Bringing AI to Your School or District: Practitioners in Action

Connecting UDL Guidelines to SEE Mindsets

AI and UDL Work Better Together

5 Ways AI and UDL Work Better Together

The weirdest people in the world?

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.

Scott Ross

Scott Ross enters his 33rd year in K-12 education, with as much passion as ever to have a positive impact on the educators and students that he now serves through Summit Educational Service Center in NE Ohio.

Colleen Rooney

Bringing 30 years of experience in the field of education, Colleen believes learning happens everywhere -- in classrooms and outdoors in nature. Currently, Colleen works as an instructional coach for the Pewaukee School District, helping educators get comfortable with everything from technology integration to STEAM challenges to Computer Science, including AI Literacy work.

Melinda Larson-Horne

Melinda Larson-Horne is an innovative educator and consultant with over three decades of experience fostering authentic and engaging educational experiences for learners of all ages. Currently an instructional coach in the Pewaukee School District and founder of MLH Creative Consulting LLC, Melinda specializes in backwards curriculum design, standards-based grading, and the integration of digital technologies to engage, enhance, and extend learning.

Julie Kelleher

Julie Kelleher brings 19 years of EdTech leadership to a problem most experts have overlooked: parents. She is the founder of LIKEAMOTHER.AI™ and creator of Parent-in-the-Loop™, AI training and education that helps parents become informed, intentional guides in how their families experience AI. She has delivered workshops to 500+ parents and caregivers across Virginia and nationally and is a 2026 EDSAFE AI Alliance Catalyst Fellow. Julie began her career as a middle school teacher and Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine. She holds degrees from Harvard Graduate School of Education and Georgia Tech, and is a mom to two girls navigating the AI age alongside her.

‍ 00:01
Amanda Bickerstaff
Hi, everybody. We're super excited today to have our webinar. This one is like a special one because this is people that we have grown to respect and care for that have been part of our ecosystem in terms of the courses that we have. Very excited to be joined today to kind of dive into what AI literacy looks like on the ground. And so I think that this is. It's going to be a little bit of a smaller group than usual. So if you feel free to say hi and to get involved. But what we are going to be doing is talking a lot about what it means to start to do deeper AI literacy work at the district level. We have a lot of different perspectives, which I absolutely love.

00:41
Amanda Bickerstaff
That's one of the things that I love about this webinar that we're going to be doing. And as always, say hello. We know you're from all over the world, so feel free to say hi. Introduce yourself also, like, genuinely. If you have resources or anything you want to share, please do that. Our chats are always really great. Just make sure that you have your chat turned on to everyone because if he's always social, I'm going to call out Shannon. Shannon said hi. If you set your. Just go to your settings, not to host and panelists. There we go. But to everyone. That way everyone can see your communication. There we go. Thank you, Shannon. But if you have a question specifically for the group or myself, use the Q and A function. So that way I can make sure that we see it.

01:24
Amanda Bickerstaff
But I'm just really excited. We have been thinking a lot about general VI literacy for a long time. And one of the things that has always been a challenge for us as an organization is that we would come in and do like, good PD, like everyone would like I would say, like 90% of the people are engaged, hands on, they're changing their thoughts. And then, like often we would leave and then maybe there'd be some work coming up. But like always felt like were unable to really support our partners in a way we wanted to. So last December we had this crazy idea to build a set of micro credentials that were these hybrid courses that were designed to really build the capacity of those within the entire education ecosystem. And we did it with.

02:12
Amanda Bickerstaff
The funniest part I don't even think everyone here knows is that we thought like, oh, we'll just adapt our existing content. It'll take like a month. And then we end up writing three completely new courses and developing hybrid content. So the whole process ended up taking about Six months for us to get right. But since then we've had alumni for like 35 countries across 800 people all around the world. But also today we're really going to focus on K12 and in the US but we know people are quite international, so I'm sure there'll be places in which you can latch on to. But I want to really focus on what it means to do AI literacy, whether directly in a district, for actually supporting districts, and then also for the community.

02:56
Amanda Bickerstaff
So what we're going to do is we're going to start with, you know what brought you to thinking that? Okay, you know what? In my crazy schedule, I'm going to spend six weeks doing this deep dive of learning and I have to build a project that I'll actually use. So I want to start with. So Colleen and Melinda actually work together. So why don't we start with Melinda, if you can introduce yourself and then talk about what brought you to working with us in this course.

03:20
Melinda Larson-Horne
Hi everyone, I'm Melinda Larsonhorn. I work in Pewaukee, Wisconsin in the Pewaukee School District. I was a classroom teacher. I taught French English for 19 years. And for the last 13 years I've been an instructional coach focusing on technology as well as just good instructional practices. Our district has been focusing on AI for the last few years. We are getting ready to roll out Gemini to our high school students at some point next year. But we need to build educators capacity, knowledge, safety, all of those things. Literacy piece before we start using it with students. And so Colleen and I'll let Colleen talk about this in a minute. And I are offering some summer PD this year. We have a one day, eight hour course. We'll talk a little bit about that. And we're also presenting at our regional AI Summit.

04:18
Melinda Larson-Horne
So the work that we have done here and the things that we've learned have been invaluable.

04:23
Amanda Bickerstaff
Awesome, Melinda. And so Colleen, over to you.

04:26
Colleen Rooney
Yeah, so my name is Colleen Rooney. I have been an educator for 30 years. I spent 22 years in the classroom teaching primarily 4th grade, and then have spent the last 8 years as an instructional coach with Melinda here in the Pewaukee School District in Wisconsin. And kind of my in has been I've been working with the 4K through 5th grade teams to help develop and go through the curriculum renewal process for computer science. And so we recognized very early on in the process that AI literacy was going to be an essential component even for our younger students. And so that's kind of how I got my Feet into this and working with Melinda, then developing, as she mentioned, the professional development for staff and then for the summer program and then also for the AI Summit that our district helps to co lead.

05:17
Amanda Bickerstaff
That's amazing. And definitely I love how you're thinking of it from the two different perspectives already. Right. Because you come from two unique opponents. And I think that we'll definitely want to dig into the younger grades, because that's a really big question for a lot of people right now. And then Scott is a good. Has become, I think, a good buddy over the last year or so. And so, Scott, you have a unique position because you're actually at Summit esc. You're not in the district, but you are supporting the district. And so can you talk a little bit about. I'm sure you got a lot of questions over the last couple of years about AI adoption, is that right?

05:50
Scott Ross
Correct. My journey started as a high school principal and investigating how we could integrate AI into the classroom with our teachers. And what I discovered pretty quickly was I was probably moving too fast without taking a step back and looking at the big picture. So when I took on this role, it was really helpful to have the resources from you and the AI for Education team to get that. That larger perspective and start asking the bigger questions before we dove into tools and lessons and things like that to. To frame the work that districts need to do. So that's. That's been part of my mission in my first year as an AI consultant here in Northeast Ohio and just providing services for schools that need help and taking those steps on that journey.

06:37
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And I think that, Scott, just to reflect back, you were like, okay, we got this right? And you were like, principal. You're like, it's going to help people and maybe we get tools. And like, I think that is something we hear a lot of, like, wait a second. Okay. It sounds like this is like, go as fast as possible, but actually, like, you learned through the process that, like, slowing down and being intentional, it was like a much better approach. And we hear that all the time, so we'll definitely want to dig in with that together. Yeah. But you. I feel like you are. You're probably still pretty gung ho in the sense of getting people, like, reared up and ready, right?

07:11
Scott Ross
Yeah. And I am. And I've. I've had to take a step back in this role as well, because not everybody was. Was ready for that inflection point in the fall. So taking a year to kind of catch our breath and see where every district was at and respecting where they're at in their journey, depending on their resources and their capacity to build the bandwidth. So, yeah, I'm still learning. And again, having the tools and the courses that you have offered have been really beneficial in helping meet them where they're at.

07:41
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, absolutely. Well, we appreciate it. And then, Julie, it seems like you've had some immediate issues with technology, because when we talk about generative AI, something has to go wrong with technology. We can see you loud and clear. But do you want to talk a little bit about what brought you to. And you have such a unique. You have such a unique trajectory, I think, since when you took the course to now. So do you want to talk a little bit about that?

08:02
Julie Kelleher
Totally, yeah. And. And so can you guys hear me okay?

08:04
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yes. You're great.

08:05
Julie Kelleher
So I. So I am a. I'm Julie Kelleher. I'm based in the D.C. area, and I'm a former middle. Former middle school teacher. So I know how to improvise. So I just switched to my phone. For some reason, Zoom was not cooperating on my. On my laptop. So I am a mom to two girls, third and sixth grade, former middle school teacher, and I'm founder of LikeAMother AI. And so I've been in education technology for about 20 years. And about a year and a half ago, early 2025, I was really bullish about, I want to help other moms be more productive with AI and reclaim time. And then in the summer, I started to kind of feel this sense of like, I don't really. I can't really be teaching about AI without having this foundational knowledge of AI literacy. And. And so I just.

08:48
Julie Kelleher
It was like, right place, right time. I saw that the. Some sort of promotion for the trainer, and I was like, can I do this? Even though I'm not going to be doing it for teachers, can I do it if I'm going to be doing it for parents? And as you would expect from AI for education, they were like, sure, this is relevant for anybody who wants to teach, any community. I approached the course, coming at it as a mom, a parent, and a parent educator, and it opened my eyes in so many ways and really served as a catalyst for me to. To kind of go deeper on a literacy education first in workshops and trainings. And, and really, it has kind of. It's. It's turned into this catalyst for so much more that I didn't expect.

09:32
Julie Kelleher
And I think it was really because it gave me confidence and the just inspirational Approaches to teach other parents how to leverage AI and teach really important concepts in a way that's impossible to ignore. And that literally is a statement that Amanda shared in one of the first sessions where like, if you show them a way that they can model bias for their kids in a way that's impossible to ignore, then it just, you know, is a spark for everyone. And that's my goal, to just kind of light little sparks for parents and so they don't shy away and they become the parent in the loop in their kids lives.

10:08
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And I. And I think that there is a fine line and I'm sure you guys saw that. And the way that we do the work of like making it feel like unignorable, but also like there's choice. Like we're not gonna be like, hey, bang down the door. You must. Right. We avoid. You must in anything that we write because we do think that choice is important. But if you do something that's so in your face, like meaningful and it drives that like kind of those anchor moments of like decision making and the need to have informed decision making, it really does tend to work. And so I'm going to go to Melinda and Colleen. So you guys have. Can you talk a little bit more about like the size of your district, but like the complexity of like what's happening?

10:48
Amanda Bickerstaff
And then like when you were thinking about the approach, like what you were learning, like what were the places in which it really started to shift the way you started to approach the planning, the PD, the summer PD, etc.

11:02
Melinda Larson-Horne
Well, we have a unique situation on here in Pewaukee in that our campus holds all of our schools 4K through 12th grade, which is really nice. We have the opportunity to collaborate across the campus a lot. And that's really nice for Colleen and me as we get to work together. So Colleen serves the staff 4k through 5. And then I have the middle school and the high school. And one of the things that we wanted to do was to continue to lean into the framework that we've been using for several years in terms of we only use technology if it engages students in learning, enhances their learning, or extends their learning. So the triple E framework has been something that we've been teaching teachers about and leaning into for the past several years, I think since 2020.

11:56
Melinda Larson-Horne
So when we thought about building PD around AI literacy or any sort of use of AI, we wanted to use that for framework to kind of guide what it is that we did. And so we also. So we have some general AI Literacy lessons that we want to be doing with. We have 44 teachers signed up this summer to take our eight hour course. We're going to start with some sort of universal AI literacy things and that is also what we're doing at the AI Summit. But then we're going to be differentiating for the different grade levels and talking about how do we use AI to engage, enhance and extend learning from our littlest learners to our high school learners. Colleen, I'll let you take it from there.

12:49
Colleen Rooney
Yeah. And some of the work that I've done even this year with some of our building administrators is really just starting at the very basics for elementary staff. And that's just what is AI and what it's not. And kind of really tackling the myth of if we're talking about AI literacy in elementary schools, we're not talking about teaching a five year old how to use Google Gemini, but we are really doing a lot more in terms of modeling and really helping students to understand what it is and really how it works. And then building into those middle grades of 3, 4 and 5 in our district where then they might be experiencing or using it more and then really kind of that ethical using the C framework from AI for Education and really understanding that responsible use and that ethical piece.

13:40
Colleen Rooney
And so elementary very different than what we're doing in middle and high school. But it's been great to collaborate with Melinda on this and really like we have quite a range of staff that are participating in our PD this summer. So it's going to be great to have people then that can kind of go back to their teams and really share the information that we've been able to learn through our coursework as well.

14:04
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely.

14:05
Melinda Larson-Horne
And I think Scott mentioned before, like we do obviously have, especially at the secondary level, teachers and students using AI. AI isn't open to students in our district at this point, but they're using it at home and we have teachers using it. And it's sort of the wild west right now, you know, in terms of what they're doing, how they're doing it, et cetera. And so we do need to slow down a little bit, pull back a little bit, share those best practices with teachers across the district. But certainly in the high school, we want to make sure that teachers are modeling and comfortable with those best practices because we will be rolling out gemiini for our high school students at least by second semester this year. So we want to set them up to be really successful with that.

14:54
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah. And I think it's why I think it's such a good thing to have both of you taking the course because you're looking at it from two perspectives. And what an elementary school needs is quite different than what a middle and high school, especially if you're thinking about tooling. Right. And so, Colleen, you cannot speak more to my heart when saying we're not AI. Literacy is not. You use a chatbot with a 7 year old, an 8 year old, a 10 year old, but it is about like, what is AI? If you see this other places, like you know Alexa and you know the places, but also like your parent might be using ChatGPT or you might see it in Roblox and like the ability to start having those awareness conversations are incredibly important.

15:36
Amanda Bickerstaff
But with the work on cognition, we know that we should not be giving chatbots. When you talk about the engage, extend, enhance, is that right? Like there's nothing that a chatbot is going to do to engage, extend or enhance learning for an 8 year old. And so the idea that is something that can be used to limit negative impact. Right. But still talk about, we need informed decision making and to build an informed populace. That's what you can do in K5. But then for you, Melinda, for your middle and high school, especially knowing that kids like the wild west were at home and it's everywhere. It's my Snapchat, AI or whatever it may be that you're building towards, not just like what it looks like, but also what responsible would look like when they have Gemini. Right.

16:27
Amanda Bickerstaff
But you can see how there's now like a connection from point A to point B that is actually not like two different approaches. It's one approach with different expressions. Right. Is that fair?

16:38
Colleen Rooney
Yes. Yeah.

16:39
Julie Kelleher
Yeah.

16:39
Amanda Bickerstaff
And I think that's what we want, is that. And I think that this is a good segue to Scott, because I'm sure you are seeing though, in places where there's deep fragmentation, right? Where you have like everyone doing something different within a school building or you have like, you know, one teacher that's really into it or not like, and you're kind of on the out. So can you talk a little bit about like, what that kind of like that fragmentation, like, is like why it's important for you to have like a set plan, but also like what did you pull from the interactions and courses to bring back to help with that?

17:13
Scott Ross
So what I learned from the courses and what I've started to integrate a lot more into my presentations were exactly what Colleen and Melinda were echoing in that when I was coming in as the AI consultant, I think there was a little bit of a wall there from teachers and especially elementary teachers because they were anticipating that I was going to promote AI all the time and throw out your lesson plans. We have to do all these new things and from the course is saying now hold on, this is actually an opportunity to get back to some of the soft skills and durable skills and crit thinking and everything else that we've, you know, maybe didn't lost at some point during the pandemic.

17:51
Scott Ross
But the more effectively our elementary teachers focus on those things, as you just said, Amanda, throughout their journey, they'll be actually better equipped to you utilize the AI tools when that time comes. So really differentiating what that integration looks like at the elementary, intermediate, middle and high school level has been eye opening for me and a great lesson from the courses that I've tried to apply more and more. And as I go out into schools and work with districts. Yeah, that's what I would say to that question.

18:26
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, and I think so. So Scott, like also, I mean when you thought about your school versus like moving into this position, it feels very much like if a leader isn't like really engaged, then like not like it's not going to change the, that like fragmentation and disconnect. Is that fair? Because like we see like you could have the best teachers that are super into it, that want all these things, but like if the leader isn't creating time, space, budget and prioritization, we just see it fall flat a bit.

18:59
Scott Ross
And that's funny because recently I went back and watched one of the modules from our courses and you led a great conversation on that. And it really resonated with me because I had a tech background. So as a principal, of course I was invested in this and wanted to see effective implementation. Not every principal has that background. And that's healthy. We understand that. But that doesn't mean they don't understand the value of this moment in history with this unbelievable technology revolution and what it means to the kids that they're sending out into the world post graduation. So being invested doesn't necessarily mean that they're the expert leading the district. It just means they have the team in place and they're part of the core committee and they understand the importance of this moment.

19:48
Scott Ross
So that goes along with any initiative, but this more so than others. Yeah. If they're not invested and that work falls apart, hopefully best case scenario, they're following an AI for education model. And then there are support places like us or other consultants to carry that work forward. And we're training the in district pioneers and trailblazers that can further that work. And there's that sustainability piece. But yeah, if the leader in the top isn't invested, it's not going to happen.

20:18
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, were finding. I always felt like maybe I was just. I think I was incredibly naive. Like, I don't think I knew what I was doing when I started AI for education because I had never been a school transformation person. I never been someone that led pd. I'd never been someone in that role. And so I think I've learned a lot of this through the process. And I think it's really shown me like, especially at the level of like, change is it. It has to, it has to be like a traditional change management process, but like, but faster. Like, it has to be like there. That's like the main difference is like the speed to which we recognize.

20:59
Amanda Bickerstaff
And I think that's where, I mean, I think that if you're watching this webinar and you're already doing this work, you're thinking about doing this work. The more that you can build, buy in, the more that you can have systematic change of strategy in your approach. I think that's the best thing you could do right now. And then, of course, I think a hand in hand is that the decision makers need to have AI literacy too. Right. And I think when Colleen and Melinda, you're talking about how you do more of that now, right? You're not, you're not assuming that, like, people have that when they walk in the door, you're actually probably assuming the opposite, which is what we found as well. So.

21:35
Scott Ross
Can I tack one more thing, please?

21:37
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, go for it.

21:38
Scott Ross
The other aspects that kind of bothered me when I was a principal is the driving impetus behind this. And we knew how important the moment was, but were kind of using the wrong entry points. Not that AI can't save you time, but if AI saving time is your only drive and mission to get it into schools, that's, you're going to miss the mark. You know, you, there are a whole host of other reasons that you cover in the courses and, and going through that really help me frame this. Like, yes, some of that might be in the realm of this, but the driving force is much bigger than that. And if the leaders don't grasp that and they're only attacking it from, oh, it's going to save you time. It's. It's going to stunt the growth right off the bat.

22:22
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, totally. And I think that it's a hard one, right, because like, the companies are calling that, like, how many times did you hear in the last three and a half years? And I'm sure it's a good segue to Julie, like, parents are hearing it too. Like, you could save time. It's efficient. It's like. But like, that's like the complete wrong value proposition of generative AI today because it takes a human judgment out of it. And also, like, any good user of generative AI is going to spend more time than less time with the tools because they're actually using expertise, interrogating the outputs and making them fit for purpose, and then sometimes saying, you know what? This is not working and I should not be using it for this. And I think that is like the complete opposite. But that's not very sexy, right?

23:04
Amanda Bickerstaff
That does not sell licenses. That does not, you know, but it really is, I think, the most important thing. So, so, Julie, man, it is an interesting time for parents right now, right? Like, you did this before the Tech Lash, and if you're not from the US Tech Lash right now is like the name of, like, how screen time has become this huge question. And we have the surgeon General's warning coming out saying, return to textbooks and pen and paper. You've got, you know, Utah was the first state to like, advance and pass anti screen time bill. You've got anti screen time bills in like, almost every state, like legislature. So there's a lot going on.

23:45
Amanda Bickerstaff
So, like, it's probably changed a bit, Julie, but like, when you came to the course, right, what were the things that really started to shift your mindset and then what does that mean today?

23:53
Julie Kelleher
Yeah, so. So yeah, when I came to the course, what shifted my mindset was really, you know, not like there are great productivity gains for parents. Right? Like that. And that is still something that I teach, but that's like the scat a few scaffolds up. Because what really struck me was parents need to understand the risks. And I don't want to scare everybody, but I could never teach a workshop now without spending five minutes on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and showing them in a way that are impossible to ignore and figuring out ways you modeled things in a way, Amanda, where I could immediately translate it into something that a parent could show their kid that would Engage them. Like, I mean, I got a sixth grader. She's hard to engage, and I'm not funny to her anymore.

24:44
Julie Kelleher
But I have been able to model bias in a way that actually, you couldn't model so easily before. It was such an abstract concept. But now we could sit together and say, generate a picture of a doctor and generate a picture of a nurse, and it sparks this really thoughtful conversation. So that's just one example. I mean, you sprinkled so many examples modeling that way that I could easily apply to parent education. And, you know, I think what has changed now is, you know, when you talk about the Tech Lash, you know, my big point of view is, look, the job description of parents has changed. And nobody's talking about that, right? Everybody's talking about how schools are responsible for cultivating digital or digital literacy, AI literacy and durable skills. Employers are responsible for that. But nobody's saying that parents need to.

25:28
Julie Kelleher
And I think that, like, we. We all, parents and caregivers all have a responsibility as well. And. And nobody really gave us a guidebook. And my whole goal is to really empower people with knowledge and skills so they can help themselves and their families navigate AI with AI with confidence and clarity. And I think the Tech Lash piece now makes that an even stronger need, because if there are textbooks, like the shift back to textbooks, kids are going to be on their devices at home. And if parents don't have awareness of the broad literacy landscape and awareness of where their kids are accessing AI across all facets of life outside of school, then that's what keeps me up at night. And I think that I'd be remiss if I didn't say this.

26:11
Julie Kelleher
A lot of pressure and a disproportionate amount of pressure has been put on schools and school districts to be responsible for digital literacy, AI literacy, safety online. And, you know, there is an ecosystem here, and I want to help kind of build that connective tissue.

26:28
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, I think you're. I think it's really interesting because, Julie, I think that what we see is that parents in a lot of the districts we work with are considered, like, inconvenient voice. Like, and so I'm sorry to use, like, voice and agency, but, like, it's who I am. And so, like, the idea that parents are something to be managed instead of something to be leveraged. And I think that, like, when we've seen that parents are leveraged and become part of the process, that, like, they become amazing advocates and they're totally willing to, like, make like judgments and nuanced decisions that are not just yes or no. But I think in a lot of cases it feels like, oh, we don't want our parents to like. Like we don't. The complexity that come with the parent having a more informed opinion, I think.

27:16
Amanda Bickerstaff
Okay, let's be honest, everybody. We have a. I'm going to show. You know what, I'm going to go off book, but I'm going to show a new slide that we have for our. So if you're not familiar with our C framework, we'll drop that in the chat. But the C framework is our gen literacy framework that we released in April. But the courses, even though they're a year and a half old, we've been using these internally for that long. But what's really great is that were able to finally write a 65 page document. It sounds really scary. I promise it's not that goes deeper into the evidence space and all these pieces. But one of the things that we have. And I'll share it to you guys and see if, like what you all think. So I'm actually gonna ask you. I'm.

27:54
Amanda Bickerstaff
I'm going completely off book here. The team does not know this, but if you can come off mute. And I would love to hear from Scott, Melinda, Colleen and Julie. What do you hear are the reasons why people are not making AI literacy a priority? Whether that's for parents, students, teachers. Like, what do you guys hear?

28:14
Scott Ross
I'll hop in and just say it's a matter of time, resources, funding, you know, they. We're not ready yet. We know we need to train teachers before students. So we're going to try and take this one step at a time. Let us get our policy in place before we get the plan in place, which I'd love to speak to later. Those are just a few.

28:36
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah. So, Melinda or Colleen or Julie, what else do you hear?

28:42
Melinda Larson-Horne
I think part of teachers and student users is just the ease of use of the tools. And so they dive right in and they like the outputs they're getting or they see sort of like, you know, that it's saving time or I don't have to do this if this can do this. And that's the part that's intriguing to them. And so they haven't taken the time to do the literacy part to understand how to use it safely, how to use it responsibly. Because of the. Just the wow factor of the tools.

29:17
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah. So just going right to usage. Right. Just like the tools look very easy. I'm already using them. Why do I need to learn anymore? I'm getting value out of them. So let's go to Colleen and then Julie. Cause I think you both spoke at the same time.

29:29
Colleen Rooney
Yeah, sorry. So I would say from lower elementary, there's kind of this idea of, well, if we're not using AI, why do we need to do AI literacy? Like why does a 4 year old and 5 year old need to know anything about AI? Why we, why would we spend the. To do that? There's so many other things that are more important for kids to learn at that age. And I think the idea of it kind of feels like that one more thing that comes along in education now I gotta find time for this. And so I think part of the classwork too is really understanding that it's just a natural part of what you're doing every day. There's those teachable moments that you can use and it really doesn't have to be something additional.

30:07
Colleen Rooney
But yeah, from that elementary viewpoint, it's a lot of times like why would I, why do I need to do this if the kids aren't using AI?

30:16
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And then Julie.

30:18
Julie Kelleher
Yeah. So, you know, kind of from a parent perspective, from the parents that I've worked with, it's, you know, they're kind of feeling in the dark on two fronts. One, a lot of people have no idea what schools are doing and you know, myself included. And it's, and it's not for lack of trying, but I think, you know, for any teachers and district leaders out there, like, you can't over communicate on this topic, that's the piece where there might be a policy published somewhere. But a lot of parents don't know what's going on and they don't know what their kids may be learning about or not learning about at school. So that's kind of one front. And then the second one is a lot of parents don't know where to begin at home and they don't feel like they have the tools.

30:57
Julie Kelleher
They don't feel like they know where to look.

31:00
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And so, I mean, for us, I think this really does like, reflect a lot. And by the way, this is my least favorite slide ever. Because of the design. We're fixing the design if you ever want this keynote. But what we're hearing a lot is like, who has enough expertise to lead it, which is why the courses exist. Right. But also we hear a lot about, we did one training, we don't need to do more or we hear to Scott, your point. Time, budget, priorities. The other thing calling is the quickest way to kill an initiative is when it feels completely separate. But then I think the two ones that I just want to kind of point out to you that I think are really strong rhetorics is like, AI is changing too fast. How could we possibly keep up?

31:47
Amanda Bickerstaff
And like, that is like the worst thing you can possibly do there. We actually have heard like, we need a moratorium on AI gen, AI use. And you're like, how are you going to stop people from using these tools? It's going to be in their fridge. It literally will be in their fridge in a couple of years. All of these different pieces. So like that is like crazy. And I think it's always surprising to people when we tell them like that we. The first time I ever walked into a school was in Queens. So I did a virtual in Queens and I did an in person in Queens in June of 2023. And Julie, you talked about that modeling activity of like the Think Aloud. I did that the first day. And of course gender bi was like so much worse at that point.

32:28
Amanda Bickerstaff
Like I still remember ChatGPT was blocked, so we had to like use a VPN. Like it was a very funny moment, right? But the same way we did that, we are more sophisticated now because the tools are more sophisticated and our knowledge more sophisticated. But the same way it works then is that is still good. And the idea that it's still possible to talk about how the tools work and know that they will change, which is one of the reasons why our mindset in C framework, one of them is keep learning. The idea that if it doesn't work today, it might work tomorrow. But as Davin said all the way back and also in 2024, is that you don't need to be the expert, right? All you need to do is be open to being the person that's building capacity.

33:12
Amanda Bickerstaff
For example, we just were doing new courses and we're doing an instructional planning course. And in one of my videos it breaks four times, literally. It didn't follow my directions and hallucinated. And I could have recorded that video, but instead of that, I just was like, okay, I'm not gonna freak out. I'm gonna like just keep going. And like, that's almost more valuable. I'm gonna get to where I want to go. But also like, you know what? Sometimes things are weird, but I think that is like a really big part of like what we don't want to happen. And then I think the last one is the most treacherous. Students, if you teach them how to build AI literacy, they'll better cheaters. And I also think that's to your point about parents.

33:53
Amanda Bickerstaff
If you, if you teach parents about AI, they're gonna have more opinions and we won't be able to moderate those. And I think that is the worst thing that could possibly happen is that, like, we cannot build informed people. So, Scott, go for it.

34:06
Scott Ross
Well, one of the things you have stressed from the beginning that I've really taken hold of is the importance of conversations. And conversations can maybe not eliminate, but certainly mitigate and find a path forward for all of those challenges you just put up. And speaking of students in particular, we assume students feel a certain way about AI and we assume all the kids are cheating. But when you, as I've learned from the courses, when you dive into these conversations, it's much more nuanced than that. And all of those conversations provide a step forward toward a solution for those areas.

34:41
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, absolutely. And it was really so Naika McGee. We did a really wonderful webinar on like, Littles, like AI for Littles. And she's hopefully, let's cross our fingers, going to do some curriculum work with us. I think she's fabulous. But she talked about everyone can have a conversation. There's no. Even if someone is non verbal and you do it the right way with the right supports and assistive technology, is that is, there is no friction, nor is there a barrier to having conversation. And I think that is like such a wonderful way to think about this. And I think a lot of what we talk about in the courses and in our PDs is that, like, you just have to lower the barrier and walk in, right? You just have to lower the barrier and walk in.

35:23
Amanda Bickerstaff
And whatever that is for people is the best thing you could do, especially initial training, because what you're doing is building trust. You're creating these safe places. But I think that accepting that people believe it has to be this big, enormous, flashy thing, right? When it can just be like, hey, here's a common dilemma. Let's talk about what that can mean for like your classroom or your, you know, your student's life. And I think that it's probably the most harmful thing you could do because it means that you're not just talking, like, you're not just being transparent. And so what I want to do, I'm going to go off book again because I want to get you guys feedback on Something. But I want to.

36:01
Amanda Bickerstaff
I want to, like, throw it to you all before we have this new C snapshot that we just released. And I want to kind of go through this because I think it's a really good way to, like, turnkey what we've been talking about. But I have two things. I know, Scott, you talked about the policy versus AI literacy talk, but I think for Colleen and Melinda, I'd love to understand, like, when you think about what's happening day to day, how are you getting around? It's only. You're not a huge group of people. You have a lot of expectations. It's not just AI. So how are you managing that? How are you thinking through building these sustainable systems that don't put so much effort. An impact on you too, specifically?

36:44
Melinda Larson-Horne
Well, one thing that we did do is that we brought some of these AI questions to our strategic planning earlier this year, and all of the stakeholders, including parents and students and educators at all levels, had the opportunity to talk about AI a little bit. And kids were really honest about. I know my teacher is using this. I see all these mistakes that's not in her voice, those kinds of things. And so it's really good to get the student perspective. I also think, like, when we talk about cheating, kids are perceiving some of the ways that teachers are using AI as cheating, too. And so, you know, just being really honest about, like, how we should be using these and then also thinking about our instruction and our assessment methods and looking at, like, are we only assessing end products?

37:35
Melinda Larson-Horne
We shouldn't be teaching to the end product, assessing the end product, but the learning process as we go along. And how do these tools support the learning process as opposed to make it so that kids can just cheat and not learn? So all of that needs to be part of our approach to AI literacy. And so that's why we have a task force, we have this summer PD that we're working on. We're going to be embedding some of this in our professional development days. All of those things are going to be really important so that we are sending the right message to all stakeholders.

38:16
Amanda Bickerstaff
That's great. And I love talk to kids. And they do think that AI feedback, by the way, is cheating. They think their teachers are cheating by giving them AI feedback, especially when they have not gotten transparency about it. And it completely changes the way in which a teacher gives feedback. So I'm just gonna. That one's a strong one. But, Colleen, do you have something to add?

38:35
Colleen Rooney
Yeah, well, I was gonna say a couple Comments When Melinda was talking about the strategic planning, and I was in a group with a number of middle. And some of the things that they even just said, one of them making the comment of I need my teachers to teach me how to use it the right way, that was something that was just, you know, like, yes. And then also just having the students saying that, you know, they are. They are okay being responsible, using. Using it in an ethical way. You know, like, one student spoke specifically about using it to help him get to where he needed to be with a formula for a math problem, but he wasn't going to use it to find the answer.

39:15
Colleen Rooney
But their concern as students was there are some other students that are not using it ethically, and they don't want that to be something that prevents them from using it in the future because, you know, with this cheating idea and things like that. So it was just really great to be able to have that student voice. And that's one thing that I think, you know, definitely the parents and community, but, like, we gotta make sure we've got that student voice in there too.

39:39
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. Okay, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna come to Scott and Julie to kind of wrap us up with some of the big pieces. But I want to show you the new snapshot because it's actually, like, really, like, appropriate to the conversation we're having is. So this is. So the C framework, again, was April, right? And so we started with this idea that in the framework, there are these framework and action dilemmas where you work through what safety ethically and, like, effective looks like. And what were finding is that people could not dive that deeply into even conceptualizing the right questions to ask. So what we did is we built a new piece, which I think that's really built off of this idea.

40:19
Amanda Bickerstaff
So the way the Genai literacy framework is set up is the knowledge of how the tools work drive mindsets of action that lead to safe ethical and effective practices. And so these are the five mindsets. So be intentional, which means, like, you always come with a plan. And the plan may be don't use AI for this. The critical is that these tools always make mistakes, so you always have to be vigilant. The transparency is if we don't. If we don't be. If we're not transparent, then nothing is going to change. Act responsibly is about causing undue harm. And then the idea of keep learning. And so what we did is we built this snapshot. So it actually is pretty appropriate to what Melinda, you brought up right? And Colleen, which is the idea of like generating feedback on essays.

41:00
Amanda Bickerstaff
So the way that the snapshot works is like, you take a dilemma in this case, an educator is thinking about grading essays and giving feedback with an AI tool. And what we do is we then take a step and say, what do I need to know about how that tool works to be able to make an informed decision. And so things like, and I'm going to tell you right now, teachers do not understand this. We just saw it again in Nebraska. But that these tools might store or own that young person's intellectual property, that it might be used to train further models and it could be shared like that. Like, people don't think of it that way. They just think, oh, I'm just going to give kids feedback and not understand that they also don't know that the outputs themselves can be biased.

41:44
Amanda Bickerstaff
Let's say the young person talks about their love of like rap music or anime or that the fact that they have a disability that can lead to bias and outputs that they could be incorrect. There's not a gender bi system in the world that doesn't make mistakes. And then also it can be so generic that it can a grade you to an average of a C, which is not how teachers grade and or actually like impact negatively a creative problem solving. Meaning like, Scott is like going to give me this type of answer, but let's say Julie's going to give me like this lateral answer. They're both right. But because Scott took the highest probability approach, that's going to get scored higher. So but that all relates back to how the tools work. Right?

42:28
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so if I have that in my head, what I can start to do is think like, what does it mean to act responsibly? And this is where the thinking routine comes in. So what are the tools, data privacy pitfalls in terms if they are. The second thing is how might these hallucinations or inaccuracies and bias affect my students? But even more importantly, do my students even want AI feedback? And you can see how you start to like, put the dots together. Because if I have this all in my head, I could take many decisions right now. I could either be transparent, ask, I can get permission. I can then, like if it's approved, always verify or advise if I decide to use it and disclose it. And then I could always write my own, like my judgment always matters.

43:15
Amanda Bickerstaff
But the same thing can happen where you say, like, I decide not to use genai for feedback or I teach students how to use genai for feedback or the idea of how this works. If you're interested in something like this, we have something that you can use. And so we love to give resources. So not even the team yet has these. That's on the call. But what we have is that you can take this and yeah, Deb, this is brand new, everybody. By the way, we did the first time on Tuesday and it worked so well. Like we had people that were not even familiar with the C framework, one hour of a keynote and doing this.

43:52
Amanda Bickerstaff
But what we have here is that you could take this and the way we did it is we had a virtual audience and an in person audience and the virtual audience had this and the in person audience had a big sheet of note paper. And then what we did is we have an example of like a works example and then a whole list of dilemmas, including Julie, for like students and families. And so what you could do is you could actually go through. And like what we did is we had everybody work on this one. We did this a college student because it was like kind of an easy one to empathize with. But what you can see is you can pick and choose the ones you want to use. And so this is a brand new resource.

44:31
Amanda Bickerstaff
It's going to go on to the. It's the next thing we're going to share as a resource. But I hope that things like this though, and I'll maybe ask for feedback from the group. But it feels like the bridge for like in that every decision with generative AI has to be informed. Because I think a lot of people are just making. Are just doing or not doing. Very few are like taking a step back and saying like, wait a second, I really need to be thoughtful about this every time. And the good news is that the knowledge is once you start understanding them, they're almost always the same. So you don't have to actually do that every time. So crazily. But the mindsets and the practice ends up being different every time.

45:13
Amanda Bickerstaff
And I think that's really where we're seeing that like that very like positive, like perspective. So anyway, that's a brand new thing for everybody. But I'll actually start with Julie, like maybe thinking about what you're seeing in terms of where are these kind of these moments of informed decision making you think are really important for parents?

45:35
Julie Kelleher
Yeah. First of all, I can't wait to dig into what you just shared. That looks amazing. And I think it's, well, where does that informed decision making need to happen? From my perspective, it's so personal and it's so unique. And so what I really focus on is just try to build awareness of what's going on in your house, in your kids lives and have conversations early and often. So when you all were talking about just the conversations piece, you're speaking my love language. Because that's what I say to every parent I meet. Like have conversations early and often about anything. Like we talk about it everywhere so much that my kids just talk about AI to me all the time. Like we talk about it at the dinner table, we talk about it in the car.

46:14
Julie Kelleher
Things like, hey, do you know how Spotify knew what song to play for you? Or you know, why do you think Alexa? Why, how come you know, why do you think Alexa does that? And like also modeling for them how they can ask the AI tool. Like my 8 year old asked Alexa where Alexa lived and she thought Alexa lived in the clouds because Alexa said in the cloud. So it can be funny and fun. And also modeling through this early and often modeling how we adults are learning too, because it just creates this new moment of connection, of this dynamic of we're both learning alongside one another and many times they can teach us. So what I loved from this conversation is how you use the term leverage, Amanda, how families can be leveraged, the students can be leveraged.

46:59
Julie Kelleher
We all can have more agency in this process because really none of us can do it alone. So the ecosystem is vast. And I just try to get people over that initial hurdle because it does become a spark. And once people see one example, they can start applying it to other areas of their life. But I know that really didn't answer your question.

47:21
Amanda Bickerstaff
No, it was great. I think it's real. And I think that what we're hoping is the C framework and like the resulting kind of things that we're working through in real time just give people the practical step. And I think that like this is all we want, right? We just want people. We don't want this to be a reflex. Whether it's like Gen AI is bad or always good. We don't want it to be something that like we don't have control over. I think that it's so it feels like we don't have control, but like we do. Like we can. Like any school district could decide not to have chatbots until a certain age. Any district can decide to bring parents in. And I'll move to Scott here because I think the policy conversation is incredibly important.

48:07
Amanda Bickerstaff
It's that same idea that we can't until A policy. But we see it has to be hand in hand. The two can't, you can't have an AI policy without AI literacy. And the AI policy will only work if everyone has AI literacy. So do you see that as well?

48:22
Scott Ross
Right. And before I get to that control aspect is so fascinating because what I tell the schools I work with, you're right, we're probably not going to be able to control what chat, GPT and you know, the big corporations are doing, but we can control what's happening here in our district with our kids, and that's what we're going to focus on. Ohio was one of the first states to mandate the policy deadline. And I just want, if people that are listening can learn one thing from our experience.

48:51
Scott Ross
The schools that I saw this, do this really well, saw this not just as a mandate where they had to check a box and kind of just, you know, meet the requirement, move on, but as an opportunity to get their core group together, talk to the teachers, talk to the students, get all the inclusive voices, and start to form their framework and implementation plan for AI literacy as a whole. And I saw some schools do that wonderfully and marry those two things in the process. So it became more than just another mandate handed down and it's going to make a difference. So absolutely, if you can approach it from that lens, it's really helpful.

49:29
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah. And I, and I think that, you know, we're wrapping up on time. I think the, what, I think what we always like, want to think about and learn from the work that we're doing because I, I continue, I think that our organization will never stop learning because none of this has existed. We're, like I said, like, we thought the framework in action would be enough, but then realized there had to be a place in between. But I think that one of the things that is so unique and rich about the people that have decided to work with us in these courses is that there is that point of view of this is an opportunity. Right. And the more we know, the more we build confidence, the more that we can kind of leverage existing opportunities and frameworks.

50:13
Amanda Bickerstaff
And for us just having done so much of it, that it does end up being something that really shifts into a place of like, action and change. And I think that is like the ultimate goal. And I think I, I think about this a lot because, you know, for today, for example, you know, Meta was starting to key log and track every employee's work. Right. And it was something because that type of data is like the next place of data. And it was a big to do. But you know what? Enough people, enough of their employees said no that they rescinded that today. So that is no longer happening. And I. And I think a lot about that. And so.

50:56
Amanda Bickerstaff
And I think if we all collectively came together and said, like, we need this, or this is a decision we're not going to make, that there is power in us coming together and, like, making these informed decisions. And the more we build AI literacy on the ground, the more possible that is because we could go back and say, like, hey, like, you shouldn't be able to. Like, we don't want this type of tool, but stop trying to sell it to us. Instead, we'd love this type of tool. Or we want, you know, something that fits into, like, the policies that we're creating instead of having us to create new policies. And I think that's something that is under. I think it's underrepresented in how we think about the agency of being an educator or a family, like, or having families than what we have.

51:37
Amanda Bickerstaff
So, anyway, on that note, can I just say thank you to all of you for being a part of, like, our. Our family. I believe you're part of our family. I think that it is, you know, it is. So we. We build things and we have no idea if anybody wants them, you know, like, and we're, you know, we're creating things, and it's just so nice to be able to build relationships and to learn what you're doing and support you all. So I just want to say thank you to everybody and, yeah, we'll share the resources, everyone's resources, but just appreciate everyone and thank you all for joining us and have a wonderful start to your summer. Thanks, everyone.