Speaker 1: 0:14

here we are, another shifted ed podcast. Um, today I'm reaching way west, way west from, I think, freezing cold in the east to probably nice and balmy in the west coast there, hey john yeah, it's pretty standard.

Speaker 2: 0:30

Uh, pacific, northwest oregon. So, uh, yeah, if you're, if you're, if you're familiar with portland, seattle, vancouver, that whole. It's lots of rain this time, but it is gorgeous right now and not not not freezing, thankfully, amazing yay, yay.

Speaker 1: 0:48

So I have john spencer coming in. Dr john spencer, I should say um, used to be a middle school teacher, professor, maker, designer, author, podcaster. Like john dabbles in all things educational um, and it's always at the forefront of what, the trends and what's going on. So I've been hacking through his book, the AI Roadmap, human Learning in the Age of Smart Machines, and we're going to dive into that. But, john, just to kind of like, establish our foundation. How did you go from middle school teacher to becoming this huge advocate for ed tech and project based learning, and where did all that start for you?

Speaker 2: 1:30

So it really began with when I was a pre-service teacher. I was never necessary. I wasn't your typical like techie, necessarily, so you go way back in time. You know we we would have a couple of ed tech classes and I think you know we learned about web quests back in the day and certain things and I sometimes we get excited about those ideas, but it was always the instructional side. So I thought, oh my gosh, if you can curate a set of of of sites that students can go to and they can answer their own questions and they so. It's always the learning that excited me and I remember in oh gosh, it had to probably be 2001, 2002 web logs came out and they eventually became blogs, right?

Speaker 2: 2:17

and so I learned how to code, you know, on my own website and create a blog, and I just communicated, you know. Hey, this is how things are going. My blog was called Musings of a Not-So-Master Teacher. I was a brand new teacher and it just was. I started sharing my thoughts but then I realized, oh, I can share things that are working, I can talk about ideas, and slowly that education blog community grew bigger and bigger and bigger.

Speaker 2: 2:51

But I was always a teacher blogger, right and so, through my own district and working in middle school, I ended up teaching, you know, started out social studies and reading intervention. I eventually taught self-contained, all subjects. I got to pilot our photojournalism class and then help with the redesign of computer class, which was actually just keyboarding into STEM. So I was always rooted in, like the teaching side, and what I really began to find was two things about the technology. One, the technology often made things faster and cheaper than they were before, and when you have no money and time is scarce, that's huge. So that was the biggest draw. I was like, oh my gosh, we can, we can use rightly, which became google Docs and we can do things. And then there was this transformational side of oh my gosh, well, how can we transform some of the learning too, and how can we do documentaries and things that we've never done before.

Speaker 2: 3:57

So that was all happening in the background, ed tech wise, and I think I would have. If you said, you know, are you passionate about EdTech? I would have said no, I'm passionate about project-based learning. I'm passionate about design thinking. You know, it's always been about the pedagogy, and along the way I started doing more and more blogging, video making. I make these little sketch videos on the YouTube channel and things like that.

Speaker 2: 4:23

And I was doing more and more professional development and I was mentoring new teachers and I just I was around I guess it was year 12 when someone reached out to me and said, hey, there's this position open as a professor of educational technology and they're looking for someone who also has a social studies background and someone with a middle school background, and it just it. I read the description and I was like, oh, this feels like it's me. I didn't have a doctorate at the time, so I didn't think I'd get it in terms of applying for the job, and so it was really almost by accident. But it was sort of an evolution of of just working more and more with pre-service teachers and mentoring them at that level, at the school-based level, and so, yeah, that's how I ended up there and um, yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:16

And John, what do you, what do you think about pre-service teachers in the sense that they come in with high expectations, high hopes, you know the idea of changing the world and I mean I love the enthusiasm. When do you find that pre-service teachers actually hit the road literally and start, you know, doing the practice from you know, kind of this practical kind of observing what the teacher or the professor says and to their practicum, to actually getting into that first class? How do you, how do you support them in there in that original journey, those pre-service teachers? Because I mean, I remember my first year was something I'd rather forget. Even the second year I would rather forget. How do you keep that kind of like that wide eyed I'm going to change the world instilled in them at the same time as this kind of practical idea where you know we have to, we have to create learning environments for our students?

Speaker 2: 6:19

Yeah, you know, I think there's a lot of. There's a tendency to, you know, to have teachers who are, you know, pre-service teachers, and they were. They were great students and they've been successful. And I always warn them, you're going to hit a lot of failure and the way that I think about it, as I say you know, it's failing versus help failure, right? So failing is temporary, failure is permanent. And just because you're failing in the moment doesn't mean you're a failure, doesn't define you, doesn't? You know, and um, and so what I find for a lot of them, as I warn them, there will be this sort of um, shock, this discomfort, but that's growth and you know, I find that a lot of times it goes to metaphors, you know, if you have a pre-service teacher who's has a theater background, it's you know, hey, teaching is a lot like improv, it's yes and it's this didn't work, but we're going to try a new thing and they get it. If it's, um, someone who's an athlete, it's a reminder that you don't make all the shots that you know a great hitter, you're fantastic. If you hit one out of three, right, you know you're gonna have two out of three to fail. So it's a lot of those things.

Speaker 2: 7:31

I think the metaphor that I always lean into is you know, when I struggled as a first year teacher and I went to my mentor and I said I'm failing, this is not working, I'm not cut out, I can't do it, I'd literally been in the car crying the day before because I had a parent upset with me, I had a class that was out of control, I had a lesson to take. It was all culminating. And I remember my mentor said you know, some teachers are light, they provide wisdom for you, and some teachers are like water. They give you something that is like life. They provide you that you can grow on your own, they empower you, they give you that water that you need. And some teachers are crap, and we need that too, because that's the manure that lets you grow. And I said what do you think I am? And he said you're all three and you'll always be all three.

Speaker 2: 8:28

And if you tell yourself that you're not, then that's when you're, then that's when you're in trouble. And I thought yeah, you know, you will always be. You're going to have lessons that are crap. You're going to have lessons that are water. It's a real earthy metaphor.

Speaker 1: 8:42

It's a little probably not the best for the podcast, but it's connected with me, so I think a lot of times.

Speaker 2: 8:48

It's the stories we tell ourselves that help us when we're a new teacher.

Speaker 1: 8:53

Right, and what have you heard through your pre-service teachers as to some of their successes? What are some of the things that lead to better success than others when they're initially first starting? Similar to you, I had a mentor that said be organized, like because it might not come naturally to most people that, but you need to be hyper organized in case you know, I mean in case this or that, like what are some of those strategies that you talk about with those pre-service teachers? On effective strategies, I guess I should say I would agree.

Speaker 2: 9:28

I mean, I think being very intentional is huge. I think that piece about being organized is critical. I mean, going back to the when we at the start of the conversation about AI, when working with pre-service teachers. It really is. These AI tools are fantastic for reducing stress and overwhelm and reducing time and um. What we find is, I like to say you know, take what ai gives you, which is the vanilla, and then modify it based on what you know about your students, the relationships that you're building, your local context, all these pieces. Look, it's easier than ever to design scaffolds and supports, but don't just slip them in there. Be intentional about this is going to help that kid. This is going to. And I find that a lot of pre-service teachers the skill in teaching, the creative skill in teaching that has always been around for a while but is more critical now than ever, is critical. Consuming and curating and modifying what AI creates Now that's always been around.

Speaker 2: 10:43

Like. For us it was. You know, when I was a brand new teacher it was how do I use the box curriculum and make it not so boxy, right? And so it's that intentionality. It's adding your own voice, it's adding those pieces. And I think the teachers that do it really well are the ones that are really intentional about what they're doing and, chris, I'm with you, like the the be organized piece is huge that are really intentional about what they're doing. And, chris, I'm with you, like the be organized piece is huge. That was my biggest struggle as a first year teacher was it did not come naturally to me at all yeah, and it's not something that you're really necessarily taught either as a pre-service teacher.

Speaker 1: 11:28

There's so much to like technology as well. You don't get a ton of introduction into integration, integrating tech in a in an effective way, where the technology is almost invisible, you know, and it's about the intent again, Like if they're coming new to this and they're trying to change their mindset from oh, it's a cheating tool and it's, you know, to cut corners to the mindset this could help me in a way. Where do you suggest that teachers just coming into it might start discovering what it can do for them?

Speaker 2: 12:03

So, you know, my first piece of advice is you really have to come at it from like a playful mindset and I would say, you know, just play. I remember back in the day getting teachers into having students do content creation, blogging and podcasting and stuff. And I initially had, you know, a professional development that I led and I was a classroom teacher at the time and it was all about how to do student blogging and how to, you know, and and I found that they didn't. They didn't implement it. You know, it showed lessons. I showed, you know, and they were still afraid.

Speaker 2: 12:41

And then the second time I did that um, with the group of teachers, we didn't do the student side at all. I just said let's explore how to blog, how to create a sports blog, a food blog, this blog, what, whatever it was. And then some of them were like, oh my gosh, we could totally do that in science. Oh, we could. And they were making that connection. So I would say that was my lesson of oh for a lot of technology. If you are afraid, then you just have to see you won't break it right.

Speaker 2: 13:12

You just have to play with it. Now, what I would say for someone starting out is a couple of things. One is generative. Ai is just the latest evolution of AI, right, so AI anytime we use algorithms to mimic human cognition.

Speaker 2: 13:29

Um, you know, on a theoretical level, the dewey decimal system predates computers right ai predates computers um we've been using systems, algorithms, to engage in our thinking for years, um, but, but the comparison I love to to give from our lifetime I'm aging myself here is, you know, is a primitive form of AI in writing would be spellcheck, and at first people thought spellcheck was cheating. We need to remember that that was a cheating tool. And then grammar check, and then autofill, and autofill definitely sounded like cheating. Everyone's like turn off autofill. Now we use it all the time, especially for emails, and now generative AI is just the latest evolution, and so I think a really good starting place is recognizing this is not an AI revolution. It's an evolution and we're in the midst of a new evolution. With that said, I think it's really important that we ask what AI does well and what we do well, and so the next step that I would say when you're new is to just play around and notice what it does well and what it does poorly. It's great at synthesizing. It's great at generating fast responses. It's great at giving you things that are a little bit derivative, a little bit cliche, a little bit, because it's using predictive analytics. What is it not good at? It's not good at voice. You're going to need to provide your own unique voice. It's not good at context and, along with context, I would say it doesn't know your local context, it doesn't know your students, but it also tends to contextually reinforce bias and stereotypes, like one of the challenges I've done.

Speaker 2: 15:12

You know, we did this with a group of um high school seniors who were potentially going to use it, and the teacher said I want you to understand bias and and you know, looking at a text, it was really hard but it, you know, I, I give you the challenge of ask for for it to generate a photo, or photo realistic picture, of a couple getting married. And what are you going to see? You're going to see the bias there. You know, I'm telling you, I go challenge you to go look it up. There's a distinct couple. They're going to be young, they're going to be skinny, he's going to be taller than her, they're going to be heterosexual, they're going to be white, it's going to be a traditional, you know, christian wedding.

Speaker 2: 15:55

You don't certainly don't see hindu, a wedding ceremony, you know nothing like that, and so it's a really interesting activity. You know nothing like that, and so it's a really interesting activity. So, understanding there's going to be bias and then it also doesn't do curiosity. Well, we have to be curious ourselves. From there, I would just say play around with it, ask it to create things, use it as a co-creation tool where you create things from scratch, but also use it as a curiosity tool where you just ask questions and engage in your own personal inquiry.

Speaker 2: 16:25

And I think, when you play with it first, then it becomes really easy to go oh, I could use it to come up with lesson ideas. Or oh, I could use it to come up with scaffolds. I could use it to come up with vocabulary. You know what I'm struggling to come up with? A fair model in what I'm struggling to come up with a frayer model in vocabulary. I'm going to use that. A friend of mine in I was just in Pennsylvania was saying you know, I use it for this frayer model piece and I was like, oh my gosh, I've never done that, but it makes a lot of sense, great. So just really, I would say, almost test the boundaries of seeing what it's capable of doing and then ask yourselves, all right now, how do I use this for my students? And then eventually pull back and say, okay, how do I use it with my students?

Speaker 1: 17:12

Right, right. And John, do you usually recommend like just the chat, gpt or Gemini, just the general, like just throw in some ideas, see what?

Speaker 2: 17:21

it spits out, yeah, yeah. And my reason for that is you know, I think there are fantastic uses of AI. You know it's great for things like creating leveled readers with DFIT, for example. Or, you know, creating a newsletter, a general lesson plan on magic school or in school. Ai there's all these tools. I'm amazed at the ability of students to use it for inquiry in Conmigo or getting feedback on Conmigo. There are these great student tools. They tend to be expensive, right, so there's a cost there, but they also are so tailored to education that we sometimes need to pull back and say, okay, but that's assuming education will always be the way it was. What if I play around with it in this other way, knowing what education could be?

Speaker 2: 18:12

you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah interesting like I had a. I had, I had someone there's a great thinker in the ed tech space named Chris Evans, and he really pushed me to see how you can use AI as a tool for reciprocal teaching and he showed me how you would have a student use this prompt of I'm learning about blank. I'm going to give you my theories and I want you to ask reflective questions as I get closer and closer to discovering the answer.

Speaker 2: 18:49

Right that's way different than any of those school-based ai tools will be right, but it was amazing and I watched this and I thought, wow, that, yes, like that's a great way to play around with it and then. So I know my answers are kind of all over the place here, but no, no, I mean it's really play with it.

Speaker 1: 19:09

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, one of the things, too, that I was thinking about. I've been thinking a lot about differentiation, and you know, and when you bring that word in, teachers think, oh, I got to make a lesson plan for every kid depending on like and I'm like. No, it's not necessarily that, but you're aware of all the different students that sit in front of you not only would start to inform you about your students, but also start to create a profile that that you could live with that student and kind of grow as it goes along. Do you see there's a future with that, with AI, where it actually would help inform teachers about? Well, you know, chris really learns best when there's a lot of visuals involved, and there's. You know, you got to remove some of the harder words that you know, whatever it might be. Um, do you see a future like that?

Speaker 2: 20:07

oh, absolutely, you know, and there's so many different things. Um, you know, when it comes to things like ieps, you obviously don't want to put in any student. Um, you know, information for sure, for sure. But once you get past that, it is amazing at because of the way that the training data works, giving you trends on on what things might work, um, giving you ideas of what to do and then actually designing some of those initial you know, scaffolds and supports.

Speaker 2: 20:39

One of the things I'm blown away by is the ability to create leveled readers. You know, you might have a student who their independent reading level is a third grade level, a fourth grade level, and they're supposed to be learning about something that is intellectually deep, about ancient Egypt. You're not going to find anything out there at the third grade level that does that. Now you can go just as deep academically, but let them read at their independent reading level. You can create decodables based on a student's interest level. You can potentially look at reading fluency and find out what skill practice they need to do in terms of phonics and blending, but then give them a customized piece to practice that they like that connects to some topic they like. I mean, that is where I think there's so much potential and it gets really exciting, and so I think we have to go beyond just the well, let's use it to make our own lesson plans, to say, okay, well, actually this is a really powerful tool to meet students where they're at, for sure I love it, I love it.

Speaker 1: 21:49

And talking about our content areas, right, I mean, we do get fixated on content and assessment and testing and the whole educational juggernaut that exists, assessment and testing, and the whole educational juggernaut that exists. How do you think AI is going to affect or redefine content areas, For example, in math or science or physics? Where do you see that kind of happening where we can shift away from the teacher in the front with the PowerPoint and all the you know the teacher as the sage of everything and kind of change that dynamic so that there's a little bit more of the of of student ability in within content area?

Speaker 2: 22:29

Yeah, I mean, I think, um, there's so many different like let's take math, for example. In math, the ability to create multiple problems, where you know we would call them sticky problems, where a student finds an answer to a word problem and then they find that their consequence of their answer leads to a new problem, that's the way applied mathematics works.

Speaker 2: 22:56

You can set that up setting up simulations, developing more authentic, essentially scenario-based problems that I mean. There's so much potential there but also, you know, as a diagnostic tool to find out. This is where you're struggling. This is where you need skill practice.

Speaker 2: 23:14

You know, one of my favorite things and I did this my son in chemistry. He took a bunch of his student work that he was doing and he wanted to study for a test. And so he said based upon what you see there, give me a list of the aspects of chemistry where I'm still struggling. Now give me an information text explaining that. Now I'm going to ask you questions to try to clarify it. And now he's using it as an inquiry tool. And then he flips it and says now quiz me on what I've just learned, using multiple choice and then open-ended questions. That's a really powerful. It's almost like this thought part, individual thought partner that you get to have, this tutor that you get to have.

Speaker 2: 24:02

But then I also think the way that we do those subjects areas are going to change because of AI. I mean, the way that we do science is going to change. The way that we learn about our universe is going to change and, like astrophysics and all that kind of stuff, um, but at the same time, I think we're also going to need to like, lean into some of those things that are non-tech, right the, the sketch notes, the math manipulatives and the whiteboards and all these other ways of doing math and science and all those subjects as well. So it's going to be a fun thing where you say, okay, how do we take what we're already learning, the ways that we're already learning, amplify it with AI? How do we move away from the AI for a moment and do this hands-on, tactile, collaborative, in-person aspect? And then also, how do we ask well, how will the technology reshape what we're learning and the way that we're doing it? And so to me, I think it's a little overwhelming at times, but it's also really exciting.

Speaker 1: 25:04

Yeah, absolutely. I love that too, that idea of AI for students where it helps them fill in the gaps that might exist on their own, you know, like why reteach the whole lesson when it's only two kids that might not have gotten it all? Where you could go and and go. They can go and kind of figure out where it is, they are and get that information and um, it's. It's amazing, like I, I love that idea and I love the idea too of the teacher kind of um toolkit that they create you with ai. That enables them, you know, and helps them with their, with so much that goes on in a teacher's life.

Speaker 1: 25:42

John, this has really been a fascinating talk. We could go on and on. I'll have to have you back on and we'll continue this in a part two. Yeah, john, please check out John Spencer's blog. His podcast I've been listening to is excellent. He's got this great new book out, the AI Roadmap Human Learning in the Age of Smart Machines. Get it. There's so many good gems in here and I just want to thank you again, john, for carving a little time and sharing some of your ideas with us.

Speaker 2: 26:13

Yeah, thank you so much, I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 26:15

Awesome. Well, we'll talk soon. Thanks, all right.