April 4, 2025 • 47 mins
Episode 319: AI, Education, and Moving at Human Speed with Rob Nelson
In this powerful episode of My EdTech Life, I sit down with educator, writer, and higher ed tech veteran Rob Nelson to explore the real story behind AI in education. Rob challenges the “move fast and break things” mentality and calls for a more human-paced, thoughtful approach to integrating AI in classrooms.
We explore what it really means to Tinker Toward Utopia, how large language models are reshaping student learning (when used intentionally), and why educators must resist pressure from hype-driven platforms. This episode is packed with clarity, caution, and hope for anyone navigating the fast-moving world of AI in education.
Links to the publications I mentioned.
Henry Farrell's blog, Programmable Mutter
Tinkering Toward Utopia by David Tyack and Larry Cuban
A Voice from the South by Anna Julia Cooper
And, of course, Rob's Blog
Website: ailogblog.com
👇 Timestamps:
00:00 – Welcome & Rob’s background in higher ed
04:00 – AI adoption: Hype vs. reality
09:00 – Duck-Rabbit duality: Two ways to see AI
12:00 – Using LLMs to support—not replace—teaching
25:00 – The danger of humanizing AI too much
28:00 – The AI Fight Club: Polarization in the space
33:00 – Why rushing into AI contracts can backfire
38:00 – Tinkering toward utopia: A better path forward
44:00 – Final reflections & rapid-fire Q&A
🙏 Special thanks to our amazing sponsors who help make these conversations possible:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Fonz Mendoza (00:30):
Hello everybody and welcome to another great
episode of my EdTech Life.
Thank you so much for joiningus on this wonderful day and
wherever it is that you'rejoining us from around the world
.
Thank you, as always, for allof your support.
As always, we appreciate allthe likes, the shares, the
follows.
Thank you so much forinteracting with our content, as
always, for all of your support.
As always, we appreciate allthe likes, the shares, the
follows.
Thank you so much forinteracting with our content.
We really appreciate yoursupport and I definitely want to
(00:50):
give a big shout out to ournewest supporter, book Creator.
Thank you so much forsupporting our mission and
believing in what we're doingand bringing some amazing
conversations into the educationspace so that we may all
continue to grow together.
And I'm really excited abouttoday's conversation, as always,
like I said, being able to haveyour own podcast and being able
(01:13):
to look for guests.
It's always amazing when thingsline up and you get to bring a
guest on that.
You follow on a certainplatform and you just are really
interested and intrigued bytheir views and what they post
and you just want to bring thoseconversations and amplify their
voices also here at our tableat the my EdTech Life
conversation table and I'mreally excited to welcome today.
Rob Nelson (01:39):
Mr Rob Nelson.
Rob, how are you doing today?
Fonz Mendoza (01:41):
I'm doing great Bonds, Thanks so much for having
me on the show.
I'm a big fan of what you dohere Thank you very much, rob
and I'm a big fan of what you do.
And you're posting on your blogand, of course, on LinkedIn.
And, of course, as you know,you know, 2022, from then on,
has been just so much contentfor us, so much conversation
sparking so many things and somany new ideas.
And we're going to get intothat, you know, because I really
(02:03):
love your take, yourperspectives and, like I said,
being a cautious advocate and,you know, kind of being in the
middle of things.
You know, I always love tobring various viewpoints to the
table when it, you know, excuseme, bring various viewpoints to
the table when we are talkingabout AI.
So, before we dive in, rob, forall my audience members that
(02:26):
are out there listening at thismoment and may not be familiar
with your work just yet, butafter today they will can you
give us a little briefintroduction and what your
context is within the educationspace?
Rob Nelson (02:38):
Sure.
So my ed tech life was as aneducational bureaucrat in the
provost office at the Universityof Pennsylvania for 18 years.
So at heart I'm a teacher.
I started out as a teacher, butI learned early on that
teaching will burn you out, andso I made a decision when I
finished my PhD at Rutgers to gointo administration, and so I
(02:58):
oversaw academic technology forthe provost office at Penn for
18 years, and that meantimplementing enterprise
technology, things like Canvas,course evaluations, grad
admissions applications, and sothat's really where my
professional experience lies.
And then I also taughtpart-time and continue to teach
part-time.
And recently, as you said, I'vemade a transition.
(03:20):
I left my job as a bureaucratand now I write full-time and
still teach on the side and do alittle consulting and public
speaking as a way to pay thebills.
Fonz Mendoza (03:30):
Excellent.
Well, that is a greatbackground which kind of, in a
very natural way, just is a nicesegue to my first question.
Based on all the experiencethat you just finished sharing
with us, I wanted to ask you howhave those experiences shaped
your perspective of AI ineducation and what experiences,
from your years overseeingtechnologies and initiatives and
(03:54):
so on, you know, what are somethings that we may be missing in
today's AI in educationdiscussions.
Rob Nelson (04:02):
Yeah, I think it comes down to adoption of new
technologies, which when a newtechnology comes out, it sort of
explodes on the scene and theearly adopters and enthusiasts
start talking about it.
It's often in the context oflike, wow, this is going to
change everything and it feelslike it's going to be instant
because it's so obvious to theearly adopters that this is
going to be so great.
Sometimes it turns out to begreat and sometimes it turns out
(04:25):
to be kind of a dud.
So, for example, I think theMOOCs the massive online courses
, were a technology thateverybody looked at and thought,
wow, this is going to disrupteducation.
Places like Harvard and Pennare just going to disappear.
That turned out not to be thecase and I think you know we can
(04:45):
talk about that specific case.
But I think the lesson I'vedrawn from my years implementing
technology on campus is thatchange happens at the speed of
universities and colleges andschools, not at the speed of the
technology companies andtechnology enthusiasts would
necessarily think.
Fonz Mendoza (05:02):
You know, and that's something that's very
interesting, like you said.
You know, for those earlyadopters, it just seems like
everything like this newtechnology and anything new that
comes out, is going to be, youknow, the solution to all our
inefficiencies.
And, of course, in educationright now I'm just going to go
ahead and throw it out there inthe state of Texas, we're
getting ready in the next coupleof weeks to start, you know,
(05:25):
state testing.
Prior to this, a couple ofweeks ago, we started seeing
where around the district, youknow, schools were purchasing
specific platforms and you know,kind of like at the last minute
, hoorah, you know, trying toget those grades up, and pretty
much it's just a triage to makesure that the students do well.
But, you know, trying to getthose grades up, and pretty much
it's just a triage to make surethat the students do well.
(05:46):
But you know, one of the thingsis is that, from my years of
experience, it just seems that,starting January, everybody's
trying to find that one answerand I think sometimes, even with
AI, when that came out in 2022,and even until now, you still
see that and hear like, yes,this is going to change things,
this is going to change thingsand from 22 till now, you know I
(06:08):
feel that there still hasn'tbeen enough research.
But I'm still interested to seeyou know some of that research
and see if grades are going up,because, of course, like you
mentioned new technologies I'veseen the iPads roll out and
everybody's one-to-one, and thisis going to revolutionize
education and this is going toget those test scores up.
Haven't really seen that either.
Chromebooks, everybody'sone-to-one, and the Chromebooks
(06:28):
are going to be the next bestthing and they're going to help
our students and I personallyhave not seen that either.
So it's very interesting thatyou do mention that and,
especially with your experiencein higher ed I did have Jason
Guglia on the show yesterday andinterviewing, so I want to get
your perspective as far as whatyou have seen and experienced in
(06:49):
higher education that divide,you know.
So I want to hear what has beenyour experience.
Rob Nelson (06:57):
Sure.
So I think it comes down tosome of the different
perspectives I was talking about.
Educational technologists, thepeople who develop and build new
technology are, I believe, inmost cases earnestly trying to
solve problems, but they seeproblems differently than the
way that classroom teachers seethem, and Jason's a good example
.
Somebody talks about this.
Dan Meyer, I know you've had onthe show, is another great
(07:19):
example of somebody who seesthat difference.
And so I think you know whatI've seen is a lot of
polarization, people who arerightly concerned about the way
that Silicon Valley inparticular, the sort of big
giant technology companies, areusing their not just their
financial capital, but thecultural and social power they
have to sort of impose a visionof what this technology is
(07:42):
supposed to do.
And then you've got people whoare resisting that, and I'm
certainly among those.
I think there's a great deal ofconcern about the social and
economic context in which thisstuff is happening.
But at the level of classroominstruction, I think what's
happening is, for the most part,teachers are coming to grips
with this technology the waythey have all the technologies
you've talked about.
You know everything that's fromiPhones to iPads, to the PC,
(08:07):
Chromebooks, laptops, going backto the earlier history of
technology.
Even the adoption of chalk andchalkboards Like those are
changes that technology has sortof pushed on or confronted
teachers with, and they'veresponded and turned those tools
into things that are useful.
I think that's the process.
That's what I see.
That's the positive aspect ofwhat's happening right now is I
(08:29):
see lots of teachersexperimenting with these tools,
trying to figure out what theirvalue is as an educational tool,
as opposed to what the peoplewho built them necessarily think
they should be used for, howthey imagine it's going to play
out Nice, Excellent.
Fonz Mendoza (08:42):
All right.
So I want to kind of talk alittle bit about your writing,
too as well.
I know that you have the AI log, you know which is where on
Substack, which I follow andthat you post and you share a
lot of great views, but one ofthem that draws my, or has drawn
my, attention, and I wanted toask you about it today, was the
way that you use the rabbit andthe duck metaphor.
(09:03):
We have the rabbit of gladtidings and the duck of doom, so
can you elaborate on this dualperception and how it impacts
education policy and decisions?
Rob Nelson (09:13):
Sure.
So the duck rabbit is a famousexample of what's sometimes
called an ambiguous picture,like what you see.
When you look at the picture,you can make it look like one
thing or the other.
And the duck rabbit is a famousone because the philosopher
Wittgenstein used it in some ofhis work and the sort of way
that teachers received that wascertainly in the realm of like.
(09:49):
Oh my God, this is changingeverything.
It's awful, we need to stop it.
We need to stop our studentsfrom using it, but then you've
got people who see it.
Well, this is a new technology.
It's an exciting way tounderstand and use knowledge.
These models, these partiallanguage models, summarize
information and spit it back outand use knowledge.
These models, these largelanguage models, summarize
(10:09):
information and spit it back outin ways that are interesting
and potentially educational.
And so, seeing those twoaspects, this thing that's going
to is very threatening to ourjobs.
You know AI is going to replacethis.
That message gets repeated overand over again.
On the other hand, ai is goingto save us all this work because
it can do the boring stuff sothat we can turn our attention
to the important work.
So that's the sort of swirl ofwhat's been happening.
(10:33):
I think that image of the duckrabbit is a nice way to say it's
both those things and somethingelse, something new.
Fonz Mendoza (10:40):
Now, with your experience and I know that
you're a speaker now and you goout there and train or people go
and listen I want to ask you,when you talk about this and one
of the things that youmentioned that duality of this
being both things what are gonnatake our jobs?
And then there's the other sidethat says no, no one's gonna
(11:06):
take your job, only somebodyelse that uses AI effectively.
And then one side, I see alsois just real, like playing into
the fear of this, like if youhaven't even been using this
today, you're doing yourstudents a disservice.
And then there's that side andso, like I said, what is it that
you're seeing out there and howdo you, you know, just kind of
(11:27):
bring that together for yourselfto say, okay, where is it that
I stand on these issues?
Rob Nelson (11:33):
Yeah, well, I think we still have an enormously wide
range of people responding tothis.
There are still people who havenever really used one of these
tools before, and so they'regetting all their information
secondhand.
On the other hand, you havepeople who have been using them
from the very beginning to tryto do interesting or educational
work with them, and so I thinkthat challenge remains.
(11:54):
But what I've seen over time Imean it's been two and a half
years, basically, since chat TBTsort of exploded on the scene,
and that's not a lot of time,but it's time enough for people
to have moved away from the sortof freak out modes that we saw.
And when I've been giving talkslately, I've used the image of
(12:14):
like maybe it's a revolution,but maybe it's going to be a
boring revolution that thenotion that this is going to be
transformative and we're goingto see these things, super
intelligences appear, andeverything's going to change
overnight just isn't how we'regoing to experience this.
Much like things like theiPhone and the PC.
They feel and aretransformative and they're going
(12:36):
to change things, but thatprocess takes place over a
period of time, there'sadjustments, and what I really
believe is important is that weuse our critical thinking skills
and analysis to think about howwe use these things to improve
education, to improveorganizations, and that's where
I think the conversation isstarting to move.
Fonz Mendoza (12:56):
Good and that's excellent and that's so good to
hear, because there's webinarafter webinar that I'll sit on
too as well.
And I don't know if it's somuch more in the K-12 space as
it is in the higher ed space,because I'm not involved in
webinars at that level, but inthe K-12 space there just seems
to be this sense of urgency likehey, if you're not doing this,
(13:18):
you're doing your students adisservice, because this is the
way that they're growing andthis is the way that they're
going to need these skills toget into college and for the
jobs of tomorrow.
And it's almost this attitudeof move fast and break things as
opposed to just simply.
Like you said, it canrevolutionize, it will, but
maybe it's in a slower, moreboring and more, you know, calm
(13:39):
process process.
But it just seems like it's ago go, go, go go mentality.
And going to conferences you seesome of the top platforms that
are out there that are justpushing this so much and you
know, I feel sometimes they maybe even preying on some
educators, as far as you know,onto the burnout aspect.
Like this is going to save youthat time.
(14:00):
This is going to give you backthat time.
This is going to do this andthis is going to do that, but
you have to pay us, you know, Idon't know X amount of dollars
per license, per site and so on.
And a lot of educators are like, oh my gosh, I really need this
, because they feel overwhelmedand they feel like this is going
to be that sense of relief.
Now, in higher ed is there kindof that mentality, or maybe is
(14:23):
there a crowd like that too aswell.
Rob Nelson (14:26):
Absolutely.
I mean, higher ed is sort ofthe same pressures that K-12 has
in terms of you know it's castin terms of business needs right
, businesses need graduates withthese skills and I think
Silicon Valley I mean youmentioned the Zucker fame,
zuckerberg or Facebook idea movepast and break things.
You mentioned the Zucker fame,zuckerberg or Facebook idea.
Move past and break things.
They're very much using that asa marketing term, right, as a
(14:49):
as a way of marketing theseprojects and trying to raise
revenue, which they haveinvested huge amounts of capital
in this technology and theyneed to get a return and that's
a big problem for them.
It's not the problem that K-12or higher ed is trying to solve.
We're trying to figure out howto educate students for this new
society, for the changes thatare coming, for the way this is
(15:10):
going to transform the work ofpeople who work in knowledge,
business and education, and so Ithink refocusing our attention
on, well, what is it we needthese tools to do and how do we
get the tools to do what we wantthem to do, is really cutting
against the grain of the waythat Silicon Valley and giant
(15:30):
technology companies and a lotof the startups who are in that
sort of movement that move fastand break things, movement um
are are talking about it, and sothat that's that, that
misalignment.
I think that that I, I, I think, slowly but surely um teachers,
institutions, um are comingaround to uh to establishing
their domain, their uh abilityto control or decide how these
(15:54):
things get deployed.
Fonz Mendoza (15:56):
Excellent.
Now talking about deployment,you know, kind of going back to
your writing, because if youhaven't, for those listeners
that are joining us today orwatching us on the replay,
please make sure that you docheck out Rob's Substack.
He has great writing there andyou know a lot of these
questions you know is just goinga little bit deeper into the
writings and that he has and hasavailable to all of us, which
(16:18):
is a great resource.
So please, I mean you knowwe'll definitely link it in the
show notes as well.
But, rob, I wanted to ask youyou know you have this series
it's a two part series is whatis an LLM doing in my classroom?
So I want to ask you how do youperceive the role of large
language models in enhancing orpossibly hindering the learning
process?
Rob Nelson (16:39):
Yeah, thanks for asking about that.
So that series is actuallygoing to wrap up, maybe tomorrow
, but certainly next week.
I've got one more piece towrite about for that, and that
was really a reflection on myown practice in the classroom.
I'm a history teacher and thehistory I teach right now is in
the grad school of education atPenn, and I'm teaching mostly
aspiring educational bureaucrats, people who want to go into
(17:02):
administration, and so I'menormously lucky to be teaching
in that environment, and one ofthe ways I was lucky is that,
unlike a lot of teachers, Ididn't have to figure out how to
get one of these commercialtools to use, because there's a
research center on campus thatwas willing to work with me so
(17:23):
that I could use this technologyin my teaching.
I'm somebody who believes in.
It's often called a flipclassroom.
I called it structuredactivities, and so my class is
activities-based.
It's very much student-focused,and so I treated the use of the
LLM not as something I had todecide, but as something the
students and I could work outtogether.
(17:44):
How is this going to influencetheir work?
How is it going to be valuableto them as an educational tool?
How is it going to, you know,frustrate those aspirations or
aims, and so we worked with thattool.
It's called GPTA and it'sbasically an LLM-based assistant
(18:05):
.
They call it an assistant.
I think of it as just a tool,just like a chalkboard or a
pointer or anything else thatyou use in a classroom, and so
we use that technology together,and those essays are
reflections on how that wentExcellent.
Fonz Mendoza (18:20):
So what is it?
Do you know?
As far as your essays thatyou've written, you know, and
looking into that, you know.
What do you see as far as thispossibly hindering, or is this
something that can possiblyenhance the potential of
learning in the classroom?
Rob Nelson (18:34):
Yeah.
Well, I think it starts withagain resisting that notion of
it being like a teachingassistant or a teacher.
These things are not going toreplace teachers.
There's just no way, and DanMeyer is one of the best at
describing that differencebetween what a tool is and what
a teacher is.
But so, taking that as our base, like, okay, this is a tool,
(18:55):
what is it and what is it goingto do for us?
What value does it bring?
I think what I discoveredthrough this process is that
students are very much able tomake decisions about their own
education.
I believe that I see evidenceof it in their activities, and
so they were making choices,with my guidance, about how to
use it, and it wasn't to writetheir essays for them.
(19:16):
I am very confident that thestudents were not using this
tool simply to replace theeducational work that they
needed to do.
It was instead an additionalresource.
So one of the ways we used thetool was to add a layer of peer
review, or add a layer of reviewto a peer review driven process
.
So in my classes, we write along research essay about an
(19:38):
institution of higher education.
So one of the ways we used theLLM was to.
Before they sat down with theirstudent peer review group, they
had the LLM do a review of theiressay.
It was trained on post-trained,I should say on my rubric, my
sort of language that I use,that I want them to use too when
(20:02):
they're evaluating a piece ofwriting, and the tool did that
for them.
I printed that out with thepapers.
And the peer review wasn't justabout a student's reaction to
the paper.
It was about the student'sreaction to the paper and then
this initial machine review ofthe paper that they could
incorporate into their ownanalysis of their peers' paper
(20:25):
and the feedback they were goingto give to the student.
Fonz Mendoza (20:28):
All right, and so for a lot of your students that
are working with you in thisclass, did a lot of them already
come in with experience usinglarge language models?
For some of them, was thistheir first time and what were
some of the reactions there?
If you can share that with us,because, again, I definitely
want to get that perspective forour K-12,.
You know educators that aresaying you know we need to
(20:49):
prepare them now for you knowhigher ed too, as well, as if
higher ed is starting to adoptthis.
So what were some of thereactions there from some of
your students?
Rob Nelson (21:00):
Yeah, to start with, I tried my best to make it
clear that I wasn't going to besurveilling what they do, I
wasn't going to be looking overtheir shoulder, that I wanted it
to be a space of genuineexperimentation.
So I wasn't going to put limitson their use, tell them they
couldn't use it for this,couldn't use it for that.
But I did want them to come toclass to share what their
(21:21):
experience was, and initially,almost all of them had had
pretty significant experiencewith ChatGPT and they used it,
like many of us do, as just asort of replacement for Google
Search, a natural languageinterface to the internet.
And I think that's one of theways.
I mean, that's definitely onething that these models do is
(21:41):
they provide a natural languageinterface to lots of information
, including the ability tosearch the internet.
And so we started with thatsort of baseline, and the
question I kept asking is whatvalue can we get out of this
tool?
What educational value can weget out of this tool?
And it's very clear when youframe it that way that simply
having it do your work for youis not going to be educational
(22:02):
value.
There's no value there, and so,turning that from, okay, it can
be used to cheat or it can beused to replace the output you
need to give your teacher.
How can we turn this into aprocess?
And what are those processeslook like?
And I think there are lots of.
You had Mike Kintz and NickPodoletsky on the show.
They're examples of peopleworking in KT12, or very
(22:23):
familiar with the KT12environment who are doing this
same kind of work, and so Ithink it's about working with
your students in groups,learning as a social activity
and taking that social natureand really just experimenting
with the tools.
And, like I said before, Ithink we're still in the early
days of this, and so we're stillfinding out a lot about the
educational potential for thesetools.
Fonz Mendoza (22:44):
Excellent.
Well, that's so good to hearand, of course, just for them,
getting that experience andreally seeing this as a maybe
higher level experience, asopposed, like you mentioned,
just, you know, kind of Googlesearch using ChatGPT in that way
, but now really going in deeperand seeing what can be done.
So that's fantastic.
But kind of brings me to mynext question.
(23:05):
You know, being that you are,you know, an educator too as
well.
I know that you've writtenextensively about
anthropomorphizing AI.
Anthropomorphizing AI Now, therewas a post recently that I read
, where there was somebody thatposted you know, things that I
will, I love to use AI for, andone of them they put the reasons
was historical figures, youknow.
And then, of course, I hadanother gentleman that I saw
(23:27):
there who's you know that Ifollow also as well that they
were just opposed to it as faras you know, kind of going into
and leaning into this, where nowyou're talking to this
historical figure and thedangers that can come about.
So what are your thoughts onthat as far as
anthropomorphizing, and what hasbeen your experience with that?
Rob Nelson (23:47):
Yeah, thank you for that question.
It's as a historian.
It's something I care deeplyabout and thought a lot about.
Some of my earliest writing wasmy experiments with um
Conmigo's um uh tool that allowsyou to uh chat with a
historical figure, uh, or um, auh uh or a literary character.
So John Warner who, uh, I hopeyou have on your show sometime
(24:09):
because he's a he's a great, atruly great writer on this topic
uh, on these topics, um, hecalls it digital necromancy, in
other words, the sort of sensethat you can revive a historical
figure using an LLM.
I think that's just the wrongway to think about what these
tools are, because they are they.
You know, the whole project ofartificial intelligence.
(24:29):
It has been built around thismetaphor that a machine thinking
machine is like a human mindand it's gotten us some great
new tools.
But I think it's afundamentally flawed way of
thinking about this in thecontext of education, because,
of course, you're not talking toanother person.
You can pretend that it is, butit's simply a machine, and I
(24:52):
think there are just much betterways to think about how we use
a cultural technology, like alarge language model, than
having it pretend to be a person, and so that's where I start.
If all we're doing with thesetools is pretending they're
people, an assistant, a deadhistorical figure, then we're
missing a lot of their potentialuse.
Fonz Mendoza (25:15):
Yeah, and that's something that I know, that I
see often in the K-12 spacethere, missing a lot of their
potential use.
Yeah, and you know, and that'ssomething that I know, that we I
see often in the K-12 space,there are a lot of platforms out
there that will offer thesechatbots, and then, of course,
teachers put in information andso on.
And I know one of the commentswas like well, this is what we
can be doing, you know, andreally getting the students to
know more about history andlearning more about history.
(25:35):
And to me it just seems likeyou know, many times, like you
mentioned being that it is alarge language model and there
are a lot of data sets that goin there, and my thinking is
always well, but whose historyis it sharing, you know, and
what viewpoints, and so on andso forth, and it's always just
concerned about the bias too aswell.
And so you know, for me that'sjust concerned about the bias
too as well, and so, you know,for me that's just one of the
biggest things.
(25:55):
But also, when there might be anattachment, you know, to a
certain nlm, llm and, like wesee now with a lot of platforms
too as well, that like characterai, when you know we can't deny
that that has been in the newsor it was in the news last
october and so on, and when westart seeing these, uh, chatbots
(26:27):
and starting to have parasocialrelationships with them and
thinking like it is anotherhuman being, like hey, I can do
this at home, I can do this onmy own, and that can lead into
other dangerous you know aspectsof using AI as well, so thank
you so much for sharing that,which kind of also now, in
talking about this, you know twovery, excuse me, two very
(26:48):
indifferent viewpoints.
You know that could be verypolarizing and I wanted to talk
to you about this because I lovethe way that you put this in
your writing.
It's like the ai fight club,you know, and it just sounds
like, wow, you know.
So I want to talk a little bitabout that.
You know, as far as educationand we talked a little bit about
it in the in you know pre-show,where there are, you know, two
sides and sometimes it could bevery rightly divided.
(27:11):
But, like I mentioned, I atleast would love to see myself
and I think I see myself andothers see myself as just kind
of like a kind of in the middle,cautious advocate, trying to
bring you know both viewpointsto the table to be able to share
and see and learn and just kindof you know, see how we can
kind of maybe bridge some gapsthere and so on.
But I want to get yourperspective and what was the
(27:33):
inspiration behind this term?
The AI Fight Club.
Rob Nelson (27:39):
Yeah, so I should be clear.
This is not my term.
I am borrowing it from one ofthe best writers on the topic of
large language models as acultural technology.
His name's Henry Farrell.
He's a political scientist atJohns Hopkins and he has a blog
on Substack called ProgrammableMuda, and we'll make sure that
(28:00):
goes in the show notes because Iwant to make sure that he gets
the attention for having come upwith this great metaphor, which
is he says that it's an exampleof the way that these things
are being polarized.
Right, there's this.
We talked already about thedynamic of enthusiasts and
resistors, and a lot of thatgets caught up in the power
(28:21):
around Silicon Valley and thepower of educational
technologies, and so I thinkthere is a way I mean, it isn't
obviously just this question,there's a whole way in which
these social questions andeducational questions get
polarized, and that happensaround particular approaches to
writing or particular approachesto learning comprehension, like
all the sort of wars aroundjust basic pedagogical methods,
(28:46):
and I just think we need to backoff of that.
I think you said somethingearlier about there not being
one best method or one best setof practices.
We just need to sort of openourselves up to pluralism and to
think that it's perfectly okayfor a student to come to my
classroom and be given freereign with these tools to
explore their educationalpotential and then go to
(29:07):
somebody else's class and beconstrained and told no, we're
not going to use those tools forthis educational experience.
That sort of pluralism, thatnotion that we are trying to
work towards, an understandingof this that's shared as opposed
to ah, I figured this out, I'mright.
I'm going to tell you what youhave to do.
Fonz Mendoza (29:30):
You know, and that's something like I said,
you know, in a lot ofconversations that we have and,
of course, on LinkedIn, you know, you always have those great
conversations too as well.
And you know, again, to me it'slike I do definitely see that
that there's like those twosides and, like I mentioned
earlier, it's just like thatmove fast, break things, kind of
fear, like your kids aremissing out, you're doing them
(29:50):
harm.
And then the others that are OK, let's wait and see.
And then the others that areokay, let's wait and see, let's
make sure that there's moreresearch out there, and so on,
and just kind of just trying tobring those parties together.
And then, just like youmentioned, understanding that
there's more than one way.
I know, recently I was in aconference in Puerto Rico and
the keynote speaker it justseemed like everybody in the
room was very quiet because ofthe amount of fear that was put
(30:13):
into the educators of saying, ifyou haven't been doing this, if
you have this and this and soon, your students are already
going to be left behind.
And the teachers are like, well, just kind of taking it all in.
And you know, and once I wentup there we had a panel and the
same speaker was there and Ijust, you know, told the
teachers, just to kind of bringsome peace to them, I said,
listen, you know we're all atvarying levels in this you know
(30:37):
trajectory, this journey thatwe're all moving to together.
Of course, renee Dawson I youknow she's great and she says,
you know, there's the speedboats, there are the tugboats, and
(30:59):
then there are the anchors.
The speedboats are going totake off, they're going to roll
with it, they're going to beable to do some great things and
add it to their practiceimmediately.
Then you've got, you know, thetugboats that are like okay,
let's, let's check this out,let's see what I can do, let's
wait and see, kind of attitude,but you're still moving forward.
And then, of course, you've gotthose that will highly resist
this.
And, you know, slowly, as thetugboats start kind of tugging
on and kind of moving away, theykind of start at least moving
towards that.
But that's one of the thingsthat I always say like everybody
is in a different, you know,situation.
(31:21):
They're in a different, youknow, as far as learning path is
concerned, but we'll alleventually get there.
But I just don't like that fearthat is being put into the
teachers as well.
So that's something that Iwanted to talk to you about, so
thank you so much for sharingthat, and so I want to ask you
to now talking about beyond hypeand fear.
You know you use the wordschanging rather than
(31:45):
transforming.
That's one of the thingsdisrupting or revolutionizing
when discussing AI in education.
So how does this perspectivehelp teachers?
Rob Nelson (32:03):
Yeah, well, I think again, this is.
I'm a historian and so I oftengo to a habit of mine that says
well, look, this isn'tcompletely new, things like this
have happened before.
And so the notion that whatwe're experiencing is some kind
of transformation, the notionthat what we're experiencing is
some kind of transformation,that's a word that describes
basically the modern experience.
Like you know, the speed, theincessantness of change, both
(32:30):
technological change and socialchange, is just a fact of modern
life.
And so what we're experiencingnow, in this moment, feels not
unlike what it was like toexperience electricity during
the decades that was beingimplemented, or the steam engine
or the printing press, to goback even further.
And so these changes, eventhough they feel very exciting
and new, and because they are,those are genuinely new
(32:52):
technologies.
The process of social change, uh, doesn't necessarily, you know,
mean it's instant ortransformative, or, you know,
going back to like these things,these things really did change
our lives, um, uh, and, and they, they solve some problems and
they create some new ones, andwe're just moving through the
process of figuring those thingsout.
Same thing's going to happenwith ai, and I think, for a
(33:13):
teacher, what that means is just, you know it's okay.
Like you, you've got a job todo.
Tools are meant to help you.
Um, don't let them, uh like,prevent you from doing your job.
Don't let the pressures oflearning something new, adopting
a new technology, interruptyour role, which is, of course,
to teach your students and toreach your students.
Fonz Mendoza (33:33):
Excellent.
Well, before we kind of startwrapping up, I just have about
two more questions.
But I want to ask youspecifically, you know, on
resource allocation for highereducation and, as we know and
you've talked about in your blogand in your writing, about
California State's universityagreement with OpenAI.
So what are some of theconcerns that may come about?
(33:53):
If there are other institutionsthat are open to this, how
should they kind of proceed whenmoving into something like this
?
Rob Nelson (34:02):
Yeah.
So I've got two things on thisthat I think are really
important.
The first one is that thesegiant technology companies,
especially the startups andOpenAI is really a startup and
it acts like a startup and someof that goes back to the move
(34:26):
fast and break things mentality.
That's a risky propositionbecause there's a good chance
that they're going to move fastand the thing they're going to
break is you and yourinstitution or your students,
and so I think there's a greatdeal of care that goes into
evaluating what kind ofagreement to have with a company
like that.
I think my concern about whatCSU did is they moved all their
(34:46):
institutions onto, signed on tothe enterprise agreement to
bring chat GPT to campus, and Ijust think that's an
extraordinarily risky thing todo.
So that's one issue.
The other issue is I think wedon't as institutions whether
school systems, as institutions,higher ed we don't have to sign
(35:10):
these enterprise agreementsright now.
There's still plenty of time todevelop a greater knowledge
about what these tools are andhow they can be used, and you
can do that in small projectsand you can do it incrementally.
You don't have to have thelatest, largest model.
You can go get a small opensource model and get a team of
people in your system IT peoplein your system or at your
(35:32):
institution and work withteachers to explore what value
they might get.
I mean again, I'm talking aboutmy own experience here, because
I had that chance to do that.
I just wish that was a modelthat more institutions and more
school systems were thinkingabout, as opposed to these large
enterprise agreements whereyou're signing on for a license
(35:52):
and you don't know what it'sgoing to cost in two years.
You don't know if the company'sgoing to be around in two years
for a license and you don'tknow what it's going to cost in
two years.
You don't know if the company'sgoing to be around in two years
.
All that uncertainty, I think,goes back to the message of we
can move slowly here.
Our speed of change doesn'thave to be Silicon Valley's.
Fonz Mendoza (36:06):
And that is a great point, rob, because that's
something that I see in theK-12 space and even since 2022,
all of a sudden, all of theseK-12 education platforms popped
up, and my biggest fear was thatthat, because a lot of them do
tie into OpenAI, you know,through their APIs and so on, as
OpenAI makes changes as theirprices go up, the way that I see
(36:28):
it is well, those platforms,their prices are going to go up,
or they're going to go upenough to where that platform
may not be there, and then someschools have signed on to a
three-year agreement and thenthat platform's only there for
one year, and then what can youdo?
You lose out on that money.
And so those are some of thethings that I am very cautious
about and that I really lookinto and really just have
(36:49):
conversations with a lot ofpeople in leadership as far as
CTOs are concerned, and evenexplaining it to teachers,
because oftentimes, you know, wego to a conference, we see a
new tool and it's always thenext big shiny thing where it
may have just one additionallittle button, but that button
is going to make a difference,at least in the mind of
(37:09):
educators.
They may say like, oh, thatmakes a huge difference.
But then the price point isexpensive and again, going into
the move fast and break things,you don't know if they're going
to be there.
And then from one year to thenext, you know, prices go up
seven to 11 percent.
Small school districts likemyself, where I'm located we may
get priced out of thoseopportunities and we may not
(37:30):
have those opportunities that aneighboring district has, have
those opportunities that aneighboring district has.
So those are some of the thingsthere too that I see in the
K-12 space that you know.
That can kind of relate to whatit is that you're talking about
, and it's always just that bigfear of the money and fear if
that company is even going to bethere that next year or maybe
within the next two years.
So excellent point.
Thank you so much for sharingthat.
(37:50):
And then just to kind of wrapup here, I just wanted to talk
to you.
You described your approach togenerative AI in one of your
writings as an opportunity totinker towards utopia.
Can you tell us a little bitmore about that and where your
thought process is on that?
Rob Nelson (38:08):
Sure.
So that's the title of a bookprobably my favorite book of
educational history by DavidTyack and Larry Cuban, and their
argument is essentially thatthat should be our model, that
we don't need a bigtransformation, we don't need a
revolution.
What's happened over time inthe US because this is really a
(38:29):
book about US educationalhistory is that we've tinkered
our way toward a better socialsystem, is that we've tinkered
our way toward a better socialsystem, and I think that kind of
tinkering and this is thecontext of what's happening in
Washington today, especially inthe attack on higher education
is really the exact opposite ofthis right, the notion of moving
(38:50):
fast and breaking things.
We can actually think aboutincremental change and building
social community around.
What kind of change benefitshumans?
And that includes especiallythe humans that are in our
classrooms, the teachers andtheir students.
And so for me, that notion oftinkering towards utopia echoes
(39:10):
a lot of the themes we've beentalking about here, which is
that the pace of change shouldhappen at human speed, not
necessarily the speed of ourcomputing technologies.
Fonz Mendoza (39:20):
Excellent.
Well, rob, thank you so much.
This has been a very insightfulconversation.
Thank you so much for sharingyour experience with this,
obviously through your writingtoo, as well, for all our
audience members.
Please make sure that you checkout the blog.
We will make sure we link theblog and all the resources that
were mentioned in today's talkthere so you can go ahead and
you yourself, you know dig deepinto that, those resources, and,
(39:42):
of course, sprinkle them on towhat you are already doing.
Great, so, thank you, rob, forspending this morning with us.
But before we wrap up, I alwayslove to end the show with the
following three questions.
So, hopefully, rob always loveto end the show with the
following three questions.
So hopefully, rob, you areready to go.
All right, here we go, rob.
Rob Nelson (39:59):
Question number one.
Fonz Mendoza (40:00):
Perfect Question number one Every superhero has a
weakness.
For example, superman hadkryptonite, which weakened him,
or was a pain point for Supermanas well.
So I want to ask you, in thecurrent state of education, what
would you say is your currentedu-kryptonite?
Rob Nelson (40:22):
For me it's a kind of intellectual arrogance.
So it's the notion that becauseI write to explore, right, so
that's why I write.
But I can lose sight of thatsometimes when I get hold of an
idea and I think I figuredsomething out, and so AI log the
reason I call it the log, onereason I call it AI log is it's
a log of my thoughts over time,and sometimes I can go back to
(40:46):
something I wrote when I firststarted the blog and go, wow,
that is so wrong and so thatthat.
So that notion of like akryptonite is that like, I think
I figured something out becauseI've been able to write it down
, but it's not.
That's not how things work,that's not how truth works.
Really.
Truth is always open torevision, and that's especially
true in an environment that'schanging like it is, and so for
(41:09):
me that's my kryptonite, thatarrogance, and AI log is a way
to sort of manage that, the riskthat I get hold of some of that
kryptonite.
Fonz Mendoza (41:18):
Excellent.
Thank you so much, rob.
That was very insightful.
Thank you so much for sharingthat.
Question number two if youcould have a billboard with
anything on it, what would it beand why?
Rob Nelson (41:30):
This is going to speak directly to my kryptonite
it's arrogance.
This is going to speak directlyto my kryptonite it's arrogance
, but it is AIlogblog.
It is my blog, because, for me,what I'm trying to do through
my writing is exploring theseideas in ways that are social,
and so if there's one thing Iwant to put out in the world,
it's the thing I'm doing with mywriting online, which is very
(41:53):
much reflective of what you'redoing with my tech life and what
I do when I do speaking or myteaching.
It's taking up these socialexperiences and trying to make
some kind of understanding ortruth out of them, and so where
I do that, the sort of nexus ofwhere I do that, the focal point
of where I do that is onAIlogblog, and so that's what I
(42:14):
would put on the billboard.
Fonz Mendoza (42:16):
Love it and don't forget to put on that QR code.
That way, as people drive by,they can definitely scan it for
sure.
Rob Nelson (42:21):
There you go, all right.
Fonz Mendoza (42:23):
All right, and the last question, Rob.
If there is one person that youcan switch places for a day,
who would it be and why?
Rob Nelson (42:33):
So I'm a historian, so I'm a historian, so I'm going
to take advantage of theopen-ended nature of your
question finds and say I'm goingto go back in time.
So it's not digital necromancy,You've given me this sort of
superpower to transfer myselfback in time, and it would be my
absolute favorite historicalfigure that I write about a
(42:53):
woman named Anna Julia Cooperwho was a school teacher, a high
school principal and eventuallythe president of Frelinghausen
University, and she was also awriter.
But because of herresponsibilities as a teacher
and administrator and becauseshe was a Black woman living in
a period where there were nouniversity posts or, you know,
(43:16):
the ability to get a writing gigsomewhere, she really wrote for
a very small audience.
She did publish one book.
It's a great book called Voicesfrom the South, but she also
wrote a lot of her later essayswere written and self-published
and they are amazing pieces ofwork.
And so what I would want to do?
There's not a lot that's knownabout her because she wasn't all
(43:38):
that famous in her life, and sothere isn't an archive like
there is for other greathistorical figures of that time,
and so there's a lot that'sunknown.
So I would love to go back intime and spend time in her life
trying to understand somethingabout what her experience was
like.
Fonz Mendoza (43:53):
Thank you so much, rob.
I really appreciate your shares.
Thank you so much for thiswonderful conversation.
Also, and again, we'll makesure we post all the information
so you can go ahead and contactRob or follow him on all
socials.
Please make sure that you alsofollow him on Substack, his blog
, and it's fantastic and you'lldefinitely get some great
insights and, like you mentioned, just some great experiences as
(44:14):
he continues to blog andcontinue to grow and continues
to write.
So definitely great resources,especially for this time and the
time to come, because, as youknow, this is going to be
changing, and as fast as it mayseem, but I love the way that
Rob says it, you know, changingat the speed of people, you know
, and it's all on us, so justlet's just continue to move
(44:34):
forward.
And so, rob, thank you so muchfor joining us today and for all
our audience members, pleasemake sure you visit our website
at myedtechlife, where you cancheck out this amazing episode
and the other 318 wonderfulepisodes where, I promise you,
you will find something that youcan sprinkle onto what you are
already doing.
Great.
And again, I definitely want togive a big shout out to our new
(44:54):
sponsor, book Creator.
Thank you so much for yoursupport.
Thank you so much, eduaid andYellowdig also for believing in
our mission so we can continueto bring some amazing
conversations week in and weekout.
So thank you as always, andfrom the bottom of my heart, my
friends, don't forget, staytechie you.
Hello everybody and welcome to another great
episode of my EdTech Life.
Thank you so much for joiningus on this wonderful day and
wherever it is that you'rejoining us from around the world
.
Thank you, as always, for allof your support.
As always, we appreciate allthe likes, the shares, the
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always, for all of your support.
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We really appreciate yoursupport and I definitely want to
(00:50):
give a big shout out to ournewest supporter, book Creator.
Thank you so much forsupporting our mission and
believing in what we're doingand bringing some amazing
conversations into the educationspace so that we may all
continue to grow together.
And I'm really excited abouttoday's conversation, as always,
like I said, being able to haveyour own podcast and being able
(01:13):
to look for guests.
It's always amazing when thingsline up and you get to bring a
guest on that.
You follow on a certainplatform and you just are really
interested and intrigued bytheir views and what they post
and you just want to bring thoseconversations and amplify their
voices also here at our tableat the my EdTech Life
conversation table and I'mreally excited to welcome today.
Rob Nelson (01:39):
Mr Rob Nelson.
Rob, how are you doing today?
Fonz Mendoza (01:41):
I'm doing great Bonds, Thanks so much for having
me on the show.
I'm a big fan of what you dohere Thank you very much, rob
and I'm a big fan of what you do.
And you're posting on your blogand, of course, on LinkedIn.
And, of course, as you know,you know, 2022, from then on,
has been just so much contentfor us, so much conversation
sparking so many things and somany new ideas.
And we're going to get intothat, you know, because I really
(02:03):
love your take, yourperspectives and, like I said,
being a cautious advocate and,you know, kind of being in the
middle of things.
You know, I always love tobring various viewpoints to the
table when it, you know, excuseme, bring various viewpoints to
the table when we are talkingabout AI.
So, before we dive in, rob, forall my audience members that
(02:26):
are out there listening at thismoment and may not be familiar
with your work just yet, butafter today they will can you
give us a little briefintroduction and what your
context is within the educationspace?
Rob Nelson (02:38):
Sure.
So my ed tech life was as aneducational bureaucrat in the
provost office at the Universityof Pennsylvania for 18 years.
So at heart I'm a teacher.
I started out as a teacher, butI learned early on that
teaching will burn you out, andso I made a decision when I
finished my PhD at Rutgers to gointo administration, and so I
(02:58):
oversaw academic technology forthe provost office at Penn for
18 years, and that meantimplementing enterprise
technology, things like Canvas,course evaluations, grad
admissions applications, and sothat's really where my
professional experience lies.
And then I also taughtpart-time and continue to teach
part-time.
And recently, as you said, I'vemade a transition.
(03:20):
I left my job as a bureaucratand now I write full-time and
still teach on the side and do alittle consulting and public
speaking as a way to pay thebills.
Fonz Mendoza (03:30):
Excellent.
Well, that is a greatbackground which kind of, in a
very natural way, just is a nicesegue to my first question.
Based on all the experiencethat you just finished sharing
with us, I wanted to ask you howhave those experiences shaped
your perspective of AI ineducation and what experiences,
from your years overseeingtechnologies and initiatives and
(03:54):
so on, you know, what are somethings that we may be missing in
today's AI in educationdiscussions.
Rob Nelson (04:02):
Yeah, I think it comes down to adoption of new
technologies, which when a newtechnology comes out, it sort of
explodes on the scene and theearly adopters and enthusiasts
start talking about it.
It's often in the context oflike, wow, this is going to
change everything and it feelslike it's going to be instant
because it's so obvious to theearly adopters that this is
going to be so great.
Sometimes it turns out to begreat and sometimes it turns out
(04:25):
to be kind of a dud.
So, for example, I think theMOOCs the massive online courses
, were a technology thateverybody looked at and thought,
wow, this is going to disrupteducation.
Places like Harvard and Pennare just going to disappear.
That turned out not to be thecase and I think you know we can
(04:45):
talk about that specific case.
But I think the lesson I'vedrawn from my years implementing
technology on campus is thatchange happens at the speed of
universities and colleges andschools, not at the speed of the
technology companies andtechnology enthusiasts would
necessarily think.
Fonz Mendoza (05:02):
You know, and that's something that's very
interesting, like you said.
You know, for those earlyadopters, it just seems like
everything like this newtechnology and anything new that
comes out, is going to be, youknow, the solution to all our
inefficiencies.
And, of course, in educationright now I'm just going to go
ahead and throw it out there inthe state of Texas, we're
getting ready in the next coupleof weeks to start, you know,
(05:25):
state testing.
Prior to this, a couple ofweeks ago, we started seeing
where around the district, youknow, schools were purchasing
specific platforms and you know,kind of like at the last minute
, hoorah, you know, trying toget those grades up, and pretty
much it's just a triage to makesure that the students do well.
But, you know, trying to getthose grades up, and pretty much
it's just a triage to make surethat the students do well.
(05:46):
But you know, one of the thingsis is that, from my years of
experience, it just seems that,starting January, everybody's
trying to find that one answerand I think sometimes, even with
AI, when that came out in 2022,and even until now, you still
see that and hear like, yes,this is going to change things,
this is going to change thingsand from 22 till now, you know I
(06:08):
feel that there still hasn'tbeen enough research.
But I'm still interested to seeyou know some of that research
and see if grades are going up,because, of course, like you
mentioned new technologies I'veseen the iPads roll out and
everybody's one-to-one, and thisis going to revolutionize
education and this is going toget those test scores up.
Haven't really seen that either.
Chromebooks, everybody'sone-to-one, and the Chromebooks
(06:28):
are going to be the next bestthing and they're going to help
our students and I personallyhave not seen that either.
So it's very interesting thatyou do mention that and,
especially with your experiencein higher ed I did have Jason
Guglia on the show yesterday andinterviewing, so I want to get
your perspective as far as whatyou have seen and experienced in
(06:49):
higher education that divide,you know.
So I want to hear what has beenyour experience.
Rob Nelson (06:57):
Sure.
So I think it comes down tosome of the different
perspectives I was talking about.
Educational technologists, thepeople who develop and build new
technology are, I believe, inmost cases earnestly trying to
solve problems, but they seeproblems differently than the
way that classroom teachers seethem, and Jason's a good example
.
Somebody talks about this.
Dan Meyer, I know you've had onthe show, is another great
(07:19):
example of somebody who seesthat difference.
And so I think you know whatI've seen is a lot of
polarization, people who arerightly concerned about the way
that Silicon Valley inparticular, the sort of big
giant technology companies, areusing their not just their
financial capital, but thecultural and social power they
have to sort of impose a visionof what this technology is
(07:42):
supposed to do.
And then you've got people whoare resisting that, and I'm
certainly among those.
I think there's a great deal ofconcern about the social and
economic context in which thisstuff is happening.
But at the level of classroominstruction, I think what's
happening is, for the most part,teachers are coming to grips
with this technology the waythey have all the technologies
you've talked about.
You know everything that's fromiPhones to iPads, to the PC,
(08:07):
Chromebooks, laptops, going backto the earlier history of
technology.
Even the adoption of chalk andchalkboards Like those are
changes that technology has sortof pushed on or confronted
teachers with, and they'veresponded and turned those tools
into things that are useful.
I think that's the process.
That's what I see.
That's the positive aspect ofwhat's happening right now is I
(08:29):
see lots of teachersexperimenting with these tools,
trying to figure out what theirvalue is as an educational tool,
as opposed to what the peoplewho built them necessarily think
they should be used for, howthey imagine it's going to play
out Nice, Excellent.
Fonz Mendoza (08:42):
All right.
So I want to kind of talk alittle bit about your writing,
too as well.
I know that you have the AI log, you know which is where on
Substack, which I follow andthat you post and you share a
lot of great views, but one ofthem that draws my, or has drawn
my, attention, and I wanted toask you about it today, was the
way that you use the rabbit andthe duck metaphor.
(09:03):
We have the rabbit of gladtidings and the duck of doom, so
can you elaborate on this dualperception and how it impacts
education policy and decisions?
Rob Nelson (09:13):
Sure.
So the duck rabbit is a famousexample of what's sometimes
called an ambiguous picture,like what you see.
When you look at the picture,you can make it look like one
thing or the other.
And the duck rabbit is a famousone because the philosopher
Wittgenstein used it in some ofhis work and the sort of way
that teachers received that wascertainly in the realm of like.
(09:49):
Oh my God, this is changingeverything.
It's awful, we need to stop it.
We need to stop our studentsfrom using it, but then you've
got people who see it.
Well, this is a new technology.
It's an exciting way tounderstand and use knowledge.
These models, these partiallanguage models, summarize
information and spit it back outand use knowledge.
These models, these largelanguage models, summarize
(10:09):
information and spit it back outin ways that are interesting
and potentially educational.
And so, seeing those twoaspects, this thing that's going
to is very threatening to ourjobs.
You know AI is going to replacethis.
That message gets repeated overand over again.
On the other hand, ai is goingto save us all this work because
it can do the boring stuff sothat we can turn our attention
to the important work.
So that's the sort of swirl ofwhat's been happening.
(10:33):
I think that image of the duckrabbit is a nice way to say it's
both those things and somethingelse, something new.
Fonz Mendoza (10:40):
Now, with your experience and I know that
you're a speaker now and you goout there and train or people go
and listen I want to ask you,when you talk about this and one
of the things that youmentioned that duality of this
being both things what are gonnatake our jobs?
And then there's the other sidethat says no, no one's gonna
(11:06):
take your job, only somebodyelse that uses AI effectively.
And then one side, I see alsois just real, like playing into
the fear of this, like if youhaven't even been using this
today, you're doing yourstudents a disservice.
And then there's that side andso, like I said, what is it that
you're seeing out there and howdo you, you know, just kind of
(11:27):
bring that together for yourselfto say, okay, where is it that
I stand on these issues?
Rob Nelson (11:33):
Yeah, well, I think we still have an enormously wide
range of people responding tothis.
There are still people who havenever really used one of these
tools before, and so they'regetting all their information
secondhand.
On the other hand, you havepeople who have been using them
from the very beginning to tryto do interesting or educational
work with them, and so I thinkthat challenge remains.
(11:54):
But what I've seen over time Imean it's been two and a half
years, basically, since chat TBTsort of exploded on the scene,
and that's not a lot of time,but it's time enough for people
to have moved away from the sortof freak out modes that we saw.
And when I've been giving talkslately, I've used the image of
(12:14):
like maybe it's a revolution,but maybe it's going to be a
boring revolution that thenotion that this is going to be
transformative and we're goingto see these things, super
intelligences appear, andeverything's going to change
overnight just isn't how we'regoing to experience this.
Much like things like theiPhone and the PC.
They feel and aretransformative and they're going
(12:36):
to change things, but thatprocess takes place over a
period of time, there'sadjustments, and what I really
believe is important is that weuse our critical thinking skills
and analysis to think about howwe use these things to improve
education, to improveorganizations, and that's where
I think the conversation isstarting to move.
Fonz Mendoza (12:56):
Good and that's excellent and that's so good to
hear, because there's webinarafter webinar that I'll sit on
too as well.
And I don't know if it's somuch more in the K-12 space as
it is in the higher ed space,because I'm not involved in
webinars at that level, but inthe K-12 space there just seems
to be this sense of urgency likehey, if you're not doing this,
(13:18):
you're doing your students adisservice, because this is the
way that they're growing andthis is the way that they're
going to need these skills toget into college and for the
jobs of tomorrow.
And it's almost this attitudeof move fast and break things as
opposed to just simply.
Like you said, it canrevolutionize, it will, but
maybe it's in a slower, moreboring and more, you know, calm
(13:39):
process process.
But it just seems like it's ago go, go, go go mentality.
And going to conferences you seesome of the top platforms that
are out there that are justpushing this so much and you
know, I feel sometimes they maybe even preying on some
educators, as far as you know,onto the burnout aspect.
Like this is going to save youthat time.
(14:00):
This is going to give you backthat time.
This is going to do this andthis is going to do that, but
you have to pay us, you know, Idon't know X amount of dollars
per license, per site and so on.
And a lot of educators are like, oh my gosh, I really need this
, because they feel overwhelmedand they feel like this is going
to be that sense of relief.
Now, in higher ed is there kindof that mentality, or maybe is
(14:23):
there a crowd like that too aswell.
Rob Nelson (14:26):
Absolutely.
I mean, higher ed is sort ofthe same pressures that K-12 has
in terms of you know it's castin terms of business needs right
, businesses need graduates withthese skills and I think
Silicon Valley I mean youmentioned the Zucker fame,
zuckerberg or Facebook idea movepast and break things.
You mentioned the Zucker fame,zuckerberg or Facebook idea.
Move past and break things.
They're very much using that asa marketing term, right, as a
(14:49):
as a way of marketing theseprojects and trying to raise
revenue, which they haveinvested huge amounts of capital
in this technology and theyneed to get a return and that's
a big problem for them.
It's not the problem that K-12or higher ed is trying to solve.
We're trying to figure out howto educate students for this new
society, for the changes thatare coming, for the way this is
(15:10):
going to transform the work ofpeople who work in knowledge,
business and education, and so Ithink refocusing our attention
on, well, what is it we needthese tools to do and how do we
get the tools to do what we wantthem to do, is really cutting
against the grain of the waythat Silicon Valley and giant
(15:30):
technology companies and a lotof the startups who are in that
sort of movement that move fastand break things, movement um
are are talking about it, and sothat that's that, that
misalignment.
I think that that I, I, I think, slowly but surely um teachers,
institutions, um are comingaround to uh to establishing
their domain, their uh abilityto control or decide how these
(15:54):
things get deployed.
Fonz Mendoza (15:56):
Excellent.
Now talking about deployment,you know, kind of going back to
your writing, because if youhaven't, for those listeners
that are joining us today orwatching us on the replay,
please make sure that you docheck out Rob's Substack.
He has great writing there andyou know a lot of these
questions you know is just goinga little bit deeper into the
writings and that he has and hasavailable to all of us, which
(16:18):
is a great resource.
So please, I mean you knowwe'll definitely link it in the
show notes as well.
But, rob, I wanted to ask youyou know you have this series
it's a two part series is whatis an LLM doing in my classroom?
So I want to ask you how do youperceive the role of large
language models in enhancing orpossibly hindering the learning
process?
Rob Nelson (16:39):
Yeah, thanks for asking about that.
So that series is actuallygoing to wrap up, maybe tomorrow
, but certainly next week.
I've got one more piece towrite about for that, and that
was really a reflection on myown practice in the classroom.
I'm a history teacher and thehistory I teach right now is in
the grad school of education atPenn, and I'm teaching mostly
aspiring educational bureaucrats, people who want to go into
(17:02):
administration, and so I'menormously lucky to be teaching
in that environment, and one ofthe ways I was lucky is that,
unlike a lot of teachers, Ididn't have to figure out how to
get one of these commercialtools to use, because there's a
research center on campus thatwas willing to work with me so
(17:23):
that I could use this technologyin my teaching.
I'm somebody who believes in.
It's often called a flipclassroom.
I called it structuredactivities, and so my class is
activities-based.
It's very much student-focused,and so I treated the use of the
LLM not as something I had todecide, but as something the
students and I could work outtogether.
(17:44):
How is this going to influencetheir work?
How is it going to be valuableto them as an educational tool?
How is it going to, you know,frustrate those aspirations or
aims, and so we worked with thattool.
It's called GPTA and it'sbasically an LLM-based assistant
(18:05):
.
They call it an assistant.
I think of it as just a tool,just like a chalkboard or a
pointer or anything else thatyou use in a classroom, and so
we use that technology together,and those essays are
reflections on how that wentExcellent.
Fonz Mendoza (18:20):
So what is it?
Do you know?
As far as your essays thatyou've written, you know, and
looking into that, you know.
What do you see as far as thispossibly hindering, or is this
something that can possiblyenhance the potential of
learning in the classroom?
Rob Nelson (18:34):
Yeah.
Well, I think it starts withagain resisting that notion of
it being like a teachingassistant or a teacher.
These things are not going toreplace teachers.
There's just no way, and DanMeyer is one of the best at
describing that differencebetween what a tool is and what
a teacher is.
But so, taking that as our base, like, okay, this is a tool,
(18:55):
what is it and what is it goingto do for us?
What value does it bring?
I think what I discoveredthrough this process is that
students are very much able tomake decisions about their own
education.
I believe that I see evidenceof it in their activities, and
so they were making choices,with my guidance, about how to
use it, and it wasn't to writetheir essays for them.
(19:16):
I am very confident that thestudents were not using this
tool simply to replace theeducational work that they
needed to do.
It was instead an additionalresource.
So one of the ways we used thetool was to add a layer of peer
review, or add a layer of reviewto a peer review driven process
.
So in my classes, we write along research essay about an
(19:38):
institution of higher education.
So one of the ways we used theLLM was to.
Before they sat down with theirstudent peer review group, they
had the LLM do a review of theiressay.
It was trained on post-trained,I should say on my rubric, my
sort of language that I use,that I want them to use too when
(20:02):
they're evaluating a piece ofwriting, and the tool did that
for them.
I printed that out with thepapers.
And the peer review wasn't justabout a student's reaction to
the paper.
It was about the student'sreaction to the paper and then
this initial machine review ofthe paper that they could
incorporate into their ownanalysis of their peers' paper
(20:25):
and the feedback they were goingto give to the student.
Fonz Mendoza (20:28):
All right, and so for a lot of your students that
are working with you in thisclass, did a lot of them already
come in with experience usinglarge language models?
For some of them, was thistheir first time and what were
some of the reactions there?
If you can share that with us,because, again, I definitely
want to get that perspective forour K-12,.
You know educators that aresaying you know we need to
(20:49):
prepare them now for you knowhigher ed too, as well, as if
higher ed is starting to adoptthis.
So what were some of thereactions there from some of
your students?
Rob Nelson (21:00):
Yeah, to start with, I tried my best to make it
clear that I wasn't going to besurveilling what they do, I
wasn't going to be looking overtheir shoulder, that I wanted it
to be a space of genuineexperimentation.
So I wasn't going to put limitson their use, tell them they
couldn't use it for this,couldn't use it for that.
But I did want them to come toclass to share what their
(21:21):
experience was, and initially,almost all of them had had
pretty significant experiencewith ChatGPT and they used it,
like many of us do, as just asort of replacement for Google
Search, a natural languageinterface to the internet.
And I think that's one of theways.
I mean, that's definitely onething that these models do is
(21:41):
they provide a natural languageinterface to lots of information
, including the ability tosearch the internet.
And so we started with thatsort of baseline, and the
question I kept asking is whatvalue can we get out of this
tool?
What educational value can weget out of this tool?
And it's very clear when youframe it that way that simply
having it do your work for youis not going to be educational
(22:02):
value.
There's no value there, and so,turning that from, okay, it can
be used to cheat or it can beused to replace the output you
need to give your teacher.
How can we turn this into aprocess?
And what are those processeslook like?
And I think there are lots of.
You had Mike Kintz and NickPodoletsky on the show.
They're examples of peopleworking in KT12, or very
(22:23):
familiar with the KT12environment who are doing this
same kind of work, and so Ithink it's about working with
your students in groups,learning as a social activity
and taking that social natureand really just experimenting
with the tools.
And, like I said before, Ithink we're still in the early
days of this, and so we're stillfinding out a lot about the
educational potential for thesetools.
Fonz Mendoza (22:44):
Excellent.
Well, that's so good to hearand, of course, just for them,
getting that experience andreally seeing this as a maybe
higher level experience, asopposed, like you mentioned,
just, you know, kind of Googlesearch using ChatGPT in that way
, but now really going in deeperand seeing what can be done.
So that's fantastic.
But kind of brings me to mynext question.
(23:05):
You know, being that you are,you know, an educator too as
well.
I know that you've writtenextensively about
anthropomorphizing AI.
Anthropomorphizing AI Now, therewas a post recently that I read
, where there was somebody thatposted you know, things that I
will, I love to use AI for, andone of them they put the reasons
was historical figures, youknow.
And then, of course, I hadanother gentleman that I saw
(23:27):
there who's you know that Ifollow also as well that they
were just opposed to it as faras you know, kind of going into
and leaning into this, where nowyou're talking to this
historical figure and thedangers that can come about.
So what are your thoughts onthat as far as
anthropomorphizing, and what hasbeen your experience with that?
Rob Nelson (23:47):
Yeah, thank you for that question.
It's as a historian.
It's something I care deeplyabout and thought a lot about.
Some of my earliest writing wasmy experiments with um
Conmigo's um uh tool that allowsyou to uh chat with a
historical figure, uh, or um, auh uh or a literary character.
So John Warner who, uh, I hopeyou have on your show sometime
(24:09):
because he's a he's a great, atruly great writer on this topic
uh, on these topics, um, hecalls it digital necromancy, in
other words, the sort of sensethat you can revive a historical
figure using an LLM.
I think that's just the wrongway to think about what these
tools are, because they are they.
You know, the whole project ofartificial intelligence.
(24:29):
It has been built around thismetaphor that a machine thinking
machine is like a human mindand it's gotten us some great
new tools.
But I think it's afundamentally flawed way of
thinking about this in thecontext of education, because,
of course, you're not talking toanother person.
You can pretend that it is, butit's simply a machine, and I
(24:52):
think there are just much betterways to think about how we use
a cultural technology, like alarge language model, than
having it pretend to be a person, and so that's where I start.
If all we're doing with thesetools is pretending they're
people, an assistant, a deadhistorical figure, then we're
missing a lot of their potentialuse.
Fonz Mendoza (25:15):
Yeah, and that's something that I know, that I
see often in the K-12 spacethere, missing a lot of their
potential use.
Yeah, and you know, and that'ssomething that I know, that we I
see often in the K-12 space,there are a lot of platforms out
there that will offer thesechatbots, and then, of course,
teachers put in information andso on.
And I know one of the commentswas like well, this is what we
can be doing, you know, andreally getting the students to
know more about history andlearning more about history.
(25:35):
And to me it just seems likeyou know, many times, like you
mentioned being that it is alarge language model and there
are a lot of data sets that goin there, and my thinking is
always well, but whose historyis it sharing, you know, and
what viewpoints, and so on andso forth, and it's always just
concerned about the bias too aswell.
And so you know, for me that'sjust concerned about the bias
too as well, and so, you know,for me that's just one of the
biggest things.
(25:55):
But also, when there might be anattachment, you know, to a
certain nlm, llm and, like wesee now with a lot of platforms
too as well, that like characterai, when you know we can't deny
that that has been in the newsor it was in the news last
october and so on, and when westart seeing these, uh, chatbots
(26:27):
and starting to have parasocialrelationships with them and
thinking like it is anotherhuman being, like hey, I can do
this at home, I can do this onmy own, and that can lead into
other dangerous you know aspectsof using AI as well, so thank
you so much for sharing that,which kind of also now, in
talking about this, you know twovery, excuse me, two very
(26:48):
indifferent viewpoints.
You know that could be verypolarizing and I wanted to talk
to you about this because I lovethe way that you put this in
your writing.
It's like the ai fight club,you know, and it just sounds
like, wow, you know.
So I want to talk a little bitabout that.
You know, as far as educationand we talked a little bit about
it in the in you know pre-show,where there are, you know, two
sides and sometimes it could bevery rightly divided.
(27:11):
But, like I mentioned, I atleast would love to see myself
and I think I see myself andothers see myself as just kind
of like a kind of in the middle,cautious advocate, trying to
bring you know both viewpointsto the table to be able to share
and see and learn and just kindof you know, see how we can
kind of maybe bridge some gapsthere and so on.
But I want to get yourperspective and what was the
(27:33):
inspiration behind this term?
The AI Fight Club.
Rob Nelson (27:39):
Yeah, so I should be clear.
This is not my term.
I am borrowing it from one ofthe best writers on the topic of
large language models as acultural technology.
His name's Henry Farrell.
He's a political scientist atJohns Hopkins and he has a blog
on Substack called ProgrammableMuda, and we'll make sure that
(28:00):
goes in the show notes because Iwant to make sure that he gets
the attention for having come upwith this great metaphor, which
is he says that it's an exampleof the way that these things
are being polarized.
Right, there's this.
We talked already about thedynamic of enthusiasts and
resistors, and a lot of thatgets caught up in the power
(28:21):
around Silicon Valley and thepower of educational
technologies, and so I thinkthere is a way I mean, it isn't
obviously just this question,there's a whole way in which
these social questions andeducational questions get
polarized, and that happensaround particular approaches to
writing or particular approachesto learning comprehension, like
all the sort of wars aroundjust basic pedagogical methods,
(28:46):
and I just think we need to backoff of that.
I think you said somethingearlier about there not being
one best method or one best setof practices.
We just need to sort of openourselves up to pluralism and to
think that it's perfectly okayfor a student to come to my
classroom and be given freereign with these tools to
explore their educationalpotential and then go to
(29:07):
somebody else's class and beconstrained and told no, we're
not going to use those tools forthis educational experience.
That sort of pluralism, thatnotion that we are trying to
work towards, an understandingof this that's shared as opposed
to ah, I figured this out, I'mright.
I'm going to tell you what youhave to do.
Fonz Mendoza (29:30):
You know, and that's something like I said,
you know, in a lot ofconversations that we have and,
of course, on LinkedIn, you know, you always have those great
conversations too as well.
And you know, again, to me it'slike I do definitely see that
that there's like those twosides and, like I mentioned
earlier, it's just like thatmove fast, break things, kind of
fear, like your kids aremissing out, you're doing them
(29:50):
harm.
And then the others that are OK, let's wait and see.
And then the others that areokay, let's wait and see, let's
make sure that there's moreresearch out there, and so on,
and just kind of just trying tobring those parties together.
And then, just like youmentioned, understanding that
there's more than one way.
I know, recently I was in aconference in Puerto Rico and
the keynote speaker it justseemed like everybody in the
room was very quiet because ofthe amount of fear that was put
(30:13):
into the educators of saying, ifyou haven't been doing this, if
you have this and this and soon, your students are already
going to be left behind.
And the teachers are like, well, just kind of taking it all in.
And you know, and once I wentup there we had a panel and the
same speaker was there and Ijust, you know, told the
teachers, just to kind of bringsome peace to them, I said,
listen, you know we're all atvarying levels in this you know
(30:37):
trajectory, this journey thatwe're all moving to together.
Of course, renee Dawson I youknow she's great and she says,
you know, there's the speedboats, there are the tugboats, and
(30:59):
then there are the anchors.
The speedboats are going totake off, they're going to roll
with it, they're going to beable to do some great things and
add it to their practiceimmediately.
Then you've got, you know, thetugboats that are like okay,
let's, let's check this out,let's see what I can do, let's
wait and see, kind of attitude,but you're still moving forward.
And then, of course, you've gotthose that will highly resist
this.
And, you know, slowly, as thetugboats start kind of tugging
on and kind of moving away, theykind of start at least moving
towards that.
But that's one of the thingsthat I always say like everybody
is in a different, you know,situation.
(31:21):
They're in a different, youknow, as far as learning path is
concerned, but we'll alleventually get there.
But I just don't like that fearthat is being put into the
teachers as well.
So that's something that Iwanted to talk to you about, so
thank you so much for sharingthat, and so I want to ask you
to now talking about beyond hypeand fear.
You know you use the wordschanging rather than
(31:45):
transforming.
That's one of the thingsdisrupting or revolutionizing
when discussing AI in education.
So how does this perspectivehelp teachers?
Rob Nelson (32:03):
Yeah, well, I think again, this is.
I'm a historian and so I oftengo to a habit of mine that says
well, look, this isn'tcompletely new, things like this
have happened before.
And so the notion that whatwe're experiencing is some kind
of transformation, the notionthat what we're experiencing is
some kind of transformation,that's a word that describes
basically the modern experience.
Like you know, the speed, theincessantness of change, both
(32:30):
technological change and socialchange, is just a fact of modern
life.
And so what we're experiencingnow, in this moment, feels not
unlike what it was like toexperience electricity during
the decades that was beingimplemented, or the steam engine
or the printing press, to goback even further.
And so these changes, eventhough they feel very exciting
and new, and because they are,those are genuinely new
(32:52):
technologies.
The process of social change, uh, doesn't necessarily, you know,
mean it's instant ortransformative, or, you know,
going back to like these things,these things really did change
our lives, um, uh, and, and they, they solve some problems and
they create some new ones, andwe're just moving through the
process of figuring those thingsout.
Same thing's going to happenwith ai, and I think, for a
(33:13):
teacher, what that means is just, you know it's okay.
Like you, you've got a job todo.
Tools are meant to help you.
Um, don't let them, uh like,prevent you from doing your job.
Don't let the pressures oflearning something new, adopting
a new technology, interruptyour role, which is, of course,
to teach your students and toreach your students.
Fonz Mendoza (33:33):
Excellent.
Well, before we kind of startwrapping up, I just have about
two more questions.
But I want to ask youspecifically, you know, on
resource allocation for highereducation and, as we know and
you've talked about in your blogand in your writing, about
California State's universityagreement with OpenAI.
So what are some of theconcerns that may come about?
(33:53):
If there are other institutionsthat are open to this, how
should they kind of proceed whenmoving into something like this
?
Rob Nelson (34:02):
Yeah.
So I've got two things on thisthat I think are really
important.
The first one is that thesegiant technology companies,
especially the startups andOpenAI is really a startup and
it acts like a startup and someof that goes back to the move
(34:26):
fast and break things mentality.
That's a risky propositionbecause there's a good chance
that they're going to move fastand the thing they're going to
break is you and yourinstitution or your students,
and so I think there's a greatdeal of care that goes into
evaluating what kind ofagreement to have with a company
like that.
I think my concern about whatCSU did is they moved all their
(34:46):
institutions onto, signed on tothe enterprise agreement to
bring chat GPT to campus, and Ijust think that's an
extraordinarily risky thing todo.
So that's one issue.
The other issue is I think wedon't as institutions whether
school systems, as institutions,higher ed we don't have to sign
(35:10):
these enterprise agreementsright now.
There's still plenty of time todevelop a greater knowledge
about what these tools are andhow they can be used, and you
can do that in small projectsand you can do it incrementally.
You don't have to have thelatest, largest model.
You can go get a small opensource model and get a team of
people in your system IT peoplein your system or at your
(35:32):
institution and work withteachers to explore what value
they might get.
I mean again, I'm talking aboutmy own experience here, because
I had that chance to do that.
I just wish that was a modelthat more institutions and more
school systems were thinkingabout, as opposed to these large
enterprise agreements whereyou're signing on for a license
(35:52):
and you don't know what it'sgoing to cost in two years.
You don't know if the company'sgoing to be around in two years
for a license and you don'tknow what it's going to cost in
two years.
You don't know if the company'sgoing to be around in two years
.
All that uncertainty, I think,goes back to the message of we
can move slowly here.
Our speed of change doesn'thave to be Silicon Valley's.
Fonz Mendoza (36:06):
And that is a great point, rob, because that's
something that I see in theK-12 space and even since 2022,
all of a sudden, all of theseK-12 education platforms popped
up, and my biggest fear was thatthat, because a lot of them do
tie into OpenAI, you know,through their APIs and so on, as
OpenAI makes changes as theirprices go up, the way that I see
(36:28):
it is well, those platforms,their prices are going to go up,
or they're going to go upenough to where that platform
may not be there, and then someschools have signed on to a
three-year agreement and thenthat platform's only there for
one year, and then what can youdo?
You lose out on that money.
And so those are some of thethings that I am very cautious
about and that I really lookinto and really just have
(36:49):
conversations with a lot ofpeople in leadership as far as
CTOs are concerned, and evenexplaining it to teachers,
because oftentimes, you know, wego to a conference, we see a
new tool and it's always thenext big shiny thing where it
may have just one additionallittle button, but that button
is going to make a difference,at least in the mind of
(37:09):
educators.
They may say like, oh, thatmakes a huge difference.
But then the price point isexpensive and again, going into
the move fast and break things,you don't know if they're going
to be there.
And then from one year to thenext, you know, prices go up
seven to 11 percent.
Small school districts likemyself, where I'm located we may
get priced out of thoseopportunities and we may not
(37:30):
have those opportunities that aneighboring district has, have
those opportunities that aneighboring district has.
So those are some of the thingsthere too that I see in the
K-12 space that you know.
That can kind of relate to whatit is that you're talking about
, and it's always just that bigfear of the money and fear if
that company is even going to bethere that next year or maybe
within the next two years.
So excellent point.
Thank you so much for sharingthat.
(37:50):
And then just to kind of wrapup here, I just wanted to talk
to you.
You described your approach togenerative AI in one of your
writings as an opportunity totinker towards utopia.
Can you tell us a little bitmore about that and where your
thought process is on that?
Rob Nelson (38:08):
Sure.
So that's the title of a bookprobably my favorite book of
educational history by DavidTyack and Larry Cuban, and their
argument is essentially thatthat should be our model, that
we don't need a bigtransformation, we don't need a
revolution.
What's happened over time inthe US because this is really a
(38:29):
book about US educationalhistory is that we've tinkered
our way toward a better socialsystem, is that we've tinkered
our way toward a better socialsystem, and I think that kind of
tinkering and this is thecontext of what's happening in
Washington today, especially inthe attack on higher education
is really the exact opposite ofthis right, the notion of moving
(38:50):
fast and breaking things.
We can actually think aboutincremental change and building
social community around.
What kind of change benefitshumans?
And that includes especiallythe humans that are in our
classrooms, the teachers andtheir students.
And so for me, that notion oftinkering towards utopia echoes
(39:10):
a lot of the themes we've beentalking about here, which is
that the pace of change shouldhappen at human speed, not
necessarily the speed of ourcomputing technologies.
Fonz Mendoza (39:20):
Excellent.
Well, rob, thank you so much.
This has been a very insightfulconversation.
Thank you so much for sharingyour experience with this,
obviously through your writingtoo, as well, for all our
audience members.
Please make sure that you checkout the blog.
We will make sure we link theblog and all the resources that
were mentioned in today's talkthere so you can go ahead and
you yourself, you know dig deepinto that, those resources, and,
(39:42):
of course, sprinkle them on towhat you are already doing.
Great, so, thank you, rob, forspending this morning with us.
But before we wrap up, I alwayslove to end the show with the
following three questions.
So, hopefully, rob always loveto end the show with the
following three questions.
So hopefully, rob, you areready to go.
All right, here we go, rob.
Rob Nelson (39:59):
Question number one.
Fonz Mendoza (40:00):
Perfect Question number one Every superhero has a
weakness.
For example, superman hadkryptonite, which weakened him,
or was a pain point for Supermanas well.
So I want to ask you, in thecurrent state of education, what
would you say is your currentedu-kryptonite?
Rob Nelson (40:22):
For me it's a kind of intellectual arrogance.
So it's the notion that becauseI write to explore, right, so
that's why I write.
But I can lose sight of thatsometimes when I get hold of an
idea and I think I figuredsomething out, and so AI log the
reason I call it the log, onereason I call it AI log is it's
a log of my thoughts over time,and sometimes I can go back to
(40:46):
something I wrote when I firststarted the blog and go, wow,
that is so wrong and so thatthat.
So that notion of like akryptonite is that like, I think
I figured something out becauseI've been able to write it down
, but it's not.
That's not how things work,that's not how truth works.
Really.
Truth is always open torevision, and that's especially
true in an environment that'schanging like it is, and so for
(41:09):
me that's my kryptonite, thatarrogance, and AI log is a way
to sort of manage that, the riskthat I get hold of some of that
kryptonite.
Fonz Mendoza (41:18):
Excellent.
Thank you so much, rob.
That was very insightful.
Thank you so much for sharingthat.
Question number two if youcould have a billboard with
anything on it, what would it beand why?
Rob Nelson (41:30):
This is going to speak directly to my kryptonite
it's arrogance.
This is going to speak directlyto my kryptonite it's arrogance
, but it is AIlogblog.
It is my blog, because, for me,what I'm trying to do through
my writing is exploring theseideas in ways that are social,
and so if there's one thing Iwant to put out in the world,
it's the thing I'm doing with mywriting online, which is very
(41:53):
much reflective of what you'redoing with my tech life and what
I do when I do speaking or myteaching.
It's taking up these socialexperiences and trying to make
some kind of understanding ortruth out of them, and so where
I do that, the sort of nexus ofwhere I do that, the focal point
of where I do that is onAIlogblog, and so that's what I
(42:14):
would put on the billboard.
Fonz Mendoza (42:16):
Love it and don't forget to put on that QR code.
That way, as people drive by,they can definitely scan it for
sure.
Rob Nelson (42:21):
There you go, all right.
Fonz Mendoza (42:23):
All right, and the last question, Rob.
If there is one person that youcan switch places for a day,
who would it be and why?
Rob Nelson (42:33):
So I'm a historian, so I'm a historian, so I'm going
to take advantage of theopen-ended nature of your
question finds and say I'm goingto go back in time.
So it's not digital necromancy,You've given me this sort of
superpower to transfer myselfback in time, and it would be my
absolute favorite historicalfigure that I write about a
(42:53):
woman named Anna Julia Cooperwho was a school teacher, a high
school principal and eventuallythe president of Frelinghausen
University, and she was also awriter.
But because of herresponsibilities as a teacher
and administrator and becauseshe was a Black woman living in
a period where there were nouniversity posts or, you know,
(43:16):
the ability to get a writing gigsomewhere, she really wrote for
a very small audience.
She did publish one book.
It's a great book called Voicesfrom the South, but she also
wrote a lot of her later essayswere written and self-published
and they are amazing pieces ofwork.
And so what I would want to do?
There's not a lot that's knownabout her because she wasn't all
(43:38):
that famous in her life, and sothere isn't an archive like
there is for other greathistorical figures of that time,
and so there's a lot that'sunknown.
So I would love to go back intime and spend time in her life
trying to understand somethingabout what her experience was
like.
Fonz Mendoza (43:53):
Thank you so much, rob.
I really appreciate your shares.
Thank you so much for thiswonderful conversation.
Also, and again, we'll makesure we post all the information
so you can go ahead and contactRob or follow him on all
socials.
Please make sure that you alsofollow him on Substack, his blog
, and it's fantastic and you'lldefinitely get some great
insights and, like you mentioned, just some great experiences as
(44:14):
he continues to blog andcontinue to grow and continues
to write.
So definitely great resources,especially for this time and the
time to come, because, as youknow, this is going to be
changing, and as fast as it mayseem, but I love the way that
Rob says it, you know, changingat the speed of people, you know
, and it's all on us, so justlet's just continue to move
(44:34):
forward.
And so, rob, thank you so muchfor joining us today and for all
our audience members, pleasemake sure you visit our website
at myedtechlife, where you cancheck out this amazing episode
and the other 318 wonderfulepisodes where, I promise you,
you will find something that youcan sprinkle onto what you are
already doing.
Great.
And again, I definitely want togive a big shout out to our new
(44:54):
sponsor, book Creator.
Thank you so much for yoursupport.
Thank you so much, eduaid andYellowdig also for believing in
our mission so we can continueto bring some amazing
conversations week in and weekout.
So thank you as always, andfrom the bottom of my heart, my
friends, don't forget, staytechie you.
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