Preparing Teachers for the AI-Driven Future: Strategies and Collaborations

Erin Stanley:

So we’re so excited for this webinar today because it’s not totally a webinar. This is really a group discussion. We haven’t done a lot of this before, so I’m super excited about it. I go to a lot of events for GoReact, and by far my favorite part is just talking to educators, listening to your experiences, what’s going on in your world. So that’s what we’re hoping to do here, which means if you want to say something, you can just chime in. Make sure your microphone is off, and go ahead and chime in. You can also raise your hand. I’m going to go over that in just one second. We’ll wait for a few more people to join.

But for those of you not familiar with GoReact, we’re a video feedback solution. We’ve been in the higher education space for about 10 years, and then just a couple of years ago, we moved into the K12 space. We’re really focused on helping teachers with professional development, teacher growth. We’ve been in the teacher education space for a long time. In fact, 20% of teachers that graduate now have used GoReact, so we’re super excited about that, and we want to lend the same support in that K12 world. So that’s who GoReact is.

So if you would like to raise your hand to say something, I don’t know how many of you often use Zoom, they just changed some of their settings. But if you can see the bar at the bottom that has your audio video chat, there’s a button with a heart, and if you click on that heart, that’s how you raise your hand. So let me ask you a question, we’ll test it out, and you can raise your hand that way, or you can raise your hand this way. I’m curious, how many of you feel like AI is going to make your job harder in the next three years? So you can click that heart and raise your hand. None of you. I’m not seeing any hands raised. Okay. This is so interesting. We recently-

Julie Stanley:

Hey Erin, I think you don’t have host settings, but I could see hand raised. So I just made you a co-host, and you should be able to see it. Sorry.

Erin Stanley:

Awesome. Oh, okay. Yeah, so a couple of you. The GoReact team just put together a guide for how to use AI in education, especially K12, how it’s helping. But when they did their poll, they found that 49% of teachers believe AI is going to make their job harder in the next three years, which I think is probably not unusual for a lot of different industries. I think there’s a lot of people very nervous about it. So first question for all of you for anyone to answer, what are your top concerns with AI?

Elaine Saef:

So I’m in Broward County, Florida. I work at Nova University. I’m a university supervisor. I played with the AI this summer with recorded videos of my students’ lessons because we had no students interning in the summer. And the only thing I noticed, I thought the AI feedback was great, but it lacked some of the human content obviously. And some of the comments were, as the teacher, maybe you could have said this. It didn’t see, I guess, what the student did for why the teacher reacted the way the teacher did. And that’s, I know something that may never be added yet, but that was the one thing I felt was lacking, where it wouldn’t replace me, I guess, or other supervisors was, it doesn’t see everything that went into the way the student teacher reacted to the students in the classroom or perhaps answered in a certain way kind of thing. That was the thing I thought was missing.

So I don’t know that it’s a concern. I’ve told my students they could use the AI, film themselves, record themselves on GoReact, and then get the AI feedback if they didn’t want me to watch it as a formal evaluation. But again, it doesn’t replace all the things that I might see, having been a principal and a teacher myself of why they do things.

Erin Stanley:

Yeah. Elaine, I think you hit on something that feels like one of my concerns with AI as I use it personally or professionally is just it doesn’t understand context. So I’m curious, once your students start using it for self-reflection and kind of getting that initial, if they’ll find that helpful, or if they feel like it won’t capture that context. Anyone else have any concerns with AI in general or the features they’ve used? Yeah, William?

William Thornburgh:

I like AI, and I introduce my students to it, and I teach them how to use it. But also, my concerns are that some may rely too heavily on it and end up becoming an inservice teacher who lacks skills, like the productive struggle of a multi-week unit, coming up with good assessment questions, knowing how to think critically and problem solve and come to a good conclusion because they have foundational knowledge. If they’re relying too heavily on AI through their teacher ed program, then we may be producing teachers who just don’t have some of those basic skills.

Erin Stanley:

I mean, these teachers that are being trained today, many of them will teach kids who have never known anything but AI, I guess depending on the grade you’re teaching. But what kind of skills are they going to need to fill that role?

Julie Stanley:

I’ll chime in, Erin. So to kind of piggyback off of both of these folks who brought up really great points, so part of what I do in teacher prep here at ECU is I have them strategically use AI. But then, their assignment, their task is to critique that AI and to look for those places where, it missed the mark here, and here’s what I as the human being would do, as the empath would do. Here’s where context… And so, they actually have to go in and highlight and reflect and point out those things.

I have them use it for differentiation strategies, for question generation, for all kinds of things. But the point is that they have to think critically, and that’s the skill, to answer your most recent question. That’s the skill we have to instill in them is it’s not a replacement, it’s a tool. And think critically, “Okay, I like this that AI gave me, but this is not it. I, as the teacher, as the experienced human in the room, this I can make better.” So the point of their assignment is to be critical of AI and to understand where it hit the mark and where it missed.

Jessica Lyons:

Erin, can I say something?

Erin Stanley:

Go ahead, Jessica.

Jessica Lyons:

Yeah, just kind of like what Julie was saying and really what you said, I really think that we have a responsibility with teachers, with everybody. AI is not going anywhere, and we have to teach them how to use it and how to use it ethically and correctly. And like you said, in a few years, that’s all the kids in front of us will know. And so, if we just kind of bury your head and pretend like chat didn’t happen or I’m not using it, then you’re not preparing these kids for the future, the legitimate future that they’re going to have once they walk out of our classroom doors.

Erin Stanley:

Just such a hard task because none of us know what exactly. I mean, we’re all guessing, but I mean, a lot of you on this call, myself included, remember when internet first came out. We didn’t know how it was going to change our lives or how we would be using it. So I love what you said, Julie, that focusing on some of these skills, like critical thinking, and I hear more talk about soft skills in the context of AI. Oh, now let’s teach these soft skills because AI can’t do those, and I find that really interesting. Yeah. I’m curious what conversations you have about AI either with your students or your colleagues. What’s the general attitude where you’re at?

Ann Stark:

Hi, everyone. My name is Ann, and I teach middle school in California. I’m also a lead mentor with a large induction program here. I just came back from a three-day conference where AI was one of the sessions we attended, and I was really, really surprised how many school administrators hadn’t yet tried AI. It was new for so many of them, and all of them had heard of it obviously, but were really fearful of it. And I found that, one, really interesting, and two, I had such a great time with my table group of eight other educators, showing them some of the AI features. And all of them were just like, “Oh my gosh, this is amazing. This is revolutionary. Oh, you just made my job 10,000 times easier. Oh my gosh. Do the students know about this?” “Yes, they do.”

So I think a lot of people are still, like somebody said, burying their head in the sand and pretending it’s not happening, but oh, it’s happening. It’s happening faster than we can keep up with it, and that’s the part that scares me. The tool of AI is absolutely amazing, just like the internet and just like the cell phone. But the part that’s scary is the advanced capability is growing so much faster than our ability to set policy and put some safeguards into it so that it doesn’t become dangerous in the wrong hands.

William Thornburgh:

I’m currently on a committee that’s developing an AI statement for our syllabus template, and one of the things our faculty’s going to talk about in the upcoming weeks is, there’s this guy, there’s a group out of Australia who has a usage diagram for AI from level zero to five, and it’s really good. And so, I think that our faculty has concerns with basically students just cheating, just asking AI to do something, copying it, and paste it. And that’s exactly what we don’t want, and like what Julie was saying, that doesn’t help them, and it doesn’t help anyone, future students that they’re going to have either.

And so, we have to teach them that, we have to embrace it and teach our own faculty that the AI can be helpful, and we have to teach students that, as helpful as it can be, that it makes mistakes. It’s not perfect. And so, we have to look at the output critically and then think about, “Okay, that’s decent, but I can make it better.” So we should use it as a brainstorming tool versus, “Here’s a question, give me the answer.”

And this really kind of stems from the fact that we had a doctoral student basically write multiple chapters just AI generated, and that’s that to a very different level. That’s a major concern. So there’s just some fear. And then, I think, like what Ann said, we still have a number of faculty who haven’t played around with AI, or maybe they only know about ChatGPT and not all of the other great tools that are out there. So we’re trying to help our especially older faculty to embrace it more.

Erin Stanley:

It’s hard, and you mentioned policy, for sure, it’s moving faster than policy moves. We all know how slow policy is in education. That puts a lot of burden on you guys though to kind of figure it out and lead the way.

Jessica Lyons:

I think there’s this huge stigma around AI in education with professors and teachers because you say AI, and most of them are like, “Cheating.” And of course that’s a legit concern, but it can be something that can be addressed and dealt with. But like Ann was saying, when I presented these conferences with these teachers who’ve never used chat or anything, and then you show them what it can do, it’s game changing in the classroom for a lot of teachers. And that’s what I love about it the most is that, once they’re like, “Oh, it’s not just writing their papers. Look at all these other things I can do,” it lightens the workload so much for educators, and that I think is so, so, so important.

Erin Stanley:

I’m curious if any of you could share examples of how you’ve successfully integrated AI in the classroom in some of your teaching practices.

Jessica Lyons:

Well, I can. We use ChatGPT in writing for, we do a peer review, and then I call it a machine review afterwards. So they take the rubric, and they copy and paste their paper in there. And then, I have some questions that they ask chat to answer, and then they have to share that chat with me so I can see what the response was from chat. And then, they use that for revision.

So I mean, peer reviews with your peers is like, “It good. I like. Nice paper.” And so, I’m trying to get them better at it. But if I add that extra like, “Okay, now go talk to chat and see what he says about it,” that has become just so much… The idea of show don’t tell in writing. Kids sometimes just don’t get that. And you can say it 8 million ways, but if you say, “Okay, now let’s go to chat, put your sentence in and ask him to rewrite it for show don’t tell.” And then, he does, and we look at it, but I say, “Okay, now what does this word mean? Do you know what this word means? If you don’t, let’s look it up so we can put it in our own voice.” We’re not copying and pasting it. We’re getting the idea, we’re seeing how it works. Now, let’s put it into our own voice.

Erin Stanley:

Man, and I love that in-person follow-up you’re describing that you can really, “Well, do you know this word?” That’s fantastic.

William Thornburgh:

I’ve used…

Julie Stanley:

Sorry, go ahead.

William Thornburgh:

Okay, thank you. I’ve used Diffit, so I’m in science education, and we talk about learning progressions and how the same topic, it appears at different times throughout NGSS. And Diffit’s really good that you can plug in the topic that you want to teach, the grade level, and then you can keep the same topic and then just easily click a different grade level. So instead of just talking about how the topics become more complex over time, and it builds on what they’ve learned in the previous grade bands, I mean, Diffit basically shows them like, “Okay, here’s what it looks like here, and here’s what it looks like here.” And it’s really, I mean, it’s one of my favorite AI tools. It’s really great.

Ann Stark:

Just to piggyback on what William just mentioned, the Diffit, that’s AI for education, Diffit and Brisk, I believe, is the other. And we’re having a training on that next week, and our district is embracing the whole Diffit and Brisk and really saying, “This is a tool you should be using. It will help you differentiate your instruction. It’s going to help you engage your advanced learners in a way that will challenge them to continue to grow while you’re helping your lower level kids.”

So there is all kinds of possibilities, even with some of just the ChatGPT or the Perplexity, some of the regular ones. You can say, “Here’s a list of vocabulary words. Give me a list at first grade level with definitions, fifth grade level with definitions, and eighth grade level with definitions, all with the same word, just more understandable.” So for new teachers coming in who are really overwhelmed and just teaching to that one level of learner because that’s all they can do, this is going to help our students so much because our teachers will be able to work smarter and faster versus impossibly harder, which is what most new teachers do.

Julie Stanley:

Can I jump on that bandwagon? So thank you for that, Diffit. That’s a new tool for me, so I’ll be looking into that for sure. But I wanted to make sure everyone knows about Magic School probably, Magic School AI. That is for educators, and now there’s Magic School for students. And that, Erin, you asked, how have we integrated it into our teaching, where I’m in elementary ed, and I am thinking it’s a generational thing. But they really are terrible at grammar, the Is not being capitalized as a personal pronoun and those kinds of things. And so, we talk about professionalism in if you’re writing back to a parent or to your mentor teacher, to an admin.

So one big tool that we have intentionally integrated in my class is the email responder in Magic School. So I give them a hypothetical email from an upset parent. And another thing, a novice teacher’s really nervous with upset parents, and they don’t know how to respond. How do I hold my line but not be too pushy on that? So I give them a fictional email demanding things from a parent. “You’re going to give him a grade. You’re going to let him redo this.” And in the tool, you just say, “What do you want to communicate? I’m not going to let them retake this. I have alerted you,” Those kinds of things. And then, you paste the email in, and AI generates the email in a professional appropriate tone.

And then, we have them go in, again, critique. Did AI miss the mark anywhere in this? Can you revise this? And then, you don’t have to worry so much about the grammar stuff, right. Now, it’s responding in a professional way, in a professional tone, but also not giving control to the parent.

So that’s one of the tools. But if you don’t know Magic School AI, it is amazing. And the text leveler, I think Ann was talking about the vocabulary word definitions in many levels. I put Macbeth in there, and I said, “Put it in a third grade level,” and it did it. I mean, it is pretty astounding. And I think if we approach AI, because I have some Nervous Nellies too, and they don’t want to be put out of a job by AI. But if we approach it that, look at what AI can do to take some time to give you time back, to do all the other stuff so that you can invest your time as the human being with your students, with the lesson plan, and with the creativity, with building relationships. Once we show them that this really is a tool for you so that you could be a better teacher, generally they buy in.

Erin Stanley:

That’s such a great example. My sister teaches fourth grade in Massachusetts, and that’s where she very first started using AI in her classroom was to respond to tense parent emails. That is just not a skill that’s easy for her, and she was like, “Oh, I’m going to use ChatGPT to help me with these parts that I am not good at.” And giving all the power to the parents, that’s exactly why. She would’ve just folded, I think, because so nice, so it helped her a ton.

So I love this idea that you brought up that teachers can really use it to instruction. It sounds like we can give students more personalized learning, which can also help reaching students that aren’t being reached, kind of level the playing field. My daughter is a senior this year, and so we’re talking about college application essays. I read an article that said there’s been some criticism about using ChatGPT to help brainstorm for those, like that that’s not fair. But then, some kids can afford a coach, a college coach who’s going to do that same thing. So is it really not fair, or are we a little scared that it’s leveling the playing field? But I’m curious what your thoughts are around leveling the playing field for all students and giving them exactly the things that they need.

William Thornburgh:

Why would we not want that, right? That would be my question.

Erin Stanley:

Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a little fear that, if we rely too heavily on AI, it does have its own biases. So we definitely have to watch for that. But yeah, absolutely. Of course we want that, right?

Jessica Lyons:

Well, and I am not sure a lot of people realize how much AI is already a part of their lives. You’re using Grammarly, you’re using Amazon, you’re using Google, you’re using AI. It’s not like it’s some sort of foreign thing that’s never touched you. You use it more than you know, and the idea, like you just said, I love that, that I’ve known people who’ve had coaches help them with SAT prep and stuff like that. Great, you can afford that. I can go on chat or whatever, Khan, and do SAT prep. It is really leveling the playing field, and you really are allowing the work to meet the kid where they’re at and help them from where they’re at, not where you think they should be at.

Erin Stanley:

Anyone else want to chime in on that topic? So if you had to think ahead in five years, how do you see AI transforming the role of teachers? Is it going to look really different? What would you predict?

William Thornburgh:

I really hope that, between emails, a lot of administrative type things, AI can help take care of those. So it can reduce the amount of time that teachers are spending on administration and then open up that time to allow them to focus on the kids, so that’s what I hope to see. Obviously we hope that they’ll get better at AI use over the years, but I think if we can kind of cut out some of the nonsense parts of teaching, then that will allow our teachers to focus on what’s really important.

Julie Stanley:

I one hundred percent agree. And I also think, remember, well, not remember because I don’t think any of us were around when the calculator came out. But I’ve read things, right? People were like losing their minds, “What? A calculator? Now they’re never going to learn math.” But it has actually enabled us to push even further. So this can really be an innovation where, “Okay, how do I come up with an assessment where I know they cannot use AI, that I’m really getting at their real learning and understanding.” And so, it’s going to push teachers out of the box to be more innovative, more creative, and really deeper levels of learning can be accomplished now, I think. I think it’s a good prod for teachers.

Jessica Lyons:

And I hope to see the differentiation. At this point now, if I wanted to, I could tailor it for every single kid in my classroom. I don’t want to at this point, but I think five years from now, we can get to that point where the kids, like I said, are truly being taught at the level they need to be taught at. And as teachers, we feel comfortable doing that. We all know we have to differentiate. We all know that’s one of the hardest things in the world to do, and there’s only so much you can rely on your special ed teachers or your ENL teachers. Now, I have a way of doing that differentiation as well. And so, I know my kids are getting what they need, and that’s what I hope to see with it.

Julie Stanley:

Really trying not to talk too much, but I know we’re focused on academics.

Erin Stanley:

This is great.

Julie Stanley:

I want to just bring up that I’m currently running a study, and the first leg of that study is done this summer with graduate students. But I know AI can’t be humanistic, right? But they had to generate social and emotional focused behavior management plans to respond to behavioral needs in my graduate management course, and the data doesn’t lie. I mean, of course there were concerns. There was the, “Oh, I needed the human in me. My experience is valuable. It needs to come into play.” But it generated theory-driven, theory-supported, research-based strategies that, these are experienced veteran teachers who were saying, “I hadn’t thought of that before.”

And so, it’s not only the academic world. It can also help with these kids where you’re like, “I don’t know what else to do. I can’t teach because of the behavior.” But it has been really eye-opening, and it’s just using the chatbot in Magic School. And I helped them build a profile for each student, and once they put it in, it was really breathtaking, some of the things that AI was able to do. So it is definitely academically helpful, but it also can be socially and emotionally helpful.

Erin Stanley:

Yeah, that’s such a huge problem right now for especially new teachers. So they would create a profile of the student, kind of describe their challenges and all of that, and then the chat would generate a behavior plan?

Julie Stanley:

Yes, and what they learned was how to tweak their prompt, how to ask. Because in Magic School, Raina sometimes will, well, not sometimes, she gives you follow-up questions that you could just click on. And some of them were even commenting like, “Oh, I didn’t know to ask that, but I did need to know that, and I’m so thankful that Raina had that. But then, I needed, okay, she gave me a plan, but I really wasn’t sure. I needed more detail. So okay, I tell Raina, elaborate on step number two, tell me more about how to implement it, and it does.” So they really began a conversation with the chatbot, and they really tailored it to meet all the needs that were in that student’s profile. So it incorporated also academic needs. So how do I address the behavior but also realize that some of this behavior is because they are behind in reading? And so, while I’m teaching reading, these behaviors are popping out. So how can I address across the board what the needs are? And Raina did a great job in Magic School for addressing that.

Erin Stanley:

That’s amazing, really. I mean, it does make me think another thing we might see in five years is a real stark difference between teachers who had mentors and coaches who were familiar with AI and could help them use it to be better teachers, and those who just said, “No AI.” There are going to be two different camps, I predict. Any other softwares or resources that you guys would like to share with each other?

William Thornburgh:

Eduaide is fairly popular and not too bad, but if I could throw in some votes, Magic School AI and Diffit are my two favorites.

Ann Stark:

I am so excited. I can’t wait as soon as we get off this to dig into Magic School. I haven’t heard of it, so it’s really great. This is great to learn some new things. To add on to Diffit, it’s a Chrome extension. It’s an easy one to get for all the teachers. It’s just a Chrome extension. And then, we’ve talked a lot today, like ChatGPT is the most popular or known, easiest to start on AI.

But at my conference, I learned about Perplexity. And the difference between the two is simply that Perplexity cites its sources, whereas AI just spits back information. But Perplexity cites its sources, and you can say, “Only include sources from,” if you’re looking for a .gov or something, you can be specific on your sources. And then, they list them at the top. You can click on them, and it doesn’t just cite it, but it links you to it. So then, you can read the article where it was pulled from or whatever else, so then it takes you to even more research. So you are able to then go on and research and learn more and expand your knowledge beyond what was just generated for you. So the Perplexity is a cool one that I’ve been using over ChatGPT since then.

Jessica Lyons:

If you don’t use ChatGPT that often, it is rolling over to the 4o version. So it has, 3.5 is the one we’ve been using. The 4o does give you live internet search. It does do the citing if you ask it to do that and all that stuff too, and that’s just the newer version of it. It’s rolling out right now. You can use 4o for so many different prompts, and then it shoots you back to 3.5. But OpenAI keeps saying that everybody will have the 4o version, they say within the next year. But the update to it has made it so it searches the live internet, it does give the citations for you, and that kind of thing, the changes that definitely needed to be made to it.

Erin Stanley:

Yeah, I’m excited to play around in that. I have not used that.

William Thornburgh:

I’m going to throw a link if you’ve not seen this one, but it’s called theresanaiforthat.com. And if you want to just be, blow your mind, if you want to create PowerPoints, you type in PowerPoint, and it will give you the 10,000 AI sites that can do it. It’s updated daily, and I mean, it’s overwhelming to be honest with you. But if you’re looking for new ideas for AI, it’s a really good website.

Erin Stanley:

I love that it’s updated daily. It really is. We’re in such a bubble right now. There’s so much. I mean, I think that list is going to shrink in the next five years as we see who rises to the top, but that’s amazing. It’s a great resource. Any other questions you wish we were asking around AI, that you wish maybe your colleagues or administrators or whoever were asking?

Julie Stanley:

I just wish there was a bigger intention at the school level to help bridge that gap, even for nervous teachers or for those who think they just are not technologically with it enough. But to have some more PD and to really see AI as a progressive thing and not something that you need to lock down on and not allow kids to use. I don’t know how we in our positions help facilitate that other than just presenting at conferences and showing these principles and other admin how AI is, it’s the future, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Ann Stark:

I think it’s coming faster each week that this is growing because we are seeing conferences now at, I mean, AI at education conferences. My district this year said we need to have a district-wide statement and stance on AI because right now, it’s kind of like the Wild, Wild West. And I thought, yep, it is. That’s exactly how things are right now. So AI is growing faster than any of our previous technologies have, and like Julie said, we need to hurry up and get on board, everybody.

Jessica Lyons:

And I worry, Ann, like you said, and William, you said you’re writing a policy. I just hope the people who are writing the guidelines and the policy use it, know what it can do before there’s a, “Here’s our guideline. It’s no-no.” I’ve seen that where we need a policy, and then the people who are on the policy committee, I don’t know if they’ve ever used it, and if they have, they hate it. So that’s my concern as all the policy and guidelines start to go in place is just give it a chance.

Ann Stark:

Jessica, hopefully they’ll use AI to write their policies.

Erin Stanley:

Does anyone in the audience have a question that they’d like the group to discuss? You can put them in chat, or you can unmute and just ask. But last order of business, if there are any questions that the group wants to discuss.

And while you’re all thinking about that, I will mention, Elaine mentioned that GoReact does have an AI assistant integrated. We just launched that about a month ago. You can try it out for free this month. So if any of you’re interested in that, check out that feature on GoReact. And what’s kind of exciting as we see it that’s relevant to this discussion is you still have to learn how to use AI and make it a part of your processes. And every way that you guys are using it that you’re describing, I think, is so important to share. This is what this is about, so that we can understand how to make our processes more effective and our work more effective and all of that. So we’re excited to hear from our customers exactly how they are using it. It’s not just a flip that you switch. You really have to think about…

Jessica Lyons:

There’s an art. There’s an art to writing a prompt into AI. And I love, Julie, I think you were saying, they had to go back and tweak their prompts because you can’t just type it in there and boom, I’ve got it. There is an art to creating those specific and detailed prompts.

Erin Stanley:

And like Elaine mentioned, encouraging her students to use it as a self-reflection tool. I think that’s a really strong use of it. It’s definitely not meant to replace that coach mentor relationship or personal interaction, but how can it be used to already support what you’re doing, I think, is great. Okay, any other questions? Are we all good? This was a great discussion. Thank you so much for everyone for participating and being here, and I hope your summer’s going well. Those of you that are working through the summer, good luck. Probably most of you, right? All right, everyone. Have a great day.