Transcript - AI Generated
[0:17] Hey guys, in this episode I'm going to be chatting to a good friend of mine, Sabba.
She has been diving into all things AI for the last few years.
She's been teaching since 2007 and I'm going to be talking to her about how AI can help us in the classroom, but also how it can help us as teachers to reduce our workload.
And so let's dive into that.
Well, Sam, I want to thank you so much for coming and joining me on the podcast today and chatting to you about AI.
I feel like I see your stuff on social media and I feel like you know what you're doing. if you know AI very well.
And I would love for you to be able to help other teachers to think about how they can use AI in an effective manner.
So I'm really excited to chat to you today. Do you want to just sort of tell us a little bit about who you are, where you're based, your teaching background, all that kind of stuff?
[1:12] Yeah, absolutely. So I'm based in Orange County, California, and I started my teaching career as a high school history teacher back in 2007.
And I sort of say that, like, I feel like 2007 was that last inflection point, you know, with the beginnings of, like, you know, the year the iPhone launched and really sort of like the shift to mobility that we saw, you know, over the last, you know, decade and a half or so.
And I really feel like when I think about 2020, you know, three or like 2022 and like Chad GPT now kind of being that next inflection point.
There's just so many things that lessons learned you could say from that 2007 era because when I graduated as a new student you know as a new graduate first year teacher in 2007 not one single person had really talked about like the future of work or like hey like the way you grew up teaching you know um experiencing school is going to look really different than the way it's going to be when you're a teacher in these environments and so I would say I spent like the first five years of my career trying to like figure things out because if many people might remember like you know these big technological shifts also bring economic shifts political shifts social shifts all these different kinds of things and so 2008 we had the great recession and so you know while i got my first job and it was like amazing i got one layoff notice after another after another after another just because the recession the budget cuts and all those things and.
[2:31] It took me about five years to really figure out like, wow, like the world of work is really different than like what I had been told it was going to be or like what I had been prepared for.
It was actually a book I read by Seth Godin called Lynchpin, where he said that like deal that you go to school, you get good grades, you get a job like that expired in 2007.
And in this new world of work, being able to identify your skills, your strengths, but also being able to articulate and show people the problems you can solve and the value you bring to your organization is really important.
And so that's where technology and teaching kind of became this like, you know, like this powerful combination that I was really good at, that it became like my value proposition, if you will.
And from there, it really just took me deeper and deeper, deeper down that kind of pathway.
But I think the message I always like to share is like, I was not some like tech savvy, like, you know, advanced person.
I was just like, I feel like I I was like that person. I was that student that today I advocate for and why they need to have the skills and the mindsets in particular to be able to navigate whatever comes next.
[3:36] Yeah, I love that. Seth Godin, by the way, is amazing. He's got so many really good books. I love his work.
[3:44] So that's really cool. Can you then talk about AI and how we can do exactly what you're talking about there, helping teachers bring things together and the next steps, I guess, for life for people as well. But can you just start?
Utilizing AI Tools for Effective Teaching
[4:00] Teachers are always like, oh, which AI should I use? Which ones are good? Which ones are bad?
So let's just get that bit out of the way, right? So can you just start by giving us a few AI tools that you think teachers should be using that you love to use and that are really impactful in the classroom?
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I will say, so I have this sort of like mantra, if you will, which is all about like prompting the human before the machine.
So, you know, this is another kind of like lesson learned from that, like iPad Chromebook, like that, like last decade, if you will.
And that is we really gravitated towards applications.
Like what's enough for this? What's enough for that? Give me something for this.
Give me something for that.
And one of the biggest, you know, kind of like tragedies I would say of the last decade is we didn't really spend enough time thinking about our own skills, our own mindsets, and our own pedagogical practices and how we wanted those to evolve.
And so fast forward to today, when you have AI, it feels like, you know, like, like the rug has been pulled off under you because you're just like, oh my God, my essays, my this, my that.
And a really big part of what we advocate for is not making that same mistake again.
And so one of the things that we actually say is like, before you even think about any AI tools, before you think about anything at all, first really zone in on the problems you want to solve for.
[5:17] Because one of the amazing things about AI, when we think about that past decade and why we struggle to make those shifts was it was a lot of work.
It was a lot of work and it was a lot of time to take traditional type, you know, curriculum and instruction and create these like, you know, more innovative like pedagogies or even just like more project based learning, backwards design, whatever it is that you, you know, kind of aspire to create in your classroom.
It was a lot of work. And that's one of the beautiful gifts of AI that can do a lot of that work for you. You know, I would say AI knows design thinking and knows backwards design.
And it's really, really, really good at, hey, I've got to teach the standard tomorrow. I've only got this much time.
[5:54] How can I create this type of experience for my students?
But if you haven't first identified that experience that you're trying to create, you're going to then what we see people do is go in and be like, create me a quiz or create me this.
Or we see people default to apps like Magic School and things like that, which it's not that anything's good or bad.
It's just that where are you trying to go? And when you first kind of identify, hey, these are our aspirations, these are our visions, this is what we want to do, this is where we want to go, this is my ideal teaching and learning environment, but these are all the things that prevent me from doing those things, we're able to much better prompt the AI to really get the outcomes it is that we want.
And so I personally really say that chat GPT-4 is something I really believe everyone should invest in.
And the reason for that is when we see a lot of people playing with just text versions of tools, or we see people just kind of using these like wrapper applications.
[6:52] You know, like I feel like Magic School is a popular one, so it keeps coming to mind.
But when we see people using those ones, you're not really getting exposed to the full spectrum of what's possible. And so what's going to happen is tomorrow you're going to get caught off guard.
[7:07] So if you think AI is magic school or you think AI is just, you know, write me an email or a letter of recommendation, you're probably going to be in a bit of a surprise tomorrow.
And that's the one thing I would say, like, I work really hard to try to, like, if you're at least somewhat in my vicinity or my circle, I don't want you to have to feel the way I felt in 2007, the way so many people felt in 2007, the way so many people constantly feel because they feel like technology, they can never catch up with technology.
And the beauty of always starting with your problems, your hopes and dreams, your frustrations that you want to solve for is that technology, you have a criteria to filter the noise.
And so you're not just looking for, okay, that app, let me see how I can fit it in.
It's no, this is my problem. What is this app going to do to help me reach my goal?
So it's a bit of a mindset shift, but it's one that leads to less burnout, less frustration, and more sustainable outcomes.
[8:02] Yeah, I think a lot of teachers, I do a lot of tech stuff around Australia here, and you go and you talk to them and it's like, I just want to use this.
How can I use it? You're like, well, that's not the right way to go about it.
And what you're talking about is definitely what gets repeated a lot from any tech coach, really.
It will be constantly saying, look, let's start with what your learning goals are and then let's work out if you need tech afterwards, you know.
And I think things like ChatGPT, you know, a fantastic tool, but people forget that they're still tools.
They still require the input. They still require people to know how to use them.
There are a lot of benefits to the fact that with ChatGPT 4 and stuff and the fact that it'll start asking you questions once you get going.
It'll be like, actually, no, wait, I need this information. And what about this bit of information? Oh, yeah, sure, I can give you that.
Absolutely. It's so good when it kind of talks back to you and just goes, I need to make this better.
Do you want this for, you know, high school students or do you want it for junior school students or middle school?
Where are we actually targeting this? What age is it? And it's so good that it's adaptable in that kind of sense.
Now, I spent a little bit of time recently at Google Headquarters.
I happened to be there actually on the day that they announced Gemini was out, right?
[9:24] And everyone's like, oh, Gemini, Gemini. But I remember listening to the talk there, and the guy was talking about how AI is definitely not new.
AI has actually been around for a very long time, but it's just become very popularized lately through chat GPT.
And that was the thing that kind of came out and hit the news and got everyone excited or scared about, oh, no, AI is going in this way.
And it's been called lots of things before. Machine learning has been around for a long time, and in my sense, that's kind of AI and that's where things are built from.
But the person was just like, yeah, AI has been there for so long and it's embedded in so many tools that we use anyway.
So I feel like teachers at this point are kind of getting used to the fact that AI is a very accessible tool now and very, very helpful.
And I liked how you used it there to talk about how to do unit designs, how to do lesson plans and stuff properly.
And that's ChatGPT.
[10:26] What else? So as we hit AI, right, and we're doing our design thinking or we're hitting it to come up with our backwards mapping kind of process, how do I leverage that as a teacher?
So I want to be able to save time but also make sure that it's a really good outcome in the end.
So how do I go about leveraging AI for myself to benefit me as a teacher?
Yeah, I always, I think the easiest way to do it, because you need, again, that criteria, right, to filter, to vet, to assess.
[10:56] And that's really hard to do if you don't have subject matter expertise.
And so I remember when I first started it, one of my first kind of things to do was like, okay, let me see how good it is at design thinking, right?
Like I know design thinking inside out. I know examples, like I know everything.
I have that expertise to be able to vet, to filter and all of that.
And I was honestly like absolutely amazed by what it was able to do.
I was just amazed because it just, and you begin to realize there's not a lot of controversy around design thinking.
So there's not a lot of room for hallucination or misinformation or anything like that.
Same with backwards design, PPL, all these different kinds of research evidence-based strategies.
[11:36] And so I think when you go in with that problem you want to solve, like, okay, this is something I've done. It took me a really long time to do it. It was really hard to do.
Let me see how good it is at doing parts of this process. And I think that's another really important part of it is so often, like I see, I think it does a much better job at smaller tasks.
I mean, I think it's like a human, like if I came to somebody and said like, okay, go design me an ed tech plan.
Like you'd be like, what, like, where do I start? Like, okay, do you want this? Do you want that? Like, there's just so much room for confusion. fusion.
And so I think when we treat AI, and I say this, like, not because I think it's a human, but I think when you treat these AI tools as a member of your team, and you treat it like the way you would a coworker or colleague, your mindset is different towards how you speak to it, what you ask for.
Identifying Problems Before Implementing AI
[12:21] And so instead of asking for this, like, big, like, you know, thing, if you if you can break it down into tasks, and kind of see, okay, where does it perform?
Well, what what do you you really need to have oversight on.
And what does that collaboration look like so that you're like better together, you know, and you're able to do more than you could have as two individual parts.
That's really where I think the power is.
[12:43] You know, with every single thing, even if somebody is listening to that thinking like, okay, well, how do I break it down?
You don't even have to do that work, right? You can literally go into like, you know, your chat GPT or whatever AI tool it is you're using and be like, hey, I want to know how you can support me with designing project based learning.
Can you break that down into tasks? What should you do, you know, AI and what should I do?
And it will do a beautiful job of like breaking down step by step all the elements that go into designing a project based learning, you know, unit.
You could do the same thing for a communication strategy, an ed tech plan, you know, an LCAP.
Like, whatever you're working on, the tools are really good at being able to break things down into tasks and actually telling you, this is where I excel, this is where you excel, and this is what that collaboration can look like.
And so that's kind of what I say.
And then when you have the expertise because you've done something from before, you can then assess better, okay, wow, this worked really well and did it this way, or okay, okay, it totally did not do this well, or you need to do these things to help it perform well in that way. And that's it.
[13:49] There's going to be two different types of people that emerge, you know, from this kind of, you know, this year and next.
And there's going to be one group of people who really spent their time doing that critical thinking and skill development.
And there's going to be another group of people who just defaulted to these wrapper applications.
And I would say there's nothing wrong with the applications.
It's just that if you don't have have a pathway for, okay, I'm going to start with this app because it's just my easy point of entry.
And by app, I want to be really clear. I don't mean ChatGPT.
I don't mean BARD. I don't mean Claude.
[14:19] I don't mean any app where you are the one doing the creating and the prompting.
I mean, the apps like the Magic Schools and, you know, like, I don't even know what else there is.
I feel like that's just the most popular one, but there's a lot of AI apps that like do the work for you. Right.
And so, and that's fine. But if you don't have a learning pathway from, okay, okay, I needed this as an entry point, but this is how I'm going to build my skill, you're going to be obsolete.
Like I tell people like very point blank, if you think in the next five years, there's a job for you where you're using just like AI apps without that critical thinking oversight.
I just really think you're kidding yourself. Whereas there's the real sweet spot is going to be the people who can leverage the applications, but also have the critical thinking skill set to vet, to assess, and to really have that human oversight. And.
[15:09] I'll give you a really good example. Like, you know, I host a podcast too, right? Like I grow on here right now.
And so Chad GPT is great at doing things like helping you do show notes, helping you do course topics, helping you do these things.
[15:21] But Chad GPT cannot edit your episode. It can't, you know, clean up your episode.
It can't create, you know, short, you know, sound bites for you to promote on social media, can create the caption for you, but it can't do those things yet, right?
So when I think about where I want to invest in for AI tools, I don't want like a podcast show note app because I can do that myself because I have, I've spent time building that skillset and it's something you're always refining, but I can now have the flexibility to go invest in noise removal apps, editing apps, things like that.
And so that I don't want anyone to think that I don't think AI applications are useful. I think they absolutely are.
I think you You just have to map your workflow to be like, this is where I should invest. This is where I should not invest.
And that's how I think you do things. I think that's how you refine that skill set while also getting exposure to the things that are out there.
I will say the other application that I really like is Canva.
That's the one app that I will promote all day long. I love Canva's efficacy.
I love their commitment to education.
I love their integrity. I love their slow approach. but what I mostly love about Canva is the learning journey is in there.
So even if I'm using Magic Write, even if I'm using Magic Edit, the possibilities for the things that I can create and do in the projects I can create, the products I can create are, I mean, they're endless.
[16:49] And so that's what I look for in an AI application, the evergreen nature of it.
And am I still being able to develop my own skillset alongside it instead of, because as we know in education, right, The person doing the creating is the person doing the learning.
And so the person who's creating those wrapper applications for you is the person doing the learning, not you. You don't want to be stuck in drop-down menus for AI apps.
Leveraging AI for Student Creativity & Critical Thinking
[17:13] Now, how can we use this kind of stuff? So we talked a little bit about how teachers are using it to do their design thinking.
You've got them just going, yeah, here's the magic app and just sit in front of it and do what you want to do.
But let's shift it now. How can we use it to leverage?
AI, I think, is actually a fantastic tool to help leverage our students' ability for creative thinking and critical thinking and stuff. I think AI is actually really helpful for students to be able to do that, that depth of thinking to actually use AI to drive that.
Can you maybe talk a little bit into that?
How can I use some AI to actually help my students to go deeper with their learning?
[17:53] Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think one of the challenges for a lot of people right now with AI and students is age, right?
Right. Because like unless you until you don't have like an enterprise adoption, it is a little bit challenging to kind of have mainstream use aside in your homework and all these different kinds of things.
And so I think one of the most important things we can do right now is first and foremost, talk about implications with students.
What do you want learning to look like? Where do you and it's the same thing we started with. Right. Even for educators, where are you struggling in learning?
What's hard for you? What do you wish you could do that you're not able to do?
And once I think you create that culture and that environment and that rapport where your kids are aware of the skills that are changing, they have a safe space to have those conversations about how they're feeling as they're watching this technology.
Because, you know, for these kids, it's not just AI, right?
There's so many technology just consumes every single area of not just their lives, but even our lives as well.
And I think having that conversation first where they get to assess the playing field, look at what's working, what's not working gives everyone a criteria to kind of examine what's next instead of just saying, okay, AI, we're going to use it to like, was this paragraph better or was that paragraph better? Like to me like, again, it's.
[19:12] So it's an okay thing to do. But if that's the only thing you're doing, it's not really going to get anybody anywhere.
You know what I mean? Because tomorrow in their life, it's just going to be the default that AI is your writing support, right?
It's just is what it is. And so being able to help them think more critically about what are the skills you should be thinking of if you were thinking of being a doctor, because that's what your parents have told you since day one, and that's what's just ingrained in your head. Well, how is medicine changing?
What other opportunities are there within that field? What kind of skills do you feel like, oh my God, I really need to be good at public speaking, but I'm so scared to even say two words or like whatever those things are.
There's so many more social, emotional elements, I think, that go into helping kids navigate navigate the world around them than just like, let me get you on this AI app and help you do this faster.
Because if I haven't identified where I'm struggling, what I want help with, maybe I want to launch a business.
Maybe I've always wanted to be a part of a certain nonprofit.
Maybe there's somebody I saw online who's doing something and I want to know how they did that and how I can do it too.
That data is so much more valuable in informing what we want our next steps to be with these tools instead of just like substituting assignments with a layer of AI.
Importance of Critical Thinking in AI Utilization
[20:27] Cool, that's really good. I like how you talked in there about that last point even about it's not substituting with AI.
I think that's, you know, I do a lot of clip learning and I'm like, you don't just want to send them to go and do stuff on AI, you want them to actually have, you know, something that's kind of set.
And we need to teach students too, you the the art of props is actually it's something that people really need to learn like because you know i have all these people like oh ai is terrible at writing i'm like well what are you telling it to do there's like i just put the question you're like well that's that's why your writing is terrible afterwards if you actually give your ai a whole bunch of um parameters around what to write how to write yeah um what kind of style to use all that kind of stuff suddenly what you get at the end is a lot better uh than what you know most adults even will write these days it's getting really really good i love using using ai for even just my own workflow and what i'm doing uh brings us full circle like exactly what you just said is so important not just for kids but for adults as well because that that's the skill right that is is the skill of being able to ask those questions.
How do I learn? How do I figure this out? What do I do?
Instead of just getting a package that's being given to you where somebody has done all that work for you.
[21:47] Yeah so as we kind of wrap up this episode i want to give you it's like a blank statement here is that you go any advice let's get a whole bunch of teachers in front of you you're like you've been told to talk about ai what are you going to tell them what advice you got for all of us teachers who are just like i want to use ai in my classroom i want i want to use ai to help me with my workflow i want to do i want to embrace this whole thing uh you know what do you say you've You've got like, you know, five minutes to give them all the advice that you've got.
Prioritising Personal Growth in AI Integration
[22:20] Oh my gosh, so funny. You know, I actually really would say it's not even about AI. It's about you.
Like, what are, like, I usually ask people this question, we do this whole activity where it's like, if you think about the next one month and you think about something you wish you could do, what would that be? And what's holding you back?
[22:39] And I think the more, like my, I have like so many reflections, but one of the reflections I have from the past year of doing AI workshops with people is we have gotten so used to the grind and we've gotten so used to things that we don't even like that we don't even realise how desperately we're trying to hold on to them just because we don't, we can't imagine an alternative.
Like I ask people like, okay, why does, why, like when I'm working with English teachers, for example, like why, why do essays matter to you? Like, why do you care?
And it's It's like, well, I want my kids to think critically and I want them to have these conversations and I want this and I want that.
And it's like, okay, but you don't want five paragraphs.
Like nobody says like, I need five paragraphs, right? Like people say, I want critical thinking. Like people talk about the outcomes that they want.
But because we think the five paragraph essay is the only way to achieve that, we don't even know another way, or it's hard for us to even imagine what another way would be.
But if you ask people, how many of you love going home and grading all those essays, very very few people are going to be like, oh my God, yes, that's why I became a teacher. Like, yes, that's what I want to do.
And so being able to really reconnect with the environment, the outcomes, the feelings and experiences you wish you could create.
If you had a magic wand, I feel like we've all been given a magic wand with AI.
If you know how to use it in the right way that once you recognize those areas, you, um.
[24:06] See the technology, I think, in a different way. And it's way more uplifting.
It's way more motivating.
And I think it just brings more joy and happiness. Like, let the technology work for you, not the other way around.
But you'll never get there without having that conversation first.
And, you know, because that's not a muscle we use, we don't get asked on a daily basis, what are your hopes and dreams?
What can I do for you with my magic wand? Like, nobody walks around asking those questions.
So we're not used to them. And we're not used to those questions, which means we don't know how to come up with the answers right away either.
So there's some real like critical thinking that goes into that.
Like, yeah, what would I want? Like, why do we do this?
And that's where I really encourage people again, look at the things that are happening and ask, why do we do this?
[24:54] Why do we work five days a week? Why do we have our kids kids separated out into subjects and grades. Like why?
And so if you're not willing to even go there, you're always going to be stuck adding, I say like taking 20th century practices and doing them with 21st century tools.
And my biggest piece of advice is no, it doesn't have to be that way.
There are millions of people around the world who are changing the way they work, the way they learn, the way they live to prioritise what matters to them, their health, their wellness, their relationships, which are the most important things moving forward in the age of AI.
And so that's really where I encourage people. Like, as a human, what is your ideal life? What do you wish you could do?
What are those blockers and barriers in your way? And go tell that AI tool, what can you do to help me?
[25:45] Well, Sam, I want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your knowledge, your skills, your expertise with me and with everyone else who's listening.
Can you just let everyone know where can they go to find you?
What's the name of your podcast, what websites, what's your handles, all those kinds of things that people can come and find you.
Yeah, I always tell people just go to designingschools.org and it's like choose your own adventure, podcast, Instagram, YouTube, whatever you want, it's all there for you, blog.
But yeah, designingschools.org.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on. I've loved having a chat with you. Thank you.
I love this kind of stuff. So thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you.
Well how good was that I love chatting with Saba it was great to learn from her now if you have not yet please make sure you hit the subscribe button and also I want to let you know that coming up well it's actually already running is I've got a free tutorial out for you to help you to reduce your workload and increase your impact as a teacher to find it just head over to teacherspd.net and you can see all the information about it there.
I hope you go and enjoy that. Otherwise, have a fantastic week.