March 17, 2025 • 34 mins
The educational landscape is undergoing a profound transformation through artificial intelligence, and mindfulness education stands at this exciting frontier. In this thought-provoking exploration, Amy Edelstein reviews Sal Khan's new book "Brave New Words" and unpacks the potential and challenge of AI tutors to support students' inner development, while maintaining crucial human connections.
Amy examines Khan's great success with Khan Academy and the AI Khanmigo, looking specifically at how AI tutors can personalize learning experiences, making first-class education and tools more accessible.
AI tutors can deliver mindfulness content in students' native languages, honor cultural contexts, and support English language learners in contributing their unique perspectives despite language barriers. Imagine a classroom where students speaking Mandarin, Ukrainian, Spanish, and Vietnamese can all engage with the same wellness curriculum, then bring diverse insights to group discussions.
With proper guardrails preventing misinformation and protecting privacy, these systems can safely guide students through their inner development journey.
Amy discusses the need for a mindfulness AI tutor that integrates contemplative practice with systems thinking, helping students see knowledge as interconnected rather than compartmentalized. By connecting well-being and self regulation concepts across neuroscience, psychology, physics, and ethics, AI can help students discover meaningful relationships with our world as a whole and enable students to feel their spheres of interest grow.
There are valid concerns about digital overuse, however thoughtfully designed educational AI offers something fundamentally different—tools that address each student's needs while building community.
Join Amy on this journey into the possibilities of conscious technology.
If you're interested in contributing to the development of mindfulness-based AI tutors or have feature recommendations, connect with us at innerstrengtheducation.org and help shape this next chapter in educational innovation.
If you enjoyed this episode please leave a review!
Your review supports our podcast to reach more educators and share the importance of creating more conscious classrooms.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Amy (00:10):
Welcome to the Conscious Classroom podcast, where we're
exploring tools and perspectivesthat support educators and
anyone who works with teens tocreate more conscious,
supportive and enrichinglearning environments.
I'm your host, amy Edelstein,and I'll be sharing
transformative insights andeasy-to-implement classroom
supports that are all drawn frommindful awareness and systems
(00:32):
thinking.
The themes we'll discuss aredesigned to improve your own joy
and fulfillment in your workand increase your impact on the
world we share.
Let's get on with this nextepisode.
Hello and welcome to theConscious Classroom.
(00:52):
My name is Amy Edelstein.
Today, I want to dive into onearena of life that is changing,
of life that is changing soquickly it is just hard to keep
up with.
Even those at the leading edgeof new technology have a hard
time keeping up, let alone allof us.
(01:14):
I wanted to speak a little bitabout AI tutors, what I think is
possible tutors, what I thinkis possible and the way that
I've been delving into what itwould take to build an AI tutor
that could really cultivateyoung people's sense of purpose,
(01:38):
compassion, direction,directedness, care, inquiry,
innovation and, of course,self-regulation and mental
wellness.
This is something that I'vebeen thinking about for quite a
(02:00):
while and researching for quitea while, and now have some
developers who are reallyincredible, who I'm working with
, who are really incredible, whoI'm working with.
This past week I've turned tosomeone who I feel is embodying
the commitment to high qualityeducation, tried and true
pedagogical tools coupled withthe commitment to make
(02:31):
first-class education availablefor free to young people and
older people all around theworld.
He's someone who has reallyrevolutionized this possibility
and successfully, has been usingtechnology to help scale.
That person, of course, is SalKhan, and successfully, has been
using technology to help scale.
That person, of course, is SalKhan, as somebody who's been
experimenting with his platformfor quite a while and with the
(02:59):
AI tutor supports both forteachers and for students.
I was intrigued to pick up hisbrave new words how artificial
intelligence will revolutionizeeducation and why that's a good
thing.
I wanted to see specificallywhat he would say, what concerns
he would address, and I want toshare them with you and my own
(03:20):
response to many of them.
Although throughout the book heoffers some cautions, he is an
evangelist for the potential forAI tutors to re-engage students
in their own learning process,to ignite their curiosity, to
(03:40):
really flip classroom modelsupside down so that the time in
the classroom is spent in realhuman to human interaction and
mentorship by the teacher to thestudents.
It's a time for projectlearning and group work and
(04:02):
dialogue together becausestudents are being supported in
so many ways prior to coming toclass.
I think it has tremendouspotential and, as I see what the
AI function for Khan Academy,khan Migo, is doing, I am very
(04:25):
moved and impressed by the depthto which Khan and his 250
engineers and educationalpsychologists and curriculum
developers have really beenthinking about this.
It's always tempting to want touse technology at the bleeding
(04:46):
leading edge.
I'm not sure that's necessaryfor educational technology.
Of course we want to coming tothe forefront in large scale
commercial builds.
I'm not sure we need that kindof automation for a learning
(05:17):
tutor.
I think chat GPT-4 withguardrails and modifications
built in certainly can empowermillions of young people and
activate their curiosity andallow them to address their
(05:39):
concerns in a way that can bemet in a variety of subjects.
Of course, I'm concerned withdeveloping their sense of
purpose, their life goals, theirinner curiosity, their inner
strength, their outer stability,their ability to think in
(06:00):
context, to look at systems, tolook at themselves as part of a
living system, in their family,classroom, city nation.
We're seeing more and moreindividualized AI tutors built
on specific philosophies, andthe idea of a mindfulness and
(06:20):
systems thinking AI tutor.
Mindfulness and systemsthinking AI tutor, while
somewhat unique, is certainly,in the field of these
personalized tutors, not uniqueat all, and that's why I'm
turning to see how we can weavein really strong guardrail
(06:42):
developmental tools and the bestof personalized learning so
that we are really helpingstudents uncover the richness
and profundity that mindfulnessand systems thinking thinking
can reveal, as well as providingsafeguards.
(07:05):
Should students be engagingwith their personalized inner
strength tutor with somepersonal distress Because that,
of course, is one of the dangersof developing a relationship
with an AI tutor, because an AItutor can't necessarily spot,
(07:31):
with the same kind of perceptionthat a loved one could, a
youth's distress.
We want to make sure that we'resupporting students in a way
that is transparent and reallyprovides a safety net.
So let's dive in and look atsome of the highlights from
(07:56):
Khan's book Brave New Words andreally what he's looking for and
(08:31):
looking at and is bitten byisitude and encouraging students
to pursue their interests andtheir strengths more efficient.
And I know from working in theclassroom, when you've got 30
students, period one and threeminutes before period two comes
in with another 30 students, andthat goes on for five periods a
day and 150 kids each day.
(08:54):
It's very difficult to have thestamina, the time and the
sensitivity to do that in a waythat's accurate and truly
supportive.
So if we can make some of theprocess more efficient, then we
(09:15):
can free up our human teachers,who are even more important in
this age, to really be withstudents and understand students
and be able to talk with themand encourage them, engage them.
Now AI can provide that personallearning pathway and that
(09:39):
personalized assessment, andwhat Conmigo has done very
effectively is make thattransparent to parents and
teachers, enable parents andteachers to track a student's
progress and also feed studentsquestions and alternative
(10:03):
problems to solve in the moment,helping them think through the
areas where they're gettingtripped up without giving them
the answer and without lettingthem just skate along.
That can be a breakthrough,because usually in a class,
unless your child is always atthe lead of the class in every
(10:26):
subject, generally the class isgoing to move on.
When the time demands that,some students will be ready and
some students won't, and thestudents who aren't will find
themselves further and furtherbehind because they never really
work on those areas that werestumbling blocks when it comes
(10:48):
to mindfulness and systemsthinking.
That's really important becausewe want students to understand
the concepts of self-care, theconcepts of inner exploration
and the concepts of compassionfor self and other, and how to
see oneself in this evolutionaryframework, understanding how
(11:12):
we're conditioned by theevolutionary development of our
bodies and brains and by theevolutionary development of the
world.
Those concepts are subtle andwe want to be able to present
them at a developmentallyappropriate level of complexity
(11:35):
and language.
So AI personalized tutors cando that.
They can take a lesson I'vedesigned and broken up into
pieces, present that lesson inmultiple languages, depending on
what language the studentspeaks.
In my city, where we do most ofour inner strength work although
(11:57):
we are expanding nationally nowone in six public school
students is an English languagelearner.
Oftentimes we go in and can'tpossibly translate into these
different languages, because inone class you may have a student
who speaks Mandarin, you haveanother student who speaks
(12:19):
Cantonese, you have a studentwho speaks Pashtun, a student
who speaks Ukrainian, a studentwho speaks Vietnamese and maybe
one who speaks Nepali, let aloneSpanish.
About 25% of our students areSpanish speakers.
Ai can help with that.
So currently I'm creating allmy lessons, both in text and
(12:43):
audio, broken into short pieces,so that these students, once we
build, will be able to get thelessons believe it or not, in
their own language and askquestions in their own language.
(13:19):
As we scale wellness toolsaround the world, we want to
ensure that they're culturallyappropriate, that the examples
are relatable to the studentsand that the subtle values
differences are also built intothe lessons.
The way a student in Hong Kongmight approach ambition might be
subtly different than the way astudent in New York might
approach ambition and goalsetting.
We can train our tutor tounderstand that and to subtly
(13:42):
revise the language to speak toa student in their cultural
context.
I mean, that is amazing.
Will it be perfect?
No, but these models can learnfrom themselves and from their
interactions.
That's another thing that weneed to take care of, which Khan
(14:04):
Academy is doing an amazing job, which is how do we create
privacy If we want the AI tolearn in situ and if we want to
be able to provide parentssummaries to the depth that
they're interested in, if wewant to be able to tap a student
(14:28):
out and connect them with alive person, should there be any
indication of more seriousmental distress.
What do we want to be able tocollect in terms of aggregate
data?
How do we protect an individualstudent's privacy because
they're minors, and how do weprotect the way that they're
(14:54):
learning so that it doesn'tbecome fodder for somebody
else's marketing?
This is where I feel that KhanAcademy has just really thought
these issues through with a lotof depth and subtlety, because
we do need to be able to engageand partner and mentor and teach
(15:21):
our young people as parents,teachers, mentors, guardians,
psychologists and we need toprotect privacy in all of those
ways.
So it can be done, even thoughmostly our data is being
(15:42):
harvested in just anuncontrolled and unmitigated
manner, which I think willlikely cause quite a few issues
in the future, in the short orlong-term future.
Whereas we're building thesetools for young people, the
technology exists to do it right, so it just takes the time and
(16:06):
the will and the investment andthe recognition that, for AI to
work for us, we want to ensurethat it shares the values and
the system shares the valuesthat we share and the system
(16:26):
shares the values that we share.
When we're talking about AItutors specifically around
mindfulness and the subtletiesof inner development.
We really need to guard againstmisinformation and that's
something that I intend to makesure is done with our inner
strength AI tutor and somethingthat Con Amigo has shown can be
(16:49):
done.
You create very structurededucational boundaries so that
your AI doesn't make things upwhat they call hallucination.
You may have experienced a chat.
Gpt can generate false ormisleading information, but you
can prevent it from doing thatby allowing it only to draw
(17:14):
information from trusted sourcesthat you identify and to only
speak to certain questions andcontext.
If students ask for informationthat goes outside those
boundaries, it will simply sayI'm sorry, you know I'm an AI
tutor and that is something thatI'm not able to do.
(17:38):
This is really important withmindfulness, because we want to
be sure that the AI isn't justrandomly pulling from random
sources with superficialunderstanding of the power of
mindfulness-based tools in aninappropriate way.
(18:00):
I mean there's plenty of stuffout on the internet that really
it'd be great if we could cleanit up, because it's not very
well thought through informationor tools.
So at this point now, anyonelooking for meditation
instruction needs to be quitecareful about what you're
listening to and who you'relistening to.
(18:22):
But we can build that in.
We can also build in ageappropriate filtering, so
they're not talking to a sixthgrader with the same language,
they're talking to a 10th graderor a 12th grader or a college
student, and also they're notengaging anything else that is
(18:43):
not appropriate for young peopleor for a mindfulness AI tutor
to be engaging with.
And, of course, what I'm mostinterested in is really helping
students learn how to dialogue,how to question in a way that
(19:04):
goes deeper, not just to get theanswer, but to open up an issue
, a theme, a question to explorefrom different perspectives and
to sense new threads oremergencies in their thinking
and reasoning in their thinkingand reasoning.
(19:25):
So Sal Khan and his team havedone a lot to embed, to train
their AI tutor on Socraticdialogue.
So they don't give answers butthey ask questions, so they get
(19:48):
students to think critically andexplain, and the way that the
tutor engages with them is justlike a good human mentor would
is to keep exploring together,always opening an open door
rather than an answer that endsthe discussion.
Now the wonderful thing aboutan AI tutor which of course, I
(20:10):
do with my students is I'malways bringing in very
different approaches to asimilar theme.
So we might look atneuroscience, we might look at
physics, we might look atpsychology or different schools
of psychology, or we might lookat physics, we might look at
psychology or different schoolsof psychology, or we might look
at ethics, or we might look atthe body-mind relationship as
(20:34):
different ways of unpacking ourexperience in the moment.
Tutor with access to profiles onthe great thinkers, scientists,
psychologists, historians,archaeologists, geologists,
(21:02):
cosmologists can pull in threeor four different examples from
radically different fields ofknowledge and show the student
that when we're looking at howto become strong and wise people
, how to navigate difficulty,how to take care of ourselves
and cultivate wellness, thereare many different angles.
(21:22):
We can approach this with manydifferent angles we can approach
this with.
That keeps students thinking inthis integrated way, rather
than psychology being completelyseparate from math, being
completely separate from history, being completely separate from
chemistry.
It doesn't have to be.
(21:42):
Our world is a single, unifiedworld and when knowledge is not
so compartmentalized, it reallyhelps liberate a student's
capacity.
They start to feel like, oh, Ididn't think I was good at math,
but it's only because mathdidn't make sense to me.
(22:03):
But when I relate math tosomething I am interested in.
Boy oh boy, it's reallyimportant.
Related to this is the safe andvery fantastic way that Kanmiga
works with interactive learning,with conversations with
(22:25):
historical figures, literarycharacters.
So a student could say okay,what does the Buddha say about
being kind to other people?
Where does that fit on thespectrum?
If we're talking about thespectrum of values, maybe I'd
(22:50):
like to know what were thevalues that Martin Luther King
espoused?
How would he think aboutkindness and compassion in a
relationship?
Or compared to activism, orpushing against what's wrong?
(23:10):
And what about Marie Curie?
Did she have anything to sayabout supporting the people that
she worked with as she wasinventing and pursuing solutions
to difficult problems?
(23:32):
What I like about Conmigo isthere are guardrails placed so
that historical figures can onlycomment on things within their
own time frame, on things withintheir own timeframe, and
characters in novels can onlycomment and respond to things
(23:53):
within the setting of their book.
That prevents AI from makingthings up or hallucinating or
imagining a response that wejust simply don't know.
(24:13):
One of the examples in SalKhan's book he has an expert on
Harriet Tubman engage with theAI as the historical figure and
ask what she thinks aboutreparations for slavery and
because of the guardrails.
(24:34):
The AI comments.
Well, I don't know.
We weren't discussing that inmy time, but in my time I always
was supportive of helping thenewly liberated slaves have
education and have sufficientmeans to start their new life.
(24:54):
So she didn't speak out of turn, she didn't give a reflection
on a contemporary problem, whichis very important to allow
students to make their ownassessments but to really
understand the historical figurein their own time and in their
own place and in their owncontext.
(25:17):
Sometimes students ask me forfurther learning on a particular
meditation or a particularexample or a particular
psychological approach or traumasensitive approach and
sometimes in the moment it'sreally hard to sift through all
(25:41):
of the materials that I've comeacross and thinkers and modes of
knowledge that I'veinvestigated and think about
which ones might be appropriatefor a ninth grader.
An AI tutor won't have thatproblem.
They'll be able to pull fromthe approved set of resources
(26:05):
and assess what areage-appropriate ones and make
recommendations that are muchmore likely to fit and won't
take me several hours ofresearching, because I certainly
can't meet the needs of everystudent I touch, and especially
not if we want this to grow andbe available to everyone.
(26:28):
So if you've been veryfrustrated and concerned about
the impact of excessive digitaluse by young people on their
growth and development and theirsocialization, I'm with you
there.
I understand that andespecially, I think social media
(26:53):
for preteens as well as forteens is quite concerning and
can exacerbate all kinds ofsocial and other anxieties.
But when it comes tointelligently using a real
learning tool to support anduplift students to make their
(27:18):
experience of school one wherethey feel they're at their edge,
they're not falling behind,which is a terrible feeling for
young people to feel thatthey're not good enough or they
can't catch up and that they'renot held back, because there's
nothing worse than a brightyoung mind, than feeling like
(27:42):
they're dying of boredom, thatthey're not challenged, that
they're getting duller everyminute that passes in their
classroom and grasp conceptsquickly.
(28:08):
An AI tutor can really helpfill that gap in a way that just
accelerating that student todual enrollment in a community
college won't do.
This way, they stay with theirfriends and their peer groups.
They can tutor and mentor andhave fun and also be challenged.
(28:36):
And for those students, when werelate this to mindfulness and
systems thinking, who reallywant to look at the neuroscience
, mindfulness and systemsthinking.
Who really want to look at theneuroscience?
They really want to understandthe psychology.
They really want to look atmulticultural approaches.
(28:56):
They really want to figure outhow they can be so smart in math
and so not smart when it comesto relationships and
communication.
They can work at their own edge.
Then when, for example, ourinner strength instructors are
able to be with them or theirteachers are able to be with
(29:19):
them, doing mindfulness work,exploring questions around the
nature of consciousness andthought, awareness, the brain
(29:40):
intention, motivation, care,those discussions will be even
more interesting because eachstudent will have been exploring
on their own, according totheir their own proclivities,
their own tastes.
And when they bring all of thatindependent exploration
together, the whole classroombecomes enriched.
It's filled out in multiolor.
(30:02):
It's like when you go fromhaving a box of eight crayons to
a box of 120 colors.
You can really do some funstuff.
And that's what learning can belike, especially engaging our
English language learners andbringing out their own cultural
(30:26):
understanding and their ownindividual understanding.
Just because they may not havethe language proficiency in
their new country doesn't meanthey don't have a ton to offer,
and that also shiftsrelationships and creates
(30:47):
pathways to acceptance andfriendship.
I truly believe, withthoughtfulness and care, around
pedagogical best practices,around data privacy, best
practices around time-savingbest practices for teachers and
(31:08):
parents, around personalizedlearning pathways, diverse
approaches to individualquestions that large language
models can do on the fly, tointeractive and imaginative and
creative and fun interactionsaround maybe difficult issues,
(31:34):
maybe students having troublewith test anxiety.
And she asked the AI tutor canyou create a mindfulness rap
that will make me laugh and helprelieve my anxiety at this
moment before my chemistry testnext period?
And the AI tutor can do it andsing it to her.
(31:59):
And that injecting some funinto a student's approach to
(32:32):
their own self-knowledge andself-care can encourage them to
seek the care that they need andthe support that they need.
Laugh, to shift their mindsetfrom obsessing and ruminating on
a problem to feeling like thesolution is really near at hand.
I encourage you all to pick up acopy or an audio book of Brave
New Words how AI WillRevolutionize Education and why
that's a Good Thing, by Sal Khan, and really consider freshly
(33:01):
how we can take ownership andleadership of the way technology
is being rolled out to ouryoung people and really do it
for good.
And especially.
Keep your eyes peeled for theinner strength, mindfulness and
systems thinking AI tutor notimmediately, but coming and if
(33:28):
you have any recommendations,features that you care about, or
if you're a developer and wouldlike to contribute, feel free
to get in touch.
You can always find us atinnerstrengtheducationorg and I
(33:49):
look forward to our next phasein this brave new world.
Let's meet the possibilitieswith an open heart, with love
and optimism and with a greatcare and sense of possibility
(34:10):
that we can, if we bring ourbest minds and hearts to this,
really start to create a worldthat supports us all.
Thanks so much.
Till next time.
(34:30):
Thank you for listening to theConscious Classroom.
I'm your host, amy Edelstein.
Please check out the show noteson innerstrengthfoundationnet
for links and more informationand if you enjoyed this podcast,
please share it with a friendand pass the love on.
See you next time.
Welcome to the Conscious Classroom podcast, where we're
exploring tools and perspectivesthat support educators and
anyone who works with teens tocreate more conscious,
supportive and enrichinglearning environments.
I'm your host, amy Edelstein,and I'll be sharing
transformative insights andeasy-to-implement classroom
supports that are all drawn frommindful awareness and systems
(00:32):
thinking.
The themes we'll discuss aredesigned to improve your own joy
and fulfillment in your workand increase your impact on the
world we share.
Let's get on with this nextepisode.
Hello and welcome to theConscious Classroom.
(00:52):
My name is Amy Edelstein.
Today, I want to dive into onearena of life that is changing,
of life that is changing soquickly it is just hard to keep
up with.
Even those at the leading edgeof new technology have a hard
time keeping up, let alone allof us.
(01:14):
I wanted to speak a little bitabout AI tutors, what I think is
possible tutors, what I thinkis possible and the way that
I've been delving into what itwould take to build an AI tutor
that could really cultivateyoung people's sense of purpose,
(01:38):
compassion, direction,directedness, care, inquiry,
innovation and, of course,self-regulation and mental
wellness.
This is something that I'vebeen thinking about for quite a
(02:00):
while and researching for quitea while, and now have some
developers who are reallyincredible, who I'm working with
, who are really incredible, whoI'm working with.
This past week I've turned tosomeone who I feel is embodying
the commitment to high qualityeducation, tried and true
pedagogical tools coupled withthe commitment to make
(02:31):
first-class education availablefor free to young people and
older people all around theworld.
He's someone who has reallyrevolutionized this possibility
and successfully, has been usingtechnology to help scale.
That person, of course, is SalKhan, and successfully, has been
using technology to help scale.
That person, of course, is SalKhan, as somebody who's been
experimenting with his platformfor quite a while and with the
(02:59):
AI tutor supports both forteachers and for students.
I was intrigued to pick up hisbrave new words how artificial
intelligence will revolutionizeeducation and why that's a good
thing.
I wanted to see specificallywhat he would say, what concerns
he would address, and I want toshare them with you and my own
(03:20):
response to many of them.
Although throughout the book heoffers some cautions, he is an
evangelist for the potential forAI tutors to re-engage students
in their own learning process,to ignite their curiosity, to
(03:40):
really flip classroom modelsupside down so that the time in
the classroom is spent in realhuman to human interaction and
mentorship by the teacher to thestudents.
It's a time for projectlearning and group work and
(04:02):
dialogue together becausestudents are being supported in
so many ways prior to coming toclass.
I think it has tremendouspotential and, as I see what the
AI function for Khan Academy,khan Migo, is doing, I am very
(04:25):
moved and impressed by the depthto which Khan and his 250
engineers and educationalpsychologists and curriculum
developers have really beenthinking about this.
It's always tempting to want touse technology at the bleeding
(04:46):
leading edge.
I'm not sure that's necessaryfor educational technology.
Of course we want to coming tothe forefront in large scale
commercial builds.
I'm not sure we need that kindof automation for a learning
(05:17):
tutor.
I think chat GPT-4 withguardrails and modifications
built in certainly can empowermillions of young people and
activate their curiosity andallow them to address their
(05:39):
concerns in a way that can bemet in a variety of subjects.
Of course, I'm concerned withdeveloping their sense of
purpose, their life goals, theirinner curiosity, their inner
strength, their outer stability,their ability to think in
(06:00):
context, to look at systems, tolook at themselves as part of a
living system, in their family,classroom, city nation.
We're seeing more and moreindividualized AI tutors built
on specific philosophies, andthe idea of a mindfulness and
(06:20):
systems thinking AI tutor.
Mindfulness and systemsthinking AI tutor, while
somewhat unique, is certainly,in the field of these
personalized tutors, not uniqueat all, and that's why I'm
turning to see how we can weavein really strong guardrail
(06:42):
developmental tools and the bestof personalized learning so
that we are really helpingstudents uncover the richness
and profundity that mindfulnessand systems thinking thinking
can reveal, as well as providingsafeguards.
(07:05):
Should students be engagingwith their personalized inner
strength tutor with somepersonal distress Because that,
of course, is one of the dangersof developing a relationship
with an AI tutor, because an AItutor can't necessarily spot,
(07:31):
with the same kind of perceptionthat a loved one could, a
youth's distress.
We want to make sure that we'resupporting students in a way
that is transparent and reallyprovides a safety net.
So let's dive in and look atsome of the highlights from
(07:56):
Khan's book Brave New Words andreally what he's looking for and
(08:31):
looking at and is bitten byisitude and encouraging students
to pursue their interests andtheir strengths more efficient.
And I know from working in theclassroom, when you've got 30
students, period one and threeminutes before period two comes
in with another 30 students, andthat goes on for five periods a
day and 150 kids each day.
(08:54):
It's very difficult to have thestamina, the time and the
sensitivity to do that in a waythat's accurate and truly
supportive.
So if we can make some of theprocess more efficient, then we
(09:15):
can free up our human teachers,who are even more important in
this age, to really be withstudents and understand students
and be able to talk with themand encourage them, engage them.
Now AI can provide that personallearning pathway and that
(09:39):
personalized assessment, andwhat Conmigo has done very
effectively is make thattransparent to parents and
teachers, enable parents andteachers to track a student's
progress and also feed studentsquestions and alternative
(10:03):
problems to solve in the moment,helping them think through the
areas where they're gettingtripped up without giving them
the answer and without lettingthem just skate along.
That can be a breakthrough,because usually in a class,
unless your child is always atthe lead of the class in every
(10:26):
subject, generally the class isgoing to move on.
When the time demands that,some students will be ready and
some students won't, and thestudents who aren't will find
themselves further and furtherbehind because they never really
work on those areas that werestumbling blocks when it comes
(10:48):
to mindfulness and systemsthinking.
That's really important becausewe want students to understand
the concepts of self-care, theconcepts of inner exploration
and the concepts of compassionfor self and other, and how to
see oneself in this evolutionaryframework, understanding how
(11:12):
we're conditioned by theevolutionary development of our
bodies and brains and by theevolutionary development of the
world.
Those concepts are subtle andwe want to be able to present
them at a developmentallyappropriate level of complexity
(11:35):
and language.
So AI personalized tutors cando that.
They can take a lesson I'vedesigned and broken up into
pieces, present that lesson inmultiple languages, depending on
what language the studentspeaks.
In my city, where we do most ofour inner strength work although
(11:57):
we are expanding nationally nowone in six public school
students is an English languagelearner.
Oftentimes we go in and can'tpossibly translate into these
different languages, because inone class you may have a student
who speaks Mandarin, you haveanother student who speaks
(12:19):
Cantonese, you have a studentwho speaks Pashtun, a student
who speaks Ukrainian, a studentwho speaks Vietnamese and maybe
one who speaks Nepali, let aloneSpanish.
About 25% of our students areSpanish speakers.
Ai can help with that.
So currently I'm creating allmy lessons, both in text and
(12:43):
audio, broken into short pieces,so that these students, once we
build, will be able to get thelessons believe it or not, in
their own language and askquestions in their own language.
(13:19):
As we scale wellness toolsaround the world, we want to
ensure that they're culturallyappropriate, that the examples
are relatable to the studentsand that the subtle values
differences are also built intothe lessons.
The way a student in Hong Kongmight approach ambition might be
subtly different than the way astudent in New York might
approach ambition and goalsetting.
We can train our tutor tounderstand that and to subtly
(13:42):
revise the language to speak toa student in their cultural
context.
I mean, that is amazing.
Will it be perfect?
No, but these models can learnfrom themselves and from their
interactions.
That's another thing that weneed to take care of, which Khan
(14:04):
Academy is doing an amazing job, which is how do we create
privacy If we want the AI tolearn in situ and if we want to
be able to provide parentssummaries to the depth that
they're interested in, if wewant to be able to tap a student
(14:28):
out and connect them with alive person, should there be any
indication of more seriousmental distress.
What do we want to be able tocollect in terms of aggregate
data?
How do we protect an individualstudent's privacy because
they're minors, and how do weprotect the way that they're
(14:54):
learning so that it doesn'tbecome fodder for somebody
else's marketing?
This is where I feel that KhanAcademy has just really thought
these issues through with a lotof depth and subtlety, because
we do need to be able to engageand partner and mentor and teach
(15:21):
our young people as parents,teachers, mentors, guardians,
psychologists and we need toprotect privacy in all of those
ways.
So it can be done, even thoughmostly our data is being
(15:42):
harvested in just anuncontrolled and unmitigated
manner, which I think willlikely cause quite a few issues
in the future, in the short orlong-term future.
Whereas we're building thesetools for young people, the
technology exists to do it right, so it just takes the time and
(16:06):
the will and the investment andthe recognition that, for AI to
work for us, we want to ensurethat it shares the values and
the system shares the valuesthat we share and the system
(16:26):
shares the values that we share.
When we're talking about AItutors specifically around
mindfulness and the subtletiesof inner development.
We really need to guard againstmisinformation and that's
something that I intend to makesure is done with our inner
strength AI tutor and somethingthat Con Amigo has shown can be
(16:49):
done.
You create very structurededucational boundaries so that
your AI doesn't make things upwhat they call hallucination.
You may have experienced a chat.
Gpt can generate false ormisleading information, but you
can prevent it from doing thatby allowing it only to draw
(17:14):
information from trusted sourcesthat you identify and to only
speak to certain questions andcontext.
If students ask for informationthat goes outside those
boundaries, it will simply sayI'm sorry, you know I'm an AI
tutor and that is something thatI'm not able to do.
(17:38):
This is really important withmindfulness, because we want to
be sure that the AI isn't justrandomly pulling from random
sources with superficialunderstanding of the power of
mindfulness-based tools in aninappropriate way.
(18:00):
I mean there's plenty of stuffout on the internet that really
it'd be great if we could cleanit up, because it's not very
well thought through informationor tools.
So at this point now, anyonelooking for meditation
instruction needs to be quitecareful about what you're
listening to and who you'relistening to.
(18:22):
But we can build that in.
We can also build in ageappropriate filtering, so
they're not talking to a sixthgrader with the same language,
they're talking to a 10th graderor a 12th grader or a college
student, and also they're notengaging anything else that is
(18:43):
not appropriate for young peopleor for a mindfulness AI tutor
to be engaging with.
And, of course, what I'm mostinterested in is really helping
students learn how to dialogue,how to question in a way that
(19:04):
goes deeper, not just to get theanswer, but to open up an issue
, a theme, a question to explorefrom different perspectives and
to sense new threads oremergencies in their thinking
and reasoning in their thinkingand reasoning.
(19:25):
So Sal Khan and his team havedone a lot to embed, to train
their AI tutor on Socraticdialogue.
So they don't give answers butthey ask questions, so they get
(19:48):
students to think critically andexplain, and the way that the
tutor engages with them is justlike a good human mentor would
is to keep exploring together,always opening an open door
rather than an answer that endsthe discussion.
Now the wonderful thing aboutan AI tutor which of course, I
(20:10):
do with my students is I'malways bringing in very
different approaches to asimilar theme.
So we might look atneuroscience, we might look at
physics, we might look atpsychology or different schools
of psychology, or we might lookat physics, we might look at
psychology or different schoolsof psychology, or we might look
at ethics, or we might look atthe body-mind relationship as
(20:34):
different ways of unpacking ourexperience in the moment.
Tutor with access to profiles onthe great thinkers, scientists,
psychologists, historians,archaeologists, geologists,
(21:02):
cosmologists can pull in threeor four different examples from
radically different fields ofknowledge and show the student
that when we're looking at howto become strong and wise people
, how to navigate difficulty,how to take care of ourselves
and cultivate wellness, thereare many different angles.
(21:22):
We can approach this with manydifferent angles we can approach
this with.
That keeps students thinking inthis integrated way, rather
than psychology being completelyseparate from math, being
completely separate from history, being completely separate from
chemistry.
It doesn't have to be.
(21:42):
Our world is a single, unifiedworld and when knowledge is not
so compartmentalized, it reallyhelps liberate a student's
capacity.
They start to feel like, oh, Ididn't think I was good at math,
but it's only because mathdidn't make sense to me.
(22:03):
But when I relate math tosomething I am interested in.
Boy oh boy, it's reallyimportant.
Related to this is the safe andvery fantastic way that Kanmiga
works with interactive learning,with conversations with
(22:25):
historical figures, literarycharacters.
So a student could say okay,what does the Buddha say about
being kind to other people?
Where does that fit on thespectrum?
If we're talking about thespectrum of values, maybe I'd
(22:50):
like to know what were thevalues that Martin Luther King
espoused?
How would he think aboutkindness and compassion in a
relationship?
Or compared to activism, orpushing against what's wrong?
(23:10):
And what about Marie Curie?
Did she have anything to sayabout supporting the people that
she worked with as she wasinventing and pursuing solutions
to difficult problems?
(23:32):
What I like about Conmigo isthere are guardrails placed so
that historical figures can onlycomment on things within their
own time frame, on things withintheir own timeframe, and
characters in novels can onlycomment and respond to things
(23:53):
within the setting of their book.
That prevents AI from makingthings up or hallucinating or
imagining a response that wejust simply don't know.
(24:13):
One of the examples in SalKhan's book he has an expert on
Harriet Tubman engage with theAI as the historical figure and
ask what she thinks aboutreparations for slavery and
because of the guardrails.
(24:34):
The AI comments.
Well, I don't know.
We weren't discussing that inmy time, but in my time I always
was supportive of helping thenewly liberated slaves have
education and have sufficientmeans to start their new life.
(24:54):
So she didn't speak out of turn, she didn't give a reflection
on a contemporary problem, whichis very important to allow
students to make their ownassessments but to really
understand the historical figurein their own time and in their
own place and in their owncontext.
(25:17):
Sometimes students ask me forfurther learning on a particular
meditation or a particularexample or a particular
psychological approach or traumasensitive approach and
sometimes in the moment it'sreally hard to sift through all
(25:41):
of the materials that I've comeacross and thinkers and modes of
knowledge that I'veinvestigated and think about
which ones might be appropriatefor a ninth grader.
An AI tutor won't have thatproblem.
They'll be able to pull fromthe approved set of resources
(26:05):
and assess what areage-appropriate ones and make
recommendations that are muchmore likely to fit and won't
take me several hours ofresearching, because I certainly
can't meet the needs of everystudent I touch, and especially
not if we want this to grow andbe available to everyone.
(26:28):
So if you've been veryfrustrated and concerned about
the impact of excessive digitaluse by young people on their
growth and development and theirsocialization, I'm with you
there.
I understand that andespecially, I think social media
(26:53):
for preteens as well as forteens is quite concerning and
can exacerbate all kinds ofsocial and other anxieties.
But when it comes tointelligently using a real
learning tool to support anduplift students to make their
(27:18):
experience of school one wherethey feel they're at their edge,
they're not falling behind,which is a terrible feeling for
young people to feel thatthey're not good enough or they
can't catch up and that they'renot held back, because there's
nothing worse than a brightyoung mind, than feeling like
(27:42):
they're dying of boredom, thatthey're not challenged, that
they're getting duller everyminute that passes in their
classroom and grasp conceptsquickly.
(28:08):
An AI tutor can really helpfill that gap in a way that just
accelerating that student todual enrollment in a community
college won't do.
This way, they stay with theirfriends and their peer groups.
They can tutor and mentor andhave fun and also be challenged.
(28:36):
And for those students, when werelate this to mindfulness and
systems thinking, who reallywant to look at the neuroscience
, mindfulness and systemsthinking.
Who really want to look at theneuroscience?
They really want to understandthe psychology.
They really want to look atmulticultural approaches.
(28:56):
They really want to figure outhow they can be so smart in math
and so not smart when it comesto relationships and
communication.
They can work at their own edge.
Then when, for example, ourinner strength instructors are
able to be with them or theirteachers are able to be with
(29:19):
them, doing mindfulness work,exploring questions around the
nature of consciousness andthought, awareness, the brain
(29:40):
intention, motivation, care,those discussions will be even
more interesting because eachstudent will have been exploring
on their own, according totheir their own proclivities,
their own tastes.
And when they bring all of thatindependent exploration
together, the whole classroombecomes enriched.
It's filled out in multiolor.
(30:02):
It's like when you go fromhaving a box of eight crayons to
a box of 120 colors.
You can really do some funstuff.
And that's what learning can belike, especially engaging our
English language learners andbringing out their own cultural
(30:26):
understanding and their ownindividual understanding.
Just because they may not havethe language proficiency in
their new country doesn't meanthey don't have a ton to offer,
and that also shiftsrelationships and creates
(30:47):
pathways to acceptance andfriendship.
I truly believe, withthoughtfulness and care, around
pedagogical best practices,around data privacy, best
practices around time-savingbest practices for teachers and
(31:08):
parents, around personalizedlearning pathways, diverse
approaches to individualquestions that large language
models can do on the fly, tointeractive and imaginative and
creative and fun interactionsaround maybe difficult issues,
(31:34):
maybe students having troublewith test anxiety.
And she asked the AI tutor canyou create a mindfulness rap
that will make me laugh and helprelieve my anxiety at this
moment before my chemistry testnext period?
And the AI tutor can do it andsing it to her.
(31:59):
And that injecting some funinto a student's approach to
(32:32):
their own self-knowledge andself-care can encourage them to
seek the care that they need andthe support that they need.
Laugh, to shift their mindsetfrom obsessing and ruminating on
a problem to feeling like thesolution is really near at hand.
I encourage you all to pick up acopy or an audio book of Brave
New Words how AI WillRevolutionize Education and why
that's a Good Thing, by Sal Khan, and really consider freshly
(33:01):
how we can take ownership andleadership of the way technology
is being rolled out to ouryoung people and really do it
for good.
And especially.
Keep your eyes peeled for theinner strength, mindfulness and
systems thinking AI tutor notimmediately, but coming and if
(33:28):
you have any recommendations,features that you care about, or
if you're a developer and wouldlike to contribute, feel free
to get in touch.
You can always find us atinnerstrengtheducationorg and I
(33:49):
look forward to our next phasein this brave new world.
Let's meet the possibilitieswith an open heart, with love
and optimism and with a greatcare and sense of possibility
(34:10):
that we can, if we bring ourbest minds and hearts to this,
really start to create a worldthat supports us all.
Thanks so much.
Till next time.
(34:30):
Thank you for listening to theConscious Classroom.
I'm your host, amy Edelstein.
Please check out the show noteson innerstrengthfoundationnet
for links and more informationand if you enjoyed this podcast,
please share it with a friendand pass the love on.
See you next time.
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