July 1, 2024 • 33 mins
Don't be afraid of the big, bad A.I.! In this episode, we sit down with educator, author, consultant and A.I. expert Jeff Utecht to dissect how AI tools like ChatGPT-4 have the potential to revolutionize the classroom. Utecht helps us navigate the delicate balance of excitement and fear around AI's role in education, offering valuable insights into how educators can best serve their students in this new era.
"Our job is to prepare students for their future, not for our past," according to Utecht. We explore the necessity for educators to evolve along with these groundbreaking tools to ensure students gain the relevant skills needed in an AI-driven world. Yet, how can we prepare students for a future we barely understand ourselves?
Utecht challenges the common belief that AI hampers learning by drawing powerful parallels to the historical resistance faced by other technological advancements from calculators to the internet.
He also shares practical advice on how to tackle challenges such as student cheating, the importance of clarity in educational goals and the three key A.I. policies you'll want to have in place as you begin the coming school year.
You can find out more about Jeff and his many projects at ...
JeffUtecht.com and ShiftingSchools.com.
Also, check out his podcast:
Shifting Schools Podcast: Conversations for K-12 Educators
"Outliers in Education" is a project of CEE, The Center for Educational Effectiveness. Find out more at effectiveness.org.
Produced by Jamie Howell at Howell at the Moon Productions.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ad VO (00:00):
Outliers in Education is brought to you by CEE, the
Center for EducationalEffectiveness.
Better data, better decisions,better schools.
To find out more, visiteffectivenessorg.
Eric Price (00:12):
Bolzie, this week I've got AI on my mind and I've
been dabbling around it a littlebit but how about you?
Erich Bolz (00:18):
Well, you know, because of my incredible
technological acumen, I feellike I've taken to it like a
duck to water, ep.
I mean, why would I not?
Surprisingly, I think, on apersonal level, I've found chat
GPT, especially chat GPT-4, tobe super useful.
My next most usefultechnological link was my
administrative assistant who,unfortunately, when I left
public education, didn't comewith me to the Center for
(00:40):
Educational Effectiveness.
So I would say at this pointfor me, ai has been a great leap
forward, ep, what are younoticing with AI, both on a
personal level and with thebabies that you teach there at
the Institution of HigherLearning?
Eric Price (00:52):
I have had it do things for me that have taken me
hours, like if I'm prepping fora presentation or something
like it has really helped me todo some of those pieces.
One of my kids is actuallyusing it to write code, but in
the classroom you notice likestudents that will use it as a
resource and you can still seetheir thumbprint on it and then
(01:15):
you'll see the cut and copy andlike I have never heard you talk
like this, ever right.
Like yeah, that's that kind ofa thing.
So I think there's a lot offear out there in the classroom
about you know how do we dealwith it?
Like this big monster, you knowit's this sentient thing that's
going to destroy us all.
Erich Bolz (01:33):
Well, it's funny that you mentioned that, because
I've seen like in my own twochildren I think my son now my
sense was academically he usedit as a shortcut Just write the
three-page paper Whereas I thinkmy daughter used it more as a
lit review.
So I want to go down 10slightly different rabbit trails
, as I'm synthesizing a hugeamount of information on X
concept and so it's justinteresting to watch these kids
(01:57):
in their 20s use the technologyso differently both probably to
a better end.
Eric Price (02:02):
Yeah, exactly, and I think people who are afraid of
AI right now really should beembracing it, even though I
think it has the threat ofreally changing things, which
always scares the crap out of usin education, right.
Erich Bolz (02:18):
Well, the threat and the promise right.
Yeah, but it's going to be realexciting to see where this
thing trends and goes.
Ad VO (02:30):
I think we really need to change how we look at what we
do in schools.
Everything that we do aseducators, it just comes back to
people.
Jeff Utecht (02:38):
I love it, even when it's hard, especially when
it's hard.
Eric Price (02:47):
Ultimately, I mean, this is about what's best for
kids.
Hello, hello, hello.
I'm Eric Price here with EricBowles from the Center for
Educational Effectiveness, and Iwant to thank you for joining
us for another brand new episodeof Outliers in Education, where
every month, we suss out newideas that are changing
education for the better.
Bowlesy, when we take a look atAI, I think there are some
pretty strong feelings out thereand a lot of ignorance, to
(03:10):
which I could add my own.
I've got a lot to learn on thissubject.
Erich Bolz (03:14):
Fortunately, today on the show we've got an
educator, author and consultantwho has spent a good deal more
time than we have considering AIand the impact that it will
have on education.
Eric Price (03:23):
As a former teacher, he's devoted himself to
creating sustainable change formodern learners.
It's Jeff Utech.
Welcome to the show, jeff.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Gentlemen Really appreciate it.
Hey, jeff, when we take a lookat AI, maybe that knee-jerk
reaction is like this is goingto be awful for education.
You know we need to defendagainst it.
(03:43):
I'm just going to ask you is AIreally a bad thing for
education?
Or are we responding in thewrong way, typically?
Do you think?
Jeff Utecht (03:51):
That's a really good question and I think the I
think for me, the thing that I,the way that I come about it, is
this idea that really ineducation, we don't have a
choice.
You can think it's a bad thing,you can think it's the next
golden ticket to helpingstudents learn.
That doesn't matter.
What matters is is we picked aprofession where it is our job
(04:13):
to prepare students for theirfuture and not our past, and
that is my tagline.
That is what I live by as aconsultant.
Eric Price (04:19):
Say that one again for us, jeff.
Say that one.
That's a beautiful line.
Yeah, as a history teacher,right, as a history teacher,
yeah one again for us.
Jeff Utecht (04:24):
Jeff, say that one.
That's a beautiful line.
As a history teacher, right, asa history teacher?
Yeah, our goal, our job aseducators, is to prepare
students for their future, notour past.
And when stuff like this comesalong and it usually happens
with technology, not all thetime our knee-jerk reaction is
always to think about what areall the ways this could go wrong
.
We did it with the calculator.
We did it when the internetcame into schools.
(04:45):
I sat on a committee where wedebated for months whether or
not to give every teacher anemail address, because no way
was teachers ever going to useemail.
We did it when we put wifi intoschools.
We did it when we gave everykid a laptop.
And here we are now with AI,and the knee-jerk reaction is
always going to be I don't knowhow this is going to do.
(05:07):
This is going to changeeverything.
We did the same thing whenGoogle came out, and you might
remember this.
When the internet came out, wewere just like I don't want kids
to be internet.
They're going to forget how touse encyclopedias, and they did
forget.
They did forget how to useencyclopedias, because no school
buys encyclopedias.
And so things change and ourjob in education is to make sure
(05:29):
that we are preparing studentsfor their future.
My past is my past.
I loved going and looking atencyclopedias.
I loved going to.
Microfiche said nobody ever.
We have a generation that ourgoal is is to look forward.
This is what we do in educationto look forward, to look at the
kids that are in our system andsay what are the skills,
(05:49):
dispositions and talents thatthey need to make this world a
better place as they leave ourK-12 system.
Eric Price (05:54):
So I'm going to just hop in a little bit because I
know we're going to get intosome AI stuff.
But I really want to get intothis.
Why is that?
Our posture as educators Likewe want to protect and defend
what we've done in the past.
Why do we do that?
Jeff Utecht (06:07):
So there's a couple of reasons why I think that we
do this.
And the number one thing and Italk about this a lot because I
work a lot outside of educationas well, and people are always
on me about education, education, education.
And you know what, At the endof the day, education is the
hardest organization to change.
It's the hardest structure tochange, and the reason for that
is it is the only thing here inAmerica, it is the only thing
(06:31):
that every single person hasgone through, Whether you are a
parent, whether you are aneducator yourself.
Every single whether it workedfor you or not every person went
through K-12 education, and sowhat happens is is then we
become educators, we becomeparents and we remember our best
teachers, we remember our bestyears and we want that education
(06:54):
for our children.
We want that, we want our bestteachers.
When you become an educator,you were channeling your best
teacher when you were in seventhgrade or ninth grade and you
remembered having to write theessays and reading.
You know where the red ferngrows or you read, and so you
want that for your kids.
So we reminisce we reminisce alot yeah, and parents do the
same thing, and this is why it'sreally difficult, because all
(07:18):
of a sudden, something like AIcomes along and they're saying
well, kids aren't going to haveto write.
Well, no, no, no, kids willneed to write, but writing will
be different.
Right, writing will bedifferent.
Kids are still writing.
Yeah, we, actually we did theexact same thing, and I don't
want to get too far into socialmedia, but we did the same thing
with social media.
Kids are no longer going towrite.
In fact, kids are writing morethan they did before, but
(07:41):
they're in tweets, they're indescriptions of Instagram posts,
they're in updates to Snapchat.
They're not five paragraphessays.
Eric Price (07:49):
But we can't sentence, diagram those darn
things.
That's the thing that pisses me.
Yeah, exactly, so it'sinteresting.
The one thing that you saidthere is they're still writing,
but it's going to be in adifferent way, and I think that
one of those pushes I see ineducation is when we have to do
extra calories, like we're likewhoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a
minute, right and as well, asI'm not sure how to deal with
(08:10):
this new structure that's coming.
Jeff Utecht (08:11):
Yeah, and I think that's a that's a huge part of
it is.
You know, especially withtechnology, you find this in
education.
These are heavy lifts.
You know, we don't have anyteachers, any teachers right now
.
Whether you are a brand newteacher coming into the system
or you've been teaching in itfor 30 years, everybody's in the
same place.
When it comes to AI, nobodyknows how to use this in the
classroom, nobody knows whereit's going to go or what it's
(08:33):
going to impact.
But my favorite part aboutright now this is my first time
in 25 years in education andeducational technology that K-12
education is having thisconversation on your podcast
technology, that K-12 educationis having this conversation on
your podcast.
We don't do this when it comesto technology.
We usually wait 10 or 15 yearsdown the road and then we all of
a sudden are saying you know,kids, cell phones are a
(08:54):
distraction.
We should have been talkingabout cell phones being a
distraction in 2012.
Yeah, yeah but we waited until2024.
And now we've.
Now we're trying to backfillall this, and what I love about
our conversation right now isthat nobody has the answers to
where AI is going.
No, not a single industry, nota single organization.
(09:14):
But we're all having theconversation and what I need
right now is I need K-12organizations.
I need K-12 leaders to be inthe conversation.
K-12 organizations.
I need K-12 leaders to be in theconversation.
That's it.
Keep your eye on it, knowwhat's coming, play with it.
You don't need to have theanswers, you don't need to know
how it's going to impact yourELA class, because nobody has
(09:35):
yet, but be in the conversationso that, as it evolves, we are
evolving with it, instead oftrying to play catch up 10 years
from now saying, oh wow, weprobably should have really
taught kids how to use this,because now we've got kids just
spewing out AI papers thatnobody can detect.
Erich Bolz (09:49):
So, jeff, I'm a 56-year-old digital immigrant,
and what that suggests is anawful lot of people who look
like me are leading schoolsystems into this brave new
world.
What do they need to know?
Jeff Utecht (10:02):
Well, I think step one is to know that not a whole
lot has changed.
I think we get so caught up inreading headlines and not
reading research.
And this isn't just with AI,this is with everything.
And it doesn't matter your age,we all do it.
What I usually find in mytrainings is I've got about a
third of it, and it doesn'tmatter on the age, it doesn't
(10:23):
matter what school or schooldistrict I'm in.
A third of people are oh my gosh, I hate AI.
It's going to take over theworld.
I don't know what to do.
I have a third of the peoplethat are just like eh, whatever,
it's just the next new thing.
And then I have a third ofpeople saying this is going to
revolutionize education andwe're going to do things
completely different than weever did.
And the great thing is is youneed all those perspectives, but
(10:44):
we need to all be movingforward and we all have to have
this idea of I don't care whereyou are about AI, I care about
what are the skills that thischild needs to go to the future.
And what we are seeing now isin industries, in organizations.
We don't see any industry ororganization saying you know
what, eric, I really want you tobe really good at your job
(11:07):
being a banker.
Just don't use AI.
Ad VO (11:09):
I don't see anybody saying that.
Jeff Utecht (11:12):
We don't see anybody saying, hey, you know
what, I hired you to be myexecutive assistant, but
whatever you do, don't use AI indoing the work that you have to
do in making yourself better.
We don't see AI in doing thework that you have to do in
making yourself better.
We don't see that happening.
What we see is the oppositehappening, where people are
saying and we're getting to apoint where we're not even going
to ask if you know how toleverage AI to do the work that
(11:34):
I'm hiring you to do, we arejust going to assume you know
how to use it appropriately, youknow how to use it effectively
to do the work that I hired youto do.
Erich Bolz (11:42):
So, jeff, you mentioned AI literacy.
Somebody like me doesn't evenknow what that means.
What does that mean to you?
What should it mean to us?
Jeff Utecht (11:50):
Yeah, so we're seeing a couple of things around
AI literacy and I think we'restill defining it on a larger
scale of what that means.
But really, what AI literacymeans is understanding at a
fundamental level how you puttogether a sentence structure.
Right Now, we talk aboutliteracy in writing.
We talk about literacy inreading.
We talk about media literacy.
(12:11):
You know, when we look at medialiteracy, that's probably the
closest thing we have for AIliteracy right now.
And when we talk about medialiteracy, we talk about actually
dissecting the media that'scoming at us.
It's one of my favorite thingsto do with kids, because we're
all bombarded by ads, whether itbe a billboard, whether it's
social media, whether it's anadvertisement while you're
watching a football game we'reall bombarded by ads.
Erich Bolz (12:32):
This podcast has been brought to you by Fox News.
Jeff Utecht (12:37):
And so the idea here is how do you break that
down and understand?
What is the message that'scoming at you when we talk about
AI literacy?
It's that exact same thing.
It's understanding that thereare three sides to this, and
this is one of the things I lovethat we've done here in the
state of Washington is we'vetaken what we call a
human-centric approach, andSuperintendent Reichdahl who I
know you just had on your shownot that long ago really engaged
(13:00):
in us because I helped to leadthe work here in the state of
Washington on this is he wantedto use this thing called HAIH.
Right, human input AI does itsthing and then human empowerment
that whatever we use AI forneeds to empower us as humans.
That whole process isconsidered AI literacy, and what
(13:20):
we have to start to understandis that human input side how you
prompt these things is AIliteracy.
And here's just one littlething for all your listeners, no
matter what age you are.
Here's the biggest issue we'rehaving right now, and if you
want to go, try this withChatGPT or pick any AI bot.
The number one change when wetalk about AI literacy is that
we have to change our mindsetaround the way that we talk to
(13:43):
computers.
For the last 25 years, we havebeen training students, we have
been training teachers, we'vebeen training society to talk to
their computers throughkeywords, aka Google, and so we
all know how to interact withour machines as if they are
Google, and that's what wetaught kids.
The keywords matter.
The way you sentence structurematters.
(14:04):
In a search result, you'relooking for this, this and this,
and that is a search literacy.
Now, when it comes to AIliteracy, what we have to
understand is, when I'm talkingto people, they're like well, I
tried it and it doesn't reallywork.
And I'm like well, the problemis probably because you're
trying to use it like a searchengine.
It's not a search engine, it'sa creation tool.
(14:25):
And so, when it comes to usingyour AI, the most important part
of the prompt is the verb.
Oh, you mean ELA, where westudy nouns and verbs?
Oh, oh, the verb is the mostimportant.
Do you want this thing tocreate?
Do you want it to analyze?
Do you want it to evaluate?
Do you want it to synthesize?
Do you want it to expand?
That's the power of this.
(14:45):
If you've been struggling withAI, you're probably not using
the right verb the verb is thekey.
Eric Price (14:52):
So if you said, hey, this is the way that we should
be interfacing, talk to me likeI'm a teacher, that we should be
interfacing, talk to me likeI'm a teacher, this is the way
that you should be using it,what would you say to me as a
teacher, like, this is how we'redoing it and this is how you
should switch.
Jeff Utecht (15:05):
So I think there's two things that we're going to
have to get very clear on ineducation.
Number one the first thing isis this is going to focus us to
truly understand what is theoutcome I'm assessing?
If I am not crystal clear onthe outcome that I am assessing,
then it doesn't matter, thennothing else is going to matter.
The second part is because wenow all live in an AI world.
(15:27):
One of the, I think, mostpopular pieces that we released
here in our AI guidance in thestate of Washington is we
released an AI matrix.
That is a five-step matrix thatgoes from no use of AI at all
to, on the high end, use AI tolearn.
Whatever it is you need tolearn and what teachers need to
do is every single assignmentyou're going to say, hey on this
(15:50):
assignment.
The outcome I'm assessing is X.
Therefore, you can use AI inall these other ways, but don't
use it this way, because that'swhat I'm assessing.
Do you think that, like when wewere looking at that?
Other ways, but don't use itthis way, because that's what
I'm assessing.
Eric Price (16:01):
Do you think that, like when we were looking at
that, that most teachers don'tlook at the outcome of most
assignments or more structuresanyway?
Jeff Utecht (16:08):
Yes, I think that's a huge part of it, and I think
one of the issues is we are notclear on our outcomes, and when
we're not clear on our outcomeswe cause confusion along the
line, one of my favorite.
Can I tell a story real quickof just how this happens?
Eric Price (16:23):
Anything to keep me and Bulls from talking, Jeff,
please.
Jeff Utecht (16:26):
Okay.
So here's one that I just got.
This from a school districtabout two months ago.
A teacher, high school kids,11th graders a teacher assigned
students to write a report.
This student writes a report,doesn't use AI, writes the
report, turns the report in,gets a great grade on the report
.
The teacher then decides toextend the activity with writing
(16:49):
a report and decides she wantsto hit a standard that is also
public speaking.
So she's asked her studentsokay, I want you to take this
report that you just wrote and Iwant you to turn it into a talk
and we're going to practice TEDTalk talks, right?
So they've got to be 18 minutes.
They've got to be succinct,you've got to make a point, like
the whole thing which is greatright, we've got all kinds of
(17:09):
public speaking standards.
This teacher's doing incrediblestuff.
This kid takes his report, goesto chat GPT and says how could
you help me take this report andturn it into a TED Talk?
Could you help me write ascript for this talk?
And uses as a thought partner,uses ChatGPT to help him create
(17:31):
his speech.
So then he goes back to school,he stands up in front of class
and he gives the talk and theteacher gives him a bad grade or
even gives him a zero becausehe used AI in creating the
speech.
No See, here's the issue.
Was the outcome that you weretrying to assess speech public
(17:52):
speaking, or was it speechwriting?
If the?
If the outcome was speechwriting, the?
Eric Price (17:57):
kid 100% should'd get a zero.
Jeff Utecht (18:00):
But if you were assessing a student's ability to
stand in front of a group ofothers and give a public speak
as if it was a TED talk, I don'tcare how you made the speech,
that's not the outcome.
Eric Price (18:13):
I always got in trouble when I used thought
partners on my assignments inschool.
Jeff, that was not looked uponwell from my teachers, but it
was not AI.
It was the guy I was cheatingfrom.
Jeff Utecht (18:23):
Well, and this is the problem, right Is Stanford.
Stanford came out and did astudy that, before the pandemic
in 2018, 2019, they did a studythat showed that 60 to 70% of
students were cheating in highschool.
They did a study in 2023 or theyeah, last last fall.
They did a study again after AIcame out.
(18:45):
They found a 60 to 70% of kidsadmitted to cheating.
So here's the thing this wholething that AI has created
cheating.
No, it hasn't.
We are still looking at 60 to70% of kids that are cheating in
high school.
Do you know what AI has done?
We are still looking at 60 to70% of kids that are cheating in
high school.
Do you know what AI has done?
It's made it easier to catchthe kids.
(19:09):
We should all be thanking AI,because before Eric it was, I
was cheating from you, you werecheating from me.
It was human to human.
It was hard to tell.
But now when kids use a machine, you can say like, oh, that
machine totally wrote that.
And so all of a sudden we thinkthat plagiarism is out of
control.
No, we're just catching thekids.
We're catching the kids, we'renot.
We're not.
We're still not catching them.
Eric Price (19:26):
We're not finished augmenting our actual
intelligence.
Hang tight and we'll be rightback after the break with more
from our guest AI expert, jeffUtech.
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Eric Price (20:47):
Welcome back to the AI edition of Outliers in
Education.
Today on the show we'respeaking with educator author
and speaker Jeff Uteck about AIand how educators should
approach this rapidly expandingtechnology.
Erich Bolz (21:00):
Jeff, what do you see as both the major threats to
education and the majoropportunities with AI?
Jeff Utecht (21:04):
if you were to contrast, the major threat is
that we don't accept that it'shere.
That's the major threat, right.
If we don't accept it's here ifwe wait too long.
I was having a conversationwith a superintendent the other
day that was saying yeah, youknow, I just really don't want
to lead on AI, I'm going to waitfor it to kind of plateau.
And I was thinking, okay, butproblem is, you don't know where
(21:26):
that plateau is going to be andyou need to be in the
conversation Like that's fine,you don't want to be the front
runner, but you need to keep theconversation going.
As a school leader, you've gotto keep the conversation going
right now.
Let your let your scouts I callthem scouts let your scouts go
out and run Like you know yourearly adopters, your geeky
teachers, you got to go.
Let them run, let them gofigure out.
(21:46):
And then they come back andthey say, no, the you know we're
headed that way.
That's where we need to go.
You everybody needs their techscouts, right, go out, figure it
out.
I think is is the thing we.
We cannot, as we have done withtechnologies in the past, just
sit here and say, ah, well,we'll get to it when it figures
itself out.
No, that puts us behind theeight ball and our kids are
(22:09):
using it.
The latest study shows that 60%of high school kids are already
engaging with AI in some way.
If that's the case, then ourjob is to prepare them for our
future.
They're going to use it,whether we do or not, in the
school.
I want to use it in school, sowhen I make sure they're using
it the right way, right.
So there's that side of it.
The other side is is if we dotruly start to look at the power
(22:29):
of this thing, specifically insupporting students who are
struggling in schools and that'swhere the research is really
starting to pile up is studentswho are not your top 10% If you
have your AP kids or IB kids inhigh school, your kids who are
already probably a 3.5 or higherAI not going to impact them
(22:51):
very much, but your kids who arestruggling, your kids like
myself who have dyslexia, kidswho have processing disorders,
kids who struggle in onespecific class because they're
just not understanding it.
We are seeing evidence startingto pile up that that's who this
supports Our most needy of kids.
Eric Price (23:10):
That is awesome, and that's the place where we need
the most help, right, thestudents that we?
Yeah, exactly, that's fantastic.
Okay, Jeff, if you get out thecrystal ball and you say, okay,
look, five years from now, thisis kind of what it should look
or what you think it will looklike.
What do you see five years fromnow in education?
Jeff Utecht (23:29):
That's really hard because this thing is moving so
fast.
You fast.
I'm getting ready to dotrainings for keynotes for
August and I've told everyschool district.
I don't know what I'm going tosay yet because that's literally
two months from now and the waythis thing is going, I have no
clue where we'll be in twomonths, but I think five years
from now.
There's going to be a couple ofthings I think we'll be able to
(23:50):
look at.
I think we're going to have oneof our biggest things is going
to be we are going to have somuch data on students that AI is
going to be able to crunchthrough and you know, you'll be
able to have an AI bot that'sgoing to go into every teacher's
gradebook and so when you typein, hey, how is Jeff Udik doing?
It's going to be able to pullout and say, well, he's, he's
(24:14):
getting a B here, but these arethe three standards he's
struggling on.
He's getting a C here.
Here are the four standardshe's struggling on.
If you're his ELA teacher, youcould actually support him in
learning the science standard byoverlapping that science
standard with your next readingmaterial and as a teacher,
you're going to have access tothat stuff.
I think that's one.
I think it's going torevolutionize the way, because
we talk about data-drivendecisions all the time.
We have no clue what we've beendoing compared to what this
(24:36):
thing's going to help us do.
Right On the student side, Isee that we're going to get to a
place where students are goingto have, at a very low cost,
maybe done by the school or itmight be some outside vendor,
but they're almost going to havea personal tutor, and that
personal tutor, their AI tutor,will be with them and that AI
tutor is going to go to classwith them.
That AI tutor is going to beable to listen to every lecture
(24:58):
that the child has heard insideclass.
They're going to be there tosupport them, and so when I'm
home studying for the test, Iwill have somebody else there to
say okay, well, what about thisand what?
You know?
How do I do this?
What does this look like?
And I don't want I don't wantus to misrepresent that.
I don't think that tutorreplaces students talking to
students.
I think it allows us to havestudents talk in really engaging
(25:20):
ways, differently, and that'swhat I want to see is one of the
things we're still trying tolean into with this stuff is the
generative nature of it, thatevery time you give it a prompt,
every single person gets adifferent response.
That, to me, changes theclassroom, because when I have
25 different kids where I cansay, everybody here's a prompt,
(25:42):
everybody put this prompt intoyour AI bot.
Now turn and talk to yourneighbor.
What did you get?
What was the output?
What do you agree with?
What do you disagree with?
What are the biases that youthink might be in that response?
Based on its training data,what is it that we need to
consider, knowing that your botwas trained this way and your
bot was trained that way?
And that's going to change theconversations of the classroom.
(26:02):
We're so worried thattechnology is going to take away
student-to-student interaction.
We stop thinking about how canwe leverage this to make more
human to human connectivity inour classrooms.
Erich Bolz (26:15):
Jeff, I'm a principal looking down the
barrel of September, or a 27year veteran classroom teacher.
Where do I start with thisstuff next year?
It's a great question.
Jeff Utecht (26:25):
I think there are three things.
Right now this is a great timeof year to be talking about this
there's three things we need tohave in place for next year.
Number one we need to have somekind of AI matrix in place so
that you, as a teacher, can say,on today's assignment, we're
going to use AI at a level three, or today's assignment, we're
going to use AI at a level four,whatever you decide.
Right, and you get that.
(26:46):
But you need to have somethingthat we can point to so that
myself and my students allunderstand today's level three.
That way, if a student uses itat a level five, we can have a
conversation about it.
Right, but I have to havesomething I can point to to say
that we all understand where weare.
And you can find these matriceseverywhere.
Again, we've got one that'sbeing adopted inside the
Washington State AI guidance,but you can find them all over
(27:08):
the web.
Find one that works for you.
That's step one.
Step two is to clearly statewhat are the expectations for
students.
So we need to update somelanguage in our syllabi, we're
going to need to update somelanguage in our student handbook
around the use of AI, andreally.
That is that you as a studentare responsible for being able
(27:29):
to explain your process oflearning, so that if I, as a
teacher, come to you and say,hey, uh, it looks like you used
AI, like I'm thinking thatthere's some AI in this piece of
work, can you explain yourthought process or your workflow
to get to this piece of work?
And I need every student to beable to say, well, yeah, if the
student says I went to chat copyand pasted the prompt and
(27:52):
printed it off, that's oneconversation.
But if the student says I wentto chat GBT, copied and pasted
the prompt and printed it off,that's one conversation.
But if the student says well, Iwas struggling, I didn't know
where to start, so I asked chatGBT to help me brainstorm some
ideas.
I took one of those ideas andasked it to write me an outline.
And then I took the outline anddid some research on Google and
came up with this paper as ateacher.
That's a completely differentconversation.
Eric Price (28:09):
But you're getting.
You're getting to outcome againLike what's your purpose, right
yeah?
Jeff Utecht (28:13):
Yes, yes.
And then the third part of thatis.
The third part of that is uh,what are what are the
expectations for me as a teacher?
Right, the expectations for meas a teacher is my outcomes are
very clear.
I have set a clear tone of whatI believe AI use on this
specific assignment should be,and I've given you the skills
necessary to use AI inappropriate and ethical ways.
(28:35):
So those are the three thingswe need AI, matrix, student
guidelines and teacherresponsibilities.
Eric Price (28:42):
Yeah, and I think all of those keep coming back to
your salient point, which is weneed to know what we're doing
with whatever tool that it isthat we're using.
Yeah, absolutely All right.
Well, this is the time when wehave our own AI.
Champion of summary.
Jeff, this is Bolzy's time thathe summarizes everything that
you've ever said in the lasthalf an hour or thought, bolzy,
(29:03):
you're up.
Erich Bolz (29:03):
Well, it sounds a little bit like Chad GPT EP.
Little bit for you, my friend.
So I think the big overarchingtheme I took out of this was we
were just peppered with Jeff'sinfusion, of Simon Sinek's
diffusion of innovationthroughout this entire thing,
really talking about leaders andlaggards.
And you know, it's OK to bewhere we are as long as, as long
as we're moving forward as asystem Right off the top.
(29:25):
I really liked you may not likeAI, but we don't have a choice.
Our job is to prepare kids fortheir future, not our past.
I think.
I think we all believe that toa high, high degree, at least on
this podcast.
Education is the hardest thingto change because we all
experience it.
I think just the difficultnature of the work I think was
underscored by what Jeff had tosay.
(29:45):
There we read headlines and notresearch.
I just love that.
I had to throw that in there.
Ai literacy is related to medialiteracy.
I really hadn't thought aboutit that way, but that just kind
of smacked me right in the face.
That's absolutely right.
That's crystal clear.
What's the quality of theoutput?
Because we talked outputs andoutcomes an awful lot as we went
.
We need to be retrained fromsearch literacy to how we talk
(30:07):
to the computer, In essencereally moving from nouns to
verbs.
For all you ELA files out there.
What's the outcome?
I am assessing?
I think we've not been clear onthat for a long time.
That was a great part of ourconversation, Always important
in pedagogy.
Way more important now, and Ijust love the analogy of don't
confuse whether the assignmentwas speech writing or speech
giving.
Are we assessing the rightthing?
(30:27):
Are we assessing that outcome?
Denial of AI is one of ourbiggest threats and we wouldn't
say we're going to go ahead andwait for the better cancer
research or you know what.
It's OK that we've got a lot offolks out here that we're not
on the cutting edge in literacyinstruction in this school, but
we'll wait for another school tofigure it out.
Who knows how many kids'opportunity to become literate
(30:48):
will pass.
We would not say that.
So we can't deny the use of AIeither.
Support for our strugglingstudents that really resonated
with me.
We heard Andrea Bittner, who'sjust an absolutely wonderful
podcast guest, national speaker,still practicing teacher,
talking about how she wouldutilize AI to really simplify
and differentiate reading levelsfor her multilingual learners.
(31:09):
So really seeing that threadthrough these two podcasts.
I thought about just playingaround a little bit with Brisk
for Google.
I thought about some of myleast favorite work as a central
office administrator wascurriculum adoption and just the
ability to manipulate standardsand the cross-cutting aspect of
standards that AI is going tohelp us do so much easier than
(31:30):
the years of pain I spent tryingto herd cats into curriculum
adoption.
How can tech be used tofacilitate human connectivity?
Maybe is the right question.
We should all be asking a wholelot more and then, to
paraphrase from our friends theBeatles, and in the end, AI may
just be the thing that leads usfrom fuzzy outcomes and foggy
(31:50):
taxonomy to the land of clarity,and maybe AI is all you need.
Eric Price (31:57):
I don't remember that song, but it really is a
catchy verse.
Bolzy, we'll have to work onthat one.
Jeff, thanks being hereHonestly so good.
You've got your website,jeffutechcom.
Your latest book out is yourConnected Classroom A Practical
Guide for Teachers.
Check that one out.
Your fantastic podcast ShiftingSchools Anywhere you listen to
(32:18):
podcasts.
That's going to be there.
Anything else that we missed,jeff, where we could find you or
find some of your thinking?
Jeff Utecht (32:24):
Nope, I think that's it At jutech, that's
J-U-T-E-C-H-T.
All over the socials and forall kinds of free downloads and
guides around AI and AIleadership, you can go to
shiftingschoolscom, which isalso the home of the podcast.
We've got all kinds of freePDFs over there for you to
download and kind of get youstarted in doing this work.
So thank you, guys, appreciateit.
Eric Price (32:44):
Jeff, such a pleasure to have you on.
I wish there was more peoplelike you that were here to break
our education system and say wegot to do the right thing for
everybody, Appreciate it.
Jeff Utecht (32:54):
Thank you, gentlemen.
Erich Bolz (32:55):
And thank you all of you for listening to this
episode of Outliers in Education.
You can get this episode at ourwebsite, effectivenessorg, or
wherever you listen to yourfavorite podcast.
Ad VO (33:06):
If you'd like to find out how to gather the data you need
to help drive positive changein your school or district, take
a moment to visit CEE, theCenter for Educational
Effectiveness, ateffectivenessorg.
Better data, better decisions,better schools Effectivenessorg.
Outliers in Education is brought to you by CEE, the
Center for EducationalEffectiveness.
Better data, better decisions,better schools.
To find out more, visiteffectivenessorg.
Eric Price (00:12):
Bolzie, this week I've got AI on my mind and I've
been dabbling around it a littlebit but how about you?
Erich Bolz (00:18):
Well, you know, because of my incredible
technological acumen, I feellike I've taken to it like a
duck to water, ep.
I mean, why would I not?
Surprisingly, I think, on apersonal level, I've found chat
GPT, especially chat GPT-4, tobe super useful.
My next most usefultechnological link was my
administrative assistant who,unfortunately, when I left
public education, didn't comewith me to the Center for
(00:40):
Educational Effectiveness.
So I would say at this pointfor me, ai has been a great leap
forward, ep, what are younoticing with AI, both on a
personal level and with thebabies that you teach there at
the Institution of HigherLearning?
Eric Price (00:52):
I have had it do things for me that have taken me
hours, like if I'm prepping fora presentation or something
like it has really helped me todo some of those pieces.
One of my kids is actuallyusing it to write code, but in
the classroom you notice likestudents that will use it as a
resource and you can still seetheir thumbprint on it and then
(01:15):
you'll see the cut and copy andlike I have never heard you talk
like this, ever right.
Like yeah, that's that kind ofa thing.
So I think there's a lot offear out there in the classroom
about you know how do we dealwith it?
Like this big monster, you knowit's this sentient thing that's
going to destroy us all.
Erich Bolz (01:33):
Well, it's funny that you mentioned that, because
I've seen like in my own twochildren I think my son now my
sense was academically he usedit as a shortcut Just write the
three-page paper Whereas I thinkmy daughter used it more as a
lit review.
So I want to go down 10slightly different rabbit trails
, as I'm synthesizing a hugeamount of information on X
concept and so it's justinteresting to watch these kids
(01:57):
in their 20s use the technologyso differently both probably to
a better end.
Eric Price (02:02):
Yeah, exactly, and I think people who are afraid of
AI right now really should beembracing it, even though I
think it has the threat ofreally changing things, which
always scares the crap out of usin education, right.
Erich Bolz (02:18):
Well, the threat and the promise right.
Yeah, but it's going to be realexciting to see where this
thing trends and goes.
Ad VO (02:30):
I think we really need to change how we look at what we
do in schools.
Everything that we do aseducators, it just comes back to
people.
Jeff Utecht (02:38):
I love it, even when it's hard, especially when
it's hard.
Eric Price (02:47):
Ultimately, I mean, this is about what's best for
kids.
Hello, hello, hello.
I'm Eric Price here with EricBowles from the Center for
Educational Effectiveness, and Iwant to thank you for joining
us for another brand new episodeof Outliers in Education, where
every month, we suss out newideas that are changing
education for the better.
Bowlesy, when we take a look atAI, I think there are some
pretty strong feelings out thereand a lot of ignorance, to
(03:10):
which I could add my own.
I've got a lot to learn on thissubject.
Erich Bolz (03:14):
Fortunately, today on the show we've got an
educator, author and consultantwho has spent a good deal more
time than we have considering AIand the impact that it will
have on education.
Eric Price (03:23):
As a former teacher, he's devoted himself to
creating sustainable change formodern learners.
It's Jeff Utech.
Welcome to the show, jeff.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Gentlemen Really appreciate it.
Hey, jeff, when we take a lookat AI, maybe that knee-jerk
reaction is like this is goingto be awful for education.
You know we need to defendagainst it.
(03:43):
I'm just going to ask you is AIreally a bad thing for
education?
Or are we responding in thewrong way, typically?
Do you think?
Jeff Utecht (03:51):
That's a really good question and I think the I
think for me, the thing that I,the way that I come about it, is
this idea that really ineducation, we don't have a
choice.
You can think it's a bad thing,you can think it's the next
golden ticket to helpingstudents learn.
That doesn't matter.
What matters is is we picked aprofession where it is our job
(04:13):
to prepare students for theirfuture and not our past, and
that is my tagline.
That is what I live by as aconsultant.
Eric Price (04:19):
Say that one again for us, jeff.
Say that one.
That's a beautiful line.
Yeah, as a history teacher,right, as a history teacher,
yeah one again for us.
Jeff Utecht (04:24):
Jeff, say that one.
That's a beautiful line.
As a history teacher, right, asa history teacher?
Yeah, our goal, our job aseducators, is to prepare
students for their future, notour past.
And when stuff like this comesalong and it usually happens
with technology, not all thetime our knee-jerk reaction is
always to think about what areall the ways this could go wrong
.
We did it with the calculator.
We did it when the internetcame into schools.
(04:45):
I sat on a committee where wedebated for months whether or
not to give every teacher anemail address, because no way
was teachers ever going to useemail.
We did it when we put wifi intoschools.
We did it when we gave everykid a laptop.
And here we are now with AI,and the knee-jerk reaction is
always going to be I don't knowhow this is going to do.
(05:07):
This is going to changeeverything.
We did the same thing whenGoogle came out, and you might
remember this.
When the internet came out, wewere just like I don't want kids
to be internet.
They're going to forget how touse encyclopedias, and they did
forget.
They did forget how to useencyclopedias, because no school
buys encyclopedias.
And so things change and ourjob in education is to make sure
(05:29):
that we are preparing studentsfor their future.
My past is my past.
I loved going and looking atencyclopedias.
I loved going to.
Microfiche said nobody ever.
We have a generation that ourgoal is is to look forward.
This is what we do in educationto look forward, to look at the
kids that are in our system andsay what are the skills,
(05:49):
dispositions and talents thatthey need to make this world a
better place as they leave ourK-12 system.
Eric Price (05:54):
So I'm going to just hop in a little bit because I
know we're going to get intosome AI stuff.
But I really want to get intothis.
Why is that?
Our posture as educators Likewe want to protect and defend
what we've done in the past.
Why do we do that?
Jeff Utecht (06:07):
So there's a couple of reasons why I think that we
do this.
And the number one thing and Italk about this a lot because I
work a lot outside of educationas well, and people are always
on me about education, education, education.
And you know what, At the endof the day, education is the
hardest organization to change.
It's the hardest structure tochange, and the reason for that
is it is the only thing here inAmerica, it is the only thing
(06:31):
that every single person hasgone through, Whether you are a
parent, whether you are aneducator yourself.
Every single whether it workedfor you or not every person went
through K-12 education, and sowhat happens is is then we
become educators, we becomeparents and we remember our best
teachers, we remember our bestyears and we want that education
(06:54):
for our children.
We want that, we want our bestteachers.
When you become an educator,you were channeling your best
teacher when you were in seventhgrade or ninth grade and you
remembered having to write theessays and reading.
You know where the red ferngrows or you read, and so you
want that for your kids.
So we reminisce we reminisce alot yeah, and parents do the
same thing, and this is why it'sreally difficult, because all
(07:18):
of a sudden, something like AIcomes along and they're saying
well, kids aren't going to haveto write.
Well, no, no, no, kids willneed to write, but writing will
be different.
Right, writing will bedifferent.
Kids are still writing.
Yeah, we, actually we did theexact same thing, and I don't
want to get too far into socialmedia, but we did the same thing
with social media.
Kids are no longer going towrite.
In fact, kids are writing morethan they did before, but
(07:41):
they're in tweets, they're indescriptions of Instagram posts,
they're in updates to Snapchat.
They're not five paragraphessays.
Eric Price (07:49):
But we can't sentence, diagram those darn
things.
That's the thing that pisses me.
Yeah, exactly, so it'sinteresting.
The one thing that you saidthere is they're still writing,
but it's going to be in adifferent way, and I think that
one of those pushes I see ineducation is when we have to do
extra calories, like we're likewhoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a
minute, right and as well, asI'm not sure how to deal with
(08:10):
this new structure that's coming.
Jeff Utecht (08:11):
Yeah, and I think that's a that's a huge part of
it is.
You know, especially withtechnology, you find this in
education.
These are heavy lifts.
You know, we don't have anyteachers, any teachers right now
.
Whether you are a brand newteacher coming into the system
or you've been teaching in itfor 30 years, everybody's in the
same place.
When it comes to AI, nobodyknows how to use this in the
classroom, nobody knows whereit's going to go or what it's
(08:33):
going to impact.
But my favorite part aboutright now this is my first time
in 25 years in education andeducational technology that K-12
education is having thisconversation on your podcast
technology, that K-12 educationis having this conversation on
your podcast.
We don't do this when it comesto technology.
We usually wait 10 or 15 yearsdown the road and then we all of
a sudden are saying you know,kids, cell phones are a
(08:54):
distraction.
We should have been talkingabout cell phones being a
distraction in 2012.
Yeah, yeah but we waited until2024.
And now we've.
Now we're trying to backfillall this, and what I love about
our conversation right now isthat nobody has the answers to
where AI is going.
No, not a single industry, nota single organization.
(09:14):
But we're all having theconversation and what I need
right now is I need K-12organizations.
I need K-12 leaders to be inthe conversation.
K-12 organizations.
I need K-12 leaders to be in theconversation.
That's it.
Keep your eye on it, knowwhat's coming, play with it.
You don't need to have theanswers, you don't need to know
how it's going to impact yourELA class, because nobody has
(09:35):
yet, but be in the conversationso that, as it evolves, we are
evolving with it, instead oftrying to play catch up 10 years
from now saying, oh wow, weprobably should have really
taught kids how to use this,because now we've got kids just
spewing out AI papers thatnobody can detect.
Erich Bolz (09:49):
So, jeff, I'm a 56-year-old digital immigrant,
and what that suggests is anawful lot of people who look
like me are leading schoolsystems into this brave new
world.
What do they need to know?
Jeff Utecht (10:02):
Well, I think step one is to know that not a whole
lot has changed.
I think we get so caught up inreading headlines and not
reading research.
And this isn't just with AI,this is with everything.
And it doesn't matter your age,we all do it.
What I usually find in mytrainings is I've got about a
third of it, and it doesn'tmatter on the age, it doesn't
(10:23):
matter what school or schooldistrict I'm in.
A third of people are oh my gosh, I hate AI.
It's going to take over theworld.
I don't know what to do.
I have a third of the peoplethat are just like eh, whatever,
it's just the next new thing.
And then I have a third ofpeople saying this is going to
revolutionize education andwe're going to do things
completely different than weever did.
And the great thing is is youneed all those perspectives, but
(10:44):
we need to all be movingforward and we all have to have
this idea of I don't care whereyou are about AI, I care about
what are the skills that thischild needs to go to the future.
And what we are seeing now isin industries, in organizations.
We don't see any industry ororganization saying you know
what, eric, I really want you tobe really good at your job
(11:07):
being a banker.
Just don't use AI.
Ad VO (11:09):
I don't see anybody saying that.
Jeff Utecht (11:12):
We don't see anybody saying, hey, you know
what, I hired you to be myexecutive assistant, but
whatever you do, don't use AI indoing the work that you have to
do in making yourself better.
We don't see AI in doing thework that you have to do in
making yourself better.
We don't see that happening.
What we see is the oppositehappening, where people are
saying and we're getting to apoint where we're not even going
to ask if you know how toleverage AI to do the work that
(11:34):
I'm hiring you to do, we arejust going to assume you know
how to use it appropriately, youknow how to use it effectively
to do the work that I hired youto do.
Erich Bolz (11:42):
So, jeff, you mentioned AI literacy.
Somebody like me doesn't evenknow what that means.
What does that mean to you?
What should it mean to us?
Jeff Utecht (11:50):
Yeah, so we're seeing a couple of things around
AI literacy and I think we'restill defining it on a larger
scale of what that means.
But really, what AI literacymeans is understanding at a
fundamental level how you puttogether a sentence structure.
Right Now, we talk aboutliteracy in writing.
We talk about literacy inreading.
We talk about media literacy.
(12:11):
You know, when we look at medialiteracy, that's probably the
closest thing we have for AIliteracy right now.
And when we talk about medialiteracy, we talk about actually
dissecting the media that'scoming at us.
It's one of my favorite thingsto do with kids, because we're
all bombarded by ads, whether itbe a billboard, whether it's
social media, whether it's anadvertisement while you're
watching a football game we'reall bombarded by ads.
Erich Bolz (12:32):
This podcast has been brought to you by Fox News.
Jeff Utecht (12:37):
And so the idea here is how do you break that
down and understand?
What is the message that'scoming at you when we talk about
AI literacy?
It's that exact same thing.
It's understanding that thereare three sides to this, and
this is one of the things I lovethat we've done here in the
state of Washington is we'vetaken what we call a
human-centric approach, andSuperintendent Reichdahl who I
know you just had on your shownot that long ago really engaged
(13:00):
in us because I helped to leadthe work here in the state of
Washington on this is he wantedto use this thing called HAIH.
Right, human input AI does itsthing and then human empowerment
that whatever we use AI forneeds to empower us as humans.
That whole process isconsidered AI literacy, and what
(13:20):
we have to start to understandis that human input side how you
prompt these things is AIliteracy.
And here's just one littlething for all your listeners, no
matter what age you are.
Here's the biggest issue we'rehaving right now, and if you
want to go, try this withChatGPT or pick any AI bot.
The number one change when wetalk about AI literacy is that
we have to change our mindsetaround the way that we talk to
(13:43):
computers.
For the last 25 years, we havebeen training students, we have
been training teachers, we'vebeen training society to talk to
their computers throughkeywords, aka Google, and so we
all know how to interact withour machines as if they are
Google, and that's what wetaught kids.
The keywords matter.
The way you sentence structurematters.
(14:04):
In a search result, you'relooking for this, this and this,
and that is a search literacy.
Now, when it comes to AIliteracy, what we have to
understand is, when I'm talkingto people, they're like well, I
tried it and it doesn't reallywork.
And I'm like well, the problemis probably because you're
trying to use it like a searchengine.
It's not a search engine, it'sa creation tool.
(14:25):
And so, when it comes to usingyour AI, the most important part
of the prompt is the verb.
Oh, you mean ELA, where westudy nouns and verbs?
Oh, oh, the verb is the mostimportant.
Do you want this thing tocreate?
Do you want it to analyze?
Do you want it to evaluate?
Do you want it to synthesize?
Do you want it to expand?
That's the power of this.
(14:45):
If you've been struggling withAI, you're probably not using
the right verb the verb is thekey.
Eric Price (14:52):
So if you said, hey, this is the way that we should
be interfacing, talk to me likeI'm a teacher, that we should be
interfacing, talk to me likeI'm a teacher, this is the way
that you should be using it,what would you say to me as a
teacher, like, this is how we'redoing it and this is how you
should switch.
Jeff Utecht (15:05):
So I think there's two things that we're going to
have to get very clear on ineducation.
Number one the first thing isis this is going to focus us to
truly understand what is theoutcome I'm assessing?
If I am not crystal clear onthe outcome that I am assessing,
then it doesn't matter, thennothing else is going to matter.
The second part is because wenow all live in an AI world.
(15:27):
One of the, I think, mostpopular pieces that we released
here in our AI guidance in thestate of Washington is we
released an AI matrix.
That is a five-step matrix thatgoes from no use of AI at all
to, on the high end, use AI tolearn.
Whatever it is you need tolearn and what teachers need to
do is every single assignmentyou're going to say, hey on this
(15:50):
assignment.
The outcome I'm assessing is X.
Therefore, you can use AI inall these other ways, but don't
use it this way, because that'swhat I'm assessing.
Do you think that, like when wewere looking at that?
Other ways, but don't use itthis way, because that's what
I'm assessing.
Eric Price (16:01):
Do you think that, like when we were looking at
that, that most teachers don'tlook at the outcome of most
assignments or more structuresanyway?
Jeff Utecht (16:08):
Yes, I think that's a huge part of it, and I think
one of the issues is we are notclear on our outcomes, and when
we're not clear on our outcomeswe cause confusion along the
line, one of my favorite.
Can I tell a story real quickof just how this happens?
Eric Price (16:23):
Anything to keep me and Bulls from talking, Jeff,
please.
Jeff Utecht (16:26):
Okay.
So here's one that I just got.
This from a school districtabout two months ago.
A teacher, high school kids,11th graders a teacher assigned
students to write a report.
This student writes a report,doesn't use AI, writes the
report, turns the report in,gets a great grade on the report
.
The teacher then decides toextend the activity with writing
(16:49):
a report and decides she wantsto hit a standard that is also
public speaking.
So she's asked her studentsokay, I want you to take this
report that you just wrote and Iwant you to turn it into a talk
and we're going to practice TEDTalk talks, right?
So they've got to be 18 minutes.
They've got to be succinct,you've got to make a point, like
the whole thing which is greatright, we've got all kinds of
(17:09):
public speaking standards.
This teacher's doing incrediblestuff.
This kid takes his report, goesto chat GPT and says how could
you help me take this report andturn it into a TED Talk?
Could you help me write ascript for this talk?
And uses as a thought partner,uses ChatGPT to help him create
(17:31):
his speech.
So then he goes back to school,he stands up in front of class
and he gives the talk and theteacher gives him a bad grade or
even gives him a zero becausehe used AI in creating the
speech.
No See, here's the issue.
Was the outcome that you weretrying to assess speech public
(17:52):
speaking, or was it speechwriting?
If the?
If the outcome was speechwriting, the?
Eric Price (17:57):
kid 100% should'd get a zero.
Jeff Utecht (18:00):
But if you were assessing a student's ability to
stand in front of a group ofothers and give a public speak
as if it was a TED talk, I don'tcare how you made the speech,
that's not the outcome.
Eric Price (18:13):
I always got in trouble when I used thought
partners on my assignments inschool.
Jeff, that was not looked uponwell from my teachers, but it
was not AI.
It was the guy I was cheatingfrom.
Jeff Utecht (18:23):
Well, and this is the problem, right Is Stanford.
Stanford came out and did astudy that, before the pandemic
in 2018, 2019, they did a studythat showed that 60 to 70% of
students were cheating in highschool.
They did a study in 2023 or theyeah, last last fall.
They did a study again after AIcame out.
(18:45):
They found a 60 to 70% of kidsadmitted to cheating.
So here's the thing this wholething that AI has created
cheating.
No, it hasn't.
We are still looking at 60 to70% of kids that are cheating in
high school.
Do you know what AI has done?
We are still looking at 60 to70% of kids that are cheating in
high school.
Do you know what AI has done?
It's made it easier to catchthe kids.
(19:09):
We should all be thanking AI,because before Eric it was, I
was cheating from you, you werecheating from me.
It was human to human.
It was hard to tell.
But now when kids use a machine, you can say like, oh, that
machine totally wrote that.
And so all of a sudden we thinkthat plagiarism is out of
control.
No, we're just catching thekids.
We're catching the kids, we'renot.
We're not.
We're still not catching them.
Eric Price (19:26):
We're not finished augmenting our actual
intelligence.
Hang tight and we'll be rightback after the break with more
from our guest AI expert, jeffUtech.
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Eric Price (20:47):
Welcome back to the AI edition of Outliers in
Education.
Today on the show we'respeaking with educator author
and speaker Jeff Uteck about AIand how educators should
approach this rapidly expandingtechnology.
Erich Bolz (21:00):
Jeff, what do you see as both the major threats to
education and the majoropportunities with AI?
Jeff Utecht (21:04):
if you were to contrast, the major threat is
that we don't accept that it'shere.
That's the major threat, right.
If we don't accept it's here ifwe wait too long.
I was having a conversationwith a superintendent the other
day that was saying yeah, youknow, I just really don't want
to lead on AI, I'm going to waitfor it to kind of plateau.
And I was thinking, okay, butproblem is, you don't know where
(21:26):
that plateau is going to be andyou need to be in the
conversation Like that's fine,you don't want to be the front
runner, but you need to keep theconversation going.
As a school leader, you've gotto keep the conversation going
right now.
Let your let your scouts I callthem scouts let your scouts go
out and run Like you know yourearly adopters, your geeky
teachers, you got to go.
Let them run, let them gofigure out.
(21:46):
And then they come back andthey say, no, the you know we're
headed that way.
That's where we need to go.
You everybody needs their techscouts, right, go out, figure it
out.
I think is is the thing we.
We cannot, as we have done withtechnologies in the past, just
sit here and say, ah, well,we'll get to it when it figures
itself out.
No, that puts us behind theeight ball and our kids are
(22:09):
using it.
The latest study shows that 60%of high school kids are already
engaging with AI in some way.
If that's the case, then ourjob is to prepare them for our
future.
They're going to use it,whether we do or not, in the
school.
I want to use it in school, sowhen I make sure they're using
it the right way, right.
So there's that side of it.
The other side is is if we dotruly start to look at the power
(22:29):
of this thing, specifically insupporting students who are
struggling in schools and that'swhere the research is really
starting to pile up is studentswho are not your top 10% If you
have your AP kids or IB kids inhigh school, your kids who are
already probably a 3.5 or higherAI not going to impact them
(22:51):
very much, but your kids who arestruggling, your kids like
myself who have dyslexia, kidswho have processing disorders,
kids who struggle in onespecific class because they're
just not understanding it.
We are seeing evidence startingto pile up that that's who this
supports Our most needy of kids.
Eric Price (23:10):
That is awesome, and that's the place where we need
the most help, right, thestudents that we?
Yeah, exactly, that's fantastic.
Okay, Jeff, if you get out thecrystal ball and you say, okay,
look, five years from now, thisis kind of what it should look
or what you think it will looklike.
What do you see five years fromnow in education?
Jeff Utecht (23:29):
That's really hard because this thing is moving so
fast.
You fast.
I'm getting ready to dotrainings for keynotes for
August and I've told everyschool district.
I don't know what I'm going tosay yet because that's literally
two months from now and the waythis thing is going, I have no
clue where we'll be in twomonths, but I think five years
from now.
There's going to be a couple ofthings I think we'll be able to
(23:50):
look at.
I think we're going to have oneof our biggest things is going
to be we are going to have somuch data on students that AI is
going to be able to crunchthrough and you know, you'll be
able to have an AI bot that'sgoing to go into every teacher's
gradebook and so when you typein, hey, how is Jeff Udik doing?
It's going to be able to pullout and say, well, he's, he's
(24:14):
getting a B here, but these arethe three standards he's
struggling on.
He's getting a C here.
Here are the four standardshe's struggling on.
If you're his ELA teacher, youcould actually support him in
learning the science standard byoverlapping that science
standard with your next readingmaterial and as a teacher,
you're going to have access tothat stuff.
I think that's one.
I think it's going torevolutionize the way, because
we talk about data-drivendecisions all the time.
We have no clue what we've beendoing compared to what this
(24:36):
thing's going to help us do.
Right On the student side, Isee that we're going to get to a
place where students are goingto have, at a very low cost,
maybe done by the school or itmight be some outside vendor,
but they're almost going to havea personal tutor, and that
personal tutor, their AI tutor,will be with them and that AI
tutor is going to go to classwith them.
That AI tutor is going to beable to listen to every lecture
(24:58):
that the child has heard insideclass.
They're going to be there tosupport them, and so when I'm
home studying for the test, Iwill have somebody else there to
say okay, well, what about thisand what?
You know?
How do I do this?
What does this look like?
And I don't want I don't wantus to misrepresent that.
I don't think that tutorreplaces students talking to
students.
I think it allows us to havestudents talk in really engaging
(25:20):
ways, differently, and that'swhat I want to see is one of the
things we're still trying tolean into with this stuff is the
generative nature of it, thatevery time you give it a prompt,
every single person gets adifferent response.
That, to me, changes theclassroom, because when I have
25 different kids where I cansay, everybody here's a prompt,
(25:42):
everybody put this prompt intoyour AI bot.
Now turn and talk to yourneighbor.
What did you get?
What was the output?
What do you agree with?
What do you disagree with?
What are the biases that youthink might be in that response?
Based on its training data,what is it that we need to
consider, knowing that your botwas trained this way and your
bot was trained that way?
And that's going to change theconversations of the classroom.
(26:02):
We're so worried thattechnology is going to take away
student-to-student interaction.
We stop thinking about how canwe leverage this to make more
human to human connectivity inour classrooms.
Erich Bolz (26:15):
Jeff, I'm a principal looking down the
barrel of September, or a 27year veteran classroom teacher.
Where do I start with thisstuff next year?
It's a great question.
Jeff Utecht (26:25):
I think there are three things.
Right now this is a great timeof year to be talking about this
there's three things we need tohave in place for next year.
Number one we need to have somekind of AI matrix in place so
that you, as a teacher, can say,on today's assignment, we're
going to use AI at a level three, or today's assignment, we're
going to use AI at a level four,whatever you decide.
Right, and you get that.
(26:46):
But you need to have somethingthat we can point to so that
myself and my students allunderstand today's level three.
That way, if a student uses itat a level five, we can have a
conversation about it.
Right, but I have to havesomething I can point to to say
that we all understand where weare.
And you can find these matriceseverywhere.
Again, we've got one that'sbeing adopted inside the
Washington State AI guidance,but you can find them all over
(27:08):
the web.
Find one that works for you.
That's step one.
Step two is to clearly statewhat are the expectations for
students.
So we need to update somelanguage in our syllabi, we're
going to need to update somelanguage in our student handbook
around the use of AI, andreally.
That is that you as a studentare responsible for being able
(27:29):
to explain your process oflearning, so that if I, as a
teacher, come to you and say,hey, uh, it looks like you used
AI, like I'm thinking thatthere's some AI in this piece of
work, can you explain yourthought process or your workflow
to get to this piece of work?
And I need every student to beable to say, well, yeah, if the
student says I went to chat copyand pasted the prompt and
(27:52):
printed it off, that's oneconversation.
But if the student says I wentto chat GBT, copied and pasted
the prompt and printed it off,that's one conversation.
But if the student says well, Iwas struggling, I didn't know
where to start, so I asked chatGBT to help me brainstorm some
ideas.
I took one of those ideas andasked it to write me an outline.
And then I took the outline anddid some research on Google and
came up with this paper as ateacher.
That's a completely differentconversation.
Eric Price (28:09):
But you're getting.
You're getting to outcome againLike what's your purpose, right
yeah?
Jeff Utecht (28:13):
Yes, yes.
And then the third part of thatis.
The third part of that is uh,what are what are the
expectations for me as a teacher?
Right, the expectations for meas a teacher is my outcomes are
very clear.
I have set a clear tone of whatI believe AI use on this
specific assignment should be,and I've given you the skills
necessary to use AI inappropriate and ethical ways.
(28:35):
So those are the three thingswe need AI, matrix, student
guidelines and teacherresponsibilities.
Eric Price (28:42):
Yeah, and I think all of those keep coming back to
your salient point, which is weneed to know what we're doing
with whatever tool that it isthat we're using.
Yeah, absolutely All right.
Well, this is the time when wehave our own AI.
Champion of summary.
Jeff, this is Bolzy's time thathe summarizes everything that
you've ever said in the lasthalf an hour or thought, bolzy,
(29:03):
you're up.
Erich Bolz (29:03):
Well, it sounds a little bit like Chad GPT EP.
Little bit for you, my friend.
So I think the big overarchingtheme I took out of this was we
were just peppered with Jeff'sinfusion, of Simon Sinek's
diffusion of innovationthroughout this entire thing,
really talking about leaders andlaggards.
And you know, it's OK to bewhere we are as long as, as long
as we're moving forward as asystem Right off the top.
(29:25):
I really liked you may not likeAI, but we don't have a choice.
Our job is to prepare kids fortheir future, not our past.
I think.
I think we all believe that toa high, high degree, at least on
this podcast.
Education is the hardest thingto change because we all
experience it.
I think just the difficultnature of the work I think was
underscored by what Jeff had tosay.
(29:45):
There we read headlines and notresearch.
I just love that.
I had to throw that in there.
Ai literacy is related to medialiteracy.
I really hadn't thought aboutit that way, but that just kind
of smacked me right in the face.
That's absolutely right.
That's crystal clear.
What's the quality of theoutput?
Because we talked outputs andoutcomes an awful lot as we went
.
We need to be retrained fromsearch literacy to how we talk
(30:07):
to the computer, In essencereally moving from nouns to
verbs.
For all you ELA files out there.
What's the outcome?
I am assessing?
I think we've not been clear onthat for a long time.
That was a great part of ourconversation, Always important
in pedagogy.
Way more important now, and Ijust love the analogy of don't
confuse whether the assignmentwas speech writing or speech
giving.
Are we assessing the rightthing?
(30:27):
Are we assessing that outcome?
Denial of AI is one of ourbiggest threats and we wouldn't
say we're going to go ahead andwait for the better cancer
research or you know what.
It's OK that we've got a lot offolks out here that we're not
on the cutting edge in literacyinstruction in this school, but
we'll wait for another school tofigure it out.
Who knows how many kids'opportunity to become literate
(30:48):
will pass.
We would not say that.
So we can't deny the use of AIeither.
Support for our strugglingstudents that really resonated
with me.
We heard Andrea Bittner, who'sjust an absolutely wonderful
podcast guest, national speaker,still practicing teacher,
talking about how she wouldutilize AI to really simplify
and differentiate reading levelsfor her multilingual learners.
(31:09):
So really seeing that threadthrough these two podcasts.
I thought about just playingaround a little bit with Brisk
for Google.
I thought about some of myleast favorite work as a central
office administrator wascurriculum adoption and just the
ability to manipulate standardsand the cross-cutting aspect of
standards that AI is going tohelp us do so much easier than
(31:30):
the years of pain I spent tryingto herd cats into curriculum
adoption.
How can tech be used tofacilitate human connectivity?
Maybe is the right question.
We should all be asking a wholelot more and then, to
paraphrase from our friends theBeatles, and in the end, AI may
just be the thing that leads usfrom fuzzy outcomes and foggy
(31:50):
taxonomy to the land of clarity,and maybe AI is all you need.
Eric Price (31:57):
I don't remember that song, but it really is a
catchy verse.
Bolzy, we'll have to work onthat one.
Jeff, thanks being hereHonestly so good.
You've got your website,jeffutechcom.
Your latest book out is yourConnected Classroom A Practical
Guide for Teachers.
Check that one out.
Your fantastic podcast ShiftingSchools Anywhere you listen to
(32:18):
podcasts.
That's going to be there.
Anything else that we missed,jeff, where we could find you or
find some of your thinking?
Jeff Utecht (32:24):
Nope, I think that's it At jutech, that's
J-U-T-E-C-H-T.
All over the socials and forall kinds of free downloads and
guides around AI and AIleadership, you can go to
shiftingschoolscom, which isalso the home of the podcast.
We've got all kinds of freePDFs over there for you to
download and kind of get youstarted in doing this work.
So thank you, guys, appreciateit.
Eric Price (32:44):
Jeff, such a pleasure to have you on.
I wish there was more peoplelike you that were here to break
our education system and say wegot to do the right thing for
everybody, Appreciate it.
Jeff Utecht (32:54):
Thank you, gentlemen.
Erich Bolz (32:55):
And thank you all of you for listening to this
episode of Outliers in Education.
You can get this episode at ourwebsite, effectivenessorg, or
wherever you listen to yourfavorite podcast.
Ad VO (33:06):
If you'd like to find out how to gather the data you need
to help drive positive changein your school or district, take
a moment to visit CEE, theCenter for Educational
Effectiveness, ateffectivenessorg.
Better data, better decisions,better schools Effectivenessorg.
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