more sustainable, so
I just think teachers areamazing.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Okay.
So I think we know that whenkids have a relationship with a
teacher, that they feel likesomeone in that school building
cares about them and theiroutcomes.
They have higher graduationrates.
They have higher post-secondaryschool attendance.
Like that relationship buildingis so important.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
But yeah, so it's not just free.
Go ahead, Katie.
It's hard to ask a teacher todo everything you're doing and
be friendly and have arelationship, right, like, one
of those hats has got to change,and I think technology is that.
Like what you said before, theschool system is the way it is
because of the constraints ofthe day, right?
But hey, we have released oneof those constraints now, right,
(29:59):
we have a new tool.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
And so we don't have to keep pretending that we, that
the constraints are the sameright, we need to incorporate
those.
It's not just freeing up thetime, because that is a big
chunk of it and that I'm surethat leads to burnout, but it's
freeing up the mental capacityand the mental space that these
teachers, like you said thatblows my mind, 60% are
struggling with, just likehealth conditions and, I'm sure,
anxiety and all these things.
So it's freeing up that as well, so that they can get to a
place where they're in theirsocial engagement system and
(30:30):
they can truly connect withthese kids and and help empower
them and get them excited aboutlearning.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
And so just trying to get through the day, the
drudgery of getting through theday, literally.
Just having a conversation witha gal in Arkansas the other day
day who she's going to start afront of micro school, um, but
she said that last year on thefirst day of school, like they
were doing their teacher prep,she was taken to the hospital in
an ambulance due to likeanxiety, panic, uh, and like no
(30:58):
teacher should live with thatand that's not why teachers go
into the profession you knowthey go into because they love
kids and they love learning.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
So how can we be part of that solution to where?
I mean, we talk about studentsa lot around here, but I feel
like there's this whole othercategory of humans that we need
to care for and to help them.
So I feel like both of us,Prenda and Khan Academy, are
part of that solution.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Yeah, and this is probably a good place to drop in
.
For the last year and a half,we've been really working with
generative artificialintelligence.
Yeah, let's talk about that.
As most folks know, you knowchat, gpt, those kinds of things
.
We have been building tools yes, student tutor tools, but also
teacher tools that help teachershave an assistant tools yes,
(31:44):
student tutor tools, but alsoteacher tools that help teachers
have an assistant to again freeup some of their time so you
can use generative AI on KhanAcademy as a teacher, for
example, to help write a lessonplan, start a draft, so you're
not starting with an empty pageof paper and start working
things through.
Help write your class newsletterAll of those kinds of things.
(32:08):
Help brainstorm that lessonhook.
What's that thing you're goingto do to spark students'
curiosity and activate theirprior knowledge right at the
beginning of a lesson, likethose kinds of things that
teachers spend a lot of time andeffort thinking through.
If you have a partner to help,you know brainstorm and give you
ideas, A partner that happensto be like semi quasi omniscient
(32:30):
, like yes, and knows everythingit's pretty valuable, and so
we've been.
We started off with, I think,four things that it could do and
as soon as we started showingit to teachers, they said whoa,
can it help me unpack standardsinto learning objectives?
Could it help me write a rubric, could it help me?
And we said well, let's try.
(32:51):
And so now we have about 25tools for teachers that are all
free for teachers to use and,again, help maybe free up some
of the time that they spend onthose kinds of activities.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Let's get a little bit more into Conmigo, tell us
what it is, what it does, whatyou've seen.
Like you know, this is theforefront of the future of
education right here, and I knowthere's a lot of like fear
around AI and especially AI andkids.
So, like I've been reading umSal's new book, um, brave new
words, brave new word.
Yes, it's wonderful.
So really really powerful stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Um so, so Sal and I, in September of 2022, so
remember that was before most ofus had heard of generative AI
got a sneak preview from one ofthe companies, openai, that
builds these models of what wenow call GPT-4.
(33:44):
They were going to launch thatin March, but were interested in
thinking about educationapplications for it.
And they said, you know, sal iswidely, you know, known in the
arena.
They said maybe Khan Academy isa good place for this and they
asked if we wanted to try it out.
And they gave us access througha chat interface on Slack.
For those of you who know whatSlack is, it's, you know, one of
(34:05):
the messaging features.
And so Sal and I spent theweekend like asking all these
crazy things, everything from,yes, learning things to oh, can
it?
You know, sal was like can itwrite a bedtime story for my
kids?
You know all kinds of things.
We're like this is prettyimpressive.
But one of the things they wereshowing us was how it could
answer AP biology questions, andthis is great, but we don't
(34:28):
want it to answer the questions.
Speaker 3 (34:29):
We want kids to answer the questions.
We want the kids to answer thequestions.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
We want the tutor to help students get to the answer
to those questions.
But we saw what we thought wasthe potential there and so we
said, yes, we'd like to partnerwith you on this, and in March
of 2023, we launched Conmigo,which is an AI powered tutor for
students and an assistant forteachers.
On the student side, whenyou're working on Khan Academy,
(34:56):
if you're, say, working on amath problem, you can bring up
Khanmigo and we feed intoKhanmigo the problem that you're
working on, the answer to thatproblem and also a whole bunch
of instructions to the model ofhow to act like a tutor.
So then, let's say, the studentjust says I'm stuck.
Well, it already knows whatproblem they're working on and
(35:16):
you know how to act like a tutor.
So it might respond withsomething like well, what do you
think the first step is?
And starts walking studentsthrough how to get there, which
is, of course, very much inopposition to like if you just
put the problem in chat, gpt,it'll work it all out and give
you the answer, but not what wewant for students, and so we
started building on that.
(35:38):
We also put in some more safetyguardrails kinds of things, so
teachers and parents can viewthe chats that students have.
So there's always some level ofhuman oversight there.
And we also flag.
We have a moderation systemthat flags any harmful content,
violence and hate and self-harmand things like that to kind of
(36:00):
build in some more safetymechanisms, because we didn't
know what students were going todo when we gave them access to
the ability to chat with an AI.
We found that, overall, studentsare definitely, you know,
understand.
This is an educationapplication and don't, after the
first couple of attempts wherethey try to see what they can do
(36:20):
with it, understand.
Okay, this is for you know,this is for helpful learning, so
you can use it on Khan Academywith Khan Academy content.
But we also have a bunch ofthings.
We have a tutor me math andscience.
So if you're working on, youknow, problems on math homework
or science homework that aren'tKhan Academy, you can, you know,
students can bring those in andhave the same kind of
(36:41):
interaction.
And then we also have launcheda writing coach.
So we have had writing feedbackfor about five months and then
two weeks ago, hot off thepresses, we launched an
end-to-end coach that startswith what's your assignment?
Do you have questions about theassignment.
What do you think you might do?
Let's start with outlining.
What might your paper look like?
(37:03):
And then they draft and then getfeedback on the writing.
Um, and so we've just been,yeah, working through.
What are the things that, if wetake this new technology, what
are some of the problems thatwe've had historically?
One, for instance, beingstudents don't get enough
practice writing because ittakes so long to grade Um.
What are problems that thismight help us solve?
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Yeah, that's great.
Yeah, sal Khan, he had the Tedtalk.
You know how AI could save, notdestroy, education.
That really helped me see it ina different light, because he's
like it's here, you know.
So we're going to use it forgood or, in the wrong hands,
it's going to be used for notgood.
So let's use it for good, andit sounds like what you guys are
(37:47):
doing is using it for really,really good and helping kids
still learn and still engage intheir learning.
But it's more of you know, likeI said, I use the word psychic
earlier, but that's what I keepthinking that you know it's
helping.
And then you mentioned thatteachers can use it too.
So is it helping them withideas and lesson plans and
(38:08):
things like that?
Speaker 1 (38:09):
That's right.
Yes, so I'll put the plug infor teachers.
If you just go to Conmigoai,you can get free access and
you'll get just a screen thathas 25 different activities that
teachers can do, includinglesson plans.
My sister's a high school mathteacher in Massachusetts and
(38:31):
when she looked at it, she also.
We have a help.
You write letters ofrecommendation and she teaches a
ton of high school seniors andevery year has to write so many
letters of recommendation.
So there's a piece there.
There's a help of drafting IEPgoals.
I was talking about as a schoolpsychologist, you know the
amount of paperwork arounddeveloping those individual
(38:53):
education plans.
It can help start drafting someof those, those, those kinds of
things.
So yes, a lot of teacher toolsas well.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
So, when going back to students, when ChatGPT first
came out, like everything in thenews was like this is just
going to make kids cheat, right,so talk about that.
How have we, how have you guys,shifted this to a, a tutoring
tool instead of a cheatingmachine?
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Definitely we see.
So I mentioned the the you knowchat histories before that
students can see, we think withwriting in particular, because
students are writing in thesystem.
Now teachers can see what didthe students write, what did the
AI write, how did the AI, whatfeedback did the AI give and how
(39:44):
did the students respond tothat?
So all of that becomes visibleto the teacher or the parent now
.
All of that becomes visible tothe teacher or the parent now.
And so that's one I think, bigyou know.
Just hey, I'm not going tocheat if it's clearly, you know,
visible to my teacher.
(40:07):
And a lot of the research onstudent cheating isn't that
students, it's almost like anopportunity.
If it's there to take the easyway, students will do it.
But if it's clear what theexpectations are and there's
some systems in place that atleast slightly discourage it,
students won't take theopportunity to do it.
So it's definitely puttingthose kinds of things in place.
But we also saw, for example,we have some activities like
(40:31):
chat with a historical figure.
Well, some you know thinkingstudents said what if I say I
want to talk to Pythagoras andthen get Pythagoras to do my
homework about the Pythagoreantheorem?
That's great.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
And you're supposed to be the one who does the work.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
So we had to do again that you can.
We have found that we can doquite a bit with what they call
prompts, which are how you giveinstructions to the model, and
so we give it a lot ofinstructions about how not to
answer student homeworkquestions or questions that look
like student homework questions, and help it, you know, just
kind of lock down where, wheresome of those things are.
(41:12):
So the system will just say ohyes, that is a question that I
know the answer to.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Why don't you tell me what you know about that?
That's interesting.
I think it's fascinatingbecause, as an adult that has a
job like there, is nothing thatKelly, my boss, the CEO of
Brenda wants more than for me touse AI as much as possible to
do my job right.
So it's like he wants me to mytime and my efforts and thoughts
to be freed up, doing morecreative work, more.
You know, like we want to usethis tool, and so, when I'm
(41:47):
thinking like we want to takekids through, like, use, use AI
as a scaffolding to build askill that can stand on its own
right, like if, if needed, Icould write a 30-page academic
paper, like I've done that,right, without using AI, I can
do that, but um do, is that thebest use of my time in my
practice?
Right?
(42:07):
Like wouldn't it be to to havethat take an hour instead of two
weeks, Right?
So, like then, we want it'slike you use AI to train them to
do it by themselves.
And then, on the other side ofpersonal capability and capacity
is, and now we want to use AIto be to free ourselves up and
to to move humanity forward andnot have humans be doing things
(42:29):
that computers can do right.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Yes, we talk about augmenting human potential
really.
So how can it help us do thingsbetter?
And I think what we may find,and we're working with some
other organizations on this isdefining what AI literacy means.
So, yes, if these are tools thatstudents need to know how to
use to be successful and moveahead in the workplace, how do
(42:55):
we build their understanding ofhow to use the tools, how to be
successful with them, when, whenthey can provide value and what
that looks like?
So I do think there's a wholerole to be played around giving
students the skills to be ableto prepare them for that future.
And, of course, everything'smoving so fast that the other
(43:17):
skill that students need to knowis how to teach themselves
things like learning how tolearn new technologies, because
what we know now is not going tobe what's you know the new
technology in 10 years.
What we know now is not goingto be what's you know the new
technology in 10 years, but youneed the skill of how do you
start to approach a newtechnology and understand what
it can do and understand what itcan't.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
yeah, what do you think those skills are in the
future?
I was just uh doing the.
I think I talked about this ona just a recent episode, but
like what, like kids that aregoing into kindergarten now
they're going to be?
What like kids that are goinginto kindergarten now they're
going to be going into theirlike primary earning years in
like 2065 or something like thatjust sounds like so futuristic.
(43:59):
Like what do you think thoseskills are that the kids are
going to need?
Just spitballing?
Like obviously nobody reallyknows.
But what do you?
What are your hunches?
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Well.
So one of the things I do islook back at my own trajectory.
So when I graduated fromcollege, there's no way I could
have said I want to be the chieflearning officer of Khan
Academy.
We barely had the internet, webarely had email.
Like there was nothing.
Not even just Khan Academydidn't exist, like the idea of
(44:28):
what we do doesn't exist.
But the things the college thatI went to had two things One
was an emphasis on writing andone was an emphasis on speaking
and those kinds of skills thathave, I think, been certainly
contributed to my successthrough my career, and it hasn't
again.
It hasn't necessarily beenwriting a you know five
(44:50):
paragraph essay, but just how tocommunicate well with words, I
think is an important skill,both written and orally, that I
can't imagine is going to goaway because we still have all
of this communication we'redoing.
Another skill that we don'tteach well but I think is really
(45:11):
important is teamwork andworking together, and everyone
hates those group projects inschools.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
But I think I love them, but the reason okay,
listen, you're not normal.
Adrian.
This is why I love them,because I was very controlling
and so if I got in a group, Iwould just be like, just let me
do it and I.
And so if I got in a group, Iwould just be like, just let me
do it and I.
And so, literally, I kid younot.
There is this kid, or I meanhe's like you know, a young
adult in college that would askyou my schedule every single
(45:40):
semester because I was acommunications major and so we
had a lot of projects, and so Ihe just got in the groups with
me and knew he didn't have to doany work, so hopefully he ended
up.
But we're talking about likeConmigo, not being like a team.
You were his Conmigo, adrienneConmigo.
So I'm sorry but go ahead.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Collaboration, teamwork is very important.
It is and we often just setkids free and be like, here's a
group, go do a thing, like wedon't actually teach them how,
how, maybe, to delegate oh, theyhad someone like me that just
ran in the show, right?
And then, if you're like mecause I have a little bit of
that too but then I have theother side of my personality
(46:22):
that's like I can't believe I'mdoing this whole thing and I
like turn into myself, into amartyr, which is no good for
anyone either.
So, um, so anyway, yes,thinking about how do you break
up work, how do you bring itback together, how do you hold
people accountable, like thoseare all really important skills
that last, yeah, and skills thatwe should start teaching when
(46:43):
they're really young, I thinkabout too.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
I had a college class it was called group discussion.
We learned all.
It was such an amazing classbecause he literally would film
us having these discussions andwe would have to solve really
complicated problems and hewould not interrupt us, not tell
us, and then we would watch thereplays and he would talk about
what was happening within ourgroup dynamics and how to better
(47:09):
communicate, and that was sucha life changing class.
But I didn't take it until Iwas 20 years old.
I mean, how powerful would thatbe to start teaching these
skills to five-year-olds andsix-year-olds, especially at
that age where it's veryegocentric and everything is
theirs, and so we can starthelping them have these
(47:30):
collaboration skills?
That would be really amazing.
Speaker 1 (47:33):
Absolutely, absolutely and to your point,
katie.
It's not like kids don't needacademic skills in 2060.
You have to know enough to beable to judge the accuracy of
the technology.
To be able to you, it shouldstill be your assistant, not
your, not your boss.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
So you need to have the knowledge and the skills to
be able to you know and also Iwant my kids in 2060 to be the
creators of this, not theconsumers of it.
Right necessarily like that allthe time.
Yeah, creator, not consumer.
So in order to be the personthat is prompting and you know
(48:17):
you like training, that modellike you have to have all of
those skills right, it's notlike sometimes people will be
like, well, no one needs tomemorize anything anymore, cause
you can just Google something.
I'm like, yeah, but you reallywant an internal knowledge store
of like a lot of stuff so thatyou can be the judge of what's
like accurate, and you're gonnabe really easily led to some not
(48:40):
great places if you're justtrying to google everything.
I was literally teaching thisclass the other day with a bunch
of high schoolers and I wasasking them kind of like a I was
asking them the definition of aword so that I could understand
their, their understanding ofit, and they literally totally
just did not understand thatthat's what I was doing and this
girl was just like I got youpulled out her phone and just
(49:01):
like I was like no, no, I knowwhat this word means.
I want to know if you know andlike what it means personally to
you.
I want to know if you know andlike what it means personally to
you.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
But imagine if you had to Google every word you
heard to understand what it likethere.
Yeah, that wouldn't work.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
So yeah, and I really think you can't just Google.
Yeah, and parents can use theseonline tools and resources like
Khan Academy.
Or we had Audrey on the podcastfor episode 22.
To me, or we had Audrey Wish onthe podcast for episode 22.
And so she has a company calledCurious Cardinals and she
matches people, or matchesstudents, with mentors, and so
(49:38):
my son would like to play Robloxall day long and or whatever
you know games that give himlots and lots of dopamine, and
so instead he has thisincredible mentor, and it is all
through online.
So we're using, we're teachinghim how to use the internet and
use zoom as a tool, and he islearning how to create his own
(50:03):
video games from scratch.
He is learning reallycomplicated coding, and that's
why I want him to get back ontoKhan Academy, cause you guys
have a lot of coding on theretoo.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
Like I said, now he has a little bit of PTSD, but I
will tell him he can use it as atool and our Python coding
course is the most creative,actually, of probably all of our
courses.
Yes, our doing Python, doingcoding, doing some projects.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
Yeah.
So instead of being afraid oftechnology, we can really use it
as a tool and, like Katie said,teach our students and teach
our kids how to use it to createand as a tool, not just to
consume and sit and watchYouTube all day long or play
video games, in the same waythat like knowing how to go to
the library and find theencyclopedia and look something
(50:50):
up used to be like.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
That is a skill that we need and we have to train
that it's like well, right now,like knowing how to Google
something and find an likereliable, reasonable answer on
the Internet is a skill, and thenext wave of this is knowing
how to use AI to do that and howto how to use that as a human.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
And how to evaluate the answer AI gives you, because
these answers can be wrong.
They can not Anything you readon the internet can be wrong.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
I think it's really important to look at it because
we had Michael Strong on withSocratic experience, and he
talked about that, how he reallyhelps students read something
and then go, okay, how do youknow that's true?
How do you know it's not true,and really start getting into
debates about it.
I think that's really importanttoo.
So it's not just looking at AI,but anything that we read on
(51:40):
the internet or hear from anyone.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
Yet that's probably one of the things we should put
on our future learning skillslist, right, like the evaluation
piece.
Yeah, okay, let's wrap up, butI have a silly question who I
just want to know?
I want to give this whoeverthought of the, the, the name
Conmigo.
It's such a beautiful pun and Ilove it so much and I just
(52:03):
really love puns.
I just want to know who thoughtof that.
Speaker 1 (52:06):
So there's a whole story.
So naming things is really hardand what we've come to, conmigo
for Spanish speakers Conmigomeans with me and it's a
portmanteau of con and amigo.
So whatever, however you accessit, we really liked that, liked
(52:34):
that had done me.
We had probably, you know, acouple hundred names that we had
brainstormed.
We're trying to figure out.
We had settled on a differentone, which I'm not even sure I
remember at this point what itwas, and we started calling it
that and then, after we starteddoing a deep dive into, like,
all the possible meanings, youknow, oh, that one didn't work
out and other things werecopyrighted and already taken.
But we knew, if we use con thatit's less likely that someone
(52:57):
else has it already, and so Ithink it was actually one of our
designers came up with thissuggestion.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
And they should get a raise and a trophy and a pizza
party.
I just think it's so great.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
And Star Tarts.
I love it Okay, let's wrap up.
Okay.
So this is a question we askall of our guests who come onto
the Kindled podcast.
So who has kindled your love oflearning, motivation, passion,
or like in what you're doingtoday?
Speaker 1 (53:27):
My answer actually fits into much of what we've
been talking about.
I had a fifth grade teachernamed Mrs O'Leary and I was
always a reader to this and bythe time I was in fifth grade
those kind of standard readingbooks were kind of like I knew
what was in them.
I kind of mastered to use ourterminology now mastered that
(53:47):
she for the whole year just hadme read books and every
Wednesday afternoon she and Iwould have book talk and talk
through the books.
And here's what I was readingand read all kinds of things in
different genres and differentyou know, fiction, nonfiction,
(54:07):
all those kinds of things.
You know fiction, nonfiction,all those kinds of things and
really sparked interest in lotsof different areas for me,
because she said you know what?
I see that you are in adifferent place here, you need
something different and I canhelp make that happen for you.
So, mrs O'Leary, fifth grade,it's amazing.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
I love that.
And how can listeners learnmore about your work or Khan
Academy?
Speaker 1 (54:32):
I mentioned conmigoai , so that's, if you're
interested in the AI pieces, youcan go there.
Khanacademyorg certainly isfree for everyone, so dive in
and just click on the coursesmenu and see all the different
courses that we have.
There's probably somethingthere that will spark your
(54:53):
interest and work your way wherewe are.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
I love that.
Thanks so much for coming onthe Kindle podcast.
This has been such afascinating conversation.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
Thanks for having me.
Thank you so much.
It was nice meeting you,kristen.
That's it for today.
We really hope you enjoyed thisconversation with Kristen as
much as we did.
So if this episode was helpfulto you or you want to dive more
into mastery-based learning orpersonalized learning, please
like, subscribe and follow us onsocial media.
At Prenda Learn Well, you'lleven find Katie doing a really
(55:22):
fun rap about joining andfinding a micro school.
So if you have a question thatyou would like for us to address
on the podcast, all you need todo is email us at podcast at
prendacom, and you can also goto our website and you can
subscribe to our weeklynewsletter.
It's called the Sunday Spark.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
The Kindle podcast is brought to you by Prenda.
Prenda makes it easy for you tostart and run an amazing micro
school based on all the ideasthat we talk about here on the
Kindle podcast.
If you want more informationabout becoming a Prenda,
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