Chris: 0:13

back shifted podcast. Here we are. Um, we are super excited to have to have matt miller join us today.

Matt: 0:23

Now, where are you coming in from? Today? I'm here in Indiana, kind of out in the middle of nowhere here in the United States. I live on 25 acres, like a mile away from any neighbor or anything, so it's pretty quiet out here. Very nice.

Chris: 0:41

I'm sure you have great time to concentrate and reflect with all that quietness.

Matt: 0:46

Yeah, if I didn't have three kids that are always running around doing things, there might be a little more solitude, but I take it wherever I can get it.

Chris: 0:55

Amazing. So, matt, I love starting these off just kind of like a little bit of a backstory. How did you get into ed tech and supporting teachers with integration, and what was kind of your timeline that brought you to what you're doing today with Ditch your Textbook?

Matt: 1:13

Yeah, so I was teaching high school Spanish. I was a high school Spanish teacher for more than 11 years and before I went into education I was actually a journalism major in college and actually worked at several daily newspapers. So I loved to write. And once I started teaching after I'd been in teaching for a few years I got the bug to it, or like the itch to write again, and so I started up a blog just sharing some of the things I was doing in my classroom and I was trying to integrate technology. I've always been sort of a techie guy.

Matt: 1:45

I've loved my gadgets, uh, you know used computers as growing up as a kid did some programming, owned a Palm pilot. I mean that that all sort of tells you.

Matt: 1:56

Yeah, so, um, so I I just wanted to find ways to to integrate it meaningfully into my teaching, and so I was writing about it in my blog and started presenting on it in some local conferences and stuff, and what I was saying seemed to resonate with folks, and so the email newsletter grew and I kept writing about it and stuff and it just all kind of took off from there, and so since then I've had lots of opportunities to share more things with teachers all over the place now opportunities to share more things with, with teachers sort of all over the place now.

Chris: 2:31

Absolutely, it's very inspiring your blog and your website and all that you do and we'll talk about that in a little bit. Where did you get inspired first? Like you know, I remember like certain teachers or certain conferences I went to, that sparked something in me and sparked that change that I wanted to go through that process when I was teaching as well. Who were some of those people that kind of inspired you to kind of look at things and maybe shift your mindset a little bit in how you approach teaching and how you go about it?

Matt: 3:00

Yeah, oh gosh. There's all sorts of names that I could mention. I don't know if any of your listeners are familiar with them, but David Warlick was one of the big names in ed tech early on, and John Spencer now writes a lot about creativity and education and design thinking and everything. He was real big for me. Vicki Davis calls herself the cool cat teacher.

Matt: 3:23

She's had a blog for a super, super long time and there's just a ton of people that I was following on social media. I got on Twitter probably a good 10 years ago, 12 years ago or something, and just started following educators and just being connected to so many people who were sharing what they were doing in the classroom whether it was successful or not, brainstorming ideas of what they wanted to try and everything. That was probably my biggest inspiration. Just to see other people iterating on a regular basis the way that I was too, and then I was able to pull from their reflections, and so I thought, well, I've gotten so much from other people's blogs and other people's social media posts and everything. It's probably my turn to give, even if I don't have all of the answers.

Matt: 4:13

And so I think that's what empowered me to do it was. It just felt like a cycle right Get ideas, give ideas and everybody can be involved in the cycle, no matter you know, no matter their, their level of experience.

Chris: 4:27

Amazing and thinking back on those times when you started shifting your practice and integration more like I see, teachers, they they want to, but they want to know everything about it before they might make that leap into actually bringing into their classrooms. What do you tell beginning teachers about integration of tech that kind of lowers that anxiety that I don't need to know about everything tech wise? Um, what are some of the, the tips and tricks that you share with them, those starting teachers that are kind of like on the cusp of like I I want to, but I don't want to not know what I'm talking about or show something that I might run onto a wall and I won't know the answers. What's some of your advice that you give to those beginning teachers?

Matt: 5:15

I think one of the big things is that I share that I don't have all of the answers and that I don't know all of it either. You know, and we're all just sort of trying to figure it out on our on our own. Um, you know, I I definitely encourage them to to start small. You know, I think if you want to try using a new tech tool, or if you want to try a new teaching strategy or something, just trying it once and then evaluating it, um, I think can be huge. And actually that evaluate piece is another tip that I like to give them too is take a little bit of time to reflect afterwards.

Matt: 5:47

You know, it's so easy for us to try something and then class is over and school is over and we're rushing off to the next thing and we don't take a moment to just sit and reflect.

Matt: 5:57

I mean, you know we there's there's all of this academic research about the power of reflection on student learning, but we never do it as teachers. So I always encourage them to just think about what did you like about it, what did you not like about it, how would you do it differently? And then probably, finally, I would say, if it doesn't go so well the first time, that doesn't mean that it's a failure. It doesn't mean that you're a failure, and if it's something that you can change and try again next time, maybe it builds itself into a success at some point. Of course, there's also no shame in trying something a few times and trying to improve on it and then going you know what I don't like this. I don't think you throw it out after the first time. But if you try it for a little while and something doesn't work for you, there's no shame in saying nah, I don't think this is for me.

Chris: 6:50

Interesting. I love that reflective idea that you're presenting, that. That reflection is so key for us as educators to kind of think back. Small tweaks, try it again. What worked, like that practice, that cyclical practice is pretty amazing, yeah, and with the sheer amount of tech that comes out, I mean I think the turnover is reducing to like two months, three months and we have like new stuff all the time. How do you personally adapt to all the stuff that comes out all the time and how do you kind of pick and choose what you're going to focus on and what you won't focus on?

Matt: 7:27

Yeah, picking and choosing. I think that you mentioned that is really crucial because early on in my teaching career I wanted to try everything I wanted to.

Matt: 7:36

And I think there was sort of a fear of missing out to that fear that, oh, everybody else seems to be trying this thing. I've got to find a way to do it myself and I started to realize that if I could limit the number of tech tools that I use in my class, that means that I don't have to teach a new user interface to my students all the time, they don't have to learn all of the buttons and all of the features and everything, and we can spend more time on learning and less time on learning the new tool. So I think that was one side of it that was important to me. But I think I also have had to come to terms with the fact that I won't know about everything. I think when you start to get into ed tech a little bit, there's this sort of sense of overwhelm that, oh my goodness, there's all of these tech tools. How do I choose from everything? And the reality is you don't have to know about everything. If you can find one thing that elevates teaching and learning in your classroom in just a small way and it's useful to you, that's a success and you don't really have to evaluate every single one of hundreds and hundreds of tech tools and websites and everything. There's going to be a lot of things that you don't know about, and that's okay, you know.

Matt: 8:54

I think that was probably one of the hardest things for me to come to grips with was that there are probably really great tech tools out there that I don't know anything about. That would be a great fit for my classroom, but I just I don't know about them, and that's okay. So then what do I do? I just keep my eyes and ears open all the time and I'm constantly listening. I think one of the biggest things for me is hearing real teachers telling me that they had real successes with something. Whenever I hear that, I pay attention. If it's just like talking heads saying, oh, this is such a great thing, oh, look at all of these great features and everything I'm like, okay, that might work. But if I hear teachers say I had success in this way with this thing, that's something that definitely makes me pay more attention.

Chris: 9:40

Absolutely Well said, well said. I loved you. I saw a video that you had put out. I mean, you put out so many great videos but one that caught me was find the bigger purpose. Me was find the bigger purpose and I think you were quoting Daniel Pink's Drive book, which has such great inspiration in it. But like it's kind of like this backward design right when you're not thinking about the tool, and I find that when teachers kind of feel that pressure to integrate, it's all about the tool and how do I use it and tell me all the tabs and the buttons and the this. Can you kind of explore that idea a little bit, where it's about the purpose, not the tool?

Matt: 10:20

Yeah, I think you just said it right there it's about the purpose and not the tool, and I totally, wholeheartedly agree with that. Just recently I went back in the classroom to teach. I'd been out of teaching for eight years and there was this temporary one semester teaching assignment that came up that I took last spring. Second, you said it was about yeah, about the purpose and not about the tool. I was trying. I lost my train of thought there for a second, but, yeah, when it comes to that, I went back in the classroom and I started teaching again and I started to find that some of my most successful stuff was not super techie, but some of it was.

Matt: 11:08

Some of it did have to do with technology and really I think the core, fundamental thing that I had to keep coming back to is what am I trying to get kids to do? What skills am I trying to build in them? What understanding am I trying to build in them? And then I wanted to see what's the process that I want to go through to get to that, and if technology could help push me in that direction, then I was willing to give it a shot. But I think you know it's exactly what you said, it's not about what tech tool do I need to use, and I think sometimes like school leaders, principals, tech directors, superintendents, even like they don't mean to, but they start to kind of push this pressure on us. Oh, you need to use your learning management system this many times by the end of the semester.

Chris: 11:56

Oh.

Matt: 11:56

I want to see you using technology integration. Oh, it's going to be on your teacher evaluation and that's not how you're supposed to design learning. What you should do is you should have the end in mind and figure out. It's like you said that reverse instructional design. You know, here's my goal. How am I going to get to my goal? And if technology can help me get there, then that's what we should be focusing on, instead of checking some boxes.

Chris: 12:24

Exactly. I love, too, that you mentioned process, because I think that that's where the true learning happens, when kids are involved in process thinking and it's not about the end game I mean, who cares if it works or not at the end but did they try? Did they have some earmarks that you could look at? Um well, and speaking to of of, you know, new pressures. I mean we were getting swamped with ai, um, you know, presented to us, tell us it. It's still this kind of stand back a little bit, in the sense that we want to know about it but we're not ready yet to use it.

Chris: 13:01

But going through your book, I mean it's such a great book, I recommend it to all the listeners there. Just extraordinary AI for educators, it's called. I'll put the link in the notes. But at this kind of tipping point we're at again, how are you approaching this with? You know, the administrators, teachers, like the system. How do you, how do you see us integrating ai into education so that it benefits? Again and again, it's about the purpose we're focused on, not the AI stuff.

Matt: 13:36

Yeah, yeah, gosh, I can see it. I can see it integrated in so many ways, and the thing that people don't realize is that it already was integrated before chat GPT came around. There are all sorts of misconceptions right now about AI. I think, and I think a lot of people think, that AI is chat GPT, because that was the first sort of capable, friendly human face on artificial intelligence that talked to us the way that we do as humans. And all of a sudden, everybody starts thinking oh, chat GPT came around. Well, now there's AI and it's like well, ai has been around for a long time already.

Matt: 14:15

It makes recommendations for us and Netflix and Amazon. It's behind the directions that we get in our GPS map apps. It's in the autocorrect and autocomplete that we have. I mean, it also has a lot to do with crunching our school data. It's it's in a lot of the things that we're already using and we just don't even realize it. But now we have new applications of it. We have these very capable large language models like ChatGPT, and those are already starting to get integrated into other tech tools and everything.

Matt: 14:49

So you know, I think everybody immediately rushes to the big picture of oh well, in 10 years are teachers going to be obsolete and whole robots have taken over the world. And I mean, like sure, there's, there's some, you know, there's definitely some dangers and some concerns about all of that. But as far as making sense of it and making steps in the right direction right now in education, I mean, I think one of the biggest steps is to use AI tools to help free teachers up, free some time up, get creative ideas and help us to get some of the. I always love to suggest people use it for the drudgery, the stuff that isn't part of what you were put on this earth to do as an educator. If you don't put it in that category, then see if AI can do it for you faster so you can put more of your time and attention into the stuff that matters most. I think if we focus on things like that, that's a good first step.

Matt: 15:50

I know a lot of people are starting to talk about well, what about students interacting directly with AI?

Matt: 15:57

Well, first of all, I think there's lots of steps that we can take where AI can support the teaching and learning process. Before that, you know, students prompting chat, gpt, or prompting AI image generators, or interacting with chatbots or whatever. I think we've just got to be super careful with it, you know, I think we have to. There's got to be some oversight by the adults, by the teachers, to make sure that what the AI is giving the students is what they need and if it's not, then making some adjustments and if it produces some harmful or biased or misleading or inaccurate information, just having conversations with the students about it, helping them to be AI literate, so to speak. So I think, if we take some of those cautious first steps where we're using it on the teacher side, for sure, but then we're also having conversations with students about the nature of AI and the things we got to be careful of. I think we'll, I think we're we'll be off on on a good foot.

Chris: 17:02

Yeah, absolutely, you know it. It it comes to kind of digital citizenship in. In the end, I find, is that we have to be having those conversations with the students, and ai is a great vehicle because it's so um interesting right now for everyone. You know, like, what it does and how it does this and um, and why is it that that that, like here in quebec anyway, they limit like it's 16 years and older that can interact with like third party apps and stuff like that. Why do you think that is Like, why is it that we have to limit what kids can do?

Matt: 17:41

Yeah, and yeah, I've seen it at six, set at 16.

Matt: 17:44

I've said it at 13,.

Matt: 17:45

You know, I think with a lot of those, you know, I've got to think that we want to make sure that students understand, especially with AI, that they understand that it's not actually a person.

Matt: 17:59

You know, I think the danger of anthropomorphizing there's a great big 50 cent word I can throw around, you know of trying to make it out to be like a human and then you just trying to protect them before they're of an age where they can make conscious, solid adult decisions. I think that's why some of that stuff is in place. But I think also, teachers sometimes use that as an excuse to not explore AI. Some of them will be like oh, I've got some of the younger kids, this doesn't apply to me because they're not 13. Well, teachers can use some of these AI tools like ChatGPT, and they can put them up on the projector screen or they can put it on an interactive display or a smart board or something and they can be the user of it and do some pretty cool stuff in front of the class or they could use it to generate an essay or a story or something, copy it out of chat GPT and stick it in a document and distribute it out to the students.

Matt: 19:28

That's all acceptable under the terms of use. Use an AI image generators to make pictures of things that students are studying and then displaying that to the students on slides or something like. All of that stuff is acceptable and also is a really good fit developmentally for younger kids too. So yeah, when it comes to the terms of use, I think it's important to understand that with a lot of the tools, it has to do with who's laying fingers on the keyboard.

Matt: 19:57

And if the teacher is the one doing that. There's still a lot of things that you can do educationally with it.

Chris: 20:02

Amazing, amazing. So we've crossed this tipping point, as I said, with artificial intelligence. Where do you see this going like long term, like? I think back to the internet, you know like it seems like it's been with us forever, but it's not that old um in in the earth's. You know lifespan um where do you see ai heading um in the future?

Matt: 20:34

how crazy do you want me to sound?

Chris: 20:37

I want you to go for it.

Matt: 20:40

The further out. So the further out you look, the more that. So the further out you look, the crazier it starts to sound. I've I've been reading a lot about people who are from people who are in the AI development space. You know people like Mo Gowdat, who worked with a lot of the AI stuff with Google, Mustafa Suleiman, who was part of the DeepMind project, ray Kurzweil is one that has been sort of a prognosticator about technology for a long time and has gotten things right, and if you start to read what a lot of these folks are writing about where AI is going, you know it starts to sound like the stuff of science fiction novels, you know, like some of that, some of that stuff, um, and you can get all kind of twisted up in that and and freaked out and everything. So I will just put it out there that for any educator that's listening to this, the changes that are predicted in AI are pretty fast and it should start to change things pretty quickly. So, without getting too creepy and out there as far as what it could do, I just want to say keep an open mind and be prepared to change.

Matt: 21:58

Now, more specifically to education. Let me speak to that More specifically to education, I'd say in the next several years I would very much expect to see more and more AI capabilities and lots of the tools that we have available to us our learning management systems, our ed tech tools that we have available to us, our learning management systems, our ed tech tools that we use on a regular basis. I would also expect to see some of the assignments that we give students start to adapt and change. I mean, they already kind of have to now. The question is, are we willing to make those changes? Because you've got AI assistants like ChatGPT that are out there that are starting to render the go home and write an essay about X, y and Z, like those assignments they're starting to render those a little more and more obsolete.

Matt: 22:50

So I think we also have to be aware of students' motivation. Are they motivated to do the work? Because if they're not, then they're going to have AI do it for them. And then one other thing that I think will be really key in all of this, too, is that I think AI will allow us to personalize education at a scale that we just can't with human teachers. The old traditional model of put two dozen kids of the same age in a classroom with one human teacher and get a personalized education. It's just something that a human teacher can't do in that way. But as AI starts to collect data about what the student has mastered, what they struggle with, starts to you know, collect data about what the student has mastered, what they struggle with, what motivates them. You know those personalized learning plans, I think, that are AI driven. I think we're going to start to see more and more of that in the coming years.

Chris: 23:52

Right, that's amazing, like imagine having a profile of a student before you even met them, just to kind of see. You know needs a little bit more help with reading, or you know struggles in this area, or is really amazing in this area. You have this blueprint almost of of your learner and then you can craft the learning around these people, around these students.

Matt: 24:09

Yeah, and see, I, I'm I'm excited about the potential of that, but also that also makes me worried too, and this goes back to my fundamental belief that, as more and more AI comes into this world, we need to make sure that we get the balance right of not too much AI, not too much human. And I think that's a perfect example of that, because we've seen the human version of that before, where you get a new class of students at the beginning of the school year and the teacher next door says, oh, you've got that one kid. Oh, you better beware. And you know, they tell you all of the things you need to be concerned about with that kid and if you come into that relationship with those preconceptions, all of a sudden you don't even give that kid a chance, right. And so there's, you know there's all of that information ahead of time.

Matt: 24:59

But the teachers that come in and watch with their human eyes and listen with their human ears and, you know, use their human heart to figure out what they need to know about that kid, like you know, that's humanity, right. So I think we still need to keep that. You know, that's humanity, right. So I think we still need to keep that nice balance of what makes us special as humans and what AI can do to support us, and you know, when it comes to that, you know that profile that you were talking about. That's good information to have, but we also need to use our human side too, right. So I think I'm glad you brought that up, because that's going to be stuff like that is going to be crucial, helpful tools that we can put in the hands of teachers, but we also have to keep our humanity involved in it too, I think.

Chris: 25:44

I love that. I love that I mean relationships still need to be built. I mean teacher student relationships exist, have existed and need to continue to exist because, as you said, we live in a world with other people and humans. Aren't prediction models right? I mean, ai predicts it doesn't feel, it won't tell you it loves you, it's not your best friend, so that that's a really cool thing. I love that idea of the balance, Matt, just to kind of draw things to a close here, what can people get on your Ditch your Textbook? There's so much there. If you had to give a little resume of teachers looking for stuff, what would they find on your website website.

Matt: 26:32

Ditch that textbook. It doesn't have anything to do with thinking textbooks are evil, but it just provides lots of practical teaching ideas that teachers can use in class right away. I just wanted to create it really as this practical resource that I wish that I had had as a teacher, where you can get the email newsletter I send them out three times a week. You get the email newsletter, you scan through it and you go yep, that's something that I can use in class right away. So we try to keep it super, super practical. There's lots of techie teaching ideas and even some not so techie ones.

Matt: 27:06

I've been writing about AI some, but also I'm trying not to give all AI content all the time all AI content all the time. But we're big on templates, you know, like Google Slides or PowerPoint, templates that you can make a copy of and assign directly to students. You know just all of that stuff, and so if anybody's listening to this and is interesting, the easiest way to find it is just to go to ditchlink, slash, join. That's the email sign up right there and the email newsletter is where I'm sharing all of the most recent stuff. It always hits the email newsletter before it hits any place else, so um yeah, that's that's, that's my.

Matt: 27:44

My goal is to try to give people things that will save them time and, you know, help them to to teach better for for class tomorrow amazing, amazing, amazing.

Chris: 27:55

And you have a great podcast with Holly Clark, which has tons of episodes. So if you're driving in your car and you don't want to listen to Shifted, you can listen to Matt and Holly's podcast, which I've been listening to, which is fantastic, and also remember that Matt has a new book out AI for Educators Great book. We got it not too long ago. Been leafing through it. Lots of nuggets in there. Matt, thank you. I just want to again. I mean this has been a great conversation. Thanks so much for sharing your insights and also I'll attach all these links that we shared and where to find Matt online. So thanks so much for taking some time out today to come and share your thoughts with us.

Matt: 28:40

Yeah, this has been a great conversation, Chris. Thanks for inviting me.

Chris: 28:44

Awesome, take care.