Arizona State AI Guidance

State AI Guidances Resource

Arizona's 3-in-3 Challenge

Guide to Developing an AI Policy for Your School

Drafting a GenAI Academic Policy at Your School

EVERY Framework for Responsible AI Use

AI for Education's 3x3 Challenge

3x3 Challenge Map

Chatroom Shared Guidances

Amanda Bickerstaff

Amanda is the Founder and CEO of AI for Education. A former high school science teacher and EdTech executive with over 20 years of experience in the education sector, she has a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities that AI can offer. She is a frequent consultant, speaker, and writer on the topic of AI in education, leading workshops and professional learning across both K12 and Higher Ed. Amanda is committed to helping schools and teachers maximize their potential through the ethical and equitable adoption of AI.

LeeAnn Lindsey, Ed.D.

Dr. Lindsey currently serves as the director of edtech and innovation at the AZ Institute for Education and the Economy where she is leading statewide efforts to help K-12 schools responsibly adopt generative AI. With twenty-something years in the field, LeeAnn has led system-wide innovation at the organization, state, and national level. She served on teams that developed the ISTE Standards for Students and Educators and has been twice named an ISTE “Making IT Happen” leader for her contributions to the field. Her mission is to transform outdated education models by leveraging digital tools and prioritizing new literacies that help us all to thrive as our world continues to digitally evolve.

Emily Marshall

Ms. Marshall is the Assistant Director of Education Technology at Vail School District in Arizona, driving the district’s digital transformation with a focus on AI-enhanced learning, student data privacy, and high-quality technology integration. Through her dedication to equity and innovation in education, she strives to ensure that both students and educators are prepared with the tools for success in today’s evolving learning environments. Emily holds a Master's degree in Instructional Technology, is an ISTE Certified Educator, and is a Certified Education Technology Leader (CETL).

Amanda Bickerstaff
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our webinar. It takes just a couple minutes for everyone to be able to hop on, so we'll give everyone a little bit of time. If you have been here with us before, please. You know we love for you to share in the chat, where you're from, what you do. This should be a really rich discussion. I'm really excited to have this with you all today. We're getting back into weekly webinars. We kind of took a little bit of time off for the summer, but really excited to do this work with you all. A really important opportunity to start thinking really tactically about how to apply gender AI within your district or school or even college. This is really, we believe this is very strong for everyone.

Amanda Bickerstaff
So today we're going to be talking about our new three in three Genii roadmap challenge. And this is really fascinating because I absolutely love meeting people like Leanne, who you're going to hear from in a moment in Arizona because sometimes people have the most amazing ideas and we love to piggyback on those. And so this was an existing challenge that was done in Arizona as supportive of the Arizona state guidance on AI. We've adapted a bit based on the work we've done over the last year and change, but really excited to be here with you today on this work. You're also going to hear from Emily Marshall, who is doing the work. She is at Vail School District and she's doing the hard yard work of doing this adoption at the district level. Just to set the scene, we're going to do two things.

Amanda Bickerstaff
One is I'm going to actually give you guys a poll. We're going to get some understanding of what your role is as well as please pop into the chat. The Q and A and chat functions are here for you for chat. That's the best way to share resources and really dive into this with the community of practice that we've built at AI for education. So please put that in. I can already see people from all over the world. We've got some people in the Cayman Islands, Texas, which is great, Mexico, Chicago. I see some familiar faces. Hi, Vera and others. And we have some great people here. And so share resources, get involved. And then if you have a question specifically for us, put it into the Q and A.

Amanda Bickerstaff
So Q and A is where you're going to put those questions that I will be looking through at all times and then serving up to our wonderful panel. And then if you have a great resource, please share that resource that is going to be what we've seen to be so effective and really digging into what's happening not just within our context, but around the world. So I think. Did that poll work?

Emily Marshall
Yes.

Amanda Bickerstaff
So we have almost everybody will give everyone just a little bit more time, but I want to bring up our wonderful panel. So if I can get Emily and Leanne up on the screen, that would be awesome. Hello, ladies. I love saying that. I love when we get to feature strong female educators. We are really excited to have you here today with us. What we're going to do is we're going to start with where we all are before we even get into the challenge itself. It would be so lovely if you can introduce yourself and then talk a little bit about what has been happening with AI within your context, whether that's at the district level for Emily or the state level in Arizona for Leanne. So we're going to start with Emily.

Amanda Bickerstaff
So happy to have you here, and thank you so much for joining.

Emily Marshall
Yes, good morning. Hello. I'm so excited to be here. My name is Emily Marshall. I work in the Vail school district, which is the southeast of Tucson. We're about 15,000 kids, about 800 educators. And so it's been a really interesting ride. I think when, you know, chat GPT first came out and AI really burst onto the scene. Everyone knew it was important and we're trying to figure it out, but there were so many, you know, experts, but not people that were experts with AI and also all of the challenges that public school districts face today. And so really trying to figure out how do we do this, not just the importance of AI, but also mirroring that with the challenges happening in public school districts.

Emily Marshall
So I've really been working to forge relationships with other people in Arizona, people like Doctor Lindsey and just anyone I can talk to help figure out how do we solve this and how do we make progress on it. Although each district's context is so different, I just, I constantly learn and I steal things that I can take back to my district. So really that's been like my experience so far, trying to figure out how to make progress with all of the challenges and all the pieces of the puzzle to AI and education.

Amanda Bickerstaff
That's really interesting. And we've kind of did that, too, Emily. We kind of stole things from Arizona in terms of the challenge itself. So I think that this opportunity of actually diving in and seeing how others are approaching it has such value right now because we're all learning together and we're all experimenting together because there isn't a right answer. Right. There's just the evidence based best thing that we can do within the context of our organization. So really appreciate having you here. And then, Leanne, I would love for you to introduce yourself and also talk, I mean, from the state level. I mean, you have a, you had a huge remit, right? You were tasked with, how do we develop guidance? And so Arizona was a 13 state to put out guidance. And so we.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And so just tell us a little bit about what you've seen from that level as well.

Leanne Lindsey
Yeah. Well, my name is Leanne Lindsey, and I have a really long title, so bear with me. My title is. Well, my title is the director of Ed Tech and innovation for the Arizona Institute for Education and the Economy, which operates out of northern Arizona University. And the institute is new. We just passed our one year anniversary, actually, on July 1. And the context that I want to set is that our institute is really focused on the future of school and the future of learning. So all the things that we all in this webinar have probably been talking about for years and years, how do we actually move that forward? Because we have been stuck. We've been talking about it, but not a lot of action has taken place to move us forward.

Leanne Lindsey
So when the institute launched, our executive director, Chad Guston, he did a statewide tour with business and industry superintendents. He is a former superintendent himself, higher education and the community. And he came back to me and he said, you know, leanne, I never thought this would be the case. I never imagined it in a million years. But the one thing that I keep hearing from every single superintendent that I talk to is, what the heck do I do about AI in education? How do I lead in this space? Because I'm lost. I don't know what decisions to make. I don't know what to do. And so he says, we have to do something. And at the same time, it was about this time that, you know, states started putting.

Leanne Lindsey
I mean, the US department had already put out the guide, and states were starting to put out guidance. Arizona was not. And so because he was so boots on the ground with the superintendents, with education leaders who were clearly articulating, we need help. We need someone to point us in the right direction. Arizona, like I said, didn't have plans to publish guidance. We took that on, and were the 13th state to do that. We were really proud of it. We engaged so many people around the state in creating it, and we released it on May 13. And, you know, Emily was one of our guidance reviewers, she was one of our representatives for that, which is amazing.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And I think what's really fascinating is that, like, again, this is uniting us. Like, very rarely do we are we united in education on anything. I feel like we've, of course, learning, but we do have a lot of different perspectives. But right now, this is a moment in which there is a real groundswell of focus and areas. Almost half of the states in the US have guidance to date, and we can drop in where you can find all of those. And what's really fascinating is that we did analysis to look for common themes, and what we found is that things like human centered, keeping the teacher and the person in the loop, things around security and safety of data and keeping kids, their data private. Private.

Amanda Bickerstaff
But also starting to dig into some of those bigger kind of challenges around adoption, which is really interesting. And so when we met, so I just. So you guys have the backstory. I got to meet Leann a couple months ago, and we started talking about the guidance, and we're really lucky. We've done work at the state level with, like, North Carolina and Ohio, and, you know, we've gotten to do some of this work at that level. And when I talked to Talian, I was so impressed by this focus on how do we make this, like, really big thing doable for our districts. And I know that, and that was this three and three challenge.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And I know that, Emily, you are a big part of the genesis of this because you are not only a reviewer, but one of the main stakeholders that was really saying, hey, we really need something that's more than this really nice, wonderful document, but what's the tactical, practical application of this? So you want to talk a little bit about how you started to think about this and then how the three and three challenge, how you started to have that conversation with Leigh Ann, and then we'll go to Leanne right after.

Emily Marshall
Yeah, definitely. So right away, when AI came out, we started talking about the challenges and opportunities, and I was really excited when Arizona released the statewide guidance. I thought that would be kind of a kickstart moment for us to really make those system wide changes that need to happen. Unfortunately, in Arizona and I think a lot of other places, it didn't become a priority right away. And I don't think it's because we didn't realize how important it is. Everyone gets that, but I think that the scale of changes that need to happen almost felt undoable. Right. It wasn't just, like, one little change here, one little change there. It's almost like you need to completely change the way we teach in our schools. We're still teaching very much like we did 20 years ago in many cases.

Emily Marshall
So, like, many initiatives, I think anything in ed tech or technology in schools, I didn't get to do my plan a, so I was like, okay, what's my plan B, C, and Da? And that's where I turned to Leanne and I said, I love the statewide guidance. It's super helpful. But it's almost like, one step too far for a lot of school districts because a lot of school districts still don't have, like, that basic data privacy program, which is really, like, a foundational thing to do AI responsibly. And so I just, I reached out to her and I said, I need a way to get, you know, our district leaders, our superintendents, our governing boards to realize there's these foundational things that we can't ignore anymore. And we can talk about it and talk about it, but I need another support, I guess.

Emily Marshall
And that's where I begged leanne for help, and I said, what do we do? And then we kind of started talking about the three and three guidance.

Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, I think when we talk to school leaders, there's this little bit of a wait and see of, like, okay, we've got the guidance here, but what comes next? And so I think that idea of, like, how do you take this down a level and then again down another level? Because essentially what's going to have to happen is, like, we're going to have to take it to, like, the superintendents and the district leaders and down to the teachers and teachers to caregivers and students and all those pieces. So, Leanne, I'd love you to talk about it. Before we do that, I'm just going to share a new poll about, like, I know we have people from state education agencies all the way through nonprofit professionals.

Amanda Bickerstaff
So what we're going to do is we're going to do a little bit of a poll where we're going to ask, do you have guidance? So if you guys can do that, and then we'll talk a little bit about that as well. So, Leanne, I mean, you took Emily, I'm sure, and, like, you talked about, like, all the work you were doing. So how did you take this big, amazing document and then make it into something that was more discreet? I know there was a big focus on safety. Right. A big focus on superintendents supporting their schools to adopt these tools safely. So I'd love to know more about that.

Leanne Lindsey
We all know for those of us who have guidance documents at the state level and even those of us who don't, but we've seen models that are existing. We know that they're very 30,000 foot level. Right. And they're meant to because they're statewide. They're supposed to be flexible for all the different shapes and sizes and colors of school systems in the state. After the guidance came out, I wanted to really speak with as many Ed tech and district leaders as I could to find out what impact has the guidance had in your district, if any? Like, if any. Right. And one thing that I heard really loudly and clearly was that the guidance helped start conversations that weren't previously happening before. So before, weren't talking about it at all, probably because we didn't know what to talk about.

Leanne Lindsey
We didn't even know what questions to ask. And so now the guidance has given us some guidance, for lack of a better word, just to start asking some questions and having those conversations. But it was also really clear that although these conversations are happening in terms of the action we're taking in a district that was still falling short. And so I had this conversation, this great conversation with Emily, and I remember it really clearly because she said, there are some really foundational things that I feel really strongly as an edtech leader in my district that we need to do right away. And she said, it's not that my district leaders aren't with me or that they don't agree, but it comes back to this idea of, but it gets pushed down to the bottom of the priority list with everything else happening.

Leanne Lindsey
And so she said, I actually put together this document where I talked about a couple of these foundational pieces not entering Pii into AI tools. And, you know, here's what we want you to do in terms of accounts. Here are the, here are the AI apps that are, quote unquote, approved by our district, and here are some guardrails around how we want you to use those and how we don't want you to use those. And she's like, this thing has been, like, approved by a number of people, but it still hasn't gone out for public consumption within our school district. And I really need some help to make this higher up on the priority list.

Leanne Lindsey
So we began talking, and from the state level, I just began wondering, like, what if were able to challenge school systems superintendents, you know, our school boards, and say, like, really condense it down. There are three things. If you do nothing else right now, these three things are must dos quickly because if you don't do them, things are going to get away from you because the AI train is moving. And if you don't clarify what apps we're going to use or how we want, you know, data privacy guardrails, if we don't have communicate those things loudly and clearly to teachers and parents and students, they're going to run away with it. And you might actually end up on live at five in a way that you really don't want to.

Leanne Lindsey
So my boss, he comes from the perspective of a superintendent, and so he's been talking around the state about this challenge we came up with the three AI must do's to complete in the first three months of the school year. We put it out over the summer. And as he's been talking to other superintendents, it really, he's been hitting on that live at five, like, you don't want to end up like this. These are problems that can be avoided. You should be avoiding them. And we're going to give you three very practical things that must take place to keep your district on the right path for responsible implementation.

Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, this is great. So we're just going to, like, roll through it just a bit. And Dan will drop the link into the channel. He already did it. I think this is, I think a couple of things to come out. I think one is that especially from a state approach, you guys are really focused on protecting the districts that you work with and making sure, like you said, the live in five, if you're from Ghana or Bataan, that's going to be your nightly news. And so the idea that we're protecting, of course, the students and the teachers, but also the schools themselves.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And so what I thought was really interesting is that this idea of being able to clearly communicate which tools to use or not use, especially since we are finding Leanne and Emily so much that people do not know that the only chatbot, the foundation chatbot that's available under 17 is chat GBT, and even that with parental permission. And so because Google Classroom is so popular, like people think Google Gemini at this stage is available to younger students and it's not. And then we also get lots of questions. The actual, I love a good set of guidance because it also signals, hey, it's something you didn't know, now you do. And so starting with that, we find that really important. Our work with Chicago public schools, there were 894 genai ed tech tools that were used in the district last year.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And so, and that is in the first year. So to be able to put some guard rules on that is really good. The second is around training teachers and staff. I think a lot of this is around, like, compliance, which is great and a good start, and then also starting to have a way to communicate more regularly with teachers and leaders across the districts, which I think is really good. You guys have supported some resources as well. So I think that this is also pretty interesting to see that we have something that you'll see. Ours is slightly different because ours is a little bit less focused on compliance and more focus on foundations. But I think that the two actually work really well in concert together. So we've dropped this in the channel.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And what I would like to do is right now, almost all of us have answered the guidance. I'm going to end the poll, I'm going to come off share and I'm going to end the poll and we're going to launch the results. So what we can see is that, can everyone see that the guidance, it's almost like we have a two to one of a no and working on it to yes. And so I think that's a really good indication. At least one person in the chat said that they had guidance, but maybe it wasn't as fulsome as it needed to be. And we see, like, it's not as detailed. So we see that as well. So next time we ask a question, we'll make sure to say yes. Basic yes, and then yes, more in depth.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And so, like, and I love how someone, Josh said they have guidance because he wrote it, you know, that is happening, too, that we are seeing early adopters really pushing that forward. So I want to talk a little bit now more tactically about what's happened. So, like, from the perspective, Emily, that you have, where you have this three and three in hand now that came out in the summer and you are a force for AI. Good. Right. You're a force for this. If you can be as real as possible of, like, what's worked and what hasn't, we'd love to know more about that.

Emily Marshall
Yeah, definitely. I was so appreciative, and I really love the AI guidance that Arizona came out with that second piece because like you said, they definitely work together, ours. And kind of the version you guys came up with, I feel like the Arizona guidance is almost a 1.0 because there are those, I guess in the midst of trying to do the bigger work that needs to happen with AI, we're sometimes ignoring those foundational pieces that are so important. So I have struggled a lot just trying to figure out how do I make this happen when there's so many competing needs within my district.

Emily Marshall
But I've really found that making little adjustments, so listening to principals and teachers and when I get like the no or the not right now, I really try to figure out, like, why does that make sense for them and how do I adjust it a little bit? By doing that. I initially went in and I said, we have to do district wide data privacy training and AI ethics and responsible use and all of these things. And I got the no or the not right now. And so were able to adjust it in ways that made it more digestible. I think that's where it's really been successful for us. It's not as flashy as some of the really cool things people are doing, but we're making a lot of progress by making it digestible.

Emily Marshall
In our current contact in our district right now, we have the stronger data privacy programs, we have training available. We have common guidelines and common communication for everyone so that we know in the midst of working on the bigger issues or the bigger longer term projects, we know that our teachers know what to do to keep kids safe and what to do so that they're not using 800 different AI tools. Where the data is going, who knows where. So I've been really, I guess, proud of our district just in the continued progress and the continued working towards the bigger goals that we need to do.

Amanda Bickerstaff
That's great. And I think that what you've said is it's a multipronged approach. Right? Like, I think that this is where it gets really interesting, right? Where there's not like one. This is a, it has to come from all angles. And the more that we can do this, we're getting a lot of like, kind of questions and feedback about smoothing really quickly and how do you do this? Like the guidance that we're suggesting, even if with generative AI becoming like into a reasoning step of what we have next, the guidance still works for that, too. If you keep it about mindsets and you keep it about clear ways to ask for permission to identify tools.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And I think that is something that you don't have to have it be the biggest thing, but you need to have it be really targeted and have really clear ways and means to be able to ask for permission, identify tools, communicate with parents, work with students around their appropriate use. And so I think that's really, really important. So a couple things we have, like, I would say since we have a group of people here. If you have guidance that you want to drop, we'd love to do that. What we can do is we'll keep the chat, and we can kind of collect some of these to be able to share, and you can share it as well. And then if, Dan, you can also share some of the pieces of guidance that we have as well.

Amanda Bickerstaff
We have a couple of, like, guides to building guidance. That would be great, but let's use this as a community of practice, and let's collect all these great examples. But so, Leanne, you have a different, like, Emily's in the work, right? You're in the work, Emily, in a different way than Leigh Ann. You are. So I'm sure you've seen, like, really high success cases and then ones that have been a little bit more challenging or maybe even people or districts that weren't ready for the three and three challenge yet. I'd love you to talk a little bit about what's, what you've seen happen once this has gone live this summer.

Leanne Lindsey
I have so many thoughts. I'm trying to organize them in my head from the statewide perspective. Well, let me back up. I want to just clarify, too, that I come from a background of teaching and learning and using ed tech to transform what we do in the classroom to more student centered principals. And I see AI as a really great tool to help us make some shifts. So even though our three in three challenge really sits in this place of a little bit more of the guardrails, the ultimate goal is really to transform teaching and learning.

Leanne Lindsey
I think what I've heard as a real success, and Emily is an example of this, but I've also heard it echoed in other school districts, is that they can get buy in from district leadership because of the focus on guardrails, but they, because Emily has a focus on teaching and learning and instructional practices, she just back ends that, if that makes sense. So the conversation is like, you know what? We've got to tighten up these data privacy policies and make sure that everybody knows how to move forward with AI in a really safe way. But in the midst of her doing that comes all the pedagogy and all the instructional practices. But it's back ended in.

Leanne Lindsey
So that's been r1 success that we've heard how district leaders are taking the challenge and sort of driving their bigger agenda, more so than just data privacy, so to speak, from the state level perspective, in terms of what's helped us be successful in getting the challenge out, I would say that we have really focused on the broad audience. So we go everywhere and talk about this to anyone who will listen. But specifically, we go to conferences where we know superintendents are going to be. We've gone to ASBO, which is our business office folks, we've presented to the Arizona School Board association last week. We've presented to the trust, which is education lawyers. We have presented to families. We have presented, we actually got a couple of more than one spot, our local news station, to present the challenge.

Leanne Lindsey
And so we know that if the challenge isn't bubbling up from the edtech people in the districts, that maybe school board members are tapping someone on the shoulder. Maybe it's the business, maybe it's the HR person who heard about it somewhere. And we're just trying to really get the word out and appeal to a lot of different audiences.

Amanda Bickerstaff
I mean, I think this is such a key Leanne, though, is that like, we have to keep saying it, like, we cannot just do one piece right where we go off and we say, we've done this, like, good piece of guidance, and we've done this three and three. This is a change management process. Whether it's Emily, you talking about the multiprong approach within the district, to Leanne, you're talking about the state and having it be in a way that is constantly heard. And also where we start to see there's not so much fear around it or it's something that's special. It's just a part of how we talk about technology in schools today.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And even if we are not quite ready to really create the really huge procedures, we should be able to talk about them in a way in which it can be productive, it can be targeted, and it doesn't have to be so much like it's the worst thing, it's the best thing. It's just a thing we need to talk about. And I think we miss this a bit. We definitely missed it with social media. But I think that devices, like one to one devices, it kind of, we didn't take the time to get everyone in the same room and have that discussion about what it would really mean. And that's why we've seen these ups and downs and yes and no's and Covid and we're seeing now that, like, you know, the banning of devices.

Amanda Bickerstaff
But I think if we had a seen this as an opportunity to really talk about how technology was going to change the way in which students interact outside of schools and within schools, we could have had a more structured way to actually talk about it. Over the last decade, instead of it feeling almost like right now we're finally ready to. So I really love that about what you're talking about. Have you seen any districts that you know that are pretty reticent about getting started? And if so, do you, like, what are their reasons?

Leanne Lindsey
I have seen some school districts.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And.

Leanne Lindsey
There'S two reasons why I've heard that they're a little slower on the uptake. One is because the community is not ready, so they might fear and maybe very realistically fear family pushback, no support in that realm. So that's been one. And then the second one is really about where a school is in their own understanding of having a vision for teaching and learning and instruction in school. Like, they don't have the big vision for where they want to go, so they can't necessarily find the place where AI can support that doesn't support like they can't find. And their perspective on AI because they don't have the overall perspective, if that makes sense.

Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah. And we are starting to hear more and more that parents are the next big group we need to talk to. And because of that fear and uncertainty, or even just like, we're not even thinking about it yet, I just want to kind of talk a little bit before we move on to what we can do together. Whether you're at a district, a school, even in ed tech itself, is that one of the things, we have a question here about the idea of that people feel like it will take over. We did. One of the things in our three and three is gather evidence. So the very r three and three is a little bit different. Again, it's about the foundations, and we'll share that at the end of this conversation. But the first thing we talk about is gather data.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And so we have a five, very simple five question survey that we like our districts to do. And it asks one question, what is your biggest fear and what is your biggest opportunity? And we asked students and teachers that. So this district last week asked their students and teachers, and the students said their number one fear about AI was ethical considerations. They were afraid about the ethics of these tools. And you would think, okay, so teachers, they must be talking about this, too. The number one concern for the teachers was job security and ethical considerations was third. It wasn't second. It was third. And so this idea of actually starting to understand what is really driving people in terms of their fears. Uncertainty is really important.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And what we saw, we did that to someone else's point in the chat, is that AI literacy development within that staff was so important because they feel like they're going to be replaced. They're not aware of where we are with the technology, that no generative AI tool is going to replace a teacher anytime soon, especially a teacher that's doing the work in the classroom of, like, supporting students. So I do think it's quite interesting because some of it is just, we think we know what's happening and we really don't. And every school and district is going to be different.

Amanda Bickerstaff
So to that kind of segue, I love, Emily, for you to talk a little bit about what best practices or strategies do you have to start doing this adoption within what you've seen, and I would say think of it as the more practitioner and operator of the group. But what do you think really needs to happen for the people watching today?

Emily Marshall
You threw a little bit of a wrench because I was thinking something I want to add to what Leanne was saying as far as, like, why people aren't doing it. Also kind of my tip for, like, what I think needs to happen. Big picture. One of the challenge is, and I know it's different in Arizona than it is in other states, in America, to other countries, but there are so many challenges in education that I think a lot of change doesn't happen because it's almost like we haven't created an environment for educators and our schools to be successful just from a, you know, state, national perspective, I guess.

Emily Marshall
So I would really encourage people, if you have that vision for what education could and should be and want to help make changes, we have to get on board with making the changes at the core level, the root for why schools aren't making these changes and really advocating that, whether it's with our politicians or whether it's parents knowing what's really happening, just like across the board, really getting people on board with understanding there are root causes for why schools aren't making these changes. And it's not that they don't want to or that they, you know, whatever, but really we need to work towards as a group making sure schools have a winnable game where we can make these changes and teach the way we need to be teaching in 2024. That's my big, I guess, soapbox. I just.

Emily Marshall
On the ground, I think people know how to do it and they can do it if there was an environment created where they could do it.

Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah. And you know what? We love a soapbox, Emily. First of all, I have a lot. I'm going to get a soapbox and I'm just going to carry it around with me. I like to get on it a lot, but it's, you know, I think that it is really important, though, of finding that space, right? And there's some comments in the chat about, like, you need to find the time. Like, this. This will not be optional. Like, you might be ignoring AI, but it is not ignoring you, and it's definitely not ignoring your young people. Right? Like, it's just nothing. Like the younger you are, the more this will impact you. So what you just said of, like, creating that, like, creating that space and finding that way has to be one of our biggest priorities, and we just don't have another option.

Amanda Bickerstaff
Like, it's just not another option. And it's hard when we come in because I'm sure, leanne, you see this too. Like, schools and districts have. You have so many things that are competing priorities. Like, I've been. I was in a school district we do a lot of work with, where there was a protest about something that had happened in the school and the high school teach. Like, leaders had to leave. Like, we get, it's complex, but then where do we create these spaces in which we really can start to do this work? By prioritizing it and having to reprioritize other things. And that's a hard thing to ask, but I think you just said how important it is.

Emily Marshall
Yeah. And then one other thing I'd add, tie back to something you said earlier, is it's about the why I talked for years and years about Ed tech, and I realized, embarrassingly not that long ago, that when I talk about Ed tech, I'm picturing this different future or vision for kids and where they should be. And other people are picturing typing an assignment on Google Docs instead of writing it on a piece of paper. And so it's really getting people to understand, like, what does this mean in reality? What could it mean for kids? Because then people buy in much more quickly because they see, oh, this is where we need to go. It's nothing. Replacing paper with typing on a computer. It's like these really visionary changes that we need to make for kids.

Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah. And we talk about learning about and then learning with. And what we see is when we do a really strong pd with our teachers and leaders, we don't ever say explicitly, now, think about this for your students, because not everyone's ready to do that at the beginning. But then it happens automatically, because as soon as an educator or leader finds value in themselves, it is our nature to find value for the people around us and the people that we work with every day and our students, and we see that natural transition happen, because that's why we do what we do. We are educators because we want to do better by our students. And if we can figure out a way to do that for ourself, it's a natural step forward to, like, what does this mean for our students?

Amanda Bickerstaff
So, Leanne, you have a very. You're coming from a more global context, and you've got some state people here. You've got definitely got some district. You've got some international folks as well. Like, what do you think are the keys to next steps?

Leanne Lindsey
I want to back up just a little bit and respond a little bit to what both of you are saying, especially about the job replacement. One of the key audiences that I didn't say previously that we've also been speaking to a lot to is philanthropy. So about two weeks ago, I presented, like, a two hour session, and this was a follow up to another two hour session with the board of directors and then the whole staff of a big philanthropic organization. And about AI and education. And what I led with was the hill I will absolutely die on is that we, as humans, have to drive the use of AI rather than the opposite. I will die on that hill.

Leanne Lindsey
And so I think that as I was talking and people had this idea in their mind, it was kind of a thread throughout the presentation, and that really I was trying to speak to, you know, job replacement. Like, it is ultimately up to us as a society to drive this forward momentum. We can't just leave it to chance, because we've seen that happen in the past, and things can go sideways, and the benefits that I've seen to educating philanthropists and coming from this perspective of the institute, where we're really talking about changing and transforming school altogether, is we can marry those two messages really beautifully, and we have to, because this really isn't about AI. It's about changing school, the school, and learning experience, and how AI can play a role in that.

Leanne Lindsey
And then the guidance and what we continue to emphasize when we speak to everyone is what you said in the beginning, Amanda, which is the humans in the loop. Right? So it's not about AI taking the job of. But I always ask the question, like, how does AI or any EDda tech tool create more space for human relationships? How does AI actually create more to be more human? And that's a key question that we continue to ask. So in terms of next steps, I really think it is like I always say this, I'm like AI and education in general. Plug in. The term that you use at the beginning of the sentence has a marketing problem.

Leanne Lindsey
And I think that if there are leaders in your state or at your district level who can really address the marketing problem and really get out the messages and drive the narrative of where we want school and learning to go, where we want our students to be successful, how, what it's going to take to get there, how AI can play a role in that. And back up like, okay, now that y'all are on board, what are the first steps? And here's some really tangible things, whether it's our three and three version of the challenge or your three and three version, like let's back up because now you're on board. Let's talk about some really tangible ways to get started with that.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And I think the idea of like the marketing problem is real. I also think that the tools being created have a marketing problem as well. I think we are talking too much about productivity and efficiency and that's really, I don't think the ultimate goal of these tools, and we've seen it throughout the chat and everything we talk about not reinforcing existing practice but augmenting and extending. So like if you're going to save an hour doing something, put about ten minutes back in to make it more fit for purpose, for your context and your students, like do that extra work because it would have taken you longer anyway.

Amanda Bickerstaff
But then also, what does that mean when you aren't as stressed or you have so many competing priorities over time, like how do you filter that back to the high value, high reward work that is going to be in the sphere that only you can provide. And I think that whether that's leadership and spending more time with your teachers giving feedback and supporting their goals of achieving what they want to achieve within their practice or teachers themselves working on different ways of guiding students, of creating innovation in classrooms, of making it more authentic and giving more time? I think that's really important because it is so easy right now to listen to this. If you look at any, like the major rhetoric about these tools is you will save time.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And like while that is a nice bright product, I havent seen any edtech tool come out and say thats actually had an impact in the classroom. And so like what is instead that impact going to be? So that it actually starts driving change and we actually do have innovation. And I think that is where the next stage needs to go. So I just want to say, first of all, how amazing are these ladies here? Like, I think that this is like, we're just so lucky to have continuously, this is our 37th webinar, everybody, since we launched in last June. And it's a pretty cool one to have.

Amanda Bickerstaff
What we're going to do is I'm going to ask a couple questions just from the audience, and then we're going to shift into the last bit is going to be showing our three, like three and three that we're supporting, which is, again, more on the foundations. And if you're already done this or you're willing to commit, we have a nice little map that will put you up on the challenge tracker. I'm hoping Emily. I'm pretty sure Emily's already done all these things, so maybe Vail will be up first. But what we're going to talk about, I think that one of the questions that have come up the most is, like, how do you manage up and down? So how are you getting the administrators to listen and do more in terms of actually not just creating the guidance, but actually making sure it happens?

Amanda Bickerstaff
But then how do you get down to what we just said where the classrooms themselves are not stuck in this old way of doing things and. Or just I'm not going touch it kind of thing? So I may go to Emily first for that one.

Emily Marshall
Yeah. This is actually one of my favorite parts of my jobs, and I don't know that I'm perfect at it, but I think it really comes down to being an empathetic listener and leader and understanding where people are coming from. So when teachers in the classroom are hesitant or, you know, don't want to do training or don't want to do these things, it's not because they don't love kids. It's not because they don't want to be great teachers. There's a reason that they're doing that. And so what is the reason they're doing it, and how can I support the change that needs to be happened while meeting them where they are? And really, it's the same thing with our principals, our administrators, our superintendents, our governing boards.

Emily Marshall
Everyone comes into education because they love kids and they want to create, you know, a great education where kids can thrive and every kid can leave our district and go do great things. So what are the challenges? Why do they not buy into certain things? Right. So when I came with AI and I got the initial no or the not right now, it's really about why, you know, do they not understand why it's important. The vision. Where is it? And just meeting people where they are, and that's where you make, you know, little incremental changes. Maybe it's like an inch here and an inch there, but it adds up. And as long as you keep doing that and keep meeting people where there are, you're going to keep making progress.

Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, I think this is. We. We see this a lot where it's like, we got. We got into this thing of, like, you know, you're the. You're the parent, and the kid asks, why can't I use my cell phone? And you say, because I said so. So we've gotten into this, like, thing in schools across the board where something is said and there is no supporting reason why. So, like, you don't say that this is because this is already transforming the workforce or that it is going to be in every single application that you have, and there's no way to move around this, or that it has an opportunity to change how we do work. Instead, we just say, yes, no, do this, do that.

Amanda Bickerstaff
So the actual, not just identifying the why that we have, but communicating the why and making it intentional and really, like, reinforcing it in every level, I think, is such an important component of this, too, because you could do all that great work, but if people cannot repeat it back to you, then they're going to keep their own mindset as the key. They're just going to keep where they are and either listen to you or not. And if they do, it's just compliance. And we know that compliance is not going to actually drive change. And so that. I think that's really interesting. So I'll go. This will actually, we have so many good questions, but we're going to have to start moving.

Amanda Bickerstaff
But I'm going to ask you, Leanne, about what you think is actually the way in which you're going to manage up and down.

Leanne Lindsey
You know what's really interesting? The institute just convened 60 leaders across Arizona. Business and industry, k twelve higher education in Flagstaff a couple of weekends ago. Left, right, rural, urban. Convened a very diverse group of people. And what we found at the end of the day was that even though we came from all different perspectives, we had a very similar outlook on what kids need, what we want school to look like, what. Where school today is currently falling short. And so I think that, you know, so many times in education, I'm going to go back to the marketing problem, is that even the school districts who are afraid, and maybe reasonably so, that there's going to be pushback from the community. A lot of times, we just have more commonalities than we do differences.

Leanne Lindsey
But we need to educate and be talking about it into Emily's point, be really listening to what those specific fears are we can talk about. And we, I feel that we will end up by doing that, realizing that our common agenda is, in fact, common. And I think that's the best place to start.

Amanda Bickerstaff
Yes. Oh, my gosh. Love that so much. And we just believe that is so important. And so I just. It's really fascinating because, first of all, we are so lucky not only to have this panel, but also all of you in the community. We're here. I mean, there are over 30 countries represented from all over the education ecosystem, and you guys are dropping such knowledge to each other. And I really appreciate that. But I do think this is something that can bring us together, and I think that is the real opportunity here. And I think that, Emily and Leanne, you have embodied that in meaningful ways, but you've also connected it truly to change. So you both are change makers and doing work that really matters. And without that, I mean, Leanne, you guys just said were going to do this.

Amanda Bickerstaff
If no one else is going to do it, we're going to do that the same way that Emily, you kind of said that, too. And there are people in the chat that are doing that. But you can see, though, you absolutely have to keep pushing, because you keep pushing, you can see that's what's happening everywhere. The vast majority of work in this space is being done by early adopters that believe this is so important. And so your voices have got to be heard because you can see it right here when it is, it can create these really, like, this really opportunity for the change that needs to happen.

Amanda Bickerstaff
So we'll do a final word from both Leanne and Emily, and then we're going to show a little bit of our three and three challenge as well, and maybe get some people signed up today, but maybe. Leanne, do you want to start?

Leanne Lindsey
Well, I just wanted to comment. There's a. In the chat, Jane said we need to underscore the importance of AI literacy to college career and civic readiness. Couldn't agree more. And that's where I just wanted to share. A finding of our work is that engage business and industry, because they will say that loudly and clearly, and you will have business and industry on board. And it can be this collective message, because that is so true. And if we can help business and industry beat that, same drum alongside of us, it can be really powerful.

Amanda Bickerstaff
That's wonderful. And agree completely. And then Emily.

Emily Marshall
Yeah. I would just add to remember the power of community. I always tell people I'm like the consummate introvert, but the Arizona community within education and technology has been like my lifesaver and Doctor Lindsey is part of that. But just the community within this group that's here in the call today and your own states and school districts, finding anyone and everyone that believes the way you do and has the same vision you do, latching on and working together because it's so much easier to make that change.

Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And we love it for both of that. So I just want to say thank you so much to our panel. I would definitely say, like Emily and Leanne, if you want to kind of stay and maybe answer some questions, like in the chat, it's been really rich. And then what I'm just going to do is that, you know, you got, you guys know us very well. AI, for education, we love to try to create, you know, really kind of practical and tactical ways to do this work. So I'm going to share, I will say that we are, this is going to be improved over the next couple of days just because small group, everyone thinks we're like 9 million people, but we have three fourths of the team on this call right now with Mandy and Dan. So little but mighty.

Amanda Bickerstaff
But I do want to share what our approach is. And this is going to be based on the work that we've done now with over 100 districts and partners. And what you'll notice is it's going to be a little bit different because we are focusing really on the foundation. And one of the reasons we are is because we want this to be for everyone. And we know that not everyone is ready to talk about the tactical, that's truly tactical components. But the first thing that we suggest, and this is where the new resource that we're creating is going to go, is to gather evidence. We just need to know what's happening within your use case.

Amanda Bickerstaff
There is so much noise and you will be absolutely surprised by what is really happening, what students are using, what teachers are using, what their fears and their hopes are. But also, this is such a great way to build consensus because what will happen is if teachers say kids don't care about cheating, then all kids say we care about cheating, that nonsense is gone. Like, that is like, now we have, now we can say, well, you guys, 80% of you said this was an issue. Let's have that conversation and work together to create academic integrity policies that work for us. There are ways you can do that survey. It could be a focus groups or even a town hall. We found that especially if you want to get involved, other people within the community.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And what you're going to notice throughout all of this is we are talking about a full school community. A lot of the districts we have worked with kind of stop with teachers and leaders, and they're not including students or caregivers or even the wider school community where you have some, maybe some technologists and other people that are working on this work at industry level. The second thing that we have seen be the most effective, and Emily, I think you might have, this is a cross functional working group that could be a task force, a collaborative, a council. We suggest this is such a great place because you already have early adopters, but we don't want just your early adopters. We want your ela specialists that's a little bit concerned, but willing to listen.

Amanda Bickerstaff
We want your media specialist that's been doing a doing media literacy for decades. And this is another form of media literacy, AI literacy. We want it to have some students on it, board members. We've had such great conversation with board members. I know that sounds crazy. If you're like, oh, that could be hard, but it's been so good. Special education, caregivers, all of that can be included. And what we suggest, though, if you're going to do this, is don't assume any level of like knowledge about this moment in time. It's moving very quickly and there are a lot of misconceptions. So we suggest always starting with PDE to get everybody on the same page so that then they are really fully ready to start developing goals.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And what we suggest to what both Leanne and Emily have said, I'll use Emily's word, what is your why? What is the why of applying this? Is it just because we have to, or is it actually because we want to improve teaching and learning and prepare students for the future? The last thing is to start developing a plan, and we suggest that plan is going to not only focus on the guidance that already exists, but also what you're really thinking about with your district in terms of your mission and vision. We suggest there should be two parts of the plan. One that's focused on AI literacy and one that is focused on the actual safety component of this. And that safety component is more than academic integrity and data privacy.

Amanda Bickerstaff
It goes into things like deepfakes and misinformation and bullying that can happen with these tools. And so what we have here is we have our three and three. It's going to beautiful soon, everybody. We have very high standards. We have a bunch of resources, our roadmap. We'll have our questions, but also if you're willing to hang out and try. And we're starting to build this map, which is going to be dropped in. And we actually have our first one on the map, which is amazing. Holyoke. Someone in here. Let's see if we can. We want this to be global. Sorry. This is our first on the map, though. That makes me so happy. I'm ready for vale to be up here, Emily, but we'd love you to do this because we want this to be something that is driving real change.

Amanda Bickerstaff
And like I said, you might actually find that three inch three challenge, which is going to be linked for Arizona, is the way you want to go, if you're ready for that next step. But if you're just getting started or you've already done these things, place it on the map, because we want to show our other maybe more resistant schools and districts that this is possible and that it's happening in meaningful ways, regardless of context, whether you're a big or small school district, international school, even a higher ed institution, because we have some wonderful folks on here today. So really excited to, like, have this here. I'm just going to maybe go to like, this is Leanne and Emily's first time seeing that. Do you have any thoughts about the kind of more foundational view that we've come up with.

Leanne Lindsey
Hand in hand, right side and left side glove?

Amanda Bickerstaff
Yes, absolutely.

Emily Marshall
Yeah. Totally agree. They're such important steps. All of it is. And so I love anything that helps schools make one more step and make the next right step is always important.

Amanda Bickerstaff
That's awesome. And, yeah, and we want, I think that when we talk about this kind of order, you do what you need to do. But I think that we are seeing, the reason why we kind of do this thing is these are things that we are seeing are like the first three steps because some people are just starting with guidance, but then the people in the room haven't used generative AI or we're starting with AI literacy, but we don't actually know what's happened, who's using it or not, or you have early adopters and you're not activating those early adopters. And so I think that this is way we want it to be in a structure. So first of all, I just want to thank everybody. We had almost 200 people across the world here and I'm sure there'll be many that are doing.

Amanda Bickerstaff
Can we give love everybody in the chat to our amazing panelists. Leann is very busy. We're very lucky to have here and so is Emily. And I think that, you know, I hope you're inspired to do the work where you are. I can tell you are already by the people that are doing it, but those are just getting started. It is not too late. Whatever you want to do, as long as you are making an effort to create a systemic and thoughtful, intentional plan to work with these tools, we are in the best path possible right now. So thank you, everybody. I hope you have a wonderful lunch night. It might be in the middle of the night or the morning. We appreciate you all and thank you and we hope you see you next time. Bye, everybody.