001and now I would like to introduce our excellent lunch fireside chat this of artificial intelligence in shaping the future of education and the workforce executive director of AI Academy and professor at North Carolina State Gabriel Lopez director of research and practice measures from the Chan Zuckerberg in Chan Zuckerberg initiative and Tyler shman a science teacher at Cambridge Virtual Academy and Magnolia High School in Anaheim they will delve in yeah give him a give them a round of applause they will delve into the dynamic intersection of AI and career preparedness for K12 students moderated by Anaheim Union superintendent Michael matsuda this session is a deep dive into how we can equip the Next Generation with the skills to thrive in an aid driven world and now superintendent matsuda thanks [Applause] Brian you know um been spending
002lunch trying to get a read on the AUD sort of the buzz out there and the energy I um I yeah I don't know I can't say how proud I am of uh our community in the district and all of you guys taken the time to come out and uh kind of back and forth uh so the questions are not necessarily going to be answered by each person uh but I wanted to give you a little context too because I'm going to have them share about what they do um this panel is on Career preparedness what do AI made uh as a career and uh you know how is this transforming I think the morning speakers s sort of teed it off really well challenging us to this an opportunity to uh think about the
003intention of schools what is the purpose of school in this sort of upside down world that students are entering and what are we using AI to actually measure because I think those are really important questions of think about as we prepare young people for uh the world of work and um so I'm really happy to be uh sort of interviewing our guests we have a classroom teacher uh we have a professor that has an amazing program uh that is already forcing us to rethink schools it's not just in this in K12 we're talking about you know uh several entry points and we're going to hear more about that and then we have another Gabby is someone who is sort of the policy area and looks at things from 30,000 ft so think about that as
004we do this progression and again it's not going to be like everybody has to answer the question so it's more of a discussion so we're again we're going to start off with just a couple minutes of um what from a teaching perspective Tyler what does career prepar this mean in this new AI world yeah so really quick I'm also a new lead doctor so Dr Sherman um that's weird and yeah I am a classroom teacher I teach in at Magnolia High School and I teach at our Virtual Academy and then I always say I also have the greatest job too I get to work very closely with our learning management system e Cadence where we are really integrating AI at every level um I was was thinking about all all the CEOs and superintendents and
005all all these impressive titles so I was how could I inflate my my resume a little bit so I'm also the commissioner of my fantasy football league um yeah I got dared to say that so we're we're good but yeah I mean I think with with uh with careers and we had we had wonderful uh some speakers yesterday is I with with AI I think it's the first time in I mean many years hundred years that there is there's something that can disrupt the way that our classroom looks and what education looks like so there's often with jobs is we don't know you know what jobs are coming in you know two three 10 years from now and I feel like that's what's exciting about this type of work but what what stays true Into
006the Heart of au hsd and our teacher through the the vision of superintendent matsuda is skills are always going to be there right so even though there's uncertainty with with AI and and what it means teaching students how to critically think how to to not just trust it because it's there like they still need to fact check it just like they would if they search for a website on a website and so teaching teaching those skills and then and then ultimately W with jobs and I we always say you know especially with e Cadence about the power of of getting data and finding those insights at like at a street level and understanding what our students want what are understanding what companies want and then building jobs off of there thank you Carla Johnson executive
007director of the AI Academy and professor at North Carolina state so I think maybe I can add a slightly different perspective to that um I've been involved in this thing called stem for over 20 years now I'm was probably one of the pioneers of that um and I can remember me meeting with in Ohio with state legislators there and um was announced as a stem cell person so we've come a long way in 20 years um and by virtue of that work I've really you know moved into looking at Ai and building out inclusive Pathways for individuals to upskill and also enter AI careers in the last four years um 17,000 jobs and I know it's probably more than that but the last search on LinkedIn 17,000 jobs for everything from entry level to you
008know more highly skilled um Professionals in Ai and it's so important now to be thinking about how we actually develop future talent to do that in a in an educational system where science even isn't taught in a lot of schools right so we have a lot of challenges there um with the AI Academy we've been able to build a program that um engages I guess we've had almost 2,000 people now in the last four years from GED to PhD who have entered the program and are now out and prepared to move into careers in the workforce and that's been enabled with Partnerships with over 100 Industries um everything from Healthcare to financial to entertainment and also oh yeah the it companies everyone needs AI Talent now and so we need to really be thinking about
009how we now back that into um K12 schools and so um NC state has partnered with inep I know Alex is here AI edu um to build something called the national inclusive AI Alliance and so that's something that we're really thinking about how do we now take what we've learned from a Workforce Development program for um individuals across the United States and and back that into high school because it's so needed thank you and we have Gabby Lopez director of research and practice measures from the the Chan Zuckerberg Institute yes so um first of all thank you for having us here and we're excited to be in partnership with all of you here um at the zzi as we very lovingly call it um we really are thinking about how to take technology build with
010Educators and address to address the most pressing needs that Educators have in the education space and that's all in service of unlock moing unlimited student potential and so all of the work and the the way in which we see the world is really about how do we take what's what we know in learning science what we know technology can do and should do and what Educators need in order to bring that reality to life and when we think of AI we think of it needs to address specific needs that and specific as answer specific questions that we have in service of education and in service of a system that was designed for a very different purpose many many years ago when the world was a different place and now we are at The Cutting Edge
011of a world that we don't know we can't imagine what's going to happen 10 20 years ago what the workforce will look like but the fundamental skills that we need to have in order to engage in that future don't change and you named them Tyler so excited to be to have this conversation Mike so you know we've had a lot of uh well actually not that much time to really reflect on so much information that that was presented this morning my head's kind of still spinning um and but we had an interesting conversation at our table Gabby about um sort of the the purpose of Education where are we going with this you you want to maybe comment and on your Reflections from this morning yeah absolutely we um I was I mean obvious we
012are whole child people um at zzi that has been the history of our existence we've worked on um what it means to go to school and have your full essence of being reflected in the curriculum in um the choices that the agency that young people have how educators engage and and um are in relationship with young people and how what struck me about this morning is we we had a very nice sort of learning progression for those of us who like scaffolding um it was quite nicely done I will say uh In This Moment In Time what do we need young people um to walk away with once they leave our doors in order to be critical consumers of the things that they see in the world the information they see in the world how
013do we support them to develop visions of themselves and each other in deeply human ways the technology is a tool humanity is something we engender and we see in one another and that at the end of the day we have to design tools that help us see each other as dignified human beings worthy of respect sense of belonging connection all of the things that make us uniquely human that will never really be a part of technology and shouldn't [Applause] be I I I I would like to chime in a little bit about like it's such a fascinating question right what what the purpose of education is and I I think the answer to that you know my opinion is the purpose of education is different for every student and different for every person and I
014think as a classroom teacher what we always try to do is differentiate our instruction for for students and on a broader scale okay we have to differentiate our education for for students but it's always been a really I mean we all are Educators in the room that is really hard and extremely time consuming and I think where AI is is changing things is we are able to create a way more personalized education way more personalized assignments in the classroom we know we if we can identify student strength interests wherever even where whatever they want to do colleges we can get a sense of that that sense of belonging and all those things that you mentioned that are so important but AI is that I feel like that that Catalyst right now that is going to
015allow us to differentiate what education means for every student not just this one size fits-all right so Carlo it sounds like you're already on the pathway to reinvent and education when you say that it's not your program the AI Academy is not just for K12 students I mean you um talk about meeting U you're talk it's open to adults and meeting them where they are what do you mean by that well it's interesting I I think let me do a Prelude to that first you know I think about and this is going to be fun show hands how many people remember using an encyclopedia britanica to do their work in school yes I am not the only old person in the room and then we had to shift to the 21st century and oh wait
016a minute we have this computer we can look up all the information we ever need we don't have to memorize that periodic table anymore and then now we have ai that can write our papers for us so um you know some of the challenges I'm also we're the head of a university Professor um now we're seeing people in our course is writing beautiful papers AI enabled and then they have an oral exam and they can't stand up and explain any of it so there's a disconnect there there there is something that we need to work on but for um what we've been able to do with the AI Academy and we have people date of birth before 1960 in our program we have people that are fresh out of high school there's so much momentum
017around interest and Ai and people wanting to just get in the game or try to reinvent themselves and so so what we've been able to do with our program is to really make multiple on-ramps so that they're able to do um the way we do it we have a flipped classroom model so they have interactive seminars from computer science and AI professional or experts at the University that they will view before they come to the main part of our program which is live interactive workshops four hours a week so it's pretty intensive um but they are engaging with data they're engaging in discourse they're talking about things they're um really discussing what are the ethical considerations that we have to really attend to and there are a lot of them um but the the most
018important thing is accessibility and so we have I think 30% of the people in our program have never programmed probably have never taken a computer science course now of course their pathway is a bit longer but um you know what we're thinking about now is is that even enough um you know thinking about how we make this available to students in high school and then even before is something really important so there will be some modifications we need to do to make it accessible but the the thing that I really think about AI that is so beautiful is that AI can make um education more accessible and and build more Equity because to your point teachers in the classroom um there's only so much time and 45 minutes goes by so darn fast and wait
019a minute you had your hand but we'll have to get to that tomorrow and I don't really know if you understood what we talked about AI can enable all that stuff so that teachers are able to really be able to do more of the differentiation and things like that so those are all things that we're considering and doing quite a bit of research on now so our district Prides itself in being Progressive and transformative yet um when we look at at our internal data uh we have about a 70% uh usage of our learning platform which I understand is higher than most districts Tyler um you know you you were very optimistic about these tools and how it can make teaching more efficient how do we train teachers or how do we frame this uh
020these exciting things in ways that we can get the other 30% yeah I mean that that's that's the million-dollar question right and I I think to me again everything goes back to AI just being so new and and people not and so many of our teachers have been teaching you know since uhsd is such a great District it's you know they're 10 15 20 30 years into the profession and it's it's hard to change we've already we've already talked about teaching is a hard profession so so getting that change takes time however with AI I think it's just about exposure it's about meeting them just like our students where they're at and showing them how it can save time how it can get them to know their students better I think when we're talking about
021jobs I think we're in a teaching crisis right now where so many teachers are leaving the profession because it's so hard so if we can if we can use AI to actually get to the essence of why teachers want to teach like for me I didn't get into teach I didn't get into teaching because I love biology I teach biology I like it but I got into teaching because I love the connection with kids so with with e Cadence rlms I have so much time because of these little like features of not having to deal with the nuances where I can actually spend more time with my students so it's making me kind of revitalize that that fire that passion for teaching again so if we if we find those teachers amongst all all teachers
022but our district of like what is it that you value of teaching and I promise you especially with e Cadence and and AI there's a way that it can work for you and it's just finding that anybody else want to comment on how do we scale internally and externally you know all of you guys going back to your school sites how do you share this and how do you scale it how do you frame AI as a you know an expectation in uh young people's careers I think that it goes really if you think about inquiry based science so making that shift from teaching science from from read the chapter to the questions at the end and maybe don't look up the answers which is a lot of the things that we didn't want science
023teachers to do um there are people called early adopters Michael and I think that that's really where it starts um a lot of the work that we are moving into now is providing training for computer science teachers so that they become AI experts and then you have a resource in the building that other teachers can come to and learn more about how to use the AI Tools in their classroom so that that's one place to start but professional development just like trying to learn any kind of new curricula or any new kind of teaching strategy is so important and there's so much research about that L Desa moon at the University of Delaware is probably one of the leading people that have done this type of research and it requires 80 hours of professional development
024sustained at least across one school year while they're actually implementing whatever the Innovation is to actually enable teachers to be able to begin change it's simple you have to address a need that teachers need at the end of the day it it has to Absolut it can't be something that's theoretical it can't be something that's arbitrary it is super simple if you and one of our panelists this morning mentioned this if you address the thing that is going to leverage that five minutes for you to sit and check in with one of your students you'll do it you'll we we all will do it our human nature is to like get take care of that thing we have to take care of and then let's move on so that I can connect with you and
025we haven't quite done that very well in in edtech true what what is the importance of U just preparing students for a mindset of change you know the you guys just went through your first round of workshops I was in Alex's Alex coach trans workshop for a little bit and there's it it just there's just so many tectonic shifts going on so rapidly uh and that's you know and there's all kinds of political stuff going on and there's all kinds of objectifying going on how do we prepare kids um for this world and and I think this is some of the work that jun's work Professor uh an is working on but how do we prepare them uh with using AI tools for a mindset to deal with all these changes students are easy I
026think the students are easy I mean the students nine times out of 10 know more about the technology than the teachers do but I even think of Michael fand's work which I believe he's here somewhere um you know thinking about educational change there are a lot of um guides that we can point to to be able to do that um empowering students to lead this within class teachers should not be afraid absolutely there's a we've ignored for a long time we've well let me backtrack we've acknowledged the importance of TW quote unquote 21st century skills we have neglected to Anchor in the ways in which young people learn and the ways in which we've we have now science tells us that young people need experiential learning they need to understand relevance they need to have
027agency all of those things are deeply important when you enter the workforce when you enter College when you are exploring your identity and purpose and all of those things and we have fundamentally not I uh structured our schools and experiences to design for that and also learn the content that we need to learn those things don't have to be separate they have to be connected and married uh um deeply in order for them to for young people to have the skills to be successful in the future we need to learn how to learn we don't actually do that in schools we don't help ourselves learn how to learn because things will be changing so fastly and fast and they change so quickly we wouldn't have imagined a year ago that we would be having this
028conversation around AI in education if we taught young people to to learn how they learn to support each other in that differentiation and that scaffolded learning and that interaction in that interaction then that is applicable to lots of different domains and different types of information I I think that's a very important concept of um because this this panel is about career preparedness right learning how to learn is requires reflection and requires uh uh planning experiences for kids where they can learn how to learn where they can you you can build in the reflection where there's uh Transcendent learning taking place Tyler you want to comment on that on how our district is approaching that definitely and and but just to go back a little bit further learning to learn I is one of the coolest
029phrase that's stolen um but I I think with AI with all of the Power of it it it can make it almost too big sometimes so I think it's really important as as you know superintendent as teachers like we don't lose focus on what we value right and that is for us in in ahsd that is again that skill building the five C's and the importance of Professor an's work with UCI and that reflection component for our students so we we are as a district we are saying that our Northstar if you will is teaching to these 5 C's and not to the test right which as a teacher has Unleashed me and I I'm never feel this pressure of any kind of standardize anything which is which is awesome but that that reflection component
030for our students does a couple things one I think there's a a incredible skill of learning how to reflect that our students are naturally doing built into the system but then two with because of Professor on and the work is we are learning so much about where they are and that information that that he's producing for us is allowing me to be a better teacher and allowing that student to be a better learner because I know how to teach them so that that type of work and and again not losing focus on the skills I always I always say like content can be learned it's th it's those skills that take so much more time to to um develop Carla I know we talked about this earlier is sort of the the ethics of um
031you know uh how do we integrate the ethics ethics into our training for this next Generation I know you guys are doing a lot of work in that area as well absolutely and it's something that's so important um in AI overall um so and within the AI Academy we have it embedded in all of our coursework to give you a sense it's four courses they take one course at a time 10 weeks each So within a year um participants in that program walk away with a data scientist and AI associate credential um recognized registered apprenticeship credential um so a couple of examples one of those courses is data mining and in that course um we purposefully embed data sets that have implicit bias within them Compass is one of the data sets and so um
032they use that they manipulate that they learn about it they learn how to think about their own internal um personal biases and then we build upon that in the final course in machine learning and in that course um there are specific um bias awareness uh activities that they do and in those activities they really learn how to be more cognizant about their own implicit biases and then think about how that actually will um influence their interpretation of findings of the data their conclusions and then also their decision- making processes so that's something that we really focus on helping them to be more self-aware of their own but then also to be able to identify and spot that within existing um data that they may be working with Gabby would you like to comment on that
033or take it I think it's I'm I'm fangirling over here like oh my God that's so cool I want to do that um so no I think I'm well if you think about it that if we intentionally build um ethics into this training and I think ethics training should be cross-curricular um that is a reflective practice that we're building in right it's I I think all of this we need to be intentional about building and reflection and that that's where that Transcendent learning comes in so I I think you nailed it earlier uh with one your opening statement today is where teachers and and students there there needs to be this aspirational thinking but there also needs to be a little bit of skepticism with it right and and also I I think it's it's
034so important because I as we're learning about what AI is we we we need to teach our students to fact check like those skills aren't going away like just how we have like for the longest time we're we're teaching them to you know vet their sources get multiple perspectives you still need those skills those skill just because it's coming from gemini or or Chachi doesn't mean that it's it's real in fact like often times it's it's not right so you I always like I like I don't know the right way of saying this but like you need to use your brain a little bit and and you need to teach that but that needs to be built in to the way of thinking right now I think we're we're in a weird time where it's
035what is popped out of chat GPT we are just accepting where the the shift is and the power of this room is that shift needs to be 100% awesome that that popped out something cool it saved me time that I could steal that but it is not just accepting it it is then challenging it and then going to Google and researching it and doing more than just accepting what pops out agreed it is a um it's an interesting Dynamic that we have right now where we we have always quote unquote always trained ourselves to check the source MH and for whatever reason in this moment in time we are neglecting that and we're assuming that we let's give ourselves a little credit and assume that we have been helping young people and students understand that
036they should be factchecking all along the way and so now it just means that that language that we use for fact checking and evidence we've evidence generation data deren decisions we've got we have all sorts of language that we used for these processes assume that we have created the base level for that build on that so that we make it a normative thing that we all do and we still have the right we use this information to develop opinions and develop arguments and all of the wonderful things that we want to have um young people engage in as we engage in a Democratic Society can I add on to that a little bit um 21st century skills the partnership for 21st Century Learning almost two decades ago came up with this framework of 21st century
037skills that every student should learn um prior to Common Core those were embedded into some of the state standards so we had some early doops Ohio was one of those um but when people when I go in and speak to schools and I've done a whole lot of work with schools to help them change you know make a transformation into a stem approach or a stem school and it really you know at face value that excludes a lot of people in the building oh I'm not sim so it's not for me um the the way that I really um just break that right at the beginning is stem's 90% 21st century skills and they're like what and then they figure out that you know the English teacher can benefit from that anyone else can benefit
038from that but at no time more than ever 21st century skills are so important and and one of the key parts of that framework um are media literacy skills right how to be able to evaluate the data that you're pulling from the Internet or getting from chat G you know and so I think that that's something now that it's you know included in a lot more of our standards common core and others um it's it's really important for the teacher to focus on that so fun fact Proctor and Gamble how many use a how many people here use a Proctor and Gamble something something in your house tide you know all those things um a person who's applying for a job at Proctor and Gamble it's been this way for over 10 years they're headquartered
039in Cincinnati Ohio how I know this um their interest interest part of their application um process is to gauge the individuals 21st century skills regardless if they're going to be the front desk receptionist or the pH CH PhD chemist so industry recognizes the importance of these skills and to be able to do these things and so that's another caveat to you know really moving forward with an AI agenda computer science agenda you know whatever we want to call it depending on what what um roll out we're looking at focusing on those 21st century skills is critical how do we measure those skills oh we have an assessment we've developed for that yeah that yeah there and that's the biggest challenge though Mike you're exactly right because um when I work with Schools they're like that's
040great but that's not on the report card like we test science we test this and that and so we've developed a tool that can be used from kindergarten through oh pretty much next to the Grave that measures a person's um progress toward Mastery in each of those skills across the lifetime and so a lot of schools have moved to assessing that and you know on top of the content traditional content Assessments in k12 and so it's important and and the beauty of that is kindergarten you're probably going to get a whole lot of you know not you know the lower level but um the thing I always talk about and I've used it with NASA use it with a lot of people in this room I'm sorry to burst your bubble but a lot of
041people probably will not reach Mastery on that assessment because they're naturally things that we're better at so maybe some of us would be knocking critical thinking out of the park but maybe Death by PowerPoint is still a thing so our communication skills could use some work um but it's important to be able to assess that because how else are we going to help students move to the next level well that that's exactly uh kind of where the five seats came from that um the uh 21st century skills so you know we we need to talk more about how we are attempting to measure those skills with some level of um predictability right I mean I I think it's easy you just partner with czi and UCI yes we think a lot about measurement so full
042disclosure measurement is my jam so it is the thing that will make my eyes light up we can have deep conversations about it but disclaimer I am not a measurement person by training and and that it's t that I I suspect that that's why I'm so curious about it because I've always wanted to understand how we Define what success is how we Define curiosity I mean come on it looks different across every single one of us and so we think a lot about what are the ways in which we can naturally capture this information in the way that you're interacting and setting up your classrooms in the way that you're um engaging with young people and the way that young people are engaging with technology and with their Educators it's a natural occur these things
043happen naturally in classrooms when good teaching and learning are happening I think that's something that we're trying we're grappling with because the um the satellite data that we're all used to the test data has it's um it's easy to quantify right whereas once you start getting to that that map and the street data the street data is difficult to uh quantify and synthesize but that's an area I think where AI could really amplify to use uh Professor an's term um you want to comment on that Tyler yeah absolutely I I I mean I think it it has to start at at that street level and and we were really aware that in ahsd we are we are a Community School District right and and part of that is is finding our needs and assets of
044our community so what we did um with Carlos and his team uh with the from the community schools and then our partnership with e Cadence it's like data is I think probably the most valuable currency right now everyone is trying to collect your data all of our apps right now are tracking where we are and what we're looking at and all those things right but the hardest part especially at a at a anywhere but especially in within a school system it's that data is great sending that survey out is wonderful but without insights and actions it's just a bunch of numbers and letters on on a that's right on a screen now do we still use paper I know um but with within within e Cadence now at our fingertips I can I could put
045up a QR code right now you could all type something in and by the time I turn my head it's already synthesized the top five themes that's something that to this point has never existed but imagine being able to collect data and get those insights so quickly to now we can take action and I know this is a little long-winded I'm sorry we have in at Magnolia we we have raising student voices and a student came in and they they survey all of our students about the needs or their concerns of the school right and so it was awesome our our student leaders came in they did the survey and I asked the person who was running it I was like how are you like how are you like synthesizing this and he's like well
046I just tally when I say words and I'm like hey I got a tool in E Cadence let's put it through and then we found like the need I think this one you know pretty pretty standard cafeteria food but what's funny is on that that was on a Monday and on Tuesday I did a lesson on it and then I had multiple students come up to me and be like we always take these surveys and then poof they're gone but this is the time where I felt like I said something and then we did something about it so they felt that purpose they felt that agency and what I just did mattered because we were learning about it the next day and that's the power of being able to synthesize quickly so I would propose
047as we close this out um we've we started with we've been challenged with repurposing schools and arguably we've created schools based on satellite data right we've built schools and school systems and that's been our purpose for the last 25 years I would propose that now we have access to tremendous Street data voices from kids and parents and families and that's where the AI tools can be used to inform us on re reimagining what school can be I that's that's kind of what our table talk has been about yeah you want to comment on that yes oh my God so exciting um I know I get excited about everything easily excitable um we are at a moment in time where we can engage one another in understanding the information that we have available to us and
048that has not happened at scale before I I have an analogy that I was thinking about when we were having our table talk conversation which is I remember so I'm old I remember when I was training folks and working with folks around the idea of datadriven decision making and we would set up the room be in a classroom or AUD or cafeteria whatever the space was in the school and there was tons of you know flip chart papers with information and thing like paper everywhere and there is no way on God's green earth that we as human beings would be able to interpret all of that data and then make some decisions about what moves we were going to make the next day there's no way the brain cannot process that kind of information we
049now have the ability to take all of this information recognize patterns that's the beauty of AI and the tool recognize patterns understand the things that are happening and then consume that and use what we're uniquely good at doing as humans interpreting that to engage with another human being that at the end of the day is the beauty of the moment we're in right now well I think that's a great way to end our discussion I want to say this that it's not you know often times people say oh that the answers are in the room I don't I don't think they are but I think the questions we're at a point where we need to ask these question but another round of appuse for super