001very good okay we're live excellent well good evening everyone thank you for those of you who are able to join me here uh in person and for those of you joining us on the live stream welcome to the K through four and Hughes AI parent University uh my name is Dr Palo I'm the supervisor of educational technology here in East Brunswick I'm very excited to share this information with everyone tonight we had a really successful secondary uh a AI parent University last week very excited to speak with the elementary crowd and talk about specific things regarding uh Ai and how that's being rolled out uh in our in our elementary schools and I think one of the things you'll see uh throughout our presentation if you've seen any of my past presentations at uh board
002meetings last year if you were able to attend the AI parent University uh in the in the fall or I'm sorry last spring uh you'll see that you know we''ve been very thoughtful about this we've been collaborative we've been transparent uh we we have two websites here if you go to www.ebnet.org Center that's where that's kind of become our hub for all information East bronic related to AI all the teaching tools that we're using for staff for administrators uh for students our guidelines some of the things we're going to talk about tonight our AIU scale that we've been using at the secondary level and also future communications and information that we're going to share with uh you know with all constituents all stakeholders going forward is going to be there so I encourage everyone that
003tonight if you're here you're going to have all these slides posted on the website afterward uh the video will be accessible we've gotten a lot of uh hits on the on our stream from last week after the event took place which has been really exciting um but you'll have all access to the slides and information there um if you have questions I'll certainly be taking questions from the folks that are here tonight if you're at home and you want to ask questions there's not an interactive feature through the live stream but you can reach out to me via email and uh send any questions that you have or suggestions there's also going to be a feedback form at the end so folks here you'll be able to access that and Folks at home you'll see
004a QR code come up I suggest you have your phone out and you'll be able to uh share any feedback suggestions recommendations for future parent universities as well uh you know and things like that so really exciting uh to be here and I wanted to thank those of you who are a to join me both virtually and in person so let's jump right into our discussion tonight so when people hear the the the you know the term AI or the phrase generative AI you know these are the these are the official definitions these are from the state of New Jersey um and I think one of the things that I always like to point out to people that is that AI has been a part of our life been a part of our lives for
005a long time you know artificial intelligence you know it's been part of the Sci-Fi culture you know a lot of people think about uh different things with regards to machine learning and you know when you watch Star Trek in the spaceship you talk to the spaceship and ask it to do uh calculations and things like that um but in our in our um in our life we you know AI has been a part of our life in many ways a lot of the things that we see machines being able to do reacting uh to different information inputs things of that nature you know when you walk into you know one of my favorite things one of my favorite apps that's AI powered uh is an app called Shazam when you walk into CVS or you
006in the supermarket late night and a song comes on you're like wow what song is this you open up Shazam you click a button and in about four or five seconds it tells you what song is playing you go oh I haven't heard this song In Forever um so it's always a lot of fun so those kind of apps you know Alexa um you know Google um you know Siri these these things have you know these are all AI powered you know tools that have been really important you know any think of excel functionality and things like that AI has been part of our life for for a very long time the thing that I think you know when most people think about the new the AI that's been really impactful the last couple years
007is what we're talking about is generative Ai and with generative AI or gen AI we're talking about AI that generates or creates content it has the appearance that it's thinking and creating um things but it really is a response to input in inside of these large language models and it's really powerful cool technology um but that's that that's the relatively new wave of AI that we 've been seeing and that's where with the launch of chat chat GPT in November of 2022 that's where we've seen this this wave Usher in of what are we going to do about AI or you know what's going on with this wow it's really cool or wow it's really um you know cause for pause maybe and things like that so these are the official definitions they're very important
008and these are some of the things that when we talk about this with elementary students you know when appropriate these are the terms that they're going to learn and they're going to learn about privacy and safety on the internet and all those things so these terms are very important but one of the things I want to make clear to parents who are watching Guardians who are watching uh you know to students who might be watching as well with their parents or here tonight is I want you to start thinking of AI as a tool and just like the other tools you have up there on the screen you know hammers wrenches uh screwdrivers things like that does anyone know what uh anyone here know what that tool on the far right side is anyone know
009it's a glass cut it's a glass cutter awesome there's always there's one person in every crowd I've I've used this image in a few different talks I've done and trainings and somebody usually gets it thank you sir uh that is a glass cutter right so when we're using a tool you wouldn't use the glass cutter to cut wood right and you wouldn't use the hammer to put a screw in somewhere right tools you know are it's all about the you know what kind of project or what kind of goal you're trying to accomplish is going to depend on what kind of tool you're going to use so AI is very similar you know there's going to be a there's a lot that AI can do I'm going to show you some really cool stuff tonight
010that I think uh hopefully for those of you who have used AI you might be aware of some of these things for some of you who are newer to AI I I I hope that you're going to be uh pretty dazzled and and and amazed because it's some really cool stuff that it can do but it's not going to do everything maybe it's a little bit more of like a Swiss army knife where it has a lot of capabilities but it's a tool it's a tool and we have to make sure that it's not a substitute for our thoughts for our emotions you know for our creativity and Ingenuity but it is a really great productive tool and one of the a couple of things I'm going to share with everybody tonight is that it's
011a really it can be a really great thought partner and a really great work partner as well but it's all about how you use it and using it appropriately so when we talk about AI as a tool I like i' like to tell the story you might be thinking oh man like what what does mustard have to do with AI and and tools well I'm going to to share a quick little story with everybody H with regards to mustard because this is mustard is the is this story and mustard and AI right it's all connected for me this is a problem that I had that AI helped me solve that convinced me that maybe there was something to Ai and ultimate ultimately led me to this work that I'm doing right now that I've been
012really excited about for just over a year so I don't know if it was a byproduct of a couple things maybe you know collecting of food condiments and items uh coming out of covid maybe some barbecues you know when you get the value pack and you like the ketchup the the mustard and relish like you know what do you always end up with more of right the ketchup goes quick you use that on all your Burgers you use it for breakfast you use it for chicken nuggets and french fries but you always end up with a lot of mustard and a lot of relish well my house we got the two packs with just the mustard uh and then you know we accumulated some other mustards from other areas and I kind of had like
013a total dad moment where I was like okay that's it we got way too much mustard here I'm not throwing it out we're going to find a use for it I heard this AI stuff is really good with helping you you know come up with different things and all this stuff I'm going to find a use for all this mustard we're not throwing it out and that's it everyone in my house I have three kids nine six and four so at the time they were a couple years younger and and my uh my awesome wife they just like oh boy all right Dad's on a kick just he'll calm down eventually right he'll he'll be okay he's on one of his kicks so I went on AI chaty PT at the time and I typed
014in I have mustard I have chicken I have a few other ingredients what can I do with all this mustard so I don't throw it out that was pretty much my prompt some version of that and what it spit back to me was five different recipes that involved mustard that were quick and easy to make and all sounded really good I remember thinking wow all right well let me try one of these out like I don't have hours and hours to cook I have you know on my way here tonight I dropped my my son off at soccer my wife we did the tagout she's there finishing up soccer practice so I could be here I ate dinner in the back of the control room with Mr McManaman and uh you know no mustard actually
015there was some mustard in that dish it was a leftover from last night that I made with one of my recipes so I was so impressed with this and I said wow maybe there is something to this AI maybe if it can help me with this I wonder if I really took it out for a test drive could it help me solve other problems that I had or other other quick things silly things but other maybe more serious things that I that I need to work out so for me AI you know came to life and became a real tool for me when it solved this problem so I always uh joke with people like find your mustard moment if you're somebody who's really new to Ai and you like you're not really sure to
016believe the hype or you haven't had a chance to use it for some of the things we're going to talk about tonight I encourage you to find a a silly problem like mustard or ask it to do some fun things tell you a joke or something um you know help you write a a nice message to somebody on a holiday maybe uh those are going to be the things I think that open you up and go all right well let's let's let's start taking this thing out for test drive and try on some other things look for your mustard moment it's one of my big hopefully one of the big takeaways you have from tonight so before we jump into the specifics about the AI guidance that's been shared with teachers uh in the K
017to four schools and then the guidance that's been shared with uh students and with staff at uh hamers shold here at Hughes I wanted to talk about some uh specific ways that you can use AI in your life this is for the parents and guardians but you know we have uh we have a student here as well and maybe some students watching this as well some ways that uh you can use Ai and I just want to say for students who might be watching if you're under 13 right you have to make sure that you know Copa rules Children online Pro protection act right a protection Privacy Act you want to make sure you're talking to your parents you should be you shouldn't be using these tools without parental uh supervision and and most of
018the terms of service agreements for the AI tools do require to be 18 or over so just make sure you check with your parents before you sign up for anything and put your information anywhere so that you can keep your information safe a lot of our information is already out there they'll make it easier so make sure your parents know what you're doing and parents I would encourage you to uh have those conversations with your with your children as well so how can parents and Guardians use gen so two things up here that you know are are um are really important so drafting emails so this is one of the things that could be a huge timesaver writing a really good email could take a long time and I know over the course of my
019career I've been a a teacher educator for 19 years I got my start as a teacher at hamers shold in seventh grade history went to the high school for a while was uh instructional coach at the high school super uh was a department chair for social studies and media and I've been supervisor of educational technology for just over a year so I've written a lot of emails to students to parents to community members uh and in on the you know since I've been a supervisor and administrator um to all those groups plus vendors and people who reach out and have questions and things I like to write a lot lot of my own emails and I want if you have ever sent me an email uh you know it's likely that I responded to your
020email other times if I was trying if I was just having trouble with wording or if I was just having having kind of like a a blip you know like some like do I need coffee or something I I I would use I do use these tools sometimes to refine or condense a longer message and that's one of the really great uses you can use uh AI for some of the other things you know crafting a really good email for a property manager the mortgage company a customer service inquiry if you're upset about something trying to get a refund it could be hard uh if you're if you're not somebody who writes a lot of emails or maybe you know writing's never been your strength gen can be a great tool to help you with
021those things so I want to show you a couple examples here where you can use gen and how gen AI to do this and how simple it really is so in the first example we uh I know my kids uh go to Central School two of my three kids and um you one is uh he'll be there next year as a kindergartner so he's said he's a young guy in the family still enjoying uh you know you know his uh his being for and just you know having fun the others are having a blast at school love school love going every day we recently had the walk to school day now I didn't you really email about this uh but I it got me thinking this would be a great scenario for parents if you
022know we get a lot of emails you got some Blackboard messages from me I appreciate you reading those um and not automatically archiving or deleting them but let's say that you you remember like we got that message walk to school day when is it oh what do is there anything special I have to do and let's say you just you lost the email and you wanted to send a quick message to the teacher one of the things you could do is you can open up a gen tool and right here you have co-pilot and all I put in the prompt there is create an email from my second graders teacher reminder about details for walk to school day event apologize if the info was already sent and just with a you know a poorly worded
023sentence really um with a couple of details this generated a very you know solid email that I can copy and then paste right into an email that I'm that I'm creating and so what you can see that I'm doing here is you take the uh the subject you can parse that out you start to do some edits right and what you see me doing here in this process is this is the beginning of making sure the email is spoken with your voice so I didn't give it critical details about the teacher or my child's name or anything like that I gave it generic information because we don't I always encourage people not to put too much uh personally identifiable information into an AI chatbot not a not a great idea like I said before a
024lot of our information is already out there don't give it anymore so I got the I gave it the gist let it do the the the grunt work of making the email and then I go in and with a few clicks make sure it sounds right maybe delete a couple words maybe add a couple things and then I can add in the salutation that I want wanted to say my name my child's name and uh voila so something that might have taken me maybe what doesn't take you a long time to write emails but sometimes like I said depending on after a long day maybe you're just tired this thing can help you um do that really well make sure you delete all the other stuff from The Prompt and you're all good to send
025so that's that's a pretty impressive use of this tool and you know I think that that's something that could be a real timesaver right um one of the other things that I talk a lot that we deal a lot with is communication and I I before I show this example I just want to make clear a couple things like number one I think that we are able to best meet the needs of all Learners and help every student when we have honest conversation right and sometimes honest conversation about student situations it's not always you know sunshine and rainbow sometimes we have to have difficult conversations sometimes you know as a parent you have every right to be upset about something if you feel like something isn't being done that should be done so I want
026to show this example of how to revise an email not to discourage anyone from ever being honest with their child's teacher or a building administrator or curriculum administrator or or somebody else that works for the school but I also do want to say that I think generally we would all agree that if we can if we keep the conversation civil direct and honest but civil and we keep the tone such that it is it remains civil that we can get to a resolution faster when we do this that so one of the things that sometimes happens with email and I've been guilty of this myself I've I've been angry fired off an email uh to someone in my personal life and maybe even someone at work and maybe it didn't strike all the right tones
027that I wanted and you click Send and you feel good for about 5 seconds then you go oh all right maybe that that might not be the most helpful I don't think that really helped the situation you know and you might be like oh I probably should have checked the tone and sometimes even when you do those things it's hard to tell tone through email sometimes a very innocent email could come across like well what's that supposed to mean and you're like oh no I was just saying like yeah I guess we'll talk about it later I didn't mean like I guess we'll talk about it later but it's hard to do tone is really difficult sometimes through email so in this suggestion you'll see there's a scenario where maybe um you know as a
028parent you're upset about something that happened and um one of the things that you can use AI to do is run it through a filter ask it to just check for tone and um and and then it'll help you produce that email so that the communication is direct and honest but is getting us closer to resolution right and the other thing I'll just say too is if your situation isn't getting resolved after one or two emails I think the next email should be let's set up a time to call for a call and talk on the phone and I'm a big fan of Technology obviously but I I'm a bit I also believe in a blend of old school and new school so if you can't get that resolved through email recommend a time to
029call and I think that's always a good way if email is not able to resolve it so I say all those things to say here's an example ex Le here my child my first grade child came home from school she was upset about the reading group she was put in other kids distracted her said mean things this is ridiculous unacceptable write me an email uh to her teacher be direct I'm upset but be polite and what you can see here is it started to put together that email and when you use Google's Gemini you have a couple options if you if you have a Gmail account you can have a Gemini uh then you have access to Gemini you can have it sent to Gmail or can copy paste it into a word doc or
030or in this case an Outlook um an Outlook email and what you could see here that it did was it took my anger and some of the frustration that was in my email or that was in my message I didn't even really give it that much information I hope that's one of the things you're seeing is you don't have to give it information I didn't say the kid you know my my my kid's name I didn't say the teacher's name um I didn't really even give too much information I just told what the situation was and why I was upset and it helped formulate an email that expresses concern uh what happened she was quite upset today she's being distracted I understand grouping students can be a challenge but I believe it is important that
031every child feel comfortable and supported right these are things that are important right these are these are these are facts of the situation these are the feelings that you feel but it's done in a way that asks for you know explanation but also hey how can we move forward from this I want to work together so it checks that tone for you and it makes the next phase of the conversation one where um maybe there's an explanation you know sometimes there's there's other information there's other facts that you're not aware of you know you weren't there for the situation uh maybe the teacher didn't realize these things were happening I thank you for telling me that this happened I will take care of it right away um so I think that once again I want
032everyone to be honest direct I'm I'm a big fan of transparency and honesty um but also keeping the tone of the conversation civil is important um and like I said if you get to an email back and forth where you're not getting a clear answer or just maybe something's getting lost in the sauce of emails that next email should say let's set up a time for us to talk and that's and that's and that's great because then we're getting closer to resolution we're helping kids and that's what it's all about make sense right so I hope that that was that's a a pretty cool example and a good situation to see so another example I want to show is more about um the second situation dealing with a property manager or customer service comp CL
033this one uh is a is a situation where somebody emails their property manager about a heating issue in their apartment so take a look at this one this is on chat GPT the the tool that started the whole gen AI wave as we know it create an email for a property manager Marez explaining the heat is not working thermostat's not accurate I'm very upset so it creates this email and as I was doing this video I remember saying like that's a longer email so my next prom part of the prompt is condense to two paragraphs and then you click s and you'll see it takes that message above and kind of shortens it you know doesn't take out any information that I didn't want taken out but it condenses it to two paragraphs right I
034can copy that and paste it into my email and very quickly I'm expressing you know that I've reached out despite multiple times over the past week I've not received a response um you know you're being direct you're being honest but it's not you know you're not challenging anyone to a fist fight or anything or or uh you know making any threats or anything that might not resolve the situation but you're you're moving the ball forward and you're do you're creating a document uh your situation where you're documenting what happened and you're trying to get closer to resolution so um I think these are really uh great examples um you know I didn't give the AI tool my apartment number I did that afterward right um I did give in the prompt Marez uh you know
035name you know that I I probably could have left that out of the prompt but uh you know I don't think that uh that that's too bad I didn't you know give any specific necessarily information there but um you can see that that's a really helpful um really helpful tool very quick very very quickly lodging a complaint you know you deserve to have your heat work working and making sure that you're moving that ball forward is really important couple of other areas right so homework assistance this is a big one and I've experien this like I said I have a daughter who is a fourth grader and I have a son who's in first grade and another one coming up you know one of the big things I've talked a lot with parents at both
036uh Elementary and secondary level about AI people are very concerned especially at the secondaries about academic integrity and and people using AI to cheat which you know it it does happen um and we've put in in different things that I'll talk about uh in a little bit to try to mitigate some of that talk about creating a culture of collaboration with our teachers and students um but I think that there really is some value for parents when it comes to homework help um you know I'm lucky enough my my wife is is a great math teacher I uh you know I was a history guy coming up and be and and learned more about technology did my dissertation in cyber security in schools so I know a little bit about history know a little bit
037about technology math you know I I do okay I've done all right but I wouldn't say my strong suit so um this is one of those things when it comes to you know simple math or complicated math or maybe all math is complicated I know I've felt that way uh certainly a lot of my life where you can use AI tools not to get the answer for your kids not to just do the problem and get it done but you can ask it for help on how to help your kids answer these questions without doing it for them so I have a really great example I'm going to show you in a second about that um you know another thing that it can do is help with dinner ideas now I told the mustard story
038I have a fun example here where chicken and a couple of of other ingredients and it can very quickly give you some recipes so I want to keep it light and fun things that are practical and helpful but also some things that uh will help you with your with your kids homework you know we've all had those nights uh if anyone who's a parent with kids around my age and and older where it's like all right we should be getting ready for bed oh my goodness it's late like how are we doing this right now and you want to get you want to help your kid you know with that assignment but you don't want to do it for them so you're trying to find that balance and um so I think that what you'll
039see with this next example is something that's pretty cool so this is a Hughes uh grade five math problem from one of the units that they're working on right now uh and what you'll see here is I use uh an AI tool called Claude Claude AI really great tool and uh all the tools that we're talking about tonight they have free versions that are available as well and you'll see in this example what I do so I'm the parent of a fifth grader help me explain to them how to complete this math problem put the math problem in and then what you see here is I'm happy to help explain the math problem for your fifth grader and it creates the different steps for you to assist your child as they go forward to answer
040the question not just giving them the answer not doing it for them but it basically writes you a script so that you can help your child if they're getting you know having that moment of frustration if they get stuck on one of the points you can help them now at the end of this prompt says to make this more engaging you know you could use actual bills and things which like that's pretty cool if I had that much money lying around right um would you like me to elaborate on any part of this explanation so I I start typing in here yes breakdown steps I can take to help my child complete this problem without doing it for them that's the critical piece of this right and one of the things I fixed the spelling
041error but if you left it and just hit enter it would know what you were going to say anyway so I ask it to break it down even better so here's a step-by-step script that you can use to help your child now in the next example you're going to see and I I'm a big believer that in leadership whenever you give advice you usually I find within 24 to 48 hours I'm given an opportunity to follow my own advice pretty quickly and so as I was you know developing these tools for for the AI parent University last week and this week um and I was like wow this is a really neat tool my daughter came home and had an issue and I was able to use this strategy pretty effectively I'm going to show
042you in a second for fourth grade but you can see it gives you step by step so as your child is trying to get through the problem and you know that moment of frustration like I was saying before you're like it's past bedtime we got to get this thing well let's get this thing rolling let's go and you know but you don't want to do the work for them you don't want it to just do it to get it done you want them to have that productive struggle get to The Next Step this is a great tool to help you get there and then if you have a situation where your child's still struggling you can explain to the teacher in an email very very friendly manner as we showed before um what where the
043child had some some problems and where they might need some help or here's how we we did this and that's a great way to communicate with that teacher so you're you know understanding where you they are understanding where your child's at and you're able to help them as well so here's the mental math so I did this with my daughter this was last week and you can see on my my personal Gmail account if you have a Gmail account you can access Gemini and so I explain I you know what is mental math this is this is civilian herb Palo as a dad trying to help my my fourth grader with mental math I read this I read what was in the in the Envision uh textbook and some of the online resources that parents
044have I'm okay that matches up and then I give it the the problem use mental math similar to the previous example breaks down step by step all the information and then just like I did in the other example I asked for that same script you know how do how can I help my child uh you know without giving them the answer and go down visualize break down the numbers and what I found when I did this with my daughter was that by the time I got to like step 2.5 my daughter went from being really frustrated to Oh Daddy I'm really sorry I I I got it I know I know I I remember now I'm sorry I'm just tired no no no no it's okay hey it's let's let's get keep going you're hanging
045in there that's it's okay to get frustrated finish it up I'll check it after and then and then we're ready let's get ready for bed we got clearly we need some sleep I know I do right like I'm sure you could use a few little bit of sleep and it made for the whole trajectory of bedtime and get you know the end of the night changed and a lot of it was because of the you know it started with the tools we have available and then with the assistance that I was able to get from Gemini there so I think this is a really great uh tool I think math helping with math homework tends to be an area where I think I hear a lot of situations where parents struggle you know it's it's
046difficult this is hard stuff even fourth and fifth grade it's it's tough so I think that if this can be a tool a bridge to help students remember what the teacher taught them in class like my daughter was having or if it's a situation where they're having a little more trouble and they just maybe um you needed a little bit of reinforcement or presented a different way now when they go back in the next day they're more confident and they can talk to the teacher about these things and and I think that you know that that tension that sometimes happens because of frustration goes goes away and it can help it's not going to you know there are no magic wands in education um but these are some pretty powerful tools I think that can
047help kids and and parents too so this is a fun example I was talking about dinner ideas so uh this is a tool called perplexity uh which is a really great tool free tool I have mushrooms pepper spinach chicken legs in my fridge please provide me five easy dinner ideas at the top there you saw it CES all the information so you can click on the websites to see the actual recipes but right in the generated content there you have three I thought or five rather pretty good recipes and I was was reading through these I like I'm going to save this one this is pretty good and you can copy paste them into a Google doc or word doc or or whatever wherever you want to do these things one of the nice things
048perplex does is it also gives you uh follow-up questions at the bottom some of the other tools do this as well so let's say you're like oh you know what we're having friends over the vegetarians want to respect their dietary needs give me some vegetarian Alternatives and provide you with that as well as I said before you don't need to create an account with perplexity you can go to it and it kind of has a feel of a like a search engine uh which is pretty neat um so you can use it without creating an account and you can see pretty pretty neat ideas and you could kind of get lost in the rabbit whole pretty good with a lot of these other um search queries that are there so whether it's helping you know
049with revising emails whether it's helping your your children with homework or uh trying to plan dinner a lot of great lot of great uses for AI uh last area is for some work rated tasks I know depending on your work that you do uh I think that this is one of those areas where I talk to a lot of my friends who were in the corporate world um you know many of them are using these tools and if they're not they're kind of feel like they're maybe getting you know they're being they're falling behind or taking them longer to get some stuff done so there's great ways to write reports time management you know um making to-do lists all really important right so here's a an example of using this this let's imagine that I
050just took some rough notes I'm I'm working at a at a a management in financial management I'm at the quarter 2 management meeting and I want to organize all my just like random notes that are grouped together so I just ask it organize it in a in an orderly fashion and very quickly it took that glob of notes that was just in a in a in a big uh paragraph and it very nicely bullet pointed all those so I have all that information the DAT of the next meeting I can copy paste that right into a Google doc or an Excel sheet or word doc and I have a very nice uh list you can have see that in co-pilot you have these other examples here which are really neat our teachers and our uh
051our teachers have access with their ebet accounts to co-pilot and and very safe uh there's extra firewalls around to protect any of the data that's shared there uh students at Churchill and hire have access to co-pilot uh they've been able to assure us Microsoft who owns co-pilot that they have extra safeguards in place to protect student privacy blur out any information that uh you know if some private information or or names were mentioned that it'll blur those things out and it also doesn't return back to the large language model to train uh the large language model how to answer answer questions uh better if you use one of these other tools with a Gmail account or your Outlook account that's part of why I was saying before to make sure you don't share too much
052personal information because all your um prompting data goes back to the large language model and trains it on how to do those things better which is fine if you're not sharing anything that is proprietary or private um but just want to make that clear so we we take the proper safeguards in East Brunswick for our staff and student use um they have pilot access to some of these tools which are really neat but uh co-pilot and Gemini you have that extra layer of protection and that's the case too in Corporate America um other entities like that have Enterprise accounts that protect proprietary information that you don't want going into um the large language model this last one here you know I I don't know about anyone else here if you're with your spouse where you
053get a to-do list and sometimes you're just talking into the notes app on your phone or something like that um so this was a fun one uh create a to-do list for me the following items you know make sure you get the kids to soccer some laundry pick up dry cleaning and a gift for Nona cuz why not she's awesome right um so very quickly created that list for me that you can copy paste or uh have it put in a draft into a Gmail email uh you know you can have it make a checklist or put checkboxes next to it if I wanted to print it out uh you can have it do that uh so I can check off each as I complete it you know and you could like I said I'm
054and I there are some research that says if you say please to large language models that it does help with the results um I think it's just nice to be polite anyway but you can see it puts a little CH you know little check boox there and in Gemini you can copy paste it as I was saying uh or you can export it right into Gmail or put it right into a Google doc and it'll go right into your uh your Google Drive which is pretty cool so these are just a few examples that I wanted to share with everybody because I my big takeaway for the folks watching at home and folks here was to what's something you could do right now like what's a problem or an issue or a task that you've
055been putting off or something that you need to get done um that that you need to get done right now you can you can do those things with any of these geni tools um you know the district doesn't endorse anyone over the other we do like I said before co-pilot and Gemini for safety reasons those are the ones that we recommend the staff use and we just say be careful using the other ones Claude and um perplexity and chat jpt as well the big a couple big takeaways I'm going to get into the the guidance information which is really important in a second but two of the things I keep saying to our staff and and some of the older students uh Church Hill and the high school as we talk about these things is
056to start thinking of geni as both a thought partner and a work partner and I think that sometimes when people hear that it's a little it's a little scary it's it's it's it's a little you know think of a thought partner as like your colleagues and and I'll tell you I have some of the best colleagues in the State uh our you know our team when we get together as a curriculum team and trying to solve solve problems and help kids working with the building leaders as well um these are great thought Partners uh but one of the things that I've also found is that when we give uh certain survey data or we look we're looking at large data sets we're crunching information we're putting things together we're sharing out ideas one of the
057things that I've been able to do with like Google forms and other survey data and things like that is you take away all the the personally identifiable information you assign it numbers or letters and you ask you can ask I had a that data help me find the common themes within a survey help me find the outlier information and what I found is that when you when you take that information gen produces some thoughts about it you can then go to your colleagues your your your human thought partners and you can have really rich conversations about well should we do this in first grade or should we look at this in fourth grade or H how can we do better with with this program at at at Churchill or the high school and it's made
058those conversations much more rich and thoughtful because we were able to take large data sets and get some processed you know the information processed and analyzed and then talk about it after so thinking of it as a thought partner you know like that that friend that you call every once in a while to share some things and you have to say what was the last time we talked it's been a while where did we leave off well if you use any of these AI tools that archive your thoughts you don't have to do that it knows where you left off and you can pick up that conversation right where you left off which is pretty cool when I say think of it as a work partner I think think of a lot of like the
059grunt work like you know the those emails you had to get back to um some of those lists that you're generating you know creating those um you know those meeting notes and summarizing getting them sent out to people on your team um you know family events that you're trying to plan um this has been a great tool for a lot of those things so I think you know one of the things that I'm trying to you know encourage people to do is to that you know to get over that that fear you have about thinking of this as a thought partner and a work partner that's I think that's going to be a really big help for all of us for all the different things that we're trying to do very busy people get things
060done uh but very busy people can use help as well and I think that this is a great tool thought partner work partner so let's dive into a little bit about the guidance and some of the things that we're talking with staff about now like I said before with the students the big takeaway that I hope you get out of this tonight is when we're talking about elementary uh students we are not opening the floodgates for elementary students we think it's very important that we lay the foundational principles of what learning look like reading thinking math you know all the rich electives that we have at the elementary level we want students to be able to use technology safely and to build those skills out it's very important you know when we talk about exposing
061Elementary uh students to AI it's in a very thoughtful methodical controlled manner uh the K to4 situation we're talking about third and fourth grade with the media specialists at the same with it they talk about computer literacy privacy security and all those things when we talk about Hughes we're talking about controlled pilots in certain classes or certain units you know empowering teachers to think about these things say hey i' would love for kids to be able to see how this works and so it's monitored it's controlled very much in a safe way uh but for teachers we've been encouraging teachers to say look look if this can help you with lesson planning uh generating better test questions generating better essential questions in your in your lesson plans and uh guiding questions for discussion with your
062students that's where geni can be a huge huge help huge help so the with the exception of meta AI the other tools are the ones that really I've been encouraging staff uh to use there's another tool called magic school that's been a great tool for teachers but these are been the tools and you've seen that the those five are what I was using as the samples in those other um in those other examples in earlier so I've been telling staff like I said before uh co-pilot and Gemini you have access with your EET account those safeguards are in place um if you have a a Gmail account you have access to Gemini if you have an Outlook account you can get on co-pilot very easily um perplexity is one you don't need an account you
063can jump right on and start using it the same way that you jump on Google and start searching for things a lot of folks in the AI Community uh my fellow nerds as I like to say is a term of affection um that Claude um is is a very popular tool people like the layout the presentation the large language model so these are these are the tools that have been approved for pilot use I started adding meta AI into some discussions because I think that folks who haven't taken the leap with AI yet I think this is the first place that a lot of people are going to encounter Ai and if you don't believe me if you open up Facebook or Instagram right now the search bar that's at the top it has that
064meta symbol there that INF symbol and you know unless you're searching for like an old friend from high school or something if you're talking about like a a topic that's going on in the world you're trying to search for something a certain group and you click enter or you hit search on your phone it's going to have an AI generated response to that some of you I see a few folks maybe nodding right now where you might be saying oh yeah that's right it gave me an explanation about the Mets uh and the Dodgers and I was just looking for what time the game started or who was commenting on it so that's one of the first place I think if you haven't um taking that leap with AI you know most people have Facebook
065or Instagram and you're going to see that that's um that might be their first point of contact so I've been talking about that more one of the neat things when you're on a computer on a laptop using meta aai is you can ask it like imagine a cloudy day with a unicorn flying in the sky and in real time it will generate you'll see the image like change shape and it will create that image in real time which is pretty cool so um there's like serious uses for it and then there's there's fun and I think that when you keep keep the fun in learning and you keep the fun in in learning these things uh I think that's where we all learn best uh that was always my motto in my class room and
066uh it's continued in in uh as a supervisor as well so um let's talk a little bit about the overview so this is really important and I want to make clear that you know this wasn't like a herb you know Dr Palo project here um what when I applied for the the when when Dr veski Dr Bley and the Board of Education created a position of supervisor educational technology uh just over a year ago and I'm I was I privileged enough to apply for the job and interview you know my whole thing with with with Dr boy was I think we need to take a collaborative approach to this and we need to get our best people we have super talented teachers K to 12 and we need to get them together um and we
067need to talk about how what the best way to move forward what are we thinking about what have we not thought about and we need to work together we need to get our best together and I don't want just people who are um you know the the folks that always sign up to do things on committees or or or or groups uh or people who were super techy I want a little bit I I like healthy skepticism um I like people who were skeptical but interested in Solutions so we put together a working group uh at we had a K4 working group we had a Hughes working group we had a a Churchill AI working group and a high school working group all different departments grade levels um and what we did was we met
068you know four or five times over over the course of of last year and we this Vision here this overview was a direct result of those conversations and that work that we did together um very important stuff and it was great to be able to you know build that vertically articulated Vision so that we're building towards something we're not just you know um throwing the spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks we're we're we're thinking we're discussing and you know bringing research in hey uh everybody I read this article what do you think how would this work would this work in the classroom what do you think so this Vision here was a direct result of all that and as I said before you know K to4 AI is teacher facing we have staff
069guidance that I'm going to show you in a minute um staff used for various job related tasks you know we're talking about student AI awareness and limited limited pilot lessons once again very limited scope we want to be very careful and we want to be cautious you know I was on a call today with a vendor who had a really neat product and I've seen a lot of these demos and my first response is okay let me go back and talk to the team um we're you know I want to see what out what's out there but we're not overc committing to anything we're going to be thoughtful about this and we're going to see where maybe a pilot is a good idea or maybe the answer is not right now but we'll talk later
070and so I think that that's really important um so when we talk about limited pilot lessons we're talking about specials we're talking about media and maybe in certain classes if teachers are ready to do a small pilot we'll talk about how to do that safely at Hughes mainly teacher facing as well but we did create student guidance that is about edtech and AI as included in there because I can tell you last year we had some situations where we had to talk to kids about you know that you not not supposed to just copy paste uh work from Chachi BT or somewhere and it wasn't in a in a you know there was not a an overly disciplinary tone to it there you know we we talked about why that wasn't right and and and
071the right way to use it and those experience were good for for the student to learn but also for us so that we could put together a strategy we said okay next you know when we get this guidance together here are some points we have to make here's how we can help teachers have those conversations with students move the ball forward in a productive way um you know I was interim assistant principal for a couple months a few years ago um here at at Hughes and one of my biggest things I used to say to students was hey learn the right lessons learn the right lessons from this experience and we're all learning lessons the whole time we we go forward with AI uh staff defense students so it's about skill development uh certain classes
072units and lessons as well and then when we get to the high school we had to put some more safeguards and guidance in place because a lot of our Church Hill and high school students they are like they're on they have the apps downloaded so we had to take a little bit of a different approach um but I think it's been pretty successful so far we've had a lot of really great conversations we're forming student groups at Churchill in the high school to help us navigate those things and do it productively so uh on the AIC Center web page ebnet.org Center or you could just Google EIC center it's the first result that comes up which is pretty great um you can see all these guidance documents I'm not going to dive into the 7
073to 12 documents specifically but if you want to go see how the the vertical articulation trajectory is going on I definitely encourage everyone to go and check those out um also the AIU scale this is something that was developed um for Churchill in the high school I just had a grant that from the East brunic Education Foundation for magnets for every classroom at Churchill in the high school these are going to go on the boards there the bear face the evb bear you're going to be able to move the teachers can move that magnet to any of the the the levels there for the for the secondary students so we're really excited about that um so I encourage you to go on and look closer at that but for elementary once again we're talking about
074awareness we're talking about piloting we're talking about very controlled opening of access to students um only when appropriate and safe right so let's look at the the guidance for the staff and student the staff and teachers rather here at Hughes you see it talks about you know why technolog is important to use uh how it can assist everybody uh with numerous tasks what our mission is here as Tech tools and AI evolve we continue to build our own capacity while up putting our core principles in every classroom right the foundational principles of weight what make for good teaching and learning those aren't going to change the tools we use and how we get there that's what's going to change right so we talk about specific guidance we talk about equity and communication planning and assessment
075differentiation and support you know specific those are specific slide presentations that that teachers can use that drill down so if they're having specific issues or have specific questions about those things they have tools and resources available that they can use but they also you know I've I've had many sitd Downs coaching sessions with teachers as well um that are really important so it lays everything out very nicely for them and gives them the proper guard rails that they need as well um talking about uh prior to assignments you know we should be clear with with students about you know not just about AI but teachers should State whether or not collaboration outside sources or technology tools such as AI are permitted for use and we we ask teachers that you know if we want students
076I always sit this as a teacher we have to be clear in our communication with students that's really important if we want them to do certain things or to not do certain things we have to be clear in our communication so just reiterate some points that oh a lot of our teachers do really well and is are the foundation of good teaching just remembering that with AI and other technology it's important to do that citation guides uh spent a lot of time this summer pulling from different uh universities and different uh resources to make sure we had the most up-to-date MLA and APA Citation uh guides there uh which teachers have really appreciated um you know the student guidance let see so the student guidance um you know just walks through with students about um
077you know different pieces that are really important they're going to encounter technology tools that can help them learn and complete tasks more effectively uh it's important to follow directions uh you know make sure they're listening to their teachers that they know what's appropriate that they talk to parents like those are really really important um some of the types of Technology they you know what are some of the type of technologies that you might use we use the Q&A format because we found that for both the students at uh Churchill and the high school but also our students um you know here is that that's an easy way for them to understand what we want them to do and how important that is uh and it's not just about AI it's about all the different technology
078and that was a big thing that the working group talked about was well we don't want to just lead you know with AI we don't want this to just be about AI we want it to be about all technology because you know just like we said at the beginning technology is a tool it doesn't mean it's always uh the answer to the to the problem or that it's the best way to for them to complete work but we also know that we live in 2024 and that technolog is critically important so it's about appropriate use right are students allowed to use technology tools for school assignments it depends on the task right and it goes through specifically right we're very Pro Tech here right I'm the supervisor of educational technology but I always tell tell
079people it's like educational technology right when I go in and observe teachers it's like you know well I didn't use technology I'm like yeah you did how did you put that how did you put you organized the groups so you communicated it on the slides and you thought about it or you prepared that reading for them to do or you organized the problems there and then they worked in groups you did use technology the kids were conversing about it and doing on paper or they did part of it on a computer but of course you use technology it's educational technology right that's the that's the critical piece of this that we don't want to forget so with students it's the same thing right yes you can but it depends and you know when you're not
080sure when in doubt be honest and just ask it's very important very important so I think that we put these documents together I hesitate to say that they're perfect because one of the things that we realize is that you know um there's always a better way to communicate It's always important to have conversations with the and we're going to keep the AI working groups together we're going to have some new members on there this year I'm excited to begin those meetings uh over the next couple of weeks in the next month or so um getting some feedback about how this is going you know what what's going well what are some things we need to clarify um what resources do you still need um but I think that so far this has been a really
081um positive experience and and it's been positive for for the kids when it comes to our K4 uh guidance for teachers and staff remember we're not as I said at the beginning you know this is not something where we really believe for students should be using a lot of AI that you know if if and when they're using it it's in a very controlled situation I think there's some opportunities maybe by the end of third grade and in fourth grade in media lessons with media specialist um and maybe in other courses and other specials or units of study within certain subject areas those are areas that we're exploring and we're looking at very closely we want to be thoughtful about those things so in the ca for K4 we have guidance for teachers and staff
082and very similar to to what we have for Hughes uh talking about how it can enrich the classroom some ways that teachers can use AI you know reaffirming what our goals are goal is to strike the right balance between technology use AI awareness and nurturing essential skills so you know and I believe that you know we've uh consistently produced excellence in K4 schools and then technology that's been no different because we've been thoughtful about it we've talked about it we're being collaborative um and we're not rushing to do anything but we're we're not afraid to innovate and try new things either talked about Equity communication planning and assessment differentiation and support so these outline specific uh recommendations and ways the teachers can use it and I just want to talk about you know equity for
083a second that you know Equity is extremely important and some people might hear that and go what what is equity had to do with AI um you know one of the things that we found in the early versions of AI is that AI can can be a great equalizer for students who maybe don't have access to some of the resources uh that other students and other families may have uh some of the the the tools that you're seeing about the math problems and things but certain writing assistance and things like that it could be a huge help for students who maybe don't have uh whose parents don't have the means to maybe pay for tutors and things like that um but the important thing is is that you we also have to keep in mind
084that when we ask it questions about certain topics that it may have a little bit of bias that's built into it and we do have to be careful and mindful of that uh image generators with AI have had some problems with Equity as well uh if you ask it to create an image of students in a classroom or students on the playground uh I've seen many times where AI tools do that in a very Equitable way and represent the community that you might live in and I've seen other examples where it maybe doesn't do that sometimes you have to be more specific with your prompting to make sure that it does that well other times it does it on its own I always remind people that just you know that um Ai and AI algorithms
085and large language models just like the humans that created it are imperfect right and you know Welcome To Earth right nobody's perfect but those are things that we have to be mindful of and that we have to talk to students about and then we have to talk to staff about so U while it may not be a quick connection you're like what Equity AI it is something that is very important it's why that there's been a big push to make sure that there are diverse voices in uh coding and in the in the back rooms where these algorithms are devel veloped so that the information that's being shared out uh represents uh you know the the world population and our communities and make sure that that information is being shared appropriately so just wanted to
086say a couple things on that which I think are important um so planning and assessment differentiation and support and then redirecting people to the edtech and the AI websites so I got a couple minutes left here and I I want to make sure we have some time for anyone who's here to ask any questions for those of you on the live stream uh there's not a Q&A format through there but once again you'll see a survey that will pop up in a in a minute or two please uh respond to the survey or you can email me anytime if you have any questions I had some great emails from parents after last week's session I look forward to hearing from folks uh after this one as well so I just want to reiterate the point
087like the two big points AI literacy and AI pilot use when we talk about students using AI those are the two areas that we're talking about K to6 controlled specific ific we want PE we want our kids to know what this with this technology is what it can do we want them to be exposed to it in a thoughtful controlled manner that's safe so that when they by the time they get to Hughes and then they get to Churchill they'll be ready to use it appropriately we're do going to do we're going to do more conversations with the community with parents so that they're aware of these things and then how to use them and then how to talk to their kids about this because it's really important that we all work together it takes
088a team effort right we all work together on this so um I just wanted to reiterate those points and we're really excited uh for some of the things that are coming so a couple things to keep in mind I want to leave you with here you know I think that one of the things I've been saying to staff uh for the last year plus that I've been in this job and even before that is to embrace the challenges and opportunities we don't have all the answers we don't know where the technolog is going to evolve to um but we you know we have to identify the challenges we can't be weighed down by them but we also have to look at the opportunities this is an exciting time and technology so um I think that
089it's something that uh we really can Embrace we can innovate and and you know bring back uh maybe some excitement uh uh at times where you know you know the where we we have opportunities to do that so I know I'm excited and I'm excited for what what we have coming down the pipe uh talk to kids you know about appropriate technology use right ask questions you know not just about AI but about social media I think that those are things be honest and support appropriate use of technology I think we encourage our kids to be honest with with us and we we got to be honest with them and that's how the best way we're going to keep them safe and also help them be effective you know they live in a physical world
090but they also live in a digital world and I think that you know we maybe Miss some of this when social media came out it kind of just it was kind of it hit us so fast we didn't really have time to react I do think we're doing a better job uh as a district and in some ways as as a society when it comes to AI um but we it's a continual effort that we have to we have to keep working at uh trust but verify so anytime you get results from uh a gen tool this is I'm a history guy before I was a tech guy and that's a phrase from the cold war that Ronald Reagan used to use when talking about um you know the Soviet Union trust would verify I
091think it's the same thing with AI check your sources uh it it it can hallucinate or make information up at times and the the AI tools will warn you about that so just remind your your children about that and remind your friends too if they're as they're dabbling with AI I talked about equity and repes presentation awareness very critical please keep that in mind dep if if you get a result back that sounds a little you know suspicious um you know ask more questions check other sources you know some of those tools that are going to send you to sources see where they're generating that content from so that you know what's what's happening uh make sure a Content speaks with your voice with the emails we talked about that the personally identifiable information uh
092privacy settings very important children under 13 should not create accounts uh children under 18 need parent permission so keep that in mind if you you know it's ultimately up to you what you you know when you talk to your your kids about you know you may not even be aware that they have chaty BT or you some of the students that we've talked to like oh you know my mom I think they know or my dad I think they know right ask them if you're not sure ask your kids and talk with them about it I wouldn't say maybe take it away right away or maybe as long as they understand responsible use that's what's important right so just be aware of the Privacy policies that each of these tools have I'm going to leave
093this slide up um you know and I would just encourage people if you haven't tried some of these tools if you've tried one but not the other pick a new one try it out think of a problem that you that you're trying to solve or a task you're trying to do right now and and jump jump into the deep end of the poem giving everybody permission right um you know be brave and um you know if you're not ready to create an account if you have a Gmail account use Gemini and or jump on perplexity um I really appreciate everyone coming out who was able to attend tonight I appreciate folks taking time at a soccer practice or making dinner or the number of things that parents and Guardians do every day for our kids
094in our community for joining us on the live stream I hope that you'll uh come to future events or join us on future live streams I hope that you'll reach out if you have any questions I i' love getting emails from folks and and continuing that conversation and learning more about um ways that we can work together um please take a few minutes to complete the survey uh because that feedback is really critical and important to our work and continuing to make sure we're doing the best by every single child in this district and serving the community as best as we can thank you so much everybody uh and have a great night thank you again e