What Comes Next: Reimagining K12 Education in the Age of AI

Prompt Library

Matt Winters recent interview

SETDA Guide

State AI Guidance Resources from Imagine Learning and AI for Education

[Imagine Learning White Paper] Training AI on Efficacious K-12 Curricula

[Imagine Learning Webinar] Teaching in the Age of AI: A Practical Series for K–12 Educators

[Imagine Learning Webinar Series] What Does AI in the Classroom Look Like?

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.

Sari Factor

Sari’s vision and strategic direction guides Imagine Learning’s work to create effective, digitally enabled curriculum solutions. A lifelong teacher advocate, she works to ensure that every student has access to meaningful, educational experiences wherever learning takes place. Before joining Imagine Learning, Sari was a mathematics teacher and held leadership positions at several successful educational publishing and learning technology companies including Kaplan, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin, and Everyday Learning Corporation.

Ji Soo Song

Ji Soo Songis the Director of Projects and Initiatives at SETDA, where he oversees a portfolio of initiatives to support 40+ state education agencies implement promising practices on topics such as digital opportunity, edtech procurement, professional learning, sustainability, and AI. He leads SETDA’s partnerships with philanthropic groups and corporate sponsors and advises the organization’s federal advocacy strategies. Ji Soo also oversees the design and evaluation of SETDA’s signature events and represents state leaders in national and international forums, including as a designated focal point for the UNESCO-UNICEF Gateways to Public Digital Learning Initiative.

Rotem Haimovich

Rotem is a junior at Design Tech High School in the Bay Area. Through working with small education technology companies on product design and user experience, Rotem was inspired to think about how the education system can best benefit from AI. Rotem also competes in FIRST robotics and enjoys playing basketball.

00:00
Amanda Bickerstaff
Good morning or afternoon or wherever you are today, very excited to have our last webinar of the year. I cannot believe it's already two weeks before the end of the year. I'm really excited to have you all here. If you're not familiar, I'm Amanda vickerstaff. I'm the CEO and co founder of AI for Education. And today we're really excited about a webinar that's quite different than any webinar we've ever done before, which I think is pretty cool to say after doing about 50 of these over the last two years. And we're going to be really focused on a piece of upcoming work called beyond the AI Inflection Shaping Education's Future, which is a pretty amazing collaboration between AI for Education, Imagine learning with Sari Factor, but also an amazing group of thought leaders, students and experts in just education, but also AI education.

00:51
Amanda Bickerstaff
As always, we are going to always get involved. Our favorite part about our webinar culture is just how amazing it is to have everyone get involved in the chat. Our webinar last week with Stanford was amazing. Just everyone getting so engaged. So feel free to say hello. Some of you are already doing that and also engage with each other. So if you have a great resource, if you have something you'd like to share, please do so. And just know that if you have a question specifically for Sari, GC or Rotem or myself, you can put that into the Q and A, which we'll definitely be looking at. The last thing I love to say is we will be kicking out AI note takers, but don't worry, what we will be doing is following up with all the resources, a transcript and everything.

01:32
Amanda Bickerstaff
So do not worry about that. But as always, we're just really excited to be able to do this work with such an amazing international community. I want to first introduce, we'll do a little bit of a round robin just to say hello, then we're going to talk to Sari first and then bring up JISOO and Rotem. But for us, one of the things that is so important is that generative AI is now like in our experience, is now three years old, which is wild. November 30, 2022 is when ChatGPT was first launched and man, it has been a wild three years. And one of the things that I think has been really interesting is that we believe pretty strongly in this work that AI is not just a disruptive force on the workforce and school, but something that is going to force change.

02:21
Amanda Bickerstaff
And what we would love to do is see that change be really intentional, but also start literally in January. We believe that very strongly that time for change is now, which has led us to this work that we are doing together and launching in January. First, I want to start. Let's do a really quick introduction of everybody and then I'll focus with Sari. So, Sari, do you want to say hello and give a little introduction about yourself?

02:43
Speaker 2
Hello, everyone. I'm Sari Factor, Chief Strategy Officer for Imagine Learning. I'll get more about Imagine Learning when we talk. Amanda, let's go on to jisoo and.

02:55
Amanda Bickerstaff
Then let's do jisoo. Yep.

02:57
Ji Soo Song
Yeah. Hi, everyone. Thank you to the Imagined learning and AI for education teams for inviting Sita to participate in this project that we'll be discussing. But Jisoo Song, director of project initiatives at CETA and CETA, the State EdTech Directors association, we're a professional association that represents state ed tech and digital learning leaders from roughly 40 member states, as well as affiliate and corporate members who share our mission and visions. So, yeah, happy to be here and excited to engage in the conversation.

03:23
Amanda Bickerstaff
And then finally, last but not least, our student representative, Rotem.

03:27
Rotem Haimovich
Hi, I'm Rotem. I'm a student at Design Tech High School in the Bay Area, and I had the honor of participating in this project.

03:35
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so not just participating, but literally doing one of our expert talks, which we'll talk about in a moment. But GCU and Rotem, you can hang out and then we're gonna. I'm gonna talk to Sari. So I first want to, like, talk about, you know, our experiences. So if, you know, our work, you know, we're really focused on generative literacy and adoption, responsible adoption. But it's interesting because, you know, we stick. We're kind of like, outside of a lot of the work that's on the ground in terms of what has already been happening. Like, our company started the moment I first used chatbots. But what's really interesting is when I met Sari, I guess two years ago, it was immediate connection, because I think that SARI has some. I'm just.

04:16
Amanda Bickerstaff
I cannot tell you how much wealth of knowledge you have about the education ecosystem, Ed tech. I mean, you're one of the. I say OGs, you're one of the people that really started this. And so just personally, to be able to meet and work with Sari has been a pleasure. But you know, Sari, I think it would be helpful to kind of talk about, like, the work that you've done. And like, what you've seen kind of through all the epochs of like education and technology that kind of led you to the way you think about the importance of thinking about AI today.

04:44
Speaker 2
Thanks, Amanda. And it's been such a pleasure to work with you on this project. My experience with educational technology goes back over 40 years when the first app, the black apples were coming into, if you don't know what I mean by black apples, they were literally Apple II computers colored black for the school market. They were painted black, different than the computers we see in schools today, the cloud based systems and so on. But you know, at that point in time, I was already thinking about how education and technology coalesce and what technology could do to improve teaching and learning. And you know, it's been many years and many fits and starts along the way.

05:27
Speaker 2
And I will say, you know, in some ways it's been great because I think technology has really aided teachers and students in learning and in other ways it is thwarted learning. And I think if we keep at the very heart of what we're trying to accomplish here, that we really want the best for our children and teaching and learning can have. Technology can have positive impacts on teaching and learning. It could also have negative impacts. And so as imagine learning, get to imagine learning, we're thinking about technology and education and then comes generative AI. Everybody was like, this has so much potential to transform teaching and learning. Yes, but there are also risks. So what are the opportunities and risks? And we've been thinking deeply about this now for three years since ChatGPT was introduced to our world.

06:17
Speaker 2
And we think about it through the lens of educational outcomes. We are one of the leading providers of K12 curriculum. So core curriculum, student self directed curriculum, intervention materials and services that surround all digitally empowered. Really the goal is empowering teachers and empowering learners. And so we think about this through this lens of what can it do to enhance learning, to save teachers time to think about what students might be able to pursue that they could pursue potentially before because of access to generative AI. So we had that lens. You want to talk a little bit about kind of the hatching of this idea that we came up with last April.

06:59
Amanda Bickerstaff
So it's really interesting. So ASU gsv, when I started AI for education, this is a true story. ASGSV is known as the big kind of ed tech and kind of where the executives go and you know, those that fund it. And so I don't know if you know this area, but I bootstrapped our business, meaning like we did it self funded. So I actually went to ASU GSB in 2023, in April 2023. And I stayed in a hostel. I stayed, you know, I stayed like, I know that I was like, you know, like it's just me at that time. And I had launched our website literally that weekend before.

07:37
Amanda Bickerstaff
So AI for Education, when it first started, was a website with five blogs and a prompt library of 15 prompts that are now the genesis of this, including our most favorite one, which is our rubric prompt and a couple other things. And I went and I got really lucky that I was invited to this women's event that was done the Sunday before. And that's where I first met you, Sari. So I met you almost immediately after I started AI for Education and. And luckily our paths crossed again a couple of times, but most importantly at the AI show, which is starting right before the ASU GSD this year. And it was really interesting. Sari and I and Jason and Corey from our teams just were meeting, we're going to talk about some product ideas.

08:22
Amanda Bickerstaff
And were sitting though on the floor with all the vendors, all the gen AI ed tech vendors. But Sarah and I looked at each other and were like, it feels like nothing has changed in a full year of this massive disruptive technology that we looked around, we're like, this feels like we are stuck in time. And if this is going to be one of the only convenings specifically focused on AI education, we would have expected so much more innovation to have happened in that time. We were sitting there and it was quite funny because it was not the point of this conversation at all. And I looked at Sari and I was like, what if we did something similar to this AI 2027 piece? And if you're not familiar with this, AI 2027 was launched like a month earlier.

09:10
Amanda Bickerstaff
That was by researchers and futurists about what would happen when superintelligence was possible. Meaning like, you know, we have general AI today, but it's not the ultimate goal of technologists. Ultimate goal of technologists is your, you know, Rosie from the Jetsons. It is, you know, your like super intelligence that's going to be able to do all the things. And so what ended up happening is they wrote this piece, but they wrote it from a really specific point of view where they wrote it as a story. And so I don't even think, Sarah, you'd seen it before, but I was like, what do you think? And so maybe I'll hand it over to you're probably like, Amanda, you were crazy. What are you even thinking?

09:46
Speaker 2
But it was a research informed but fictional scenario of what could happen by 2027, which is a very short time frame and a really short time frame when it comes to education and our education industry. The pace of change. One of the things that really struck me is the pace of change for the education community is much slower than the pace of change for the world. There is an inherent schism there that we as an industry need to deal with. An industry that, meaning a field, the field of study, of teaching and learning needs to be considered. And again, we think of this through student outcomes and we have taken this curriculum, informed AI approach, kind of a new framework for AI integration that centers on research backed pedagogy and what would empower a teacher.

10:40
Speaker 2
Not designed as an add on, but really built in. And one of the things that were seeing at the show were many, I would call it, technological or technical novelties that was rewarded over the instructional effectiveness. And thinking about that through the lens. And so we decided we wanted to gather a bunch of folks together, really smart people, researchers, experts in education, experts in the AI technology itself, to really talk about what the future could be and what it might look like. Could we create a fictional scenario similar to AI 2027, but within the education sphere, the K12 sphere specifically, to tell a story and really provoke a conversation? That's the idea here, is how can we provoke a conversation amongst every community in the country, maybe in the world, to talk about what they want for their children's futures?

11:43
Speaker 2
So that's really the big goal.

11:46
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And if you're wondering, I know that we have people from all over the world here. If you're wondering, is there an opportunity to do something wild and big and audacious, I'm going to tell you right now, we did something like this just through the backs of our two organizations. We brought this together. There was no outside funding. Everyone that came to our convening, outside of the students and a few others, were self funded. But it was really interesting to think about this opportunity to have really thoughtful people that care about the future of education and understand the importance of urgency of this moment in time and see what happened, it was really important, is that we tried to be as intentional as possible at who came. And so of course we couldn't have 100 people.

12:34
Amanda Bickerstaff
But we sat down, we're like, who are our wish Lists of 20 people that span everything from Peter Foltz, who is one of the Original producers of AI in education, literal machine learning, grading in the 90s to two students, including Rotem, who you're going to be featured on people that are practitioners today, like Mary Beck at distinctive schools who used to be at Chicago Public Schools. Not only that, but thinkers around learning science like Kristen diserbo from Khan Academy or Tom Van Der Ark that's been thinking about school redesign for probably longer than I have been an educator. And so what we have, this is real. And Tom is one of my favorite people. But I will also say what was great about this is that we knew bringing everyone together. We did not want a uniform perspective. It was incredibly important for us.

13:26
Amanda Bickerstaff
If we have our thesis was, okay, what has happened in the world of education to date and then what will happen from here until were like five years? Like, what's going to happen and what changes will be external and internal and what does that mean for the opportunity of really shaping the next steps? And I'm going to tell you right now, this is so funny. We facilitated this. And at times I felt like there was going to be a coup. People were like, we're not sure. But what ended up happening is that all these diverse perspectives came together and created these narratives about what the future could be. And you know what? It was very interesting. And I'll hand this over to you. I was very surprised by how measured. We had our doomers. We had our optimists, we had our pragmatists.

14:13
Amanda Bickerstaff
But how at the end, everyone had come together and coalesced around this need to create something tangible and discreet for people to do on their own.

14:23
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, we used some tools to facilitate the conversation and it was good to elicit people's real feelings because we all wear our Personas at our works. When we are at work, we have a thing that we need to focus on. I tend to be an optimist around this, but I also know the potential downsides of generative AI and what I'm seeing happening real time in schools with our customers as we do our work every day in schools. You know, the AI has gotten out ahead of policy. We had people in the room. I mean, Matt Winters, who's the first person who was named a state leader for AI in education for his state. He's the artificial intelligence specialist for the Utah State Board of Education. He was with us. He's been doing incredible work here to make sure teachers are well trained.

15:19
Speaker 2
They get the AI literacy in. I mean, he's at this point, I mean, I think he would tell you they've trained about 25% of Utah's educators. Huge accomplishment. But the use is way outpacing the guidance that schools have gotten that states have given. And so that is coming on board. But it is a lot slower than what's happening out in the world. And that's. We both saw the downsides and the upsides. I'm a little more frightened in real life because I see what's happening even in my life. Things that are getting fed to me, which I didn't share data online, but somehow it's getting fed to me. Scary stuff could happen. We all brought both of those, I think, the positives and the negatives to the conversation.

16:03
Speaker 2
But we did end up coalescing around a story that we thought, or it's really a series of stories. We can talk a little bit about that we don't believe that there is one answer here. And we really are trying to encourage every school community to gather people together, to use some of the very same tools that we use as we elicited the conversation with our group.

16:27
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And I think that it was really fascinating to see just how much our past experiences with those of us that maybe are a little bit newer to policy or more ed tech writ large, or maybe a little bit more like optimistic or naive around. You can tell which, which one, depending on the day and how fast things were going to change. We had those that had very strong opinions about the ability of the system to change at all, which I think is really interesting. I think that those that have been part of the system change for a long time were maybe a little bit more pessimistic. Not about AI, but just genuinely about the ability to be flexible enough to respond to this moment in time.

17:13
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so what we think that is really important for the work to Sari's point, is that we've created. I'm actually going to show you a preview. So you guys are the first people outside of our little group to actually look. And this is not fully done, but I will tell you that being a part of this webinar, you will get the first version of our piece without having to sign up. But what we did is, if you're for us, it was really important. And I think this is a place that I felt really strongly personally about, is that we wanted to go back to the first school year that this really started to impact schools. What you're going to notice is the way that we frame the conversation is we made up a fictional district, so it's called Central District.

17:57
Amanda Bickerstaff
So think like your kind of 5,000 student district. That was our focal point for the piece. And what we did is we actually go through and what you'll notice is it'll have, we have some research and trends, but it goes through just what had happened to date all the way up until literally like this year. But then what you're going to notice is we don't stop at this year. This is where I think the, if you ask us what the challenge was, writing a story into the future was definitely the hardest part. But what we wanted to do is kind of show this district what had happened, you know, when guidelines were developed, practices, pressure from external forces.

18:36
Amanda Bickerstaff
A question that we have in the Q and A about student use, like all these things that we're grappling with today, but then looking past that to where these tools become more and more ubiquitous and start to really impact the larger world, not just within the halls of the school. And then what you'll notice is there's kind of a moment where there's all this kind of progressiveness and then something has to change. And so what we have here, and to Sari's point, what we realized pretty fast is there a lot of it. I don't look at the titles too closely, but there were definitely decisions to be made. But that would have enormous impact on the trajectory of Central District.

19:12
Amanda Bickerstaff
Whether it was something that kind of go back to the things that used to work without the technology, kind of going back to those blue books and those even more into the traditional way of schooling. One in which we looked at, which was really interesting, is going the opposite direction, where it's going all in on AI for all kinds of things around, not just learning, but mental health and well being and surveillance and privacy questions. And then the third one, where it looks really at this shaking things up so much that change really starts to happen, that we start to look at what has not been working and what has been working in schools for decades and use this as that opportunity to have change.

19:54
Amanda Bickerstaff
The cool thing that I'll say before I hand it over to Sari one more time is that when we have the resources, one of the best things about this is that we've actually created a toolkit where you can do the same exercises that we did in your own institution. And that means that like you can say Amanda and Terry and the whole team, you guys are crazy. But as long as that craziness inspires your organization to do this thinking, this really intentional thinking and collaboration, then we've done our job. I mean, I don't know if you agree, Sari, but it feels like to me, like, even if you don't agree, that's almost as good as anything, right?

20:30
Speaker 2
I mean, that's the provocation we wanted. I mean, we even tried to do some provocations for ourselves. I mean, one of them was we had a lightning talk by Molly kinder of Brookings Institution talking to us about how AI might impact jobs of the future. And, you know, were all reading the headlines and how the economy's gonna change and so on, and she was there to tell us that they really didn't have any evidence that it had changed yet. But here were what was likely to happen here, what the prognosticators believe will happen. When you start to frame it around what do our kids have to know and be able to do upon graduation to enter a workforce that is dramatically different, then you start to have school and work crashing together. Where tools are being used in the workplace all the time.

21:21
Speaker 2
I'm here to tell you, imagine learning. We use a lot of AI tools as we develop our products to try to improve our processes. I mean, that is our own imperative. But I think every organization in the world is thinking about that. How do we deliver products faster? How do we think about helping our customers better? All of those things come together the minute students graduate high school or graduate college. Some of them will go right into the workforce and need to be grappling with these tools. So. So we need to be teaching about AI and use the applications of AI to help improve schools potentially, but also to improve teaching and learning. So we had Google DeepMind was represented there, and we had a lightning talk from Irina, who did a great job of really helping us understand the technology and the pressures.

22:16
Speaker 2
I mean, these model makers are pushing, pushing. And at the same time, I think some of them are thinking very deeply about the impact on education and the impacts on young minds. You might want to talk about that more. I know you have a lot of opinions about that.

22:31
Amanda Bickerstaff
We do, yeah. I mean, but it was. I think that what was the reason why we invited Google DeepMind is that we wanted someone to press us on the technology that had an education bent, but also had this motive of, like, continuing to build these tools bigger and better and more available. And I thought that was really interesting because it kind of forced us to see a little bit of where things are going. She always kept us online of the technology is going to continue to get better. And we can't look at this as A moment in time where it's going to calcify that generative AI today is going to look like the same thing next week in a year to two years, which we know is very true.

23:17
Amanda Bickerstaff
But it also was nice because I think that the group was like, yes, but yes, we want that, but we want. One of the things about the coalition is we want OpenAI and Google and Anthropic and Meta to review the report and think more deeply about the ways in which they are approaching students, the ways in which they're approaching adults and teachers. Because I think that there's a lot of this idea of forward momentum. I don't know if you've heard, I'm sure you've heard, it's the horses out of the barn or Pandora's box which kind of, you know, creates this false premise that we can't stop it, the train has left the station.

23:57
Amanda Bickerstaff
But what we can do is start thinking about more responsible adoption, AI literacy being developed, a commitment to not only developing the tools, but ensuring that the workforce and education is not left behind, the people aren't left behind. Right. And I think that is something that we really wanted to do with this work is that we acknowledge that there are these external pressures. But also it doesn't have to just be hands raised and it's just happening.

24:23
Speaker 2
That's right. It's not happening to you. We can be, we can have intention about it, we can be really proactive and we're just coming off the social media impacts of schools for students in schools. And I think that also leads potentially to a reluctance to engage with the technology. And we know that we absolutely need to. Then the third lightning talk we had was from the students. We had two high school students as part of this. You've just met Rotem and she's going to talk a little bit about this. But they did a great job.

24:56
Speaker 2
They gave a lightning talk that actually profiled three Personas of their high school peers and then three Personas of high school teachers that really was, I thought, very persuasive because we tend to think of all kids as one thing or all teachers at one thing, and they're not. Everybody has a different approach to this and so getting that perspective was so valuable.

25:22
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And so that's a perfect segue. Sari, to bring up Rotem and Jisoo and what you'll notice is the kind of vast difference between these two wonderful humans where you have state level kind of ed tech and then you have a 11th grade student and is such a beautiful representation of what were doing. So I'll ask Jisoo and Rotem to come on video. There they are. Look at these amazing humans. And, you know, it was. I don't know, I think Jisoo got tapped by Julia Fallon. But I will say that Rotem had to go through a pretty. Like, you had to be interviewed. Right. So Maida, the other student, had been our intern who had also had to go through Sari. But Sari, you talked to a bunch of students, so maybe set up like what stood out for me from Rotem.

26:08
Amanda Bickerstaff
And then Rotem, I'm going to go to you right after and ask you what made you interested in even coming and hanging out with us.

26:16
Speaker 2
Yeah. So I interviewed about a dozen students who were recommended to me from a lot of different contacts, and Rotem really stood out as someone who was very thoughtful. First of all, she uses AI in her work. She does not denigrate people who do not. That was really important. And she really was very thoughtful about student use of AI and applications of AI, in part because of the school that she goes to. She's there on the campus of Oracle, which makes a big difference when you're surrounded by the technology. But she also has very, I would say, well, you can talk about your teachers, you talk about. Because I think the experience that she's had is varied and that's what she brought to the. Brought to the conversation. So, Rotem, talk to.

27:05
Speaker 2
Talk to us about the experience that you had as part of this coalition.

27:09
Rotem Haimovich
Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm Rotem and I'm a student at a school called Design Tech High School in the Bay Area of California. It's a charter school, which means it's free, but it's a lottery to get in. But it's very small. It's only about 500 students total. And I really like going here. As Sari said, we're on the campus of Oracle. And that plus being in the Bay Area means that our school is like, pretty advanced with dealing with all of the pressure that comes around AI. So there are many schools in our area that are still complete shut down. Don't use it at all. Any use is considered cheating. But I'm lucky enough that my school isn't like that. And they've been actively working with the students to come up with a policy that both the students and the staff here think is fair.

28:00
Rotem Haimovich
And I heard about this project from one of my school administrators who recommended it to me. And after talking with Siri, I was really excited because ever since, like, AI started becoming more popular, it was. It's always on your mind, like, especially as a high schooler, it's a big part of the future. So you're always thinking about it, people are always talking about it. And so I was just really excited to get the opportunity to talk with people who also cared about it and had things to share.

28:32
Amanda Bickerstaff
And I. I think, personally, Rotem, having met you for the first time, first of all, it was so great because Mehta and Rotem, I think you're buddies now, but the fact that were trying to have multiple student voices in a pretty small room. But one of the things I was really taken with really fast Rotem, was that you had a really measured approach, meaning, like, it wasn't all AI or no AI, but it was like this ability to empathize with those that had fears and those that were excited. And so I think that, you know, to show that sometimes we don't hear that level of measured understanding from adults. And so I think you actually, with Meta, did a beautiful job of balancing that and being that voice.

29:15
Amanda Bickerstaff
Is there anything that, like, stood out to you from, you know, the prep work or putting together a lightning talk? That was, like, a really interesting moment and takeaway?

29:25
Rotem Haimovich
Yeah, I really enjoyed listening to everyone else's lightning talks. The one about how the job market might change especially, as well as the one about Google DeepMind. When I was doing my own research and this was combined with other projects I've been doing at school, I found it really interesting, like, the different ways that students use AI, like the different types of students. And we also talked about that in our lightning talk, but I just really liked listening to all the different opinions there. I think that you guys did a really good job ensuring that everyone there had, like, different opinions on the topic, which made it really interesting because a lot of the times people kind of treat talking about the use of AI, especially in education, as, like, kind of a taboo topic.

30:09
Rotem Haimovich
And so when people do speak about it, they're, like, not willing to actually give their genuine opinion or have a debate with people. But it was really fun that it wasn't that way at all.

30:21
Amanda Bickerstaff
It wasn't. We definitely did not pick small voices. Let's just say we erred on the side of strong opinions. Some of them held strongly, but a lot of them held in a way that you can listen and engage, which I thought was really spectacular. And the good news, Leslie just asked in the toolkit, we are actually going to have the lightning talks recorded with a whole bunch of new ones. So Rotem and Maida will do theirs so that when you do your own convenience or if you just want to learn more, you'll be able to watch those to lead to your own work. So, Rosenwald, thank you so much. Okay, so Jisoo, I mean you. First of all, I just want to say thank you to Jisoo because he gave such beautiful, comprehensive feedback on our drafts.

31:01
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so just as in terms of being a great partner, I just want to call you out before you even get started. But gc, you have such a different perspective. Like, I mean, you are a state education tech. You probably have heard everything in the last three years, from like the big to the bad to the uncertain. And so what made you say yes to coming to the event?

31:22
Ji Soo Song
Well, first of all, as an association, I'm always down for opportunities to sort of relay the interests and concerns of our own state members. But on a personal level, this moment feels really distinctly different from other waves of innovation that have impacted the education sector in recent years. Right. The only equivalent I can maybe think of is maybe the onset of one to one initiatives in the early 2010s. By design, state education agencies move very slowly to ensure that new programs, new initiatives, new policies are implemented thoughtfully. But with AI, all the SEAS are asking themselves how they can more effectively lead and not fall behind other sectors and also their peer states. So as an association that convenes state education agencies, we often get the question, what are your members actually doing in response to all this AI stuff happening?

32:13
Ji Soo Song
So we conduct annual survey of our SCA leaders, which helps keep track of changing state priorities and concern areas. This year we learned that states are focusing on four categories of actions, primarily building their own capacity at the state level, developing and refining their guidance, focusing on professional learning, and also piloting funding and different incentive structures. So as states ask themselves, what next after these four categories of action? You know, CETA wanted to be at the table to be able to speak to the possible scenarios that system leaders can anticipate and help them steer towards or away from a certain scenario to others. So we want to make sure that we can be as supportive of our members as possible.

32:58
Amanda Bickerstaff
And you talk about the personal. So, like the fact that it feels different. Like when you walked, like when you thought about this work and you walked in, what was your first perspective of kind of being in this room with all of these, like, some people you didn't know and some people you did, were you surprised by anything from the actual Group itself and what we ended up lifting up through the conversation.

33:19
Ji Soo Song
I mean, to be frank, the imposter syndrome was crazy. I'm like, whoa, we have Google DeepMind here, we have Tom Van Der Ark here. Over there, Matt Winters, who is one of our members, is sitting and talking about all the scenarios that he's predicting. Right. So I was like, what perspective can I sort of bring in that would be of value to the creation of different scenarios? But I really, you know, appreciated the atmosphere, Amanda and Sarah, that you sort of navigated through our time at the in person convening and also virtually when were refining the resulting narratives. So, yeah, really was helpful to hear from different perspectives of different sectors, from research all the way to government in building out the scenarios.

33:58
Ji Soo Song
So I'm really excited next year when we release these scenarios for the feedback that we'll get from an expanded array of folks that are concerned about the use of AI in Clash of jisoo.

34:10
Amanda Bickerstaff
I don't think it was just you that had imposter syndrome. I feel like I like when I kind of started doing more the facilitation, I'm like, are these people even like, want, do they want to like, be led by me? But I do think that what was so special and maybe Sarah, you talked a little bit about this is that we kind of picked for people that like, we're going to create space for other people. And I thought jisoo, your perspective, especially around pulling us out sometimes, like, you were really good about pulling the scope back. So, for example, Matt Winters, we love him. Relatively pessimistic, my friend. We had Tom Vanderark who just wants to like blow up any conversation to make it bigger and more like the bigger questions.

34:50
Amanda Bickerstaff
But I thought that like, you did a really good job of constantly pulling us back out to be like, how do we think about this actually impacting the people we work with? So I thought you did a beautiful job and were just really glad to have you there. But Zeri, maybe you could talk about like, you know, a lot of people.

35:03
Speaker 2
In the room and a lot of voices, but respectful voices. And I think, you know, this is one of the things I didn't talk about when I said were selecting Rotem and Mayta is they were not afraid to speak up. What was great is you get a 16 year old in a room with these, you know, very powerful, experienced experts. You talk about Peter the og, you know, she wasn't afraid. She wasn't afraid. And there was space for all of it. And there Was an uncanny, I would.

35:33
Amanda Bickerstaff
Say.

35:36
Speaker 2
Coalescence around the urgency that we need to talk. You know, we need to have these conversations that none of us knows the answer and we're stronger together as a community. And I think that is really what drove that respect for one another's opinions and the work that we all need to do together to make a better experience for students and teachers. Ultimately that's what we're talking about. Jason B. Allen was in the room representing parents, which I thought was so important, especially in this day of parental choice in school choice, that we're seeing more and more, you know, understanding and having bringing parents along as part of the conversation. I mean, I think schools more than ever today need to demonstrate their value back to their communities. And parents are a big key to that understanding.

36:28
Speaker 2
The parents perspective on this because many of them are in jobs who are getting changed by AI, some being displaced by AI potentially. We need to be thinking about that too and their perspectives here. And we cover some of that in our fictional scenarios.

36:45
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. There are definitely some parent voices and student voices it represented. So yeah, it was pretty cool. And Jason is like a great example of like we also had Nicole Fuller. Unfortunately she couldn't come in person. You know what, everybody travel, definitely travel. Plus Covid meant were two down. But Nicole, who has a perspective around disabilities and even around like the impact of these systems on like the way they've been trained on those with disabilities is something that we even. We brought in later because they weren't represented in the room. But I want to go back to Rotem. So Rotem, my second question for you is, okay, you're in this room of like, you know, were thank. Thank you. To imagine learning Sarai Factor. We are a tiny little organization. So the fact that were able to have this beautiful space.

37:30
Amanda Bickerstaff
Broughton, let's talk about the snacks. I had the best snacks, the most drinks. I had Topo Chico every day. It was amazing. So they beautiful space. But when you walked in, like when you like walked into the room versus when you walked out of the room two days later, like what had shifted in your thinking? What is your key takeaway? What are the things that remain for you based on the work we did this July?

37:53
Rotem Haimovich
Yeah, I think walking out of the room even like on the first night and even more after we finished on the second day, I was just like really convinced that we have to start doing things now. And I think I kind of had that thought in my mind beforehand. But it just really strengthened my idea that like Even if we don't know what the perfect set of actions are for each school or each community to take, that's not an excuse to not do anything. And not doing anything is probably always worse than trying to do something. And it really just made me realize that we have to start taking action.

38:34
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And you know what, it's why we had such good feedback also about the title. And one of the from you and Mehta was like, it has to feel like there's choice. Right. Like you, we have a choice here. Which I think is really what you. You just said beautifully. Is there anything that surprised you? I mean, you were inside baseball. I mean, you were with people that have been doing this for like Sarai for 40 years. Like, is there anything that you were surprised by, like, listening in on?

39:03
Rotem Haimovich
I. There were some specific opinions that I remember being like, oh, I hadn't thought about it that way, but I was actually surprised by the fact that I didn't actually completely disagree with almost anything that was said because people would explain and I'd be like, oh, I hadn't thought about it from that perspective. Especially like all the like, equity things people were talking about and yeah, like being conscious of the environmental hazards and stuff like that. I just was, I guess I was surprised that I didn't disagree with a lot, which there were so many opinions and I was like, oh, wow, I agree with almost everything that's being said.

39:43
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, it's a complex time where like, you know, this is one of those times where nuance and subtlety is not necessarily what we're good at and education, especially policy, but it is like so important. So, so thank you for sharing. So G7 to go to you because like, you're coming in the room, same thing. You didn't know a lot of people. Right. So I think you were kind of maybe similar. But what stood out to you? Like what were. What was the big shift in your thinking from walking in the first day until when you left?

40:10
Ji Soo Song
Yeah, I think in our sort of day to day work as professionals in this space, we often get caught up in solving the problem of today. Right. Who's launched a new initiative that's worth paying attention to? What are the newest policies that have been introduced and what does it say? Right. And I think the convening allowed me and probably others in the room to really take a step back and examine the long term societal and economic implications of the choices that we're making right now. So I love that aspect of it. The convening Personally, for me, helped me reflect on the more sort of fundamental question, what is the purpose of education? And how will that change due to the growing onset of AI? Right. A couple weeks ago, I had a great conversation with a student from Yale on this exact question.

40:52
Ji Soo Song
Is the purpose of education to cultivate a civically minded citizenry, to develop tomorrow's labor force, to build interpersonal relationships that's necessary to function in today's society? Ultimately, we, that student and I sort of landed on something that folks might agree or disagree with. We felt that it's to help our young learners discover and explore their identities, interests and passions. So my personal hope for this project is that it becomes a catalyst for helping to leverage this emerging technology to help students to do just that. Right. To explore who they are as a person living in this society, contributing to this economy. Who are they as a person? What are their interests? What are their passions? What are their strengths?

41:37
Amanda Bickerstaff
Oh, man. I mean, amazing. I mean. Sarah, do you have something you're thinking?

41:41
Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I think you can't think about AI or generative AI as a bubble aside from everything else that's happening in the world and in the K12 education space. Right. I mentioned school choice earlier and school leaders trying to demonstrate the value of their organization. That's a big vector here. The question about what are the jobs of the future is a big question here. And what is the purpose of schooling? Is ultimately the question at the heart of what we did. Because we kept coming out of just the pure AI question into the broader, you know, broader environment that we're all dealing with in a budget constraint. You know, there's. There are budget constraints, they're declining enrollments.

42:26
Speaker 2
There is so much happening to K12 that it's time that the K12 leaders need to take that urgent, you know, mandate to what? How are you going to change things? It's really on us, and I think of us as the. The whole education field to try to move things forward for the benefit of. Of students and teachers.

42:48
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And I think one of the most interesting kind of what we thought was going to happen versus what we ended up with is if you look at the AI 2027 piece, it's actually really tied to technical moments. So we actually did this piece where we had these technical moments where you move through the possibility of super intelligence. And what we found is that while that was a good format of thinking through it, we actually kind of anchored everything on when AI becomes infrastructure. This idea of when AI and generative AI is part of all the things that we do. Right. It's in our devices, it is in our government, it is creating spaces within teaching and learning that never been before. And we kind of ended up being a little less technical.

43:34
Amanda Bickerstaff
So there's actually a note in the piece that you'll see that kind of measures that we're not saying the technology will slow down, but were prioritizing the human part, the experiential part, the epochs of change that made sense within a school system. So I think it will be meaningful for non education folks. But it's really designed for people that are on this call. And I think that was something that we didn't expect because it's exactly what SARI and gc, you just talked about this idea of like what is learning? What holds us back from system change? What are the key external factors that we have to shift as well. And I thought that was something that is really represented in the work. Okay, last question because we're coming up on time.

44:16
Amanda Bickerstaff
So Rotim and jisoo, we wanted this to be a catalyst, as UC just said, of change within your own practice, whether that is at your school level or with the state directors. Has anything changed? Have you thought any different? Have you done anything with all the things that we learned and thought through with the convening. Rotim, Sorry, yes, please.

44:39
Rotem Haimovich
I can go first. I would say it just majorly inspired me to kind of look deeper into how my community was dealing with AI. And I found that my school doesn't have a set AI policy yet. And we have an AI club that is visiting middle schools and teaching middle schools, but they're mostly teaching students how to not use AI and what to not do. And so it kind of inspired me to go into my community and be like, hey, here are some things that I heard over the summer. Can we start trying them and start moving forward? Yeah, it just inspired me to start trying to apply like all the things that I heard that I agreed with. I was like surprised and hadn't thought of to try to implement that in my school, in my community.

45:33
Amanda Bickerstaff
And this is the thing that is remarkable. You go to one of the most tech first schools in the country and there's still a lack of guidance and support for students. And I think that you know, while I know you are going to impact change, but I think that's such a good anecdote of why this is important. So gc, what about you? Like what are you. What's. Has anything change? Are you guys thinking about it at Cedar at all?

45:58
Ji Soo Song
Yeah, a couple of different things. First of all, so I think, man, I saw you posting this on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago. EdWeek reported recently that training on AI is improving, but only about 5% of that is ongoing professional learning. Right. So this reflects some of the research that we published last month in partnership with iste, Learning Forward and Full Scale. We ran some national surveys and focus groups with state and local education agencies, and we learned a few things about how AI and edtech professional learning is being prioritized right now. We don't always have a instructional North Star vision. We tend to fund sort of individual tool training right now over ongoing coaching. We tend to collect data out of compliance needs, not to improve practice necessarily. And we don't often share bright spots across district lines.

46:46
Ji Soo Song
So we actually produced a guide that you can find on CETA.org on remedying some of these gaps from a system standpoint. And inspired by the AI27 work that we're just engaging in, we'll continue to beat the drum on the recommendations for states and districts that we made in the guide. So that's project number one. And then the other thing that we're doing, in partnership with North Carolina State University, the Friday Institute, and the Spencer foundation, we're going to be launching a new collaborative house at CETA to foster sort of interstate dialogue and collaboration around thoughtful AI policymaking. So I certainly hope the narratives that we'll publish next month will become something that we discuss in our collaborative spaces and something that our participants can reflect on as they develop some new commitments for the upcoming school year.

47:31
Ji Soo Song
So, yeah, that's my hopes for CETA and our things that we're getting involved in.

47:35
Speaker 2
Yeah.

47:36
Amanda Bickerstaff
Well, the good news, everybody. So you can try the Creative Tensions exercise since we've created a version of it. So you can do that with everybody. But also I think what we're going to do with the resources is that Cedar Guide will be one of the resources, hopefully on the site so that you can dig deeper into this. So we're coming up on time. And so I want to thank Jisoo and Rotem for, first of all, you were so lucky to have had your voices as part of this work and ongoing. But I'm going to end with like, Sari and I have, like, what our hopes are. And I think for us, this is a bit of labor of love, everybody. This is definitely, we have a new brand, we have a new name, but it's one of those things where I Don't think.

48:16
Amanda Bickerstaff
I don't think either of us realize just how big of a piece this would be. But also have. I found it a remarkable partnership and. But also I think something that I'm. I'm so proud of. But, Sari, do you want to talk about your hopes for the piece?

48:29
Speaker 2
Yeah. You know, we will put a stake in the ground. It is a milestone to publish this in January. When we do, it's not the end, it's the beginning of the conversation. And, you know, I would call on any educator to engage us further as part of the conversation. We want to create resources for all of you to have those conversations in your community. And I think this is really a time where we can rethink what K12 education is all about. Jesus said it very well about his conversation with the student at Yale. That's what we should be thinking about. We need to think more deeply than AI itself is what is the purpose of schooling?

49:12
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And I'm going to echo Rotem. I think the worst thing that could happen is we don't do anything. And this is a time where there's some. Some people think that generative AI has created these cracks in our education system around assessment, around what is learning and durable skills, and even teacher time, where we spend our teacher time and student time. But I have the feeling very much is that those cracks already existed. We already knew that assessment didn't work for all of our students, that there were major needs that are put on teachers that are outside the bounds of a professional work. We expect so much from everyone within our education, but don't always create the space for that to happen. There's a lack of innovation that's stuck in 25 years.

50:03
Amanda Bickerstaff
That what it feels like to me is that AI, generative AI specifically, is the bulldozer that knocks over the walls. And it's either going to knock over the walls in a way in which it feels like there's nothing we can do and there's a sense of paralysis, or it can knock over the walls in a way that feels like opportunity because what allows us to do is rebuild back better. You know, this is something. This is why it was very. For me, the idea of including inflection point in the title is because think of the Industrial Revolution as an inflection point where our schooling still looks so similar in terms of seat time and classrooms and teachers and students that it does did with that inflection point. And so this is that meaningful of a moment.

50:46
Amanda Bickerstaff
But instead of 70 years, it's going to happen in 10. And so what we hope, I think, for all of us, again, we're putting a stake in the ground. It's a little scary, everybody. I feel like we're going to get some, like, maybe we'll get lots.

50:57
Speaker 2
We'll get lots of feedback. And that's okay. That's okay.

51:00
Amanda Bickerstaff
Because we're going to be good and be like, yes, all feedback is good feedback. But at the same time, if this inspires conversations at all levels that leads to real change and agency, then we've done what we can. So I want to say, first of all, thank you guys for hanging out. You guys hung out. So appreciative of it. Thank you for being a part of this. We will be launching on January 21st. We will do another webinar there to kind of go through the actual report. You'll get all of the resources, the. The piece itself. We'll also have some cool things where the lightning talks, the toolkit. We've got some archetype cards that have been designed that you could do, like kind of who you are as an innovator.

51:38
Amanda Bickerstaff
But we just want to say thank you and I want to personally say thank you to everyone involved. Involved. Because this definitely felt like a pretty crazy idea. But you know what? I think this is a time for crazy ideas. And so thank you, Sari, for being the best partner ever and Rotem and Jisoo and everyone that was a part of the group with us. And we'll hopefully see you again on January 21st. Thanks, everyone and have a wonderful end of your year. Thanks, everybody.