AI and the Future of Education

my next guest is fron Shaw he is a CEO of pedagogy Ai and Cloud AI which provide in Innovative Technology Solutions to help Educators navigate Global challenges in a rapidly evolving World he's the author of Willie Josie's Bast publication Ai and the future of Education teaching in the age of artificial intelligence pron is also the founder of the Civic focused nonprofit United for social change he has a ba in philosophy and an Meed in education policy from Harvard University well welcome to the podcast Bron thank you for having me well you know I reached out because of you know we've had some I guests on the podcast already to talk about AI but I think just you having these two companies uh Petty GOI Ai and Cloud Ai and then talking about just your um ideas coming from the book uh we'll have a great conversation focused around that but I do want to start off with the question I ask everybody tell me about a time when you were in the trenches and managed to craw out yeah um so I'll I'll give it an example from when when the AIS stuff initially started um and so when when these initial like wave of the public access to um Chad gpt's API started um I got really excited um and so I've been sitting there like starting to brainstorm all the potential ways that we might be able to use this for work that I've been doing for the last few years new stuff that figured would be like possible um that I never thought would be possible before um and I tried talking to people about it and they all thought I was crazy um the immediate response from everybody was um like you're you're on the wrong side of this um this is something to be scared of it's making things worse for Education um this is a problem we need to solve um and I think there was a little bit of just like it was disheartening um I was I know there was something I was like um as someone who like kind of tries to play in both worlds I I do a lot of development work myself I code um and then I try to keep up with teaching and I try to keep up with philosophy of education um it was it was a nice reminder that sometimes like all those things need to kind of work together um for it to actually be real and so um that was that was a a very like eye openening moment for me um in terms of realizing that U there's while things can be exciting from the tech angle like the the reality might be much more complicated than it seems like you said it's still now a lot of people they're you know skeptical of chat GPT um you know all these things that people are afraid of in futuristic movies right so I think it's um I'm taking the lenses like we're we see it play out if we use it um within you know the means that we're supposed to use it for um you know we'll I think we'll just kind of see what what can happen but before we talk about your book and kind of your work with AI uh I wanted to talk a little bit about your earlier educational Endeavors so you've uh worked a little bit in uh language schools in South Korea you've also taught special education classes yeah so um my teaching experience has been a hodge podge of lots of different things um and so my actually like my first Venture was an education nonprofit in high school and we did a peer-to-peer tutoring program where we also worked with the early childhood education programs um and so that was you know this is what I was like um 14 years old um and then when I I took some time off between um high school and college and that's when I taught in South Korea um teaching debate and teaching English as a second language um and then I went back to school um and at that point like I was spending uh Summers during college um and even now running my Middle School summer camp and so so um we we run a Civics um like dummer camp for students um and that's that's my favorite time of the year um because we get to kind of like be in the classroom um with like young middle school students and talk about really important things and seeing some of those conversations is really fun um but between my freshman year of college and sophomore year of college I took another Gap year um and during that Gap year um I spent um some time um as a teacher assistant in a special education classroom um and that was definitely a very different experience than I've been having um in some of those other environments um and I worked for a few years as a debate teacher at a private school in Boston and so as you can see there's like all sorts of variety of educational context that I've kind of taught and worked in um and they kind of all informed kind of a more holistic picture of um where like the projects that I work on they kind of try to tackle education role different angles as well so you um started um pedagogy CL and II and Cloud AI um and so how did that so you have a other nonprofit which is United for social change so when kind of there a timeline for the nonprofit and the the AI yeah so there's um the timeline's um complicated so the the first nonprofit um like during my Gap year before um freshman year of college um I started un for social change and that's a sific focused education nonprofit um and then at the same time I have to start a pedagogy cloud and so that's the educ consulting company where we work with nonprofits we work with schools um other educational institutions to build them custom Solutions and so a lot of the tech skills I was kind of picking up running my own nonprofit I was able to kind of help other organizations with it and so we built custom courses we bu built custom um like Management systems for summer camps for um like nonprofits um and that's kind of where the the tech aspect kind of got integrated more and more um and then when I graduated college uh that became my primary Focus was running the nonprofit and the for-profit py. cloud um and then where where we kind of building new tech Solutions we work with a nonprofit in Boston called thinker analytics that does Mastery learning for reasoning and that's one of my favorite projects to work on um during the covid-19 pandemic we worked with about 215 different institutions um helping them transition to online learning we did everything from help them build custom um online school platforms to just doing some trainings for teachers um to doing some PD on like what kind of te techniques you can use um in the middle of the pandemic um and then those same customers were kind of coming to us um while I was being excited about um Ai and its rise and ask them for support and so that's when we started working on the AI aspect of the business which is pedagogue um and so that's where our teacher facing PD courses um are accredited like three graduate course uh course was built that fall um that's spring um and all of our teacher tools and you know AI based professional development row out of that so let's dive a little bit more into um the tools that are tailored for student use um so can teachers use these alongside lessons do they fit in with different curricula um you know just that from experience I not used any of those tools so I'm not sure like how teachers can align that with maybe some of the standards or curricula that they might be mandated to teach um in their District yeah so the way we imagine AI tools right now especially student basic ones um is there opportunities to have conversations with our students about healthy usage of AI so um and that's where we we do try to make make sure they co-curricular ways to use the tools because I think um you know finding time in a regular history classroom suddenly stop and say okay here's what you're allowed to do with AI here's what's not here's good usage here's where it can go wrong that's just not practical when you have a standards based test at the end of the sorry a standard test at the end of the year um or you have standards to meet um and so we're trying to find ways that teachers can kind of start having those conversations about well what what does it mean to have a healthy conversation with the chat B what is it appropriate use what is it cheating what is it um actually using it for your own gain um using the AI chat Bo that we've built which is soc. um and that one's where like teachers kind of assign a very particular topic have all the students engage in that topic so for example you might say I want the kids to have a syncretic dialogue um about the causes of World War I um and so they can kind of go in and start having that chat with it the can kind of keep an eye on exactly what the students are chatting about um and that also provides the students an opportunity to interact with the the chatbot um AI in general really um in a way that's monitored by the teacher is is complements the already the curricular goals the teacher already has um but also not just aall environment where they're kind of doing whatever um with a like regular chat bot um and so as I told you in the pre-chat I work a lot with multilingual Learners so uh let's talk a little bit about the language learning angle and how AI can help with with that uh whether students are learning a different language in English or they're learning English um and how it can navigate because I think a lot of our students they're using Google translate or you know they're they're using U different tools that are embedded in some curricula that might have uh their uh first language pop up a text pop up with that in a translation but um I think some of those supports are tend to be over scaffolds or the kids are falling too much upon the Google Translation so how can uh these tools that you have helped inent uh help students who are maybe trying to learn more English and not use so many translations yeah so there's there's a couple of different things and there's things that we've done and there's things that I'm hoping somebody else does as well so I'll talk about people an idea of what the the larger the space might look like um and so there's everything from um AI based translations which are much more robust than Google translate they guess the Nuance a little bit more um and so it's it's likely to trip up like basic idioms and things like that and so if a student wants to do basic translation and they need need something robust the aias systems are good for that um what we've built is a a chat bot where the student can actually interact at the exact level of language that they're learning and so if they're an A2 Spanish speaker um they kind want get to like a B1 level they want we can set the chat bot to that level they can have a real life conversation so they could pretend they're um a waiter at a restaurant um in Paris and kind of have a conversation in French at that level and practice their conversational skills and that's that's where we kind of see the potential for it um our system allows teachers to kind of pick which vocabulary wor to focus on which grammatical Concepts to focus on and kind of empowers the teacher to exactly dictate what kind of conversation um the student ought to be having um in the target language um and now those are that's kind of like what you'll see in the space for the next few like months maybe even the next year um but there's also really cool things we can be doing in the long run I'm hoping that the technology becomes cheaper as we can kind of integrate more of these things into um like larger platforms um we may able to see some of these things and so one thing that I'm hoping somebody builds um is headphones because they're already translation headphones right so they're they're headphones that you can kind of wear travel to a country and kind of get everything translated back into your native language and then your phone like kind of spits out um the the target language in the area um but that's not really a pedagogically useful tool it's it's really just like circumvents the need to learn the language sure um that particular practical purpose of getting around a country um but a a pedagogical version of that might be headphones that you put in while you're an ESL student in an immersed classroom um and the headphones actually kind of know which words you've already learned and been exposed to um and which ones you haven't and so it kind of provides you the context in your native language so you can hear some of the stuff coming in through your native language because it's translating in real time um and then an has other has the um words coming in through English I wants to expose you to kind of help you reinforce okay like you now know these words here's you know you know these grammatical structures and so those you get exposed to in English and so that's where I think like the potential really lies right if we start imagining those kinds of tools which the technology exist for today it's a matter of getting you know getting the technology accessible and getting someone to build it and kind of fund it for large scale usage um that's that's where the excite that's where I'm excited about and this is where I like you know sitting down and initially reading through these things and I was like okay like we could do really cool things for our students this you know language learning is definitely one of them um but you know we have a ways to go in terms of getting everybody to know how that works feel comfortable with it um and actually use it but that would be a great example of a very effective way to kind of get students to um be exposed to both their like their target language which in this case might be English um but also still like keep up with the concepts and not fall behind in the actual curricular things because they're still getting native language um translations for what they need yeah no I I definitely would hope that gets funded and developed in the next five years because uh just for uh somebody who has experience teaching both World languages when you're in a classroom learning French and um you know students you know they can use more AI tools now for that but they they seem more motivated sometimes because they want to travel to the country and then versus now I'm helping out of teachers who uh have an influx of multilingual Learners from all over the world um that you know um varying levels of uh language knowledge and also varying levels of how much English they're learning in the course of a year so yeah if there were some headphones or something that could actually pick up on what the student has been exposed to and then then like keep keep iterating those words in English so the kid does get that right as opposed to them just falling back on that Google translation from time to time now that yeah I I would love to see that in the next three to five years and that that's possible the tech exists and that's what I I'm hoping both start to see that we if we kind of like put on our pedagogical hats for a little bit Yeah and started what what what is even doable right now there is some exciting stuff ahead of us um and we just kind of need to be navigating that and making sure that it happens so let's talk about your book uh which is the AI and the future of Education teaching in the age of artificial intelligence what does a book teach Educators about AI especially for those who maybe have a very little knowledge of the AI tools they can use but also some teachers that are Advanced um that have a lot of knowledge and have been using chat upt and other tools uh since it's been out so where where does this book fall for them yeah the book the book definitely aims to kind of scaffold the whole um the entire AI landscape and education for someone who has no exposure and so um if you pick up the book with you know never having like thought about exactly how what AI even is how it's built um what like what does it actually you know we all use the word AI pretty like regularly these days but not everybody fully grasps exactly what's the computer science behind it um how are these algorithms trained what is an algorithm all those kinds of questions um I try to provide exactly the right amount of information that you need um as an educator in order to kind of navigate that those conversations um and make use of the tools but also be careful about the risks the tools might pose as well because I think some of that background knowledge helps you um be critical about exactly what you're using what how your students are using it and avoid some risks um and so I start with that um and then I I talk about some big picture questions because um I don't think this is you know this is not the goal isn't for us to just suddenly like sit down and use AI to do what we've always been doing um right the goal is for us to just like keep turnning out the exact kind same kinds of materials um and so while that's possible and there's there's utility in that it'd be great if we can all like not to spend as many much time coming up with test questions um or creating more formative exercises like using a or those kinds of things um is effective it's it's a great use to kind of cut down on teacher workload and the book kind of gives examples of that um we also want to use this opportunity to think about what is the long-term trajectory here like gets more Advance what does it mean for society what does it mean for Education um do our goals in education change and my my my guess is no I think still want to do the same things so to figure out how to continue to justify those continue to get our students on board with it and figure out how AI can help and not make our problems worse and so um the book is kind of broken up in that way it kind of has um an intro to AI an intro to like what are the big questions we need to ask for the whole education system and then all the Practical here's how you can use it right now with screenshots and um like real prompt that you can kind of put in and start playing around with like if you're first time using the tools it ends with some big picture questions about ethics and risks that we might face if we don't do this properly um and the way I like to talk about is that like we we have problems in education that like have kind of existed for a long time um and a has the potential to either solve those or make those worse um and it's it's going to make them worse unless we do things right and so I'm hoping the book can start some of the conversations that need to be had in order for us to prevent those problems from getting worse yeah and that's a great way to end the book because U like you know the potential pitfalls but also like also teaching uh teachers like because a lot of our students know more about how to use a tool the teachers do right but it's um keeping up with those as well and um that kind of leads into what I wanted to ask about conferences because a lot of conferences now are featuring AI um either as their main um theme or it's part of their theme uh you said you are speaking at the future of Education conference at the end of June uh what is this conference about and what will you be speaking on yeah so um I've been gearing towards like a slightly more academic spaces um because I'm trying to ask some of the like I'm trying to spend some time thinking about and asking some questions that I think are maybe like necessary for us to ask the long the bigger picture and so the future of Education conference is an academic conference and so they they convene normally Scholars um to come and talk about all aspects of education so it's not focused on AI necessarily um my particular like paper um is on um how we might think about like the framework for Education um and what kinds of aims we have in education and the ethical like dilemas that we face as educator um focusing on AI and seeing how that might change how we think about those things and so there's a particular author who writes about um thinking a framework for making decisions and education um his name is Harry brous and he's provided what he what is a like a holistic framework for how might you navigate Big questions in education about how we allocate resources um how we allocate um you know resources across state across in part inside a school how we make disciplinary policies um how we decide want to promote or demote a student all those kinds of things um are the kind of questions that he kind of provide a basic framework for what we include in our curriculum what we don't include in our curriculum do we fund Charter Schools or not fund Charter Schools all those kinds of questions require some of us to kind of have asked big level questions um and he he Prov Tri provide a framework for that and I I apply that framework to AI questions and try to figure out um what might that tell us about how we allocate where we focus on first integrating AI do we start with our our foreign language classrooms or do we start with our ESL classrooms um which schools do we start with our AI literacy in do we work with the schools who already have on toone devices and like large Broadband access um and get them all on boarded onto AI because it's it's the most it's the fastest place for us to do so um or do we first fix our Broadband problem across the country and make sure every school has Broadband access and in the meantime like not have resources to spend on AI literacy so these are tough questions I don't you know I don't think to have the answer for them um and I don't think anyone would um but I hope that we can kind of help navigate some of that thinking around it it provides at least a framework for thinking about it and so this conference I'll leave the um Link in the show notes um it's online but uh the inperson uh portion is all in Florence so um that is at the end of June I'll make sure I put that in there so we've had a great conversation today around your book around AI use and education and um how that's changing with the times and some of the things that you think might be on the horizon out of everything we've talked about what's one thing you'd like listeners to remember um I I like to remind people to take a deep breath so um this is get really overwhelming there's so much coming at you um between like you know professional development in schools like probably all the media you consume on the news and social media conversations you're having with your students and with your peers um and I think that just remember important to remember that like this is all moving pretty fast everybody's feeling really overwhelmed um it's good to take a deep breath figure out what the right move is for you that your next couple of moves um whether it be reading a book or um listening to a podcast episode um and figuring out starting to gaining some of the knowledge so navigate whatever keeps coming out um but but no one is behind anyone else everybody's kind of facing the same onslaught of information um and progress and so we're all navigating it together so hopefully I know there are lots of folks who are feeling really overwhelmed by right now but but every everybody's in the same place um and those like minor catch-ups that we need to do will happen in due time where can people connect with you and find you online um so our Instagram um is where I recommend folks check out first um we post daily about like prompt tips news updates that are relevant to Educators um anything new that we do including any of our new courses we do bi-weekly webinars um you know all that kind of stuff is posted on there that's pedagogy Cloud um and then if you go to pedagogue doai that's where you'll find um lesson plans for you to use prompt libraries lots of lots of our past webinars that are pre-recorded um my book and a lot of this content is actually free on the website as well so we definitely recommend folks go in and check it out great well thank you so much for being on the out of the podcast today it was a pleasure and really exciting to hear more about what you're doing to help Educators thank you so much for having me