Episode # 66 - Matt Miller Part 1: The Need for EdTech Speed

Shows are individually owned, and opinions expressed may not reflect others. Welcome to the Adventures in Tech podcast. Talking the latest tips and trends in educational technology to innovate and engage your students. "Here your hosts, Andrew and Dan." Aw, back and better. Episode 66 of Adventures in Tech. My name is Andrew. My name is Dan. I'm excited to join this with this adventure, of course, as always, if you like our content, please help us out, providing feedback and rating. Wherever you download your podcast, we're only greatly appreciate your support. So, Dan, we got to do a quick little recap. First, let's have a nice, great conference. I happened about two weeks ago or so. What would you think? It was well attended. Very well attended. Very well. It was nice that it was part of a regional conference day. I think we had well over 200 people. Well over 200. And I know for both of us, we were very busy that day. I didn't see you. It was weird. It was, but we each led four sessions throughout the day. Great attendance, great feedback, and got a lot of traction moving forward from that event. Absolutely. All the presenters that day, I know we had corporate sponsors with Apple there. And just a whole slew of options that people were able to attend. And that's really kind of Choo Jo and Learning. We talk about Choo Jo and Adventure. It's Choo Jo and Learning, and it's fine as right there with the Hudson Valley and Ice Gate Conference. I think all those who came out and supported and attended the Hudson Valley and Ice Gate Conference. And as we start gearing up, the annual Ice Gate Conference will be taking place starting on Saturday. And again, this will be our second time now up in Verona, New York, where we don't have to travel to Western New York, which almost feels like Canada in Rochester. But in Verona, New York, and we will be sure to be, we did get confirmation. We will be broadcasting in a booth there. So definitely stay tuned. We'll have a lot of great conversations with vendors, as well as other educational professionals that are actually attending the annual Ice Gate Conference, I should say. From there, we do have the ditch summit, which is going to lead us into our conversation today. And the FETC Conference, Future Educational Technology Conference, that will be coming up in January, hosted again in Orlando. We'll have a lot of details about that in the next coming weeks. We're going to have to bypass weekly wind up news. Dan, tell us about some of the projects you got going on in classrooms. Well, there's been a few things I'm trying to remember the last thing I talked about. Actually, you'll probably be. Well, I guess I'll just start with the virtual reality project that we did with the third grade. They're studying forces in motion. And I was kind of walking through the school building, doing VR with another class, and the third grade team, and, hey, what can we do when we planned up something for forces in motion? And I got to play around with some AI features and different platforms to build the VR experiences, and it was very well received. Absolutely. Definitely was. And that's the thing is, and a class VR, if you're not familiar with it, all built in, we can definitely talk more about that. They have a bunch of new ones I was just talking with a colleague yesterday about the Colonial America one for fourth grade. So a lot of built in experiences, and Dan will be able to elaborate on how he used the actual intuitive software to help build these experience that was relevant to the third graders with the help of AI, which we're going to chat a lot about. I think it's just built into our DNA at this point. But that kind of leads us into our guest today. So without further ado, a friend of the podcast, Matt Miller. Dan and myself are here, along with a long time friend of the podcast. I mean, it's been Uber number of years now, the one, the only Matt Miller. Matt, welcome back. Thank you. Excited to be back. I always love getting to talk with you guys. We always get into such good conversations. I know. And we are super excited, which is a good reference for Matt, because Matt's always super excited about everything. Right. You know, to have Matt join us once again. And so Matt, let's kind of recap since, you know, it's been about a year, I think, since the audience has heard you. It's usually right around this time when we get to connect. And I wanted to touch base as what is like, what are you up to? Like are you in the classroom? Like, I mean, I'm looking at the walls behind you. They're the good old classic Cinder block. Right. There they are. Well, let's tell everybody what you're up to nowadays, Matt. Yeah, absolutely. So, so right, I'm still doing a lot of the same stuff, the same ditch that textbook stuff that some folks know me for. You know, I'm still putting out my email newsletter twice a week, still speaking at schools and school districts and conferences and all of that stuff. But on top of all of that now, I am back in the classroom. I'm teaching one class a day. It's a high school, Spanish three class here at the high school in the school district where I live, where my wife teaches right down the hall for me, where my two kids go to school. So, my day is I show up and I teach Spanish three from 815 till 901. And then I turn right back into ditch that textbook guy. So I'm, you know, working on projects. I'm writing a new book right now. So I'm working on that and getting ready to do the ditch summit. That's coming up in December. You know, so like, I've got all of these projects kind of like, like always. But now, you know, it's cool because I get to, I get to teach. I see kids every single day. I work with them. You know, I've got the same creative struggle that everybody else does of trying to engage them and trying to help them to learn and everything. But then I also get to do a lot of this cool stuff that gets to support teachers. So that's, that's in a nutshell right now. So do you stay in the building until like dismissal? Sometimes. So I'm hourly. So I, yeah. So I only, I'm only on the clock a little bit before class starts during class and a little bit after for planning. So because I'm hourly, I kind of like clock out and then I could, you know, take out. But sometimes I, I, nobody else teaches in this classroom. So sometimes I just sit here and just do my work right here in the school. The new office space, right? Yes. That's right. Yeah, with faster internet than I have at home, which is even better. So that's a right. Yeah. That's a win-win right there. So you have no issues with that. And you have like, you need, you know, some, something like a stapler, right? And not down in the dungeon like in office space, right? So you don't need a stapler. But yeah, there it is. There it is. So all right. So Matt, I know you referenced a bunch of points and I know Dan's going to have some questions but I wanted to talk. So we have obviously this book, right? AI for educators, right? Yeah. And this came out just about a year ago. We were talking about it, right? And shortly after it came out and you mentioned that you have a new book coming out. Can you let everybody know about the new book? Yes. I would love to. But I actually sort of stumbled upon in my own class and realized that it was a thing. So the new book is called AI Literacy in any class. Because we know everybody's talking about AI Literacy right now and we know that, you know, just trying to block and ban AI isn't really accomplishing anything. It's making it more taboo. And it's not really equipping kids for the realities of today and also the promise of the future. So I know lots of folks are looking at how do we incorporate AI Literacy into schools and into classrooms. And I think for so many of them, so many teachers at least a lot of times ago, oh, that's the job of the tech teacher. That's a tech teacher's job. That's a computer science teacher's job. That's not me. And of course, after I started finding out about some of the things that you could do with AI in the classroom and I started using some of it in class, I started to realize that every once in a while I would have these little AI Literacy conversations just pop up naturally organically in the middle class. Like for instance, I like to use AI image generators to make pictures that my students can describe. And so when I put those up on the screen, of course, you know, I'll identify to them. This is an AI generated image. And at first, I started asking them like, you know, take a look at this picture. And I, well, actually even before I asked them, I put up, put one of those pictures up there and there was something weird about it. Because you know, you make images with AI and there's, they're kind of weird sometimes. There's some weird stuff in them. And so they just sort of like chuckled and they're kind of like, you know, pointing and snickering and stuff. And I was like, okay, let's stop for a second and point out where's the AI weirdness. And of course, they pointed some of that stuff out. And I was like, okay, so you can obviously see that this is AI generated, right? And at that moment, it dawned on me. I was like, here, I've used this AI generated image. And I stopped for just a second to point out the AI weirdness and to have a quick conversation about what's artificial and what's real. And I thought, this was in us like a Spanish one class. This isn't a computer science class. Right. And so whenever AI enters into the equation, I found that no matter how you're using it, there's an opportunity to have sort of a reflection, sort of a metacognitive discussion about how it's being used. Is it fair? Is it right? How do you point it out? When should you use it? What can it do? What are the concerns? You know, there's just like all of this stuff and anybody in just about any grade and any content area can stop for a second and point to that and have that kind of conversation. So the more that after that, the more that I started to see it, I started to gather examples together. And when you start brainstorm examples and talking to other people and, you know, their own classes, you start to see, man, there is a ton of potential for the regular classroom teacher to actually equip kids with AI literacy without having to use a ton of AI on their own and also without needing to have a computer science degree. And so I found that a lot of the conversation is, let's teach kids AI literacy, but nobody seems to answer the question, how in the confines of a regular classroom in a normal school, how in the world do you do it? And I thought, I have not read that book, so I'm going to try to write it. And that's what I'm working on right now. That's great. So, and you're just starting the book. So like, do you have a timetable? Are we talking spring? I'm actually, I'm getting pretty close. I've been writing on it for probably two months now or so. I'm almost done with it. If I didn't keep having other big projects pop up, I would have totally been done with it by now, but I was kind of hoping to have it done by December, but now it's probably looking more like January. So it'd be like January 2026 somewhere around there. Awesome. Awesome. Well, and of course, anybody who gets your newsletter will definitely be able to, they'll know right away when it's officially out and published. Yes. And if they don't get it, they can go to ditch.link/join and then they can get it and then they'll know when it is. And of course, they'll get the newsletter too, which is great also. Does the link still work? Getmatstuff.com. Yeah, that one works too. Yes. And actually, it all goes to the same place. Yes, totally. Awesome. Awesome. Alright, Dan, I know you got a question from Matt. I have a few questions, but one, I'm looking forward to this book really being able to look at those different examples because like, as you said, there's no, I mean, schools will adopt an AI policy. Schools will do this. What's allowed or what's not. But for that classroom teacher, for anyone in there, like, what are those moments that you can in cool? Because it's such, there's so many different things. And, you know, it's just like, I mean, beyond all the ethical talks about it and everything, like, where are those points you can bring up those short little, those nuggets, I guess, like, let's really look critically at that. So, looking forward to that. But I like, well, I'm excited that we're sitting here talking to you in your classroom because I just want to, because it seems like you're having a lot of messy thoughts lately as you're in your classroom. And I just thought, like, if you would talk a little bit about like your last newsletter post about your messy thoughts on cheating, I found that really interesting. Thanks. Yeah. And I titled it that, yeah, that was like you said, Dan, that was the subject line of the newsletter. And I thought that was the last one that I wanted to say, like, I haven't worked my way all through it, but there are some things that aren't quite lining up and just are sitting a little bit wrong with me. And I just wanted to talk about it, you know. So it came from one day in class. I was getting ready to give a quiz. And I've sort of gotten into practice now of, because I've got this great, big classroom. It's almost like a double classroom with a collapsible wall, like an accordion foldable wall in the middle of it, because they give me 34 kids in one class. So it's a great big class and we got lots of desks. And that was the only way to fit it in there. But we've got lots of extra space behind all of the desks. So whenever I take a quiz, I have them all spread out. So they're not right on top of each other and it's not easy to just, you know, kind of peek over it somebody else's paper. So while my students are all spreading their desks out and then I say, okay, after you spread your desk out, put your study guides away, you know, put all of your stuff away, take your smart watches and your smart phones and put them on my desk. And then everybody goes back and we're getting ready to take the quiz. And I'm just kind of like standing there looking at the class and watching the kids put away their phones and put away their watches and everything on my desk. And I was like, do I really need to do this? Is this necessary? Are there any, and I know there are probably lots of teachers listening to this and they're like, uh-huh. But I also was like, are there any negative repercussions to doing this, you know? I mean, I, and the more that I've thought about this, I realized that there, there really is a balance on all of this. And I want to just try to strike the right balance because I know that with those smart phones and even sometimes with their, their, their smart watches too, there is, there are ways to look things up. And if the temptation is great and if the reset, the barrier, the resistance to doing it is low, like if it's quick and easy to do as easy as glancing over at somebody else's paper, then the temptation just might be too high. And maybe I'm creating that barrier for the temptation to, to be able to happen to them. I also thought on the other side of things, when you start to treat kids like they're dishonest, when you start to treat them like, you know, you, you think that they're gonna, all they're gonna do is just cheat. And so you're gonna take all of the precautions because they're just cheating cheaters and you got to treat them that way. That has negative repercussions too. And so if you go all on one side, you get the negative repercussions of the other and then vice versa. So you got to kind of find that right balance for you. And um, I realized that some teachers, I think don't even see that other side of it of whenever you treat kids as dishonest all the time, it starts to, it starts to make them feel like they are, even if they aren't. It's like, you know, kids might say, well, if I'm gonna be treated like a cheater, but I'm not gonna get any of the benefits out of it. I mean, there's, there's sort of a, you know, realism in that that like, well, if you're gonna call me a cheater, but I'm still gonna have to think of things on my own like grade wise, so might as well just do it, you know. This is all sort of like the side of us that isn't, you know, like the optimistic, idealistic side, but it's, it's a very real conversation that's happening. And I'm like, I want to develop solid relationships with these kids and I want there to be a level of trust. And I know some teacher, like I get it. When you feel like you're being taken advantage of and you feel like, you know, you've had kids abuse the system so much and everything you get, it's easy to feel sort of jaded and cynical and everything, but like there's, there's a balance when it comes to all of that. Can you see why I called this my mess thoughts? Yeah. I haven't found an easy answer on it. And I know anybody that's listening to this that has taught for any amount of time could shoot holes in any one of these arguments that I've been bringing up, but it's like these, this is the uneasy feeling sitting in the bit of my stomach right now. You want to know what's mind blowing for you, Matt? What's that? Not that. So in New York state, we had a new law enacted bell to bell restrictions. So we have no devices allowed. Yeah. And I've heard of lots of states that are doing that too. And I think, I think that's one part of it. But if you also know if it's not the cell phones that something else, so yeah. You know, so the cell phones are the most, the most recent thing. And honestly, with some of those cell phone restrictions and those cell phone bands and everything, I've heard so many folks saying, you know, I see kids talking to each other again. Like there are so many these like really positive benefits that are coming out of it. I'm, I think it's great, you know, but yeah, you're exactly right. That's, it's very timely when it comes to that, isn't it? Their heads are up in the hallways while they're walking in. They're not. Yeah, I was just about to point that out. It's so much safer to walk in the hallways now because you're not getting. And you know, I've also spoken with teachers and it was a map teacher in particular and said he was getting ready to start class and the kids were just talking. And he just like, I'm not starting. He just sat there. Yeah. And it was like probably about seven or eight minutes of class so that they realized what was going on. He was like, no, no, I just want to savor this for a moment. Yeah. So there is that. But I mean, I, it really could go to me when you, that made me start thinking we talked about the messy things of cheating and where we go forward and made me really think about, you know, where, what are we, what are we looking at when we're assessing students all over the time, you know, sitting there, those, the are we assessing them? Always, I, there's that absolute point where we need that summative assessment and it's like you have to show what you know and like, maybe that's the time those devices are going to be like, you know, frame it. Like we're just going to put them away. Take a break from it. Go from there, but like, are we really giving students the opportunity to demonstrate what they know? And I think that's, that's where things get messy is if we, if we focus on just that one thing, are we losing opportunities for others? Yeah. Yeah. And I think also to go along with what you were saying, some of it also is like, what's most important. And whenever the final assessment, whenever the test, whenever, you know, all of that stuff becomes the most important thing, you know, there's, there's pros and cons to that. I've started to find in my Spanish classes that sometimes the day to day, non-graded, you know, practice and engaging repetitions with things, that's sometimes some of the best stuff. And I don't get points in the gradebook for that, but it creates learning. It helps my students make those connections and remember words and get repetitions in the language and everything. And that's fantastic. But there's no grades to all of that, you know, so it's just, yeah, it just sort of depends on, you know, what, what ends up being important to you? And the way that teachers handle their business shows students consciously or subconsciously, what is important to them, right? And whether we realize we're communicating it or not, our actions and the way that we treat students and all that stuff, it really does communicate what's important to us. Mm-hmm. I was thinking, you know, when we're talking that you're back in the classroom and you're seeing classrooms from, you know, across the country, when we talk about best methods for using AI in the classroom, right? And some people were like, well, where do I begin? Because you have all those different levels, right? You have different levels of people, their comfort level, again, ethically, whatever their own personal bias and opinion is on everything. You know, when day and I are leading PDs and we're just talking with teachers and working, the biggest thing that we say is, you know, it's a co-planter with you as a planning partner and not a replacement. They feel like it's going to be a replacement and I'm like, no, I said, it's going to make things more efficient for you. It's going to help you differentiate things, right? And if you have the student use with it, you know, with clear boundaries and, you know, it's a thought partner and not an answer machine, right? So I thought that was really because if you're asking for explanations or step by step reasoning examples, what if scenarios, you know, whatever it may be, yeah, it's your thought partner and it's not regurgitating an answering machine like thing. Like I know I'm dating myself because how many people will have an answering machine anymore, but you know, in that regard, but like it's not just going to give you all that information, you know, it's really making you utilize it for certain components of how to use prompts, which I think is a key component, you know, for, you know, for how you can use AI for that, for real world skills and enhancing PBL and everything like that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, you're exactly right. That's sort of what we hope for it to be, you know, for teachers that can be, I always say, AI is my new teaching assistant. Actually, I teach shirts that you maybe you've seen like a teacher that says AI is my new teaching assistant. And so if you use it in that way to help you create things, and I think that's sort of the entry point and really probably should be the entry point for for lots of teachers. But then like you say, if it is a co planner and a thought partner and a co creator and all that stuff to help you kind of like level up what you do, I think that's great. The hard thing that I think a lot of teachers have when it comes to that is, but what does that actually look like? How do I actually do that? You know, that's that's the hard thing. And just this week, I just put on an in person workshop where we focused on student writing when it comes to all of that. And some of the examples that we did in there are some of my favorite examples. So the workshop was called student writing in the AI age. And it was lots of English teachers and social studies teachers. I had a bunch of online teachers. I actually had about 10 high school students who were on the education pathways like CTE class. Yeah. Yeah. We had 10, 10 high school students, a couple of them were student, former students of mine, which was really cool. And we just looked at one of the things we looked out through the whole morning was how can AI support student learning? So, you know, when it comes to that, how can it be a thought partner? Some of the things that we did, for instance, one of them was, you know, I created little chatbots through school AI that helped help to help students. Well, in this case, it was my workshop participants come up with a topic for a persuasive essay. And then the couple of like main points that they wanted to make in that topic. And so, you know, that ended up being a small slice of that activity where if the teacher decided, do I want to have a little bit of AI assistance doing this, then they could do it. And then that way, they, you know, write the instructions for the chatbot. And I even showed the group that morning, like, it's pretty easy to write those instructions. You just got to want to know, you just got to know what you want it to do. And then my little secret, whenever I write the instructions for those chatbots, I have chat GPT do it for me. Right? You have AI writing instructions for AI. The bots are talking to the bots, you know? Yeah. It's down ridiculous, but it works, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So in that case, I was, you know, I created this chatbot and then they were kind of like brainstorming with it. And then I was like, okay, let's go to the drafting phase. And so then I was using Brisk Boost. You know, Brisk teaching has boost where you've got the document on one side and a little chatbot on the other side. And the chatbot can read everything that's going on in the, in the document. And so I'm like, okay, we're going to start to draft this persuasive essay in this document. And every so often, just go over to the chatbot and say, what do you think of my first paragraph? How's my thesis ends? Yeah. Is there anything that I can improve on? And so we kept going a little by little. And the big thing that I kept coming back to, which really Andrew underlines everything that you were just saying earlier is that it's a small slice of instruction. It's a small slice of learning. You know, like thing was, you know, in this example, we were talking about prewriting and drafting and revising and feedback and publishing and reflecting. That's like a bunch of slight, it's like a bunch of slices of bread. We just had the whole loaf of bread right there with a whole bunch of little slices. This is not going to end up being a good analogy. The bread. We try as we go, you know, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But in this case, it's like this is the big thing that I think I think teachers miss on all of those sometimes. The teacher gets to decide when you insert that little piece of AI instruction or AI support into the instruction. The teacher is still the instructional designer. Right. And designing the lesson from start to finish. And if they decide, okay, in the prewriting phase, it would be cool to have an AI chat bot kind of like work with them to get that that support in the drafting phase. I don't want AI to have anything to do with it. And I got my reasons for it. And that's cool because you're the teacher and you're the one deciding it. And that was one of the big things I told those teachers during that workshop was, I'm going to show you how AI can support the writing process in all phases of the writing process. That does not mean that you have to do it this way. You might pick one little piece of that and then do the rest of it without AI. And I think that's one of the big misconceptions I'm finding is that everybody thinks they got to do everything with AI all the time. And it was the same thing when one to one one devices came in. Oh, we're probably going to have to do everything with the Chromebooks all the time. And it's like, no, nobody ever said that. It's this big assumption. I just saw on TikTok today that some some teacher was, you know, did some like snarky TikTok posts that's like, I'm investing in paper companies because somebody thought the technology was going to be the best way to do education. I'm like, lady, listen, you don't have to do everything. You also don't have to use paper to do everything. You pick and choose the best stuff. And everybody just wants to do, sorry, you're getting me all like riled up here, but like everybody just thinks that it's all or nothing, that everything has to be all or nothing. It's all AI. It's all technology. It's all paper and it's like people know balance. Pick and choose be the designer. Okay, deep breath. I think I'm done. I love it. You know, I got to wound up about this. Well, you know, getting them wound up and going through like that's one thing, like, you know, with the one to one, like, who would ever want to go into a classroom or teach in a classroom, being a classroom where every kid's sitting in front of a device? No. That's no, I don't think that was ever the goal. But it just like the whole thing that we just went through there, I just flashed me back to like two years, three years ago when we first started talking about like AI and how it's going to do this. And now the conversation is like, nope, we have all the parts of it that we that we can go in and place in. And I think it's it's coming around to, oh, it's more of a tool than it's going to destroy everything else. Yeah. Yeah. The idea that and you talk about building the chatbots and just for people listening and as Matt said, it's not that hard. School AI's platform makes it really easy. As you mentioned, brisk boosts, starting from your assignments makes it really easy. So those that don't have that available, gems and Gemini makes that pretty easy as well. So those become valuable tools. I know for classes that I teach, I put all my assignments and rubrics into into the chat bots and then put it along with every assignment I post just as that guide. Hey, am I doing this right? What else do I need to answer? And it's become very successful. I think one of the you mentioned, so I mentioned boost as one of them. One of the things I love about what brisk is doing with all of their, with their, their teacher plans is that boost the student activities, the student chatbots. It's totally free in the free plan. Right. Of course, whenever you have a tool where it's totally free and you're, you're using it with students and everything. That means that your school district has not signed a DPA with them and everything. You got to be more careful, I think, with personally identifying information. I'll throw that little caveat out there. Absolutely. That being said, with brisk, brisk teaching, if you use brisk boost, the student chatbot is totally, totally free, like there are no limitations. There's no caps on it and all of that stuff. And yeah, they're, I mean, and like you said, Deanne, a lot of these, it's super easy to write the instructions. And if you don't know how you can get AI, you can just ask AI to help you with it. Yeah, I was just, I was funny. He's got bots talking about. So I was creating a VR experience for a third grade class. We use class VR. And there was, there was some stuff that I can gather in their gallery. But I'm like, it wasn't, I mean, it was all upper level physics. We were doing force and motion. And I'm like, oh, but class VR has an AI image generator. I'm like, I can generate some images that goes along with what the teachers, so I tried doing it. No luck. I had a chat GPT and told them I'd like to design 3D experiences and put it all in for this specific platform, like for class VR and for a thingling. Can you help me write the prompts? And it went down and said, here's the prompt to use for class VR. Here's the prompt to use for thingling. Here's this. And I put it into their AI generators and just a little tweaking here and there. And I was able to create it. It's working. And you know what, that I think is the vision of AI and education right there, Dan, because is it the teacher becoming stupid? No, you were envisioning something that you wanted those kids to do that was right on their level that fit in exactly what you were trying to teach. You were very much the human teacher in the experience and you just created some, in that little story you just don't, you just created something. And in a matter of moments that you that would have taken you a ton of time before. And what are teachers saying is the biggest barrier to them doing the cool stuff that they want to be able to do and the stuff that's most impactful time time. It's always time. And so if we're able to do some of that stuff in less time and level up the experience, but still do it exactly the way that students need us to do. It's really empowering the human teacher to do more and less time or to do the things that they need to do in less time instead of replacing us instead of making us stupid. You know, it's, I still, I get the comments on the videos that I put out in the social media posts that I put out. Here's another AI tool that's going to make us stupid and it's going to make, no, it's like teaching is hard. Teaching is time consuming. It's getting harder and harder as it goes and we need every tool at our disposal to keep great teachers in the classroom to keep giving human instruction to kids. And if we just will equip and amplify those teachers to do the great things that they're doing, like that, I think, is the vision of AI. So Dan, I love that example. Thanks. The, you know, you talk about the efficiency and effectiveness, right, of AI from a teacher standpoint. And I want to reference back you, you know, you talked about, you have an article right on, on your website, six ways to prepare students for an AI future, right, with the whole, there's a whole, there's a whole infographic as well, right? So and we'll, we'll link to it, you know, for, for AI skills. But what it made me really think of was, you know, as we're trying to prepare students to be AI literate for their future careers, right? And we know that literacy, like you were mentioning, it means understand and use and evaluate and create with AI and ethical and effective ways that we just talked about from a teacher standpoint, but also, you know, for a student standpoint, like, you know, you said that, there's like six pillars, like in my mind, right? And like so when I was talking about AI awareness and understanding, like when we talk about the future workforce, I was thinking about, they need to know how to do that. What AI is and what it isn't, how rapidly it's changing, right? You know, that was a big thing. Prompting as a career skill, I think, is something that we need to, as a student, as educators, just, it's almost like prompting is becoming a core workplace competency, like Excel was, right? In the 2000s, right? Because students need to know clear goal setting, iterating on prompts, asking AI how to explain and simplify, like, Dan just used his example, redesign, analyze role play and giving structures, right? Format examples tone for that bias, you know, that we, we see. We talked about the ethics and, you know, AI responsibility, you know, I think we can all agree there are certain components we need to ensure with that. But also teaching them that, you know, the, I feel like the workforce as rapidly as it's changing, the workplace is going to require employees as we prepare these students who can question and not just consume, like verification of things, fact checking, critical thinking, all those skills. Because I know we've talked about AI as a productivity and creativity tool and, and really, I think the goal and, and it can't just start in high school, like, you have to build AI resilient human skills because the kids that are, that are young now, like the youngest learners, like AI is going to accelerate and your article said it and was written like in 2018, what, you know, some people were saying what AI was going to do, but AI is going to accelerate the value of uniquely human skills, which all careers are going to require. And we know that we've said students have to develop creative thinking and collaboration and communication and empathy and emotional intelligence, leadership, problem framing, right? Defining what problem needs solving, adaptability, leadership, like all those things are huge. And really, like, those six skills you said, like, I see them as six pillars of everything that we need to do to kind of prepare these students for careers that don't even exist yet. Yeah. Yeah. You've, you've thought deeply about this too. I can tell, man. Well, I just, I was on my soap box, starting to keep up with your mat. Right. No, it's, I totally agree with you on, on all of that. And I think one of the common threats through all of that is that what we're not saying is make kids use AI in the classroom so they can learn to be AI ready or whatever it is. You know, what I heard you saying was, you know, you talked about prompting as a skill. And of course, if you're going to prompt, some of that has to do with, you know, directly interacting with AI. But really, it's prompting these days isn't about, you know, like being the AI whisperer and knowing the perfect ways that you're supposed to communicate with chat GPT to get what you want because prompting skills, it's, it's shifting a little bit, you know, knowing how to prompt AI is a little bit less important because remember before it used to be like, oh, and make sure that you include an emotional plea because that's going to make the AI want to give you what you want. And make sure that you use this prompting framework or otherwise you won't get like that stuff isn't as big of a deal anymore. But communication is. Right. Really, prompting is a communication skill. It's all about clear communication and knowing what you're asking for and knowing how to describe it well. And school has been a place to develop your communication skills for a long, long, long time, you know. There's a, there's a guy, Andre Carpati. I can't remember where I think he was like one of the early open AI guys or something like that. There was this tweet that he put out a long time ago that I still remember. He said, the hottest coding language right now is English. And you know, that has to do with, it has to do with computer programming and coding and everything. But it also has to do with the way that we prompt. You know, it's like clear, clear language. And another thing you said, Andrew, was that this doesn't just start in high school, which rub some people the wrong way because some people are like, we don't want our young kids to be programming AI. And they're not ready for that and everything. Okay. There are some, some boundaries and some guidelines as far as using AI for young kids. But honestly, that's not really what we're talking about because AI literacy can start with the littles the same way that like computational thinking starts with the littles, you know. You have kids coding each other where they're standing on like tiles and a classroom floor. And you say, go forward two tiles and turn right and go right two tiles. And where are you? That's computational thinking. It's the same way. It's like knowing you can say to kindergarteners, you know, here's a picture, the computer made this for me. Just something simple like that. That's a very small ship saying that computer made this. Can you tell that the computer made this and not a person? How can you tell? I think that key right there, Matt, because you're teaching students how to use AI for the boring parts, not the thinking parts. There's that. Yes. Also the awareness of human created versus AI create, it's like, these are just what you said Andrew and then what I said right there, those are just two small examples of just like little shifts in the way that you explain things, you know, even for the younger students, it's just starting to get them ready to think about it and realizing that it exists and it's out there. It's not like you have to get them on the computer and teach them for two hours a day through AI chatbots. It's not what anybody is saying. Honestly, that could be harmful if the kid doesn't realize that an AI chatbot is actually AI and not a human. So, you know, there are definitely those guardrails out there. But, oh my goodness, yes. Like, 100 times yes, what you were just saying, Andrew, like all of these pillars, they show up in all of these different places and it doesn't mean that we have to get kids on devices and make them talk to AI all the time for them to be AI ready. You know, and when you level that just to piggyback about that, when we talk about career ready and like you said, there's boundaries that people don't want to, you know, broach and even approach any at all. But you know, if you think of the youngest learner's K2, they already are using AI as a helper tool, whether it's voice assistance or image sorting, you know, but you teach them the, you know, identifying patterns or safe tech habits, storytelling, like you mentioned with AI images that can be teacher guided, right? So, they're, you know, they're still in that regard. And then when you level it up to like, you know, intermediate level at elementary, basic prompting, right? Three, you know, grades three through five and maybe identifying the AI generated media that you talk and research with brispoos with guardrails and starting to learn a little bit about ethics so they can wrap their head around it. You know, and as we keep going up, like, you know, I'm just scaffolding this in my head. You have the middle school, you know, those kids are changing quite quickly and frequently, but structured prompting, right? Roll playing things, get them some more of the project bay uses of AI, Canva and Adobe Express and them doing it themselves. And then you get to your high school students where you have the multi-step, you know, AI workflows and coding tools, simulations, data analysis, depending upon their courses, ethical case studies. I know that always comes up, you know, as we, we mentioned and, and then how, how those real world tasks are connected to career clusters that you mentioned, CTE, business, literacy, tech ed, health science, et cetera, and so forth, you know, try to get through, but scaffold it up so that it's not like, you know, you got to go zero to 120 when you hit sixth grade. So, yeah, I just kind of want to add on to that too. I'm just remembering all those years with hour of code with the kindergarten classes, doing the maths, doing the bebads, doing all that, but you're right. It's computational thinking and that's the one thing we're talking about prompting. But, you know, you, you had mentioned that you were just meeting with a bunch of ELA teachers and so they're not going to be thinking about computational thinking. But what they should be thinking about is student inquiry and inquiry based learning. And those are the, and the idea of how to develop questions or students to develop good questioning techniques to drive inquiry to go forward, whether it's through a design thinking process, building empathy for project based learning experience, all of that. So, it's those skills that are transferable into that idea. It's like, if we want student inquiry and students driving the instruction and having things where students centered and having authentic experiences, well, that's where the idea of prompting coding, that's what it is too. It's being able to get the right questioning techniques in order to refine what you're looking for. Yeah. And really, if you go even broader than that, you know, all the way across the K-12 spectrum, it really goes to solving problems, critical thinking, reasoning. There's like all of those very human skills that have been so important to us in education for so long. And we're going to rely on those even more as AI continues to go. You know, like no matter where the technology goes, no matter how smart AI becomes and how capable it becomes and how much it changes the world, we're still going to as humans for ourselves. We're still going to have to decide if something is okay. That's critical thinking. You know, we're going to have to try to figure out how to go forward. That's problem solving. We're going to have to try to figure out if something is real or not and if we should trust it or not and how it applies to our lives. That's reasoning. And like all of that stuff, all still very much is important. And that's all AI literacy too, right? So, yeah, so no matter what it is across the board, it's going to apply in some way. And one other thing I've got to say too is that the days of saying, oh, I don't know how this fits. I can't figure out how to, I'm not that kind of like creative teacher that can figure out how to fit all of this in like, sorry, but those days are over. Right. You've got, you've got, you know, you can just hop on your AI tool of choice and say, how could this fit with my class? And it's not to say that they're all great ideas, but you can come up with something. So at some point, it's going to be, if you think that you can't come up with ways to do it, it's because you've decided that you don't want to. There's the key. Well, you know, I'm just going to get a little off track here, but you said something and that really just made me remember something and brought up like a little bit of emotion I had at the time, you know, about creativity. And I think that's one of the things that is available now is we can democratize creativity. I would love to be able to go and make a sculpture or I'd love to do a mural or I'd love to do this and I have these visions in the head and I just don't, and sometimes I don't feel like I'm the creative thing, but I can be creative now. So I was leading at a conference recently talking about the future of things and it was about this, you know, the future is more about designing for variability from the start. So if we can make sure we're designing for everyone around the edges, it's going to bring up everyone in the middle and the idea that every innovation starts with like one question, who might this leave out? So if we can figure out who we're leaving out, so I gave the example of being able to be creative and someone said, well, is that you being creative or is that the AI being creative? And it puts something inside me. I'm like, no, I'm like, because it gave me value. I felt as the creative going in because it was my guidance, my thoughts, my vision that was able to produce something that I felt that I was very proud of. So I've been able to democratize creativity, expression for students that didn't have maybe the confidence or just democratizing anything in that regard, whether it's being able to access something through a translation tool or through a voice detects or all that. So I just wrote up that feeling and I just felt like talking about it. No, and I think you're exactly right. And it also shows the balance. And the balance is a big part of AI literacy that we've got to be willing to talk about. Because in your example, if you're doing a creative work, could AI be overused so that it's doing all the work and you're not doing anything and you're just passing it off as your own? Yes. Could you also say, no, I'm not going to touch any of those tools. I'm going to do it all myself. Could there are there missed opportunities there? Yes. Where do we fall in the middle? And that also I think goes to, you know, you were talking about like accessibility features and speech to text and all that stuff. Some people are like, oh, that's cheating. Oh, that you have teachers that say that too. Oh, we're not going to let those kids use that stuff. And no, it's leveling the playing field. But really, you could ask that same question and that's going to be a key AI literacy that everybody's going to have to wrestle with at some point. Is this leveling the playing field or is this giving an unfair advantage? And there's kind of like that balance all the way across the board. And I would all, I mean, for the most part, I would like to lean on the idea of it's leveling the playing field. But also if you lean too far in that direction, then maybe it starts to, so there's that balance, right? Even in creative work and everything. And I think whenever we hit that balance, just right, it helps to bring out parts of us that we weren't able to. And I feel like that's part of the vision of what we'd really like to try to do with this. All right. Well, it's always fun talking with Matt Dan. It is live from his classroom. Yeah. And so that's just mind blowing how he gives work in that. So this is part one because we had such a great fruitful conversation with Matt. Part one of our interview with Matt is going to actually wrap up episode 66. As always, thank you for all your support listening on all those platforms, leaving those reviews. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, please reach out. Tech hard work smart live and adventure. Find Andrew on all socials at AidenakolaTak and Dan at WCSD TechDR.