SEE Framework

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Stanford cheating study

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Navigating AI Ethics in Education Webinar: From Deepfakes to Academic Integrity

AI’s Impact on the Environment Classroom Guide

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Sample Choice Board

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Prompt Library for Educators

Free Course: AI Essentials for Educators

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.

Corey Layne Crouch

Corey is the Chief Program Officer and a former high school English teacher, school principal, and edtech executive. She has over 20 years of experience leading classrooms, schools, and district teams to transformative change focused on equity and access for all students. As a founding public charter school leader, she ensured that 100% of seniors were accepted to a four-year college. Her focus now lies in assessing the broader K-16 edtech ecosystem, uniting stakeholders at all levels to build a more equitable and abundant future for all. She holds an MBA from Rice University and a BA from Rowan University.

Mandy DePriest

Mandy is a Curriculum & Content Developer at AI for Education. She has over 15 years of experience in public education, having served as a classroom teacher, library media specialist, and instructional coach. She has also taught education technology courses in higher education settings as well as professional development workshops for teachers on the transformative power of technology. She is committed to ensuring that students are prepared for the dynamic demands of the future by leveraging the power of technology-driven instruction.

00:02
Amanda Bickerstaff
Welcome.

00:02
Amanda Bickerstaff
We're so excited to have you here today. It is AI Literacy Day, which is so exciting. And a lot of our team is here with us as well. And we already see Agatha from Dubai. Nice to see Agatha. And it is AI Literacy Day. And if you don't know, AI Literacy Day was actually one of the first things that I thought about all the way back in October 2023 when talking to Aaron Moat from EdSafe AI alliance, it became a day. So we're actually our second annual day. Really excited.

00:31
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so I'm here with Mandy and Corey from our team at AI for Education and we're going to take all the learnings that we have from the last year and a half doing AI literacy work in schools and districts to talk about some of the ways in which you can start thinking about this for your own context. So I'm going to introduce Mandy and Corey. So I say hello and then give a little bit of background and then we're going to get going.

00:55
Mandy DePriest
So should we jump in and say Hi, I'm Mandy DePriest, content and curriculum developer at AI for Education, former educator. I spent 15 years in the public schools in Arkansas and I'm excited to be here with you on this beautiful AI Literacy Day.

01:11
Corey Layne Crouch
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to whatever time it is in your area of the world. I'm Corey. I'm the chief program officer here at AI for Education and I'm also a former educator, a high school English teacher, as well as a former principal and spent some time building and designing and supporting implementation of in the ed tech world as well.

01:39
Amanda Bickerstaff
Well, we're just so excited to have you all here today. As we said, Literacy Day is in its second year, but as always, we have over 200 people here with us today. Mandy, if you want to go to the next slide and as you're already starting to say hello, we appreciate that. But also you're the community of practice. And so when we talk about creating a, an AI literacy plan at your institution, you're already doing amazing stuff. In fact, I can see some of the the participants are from schools or districts or higher education institutions we've worked with. Some of you are maybe in our Train the Trainer program. So I know you've learned quite a bit. And so please make sure to always like, share. We love our chat.

02:14
Amanda Bickerstaff
It's one of the most important things that we do and just really excited to have this conversation today. So we're going to go to the next slide.

02:21
Corey Layne Crouch
So why are we really quickly Amanda, sorry to interrupt, but I'm seeing in the chat, if you're saying hello in the chat, make sure you toggle to everyone. If it says host and panelists so that everybody can see your brilliant insights and thoughts that you share.

02:36
Mandy DePriest
Absolutely.

02:36
Corey Layne Crouch
Back to you, Amanda.

02:37
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, and if we see something great and you don't remember, we'll tell you as well. But just really excited to bring our knowledge of AI literacy work that we've done. And it says school or district, but I know like Joe and others might be in higher education, we believe this is very strongly appropriate for any organization. In fact, I would say for any organization outside of education as well. I mean, I think that what we're finding is that this is where we're all learning together and no one really has nailed. And so the ways that we think about this, and we like a four stepper, if you've seen our work before, is that we first think that you have to actually start to define AI literacy first.

03:14
Amanda Bickerstaff
And I think that's the most important part, is that there are lots of different definitions, including, I have to say we have one of our own. But what we see here is that like, when it comes down to it, you have to kind of, you have to define what this is going to be. For some institutions like Digital Promise and others, they have a very strong focus on computational, like algorithmic understanding, whereas we have a little bit of a different view that is more akin to like digital and media literacy. So that's something that's going to be really important for your institution to start with. We then want you to build a team. And so I would like to ask if you have a task force or collaborative or PLC in your organization that's already doing this work.

03:54
Amanda Bickerstaff
We love that for you and we want to really have that be established. We don't want just to be a team. We also believe so strongly you have to actively understand what is happening within your institution. Because I think that we often have misconceptions about what's actually happening. And this is a good time to build evidence. Then once you do that, we now have to think about the AI literacy plan itself. So like, what are you, how are you going to identify the best times, topics and opportunities to start building AI literacy? And what you're going to notice is that we're not just talking about, for the faculty or teach or staff, we're going to talk about community.

04:30
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so Corey is really going to go into that part and then finally how are you going to embed it so we have a little bit of an example of how you can think about the next. The next 12 months of how you can do this. But we do want it to be something that becomes part of everything that we do in terms of work, professional development, and training. So we'll go to the next slide and start with what we believe very strongly here and that this needs to be for everyone. And I cannot say this. I'm going to say it again. This needs to be for everyone. And what we see right now is that it's primarily for teachers, support staff, and leadership. And what we want it to be is we want AI literacy.

05:08
Amanda Bickerstaff
This is why ALRC Day exists, is that it is for everyone within an education community. So we believe that students, even students that are in K5 that might not, like, well, not, might not, but they definitely. We do not espouse or support using generative AI tools directly with those students without AI literacy work and choosing tools that are developmentally appropriate. But student AI literacy should start in kindergarten. And I'm going to say that very strongly, and I think that Mandy and Corey will support me on that. We also believe, of course, your teachers and support staff, but also your leaders. And I will say that if you are a leader here, building, you know, building your opportunity to, like, bring in other leaders as well as your board to build, buy in is going to be very important.

05:54
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so we definitely believe that's a very important component of this. And then finally, this is our opportunity to link with home, like, to parents and caregivers and communities. They're either, like, the parents of your students are either familiar with generative AI and already doing this work with their young people. In fact, on this week, we had some guidance and development work we did, and a 11th grader said, you know what? I talk to my dad every day about the news. And so we talk about generative AI, and that's why I feel more confident to use these tools. But then on the other end, what we know is that research shows that those that are not familiar, like parents, aren't familiar, then they're going to be. The kids that they have are going to be less familiar as well.

06:33
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so we know that this is going to be very important to create that connection between home and the classroom, especially around safety. If we go to the next slide, first thing we want you to do is start defining AI literacy. AI literacy for us goes beyond just academic integrity. And I have to say this like, you know, if you know us, you've seen this metaphor before. It's something that I have to say, definitely, we sometimes build things because we don't see them anywhere else. And what we see online still today is that the major conversation in education is about AI is for cheating. So, Corey and Mandy, have you ever heard that AI is for cheating? Maybe once or twice. Yeah. Someone, I'm sure you in the, like in the.

07:20
Amanda Bickerstaff
You might even have said it, maybe, or heard it yourself within your organization. But we have to say that AI literacy isn't just about ensuring that students don't cheat with AI because we have to say, I mean, let's talk about it. Let's real talk it for a second. Kids have cheated before AI and are going to cheat whatever comes next. And so the reason and the purpose and why this happens is so much bigger than just AI being here with us today. It happened before graphing calculators and all these different technological advancements. And a lot of that comes down to how we actually structure instruction and assessment. Right. The way that we actually assess students, at least for the last three or four decades, we know, has really not worked and has not been truly authentic.

08:04
Amanda Bickerstaff
So the idea here is that we need to have a bigger discussion with AI literacy. And what I think sets us apart a bit is that we believe it needs to be a balance of both positive and responsible. And so for us, there are so many cool ways. And I'm actually ask Corey and Mandy to come off mute, but, like, let's just talk about it. So for me, like, one of the things that I love to do is I really like to get feedback on what I'm writing, especially since, honestly, like, we are going very quickly with what we develop. And every once in a while I'm like, this is just not working for me. So I use like Claude or ChatGPT to write feedback on my writing all the time.

08:38
Amanda Bickerstaff
But Mandy and Corey, are there other things on the positives that you really enjoy? Let's start with Corey.

08:43
Corey Layne Crouch
Oh, absolutely. I use AI a lot to. I think of it as enhancing creativity or more so as a brainstorming partner in particular. To your point, we're constantly developing new materials and new content. And so if we have like a new keynote coming up or we're thinking through new courses, I will actually use ChatGPT voice mode as a brainstorming partner to capture my ideas. And I, I even, I most often do this when I'm driving places. So it's like having a conversation of getting our ideas down while. While I'm also getting to whatever training it is that we have in person that day. How about you, Mandy?

09:31
Mandy DePriest
I'm kind of with you on brainstorming. I'm sort of the opposite of you, Amanda. Like, I have a lot of ideas, but I have trouble getting started. Like, I have fear of the blank page and so I will usually use it to get me started. Using that ask me questions prompt, I'll say I have to do this thing. I have ideas, but I'm not sure how to start. Ask me questions one at a time to help me coalesce my thinking. And I feel like it helps me organize my thoughts and also makes me think of new things that I hadn't even thought of before and that are not even necessarily what the bot suggested. But as it spoke to me or interacted with me, I started my wheels turning and got ideas that I didn't even have before.

10:09
Mandy DePriest
So I feel like I've never been more creative or productive than since I've started using these tools to enhance. So I get the concerns about, you know, cognitive offloading and like, maybe limiting creativity, but I personally find that's kind of a user, like depending on how you use, it can have either a positive or a negative effect. So I think it's great.

10:30
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely. And I think that to Manny's point is that there are anything that we do at all with technology, it's going to come down to how we approach it. Some of this we're not going to have control over like misinformation. That's happening at a really high rate now. Especially now with GPT4O, where you can create images that look not only real, that can replicate like language pretty great, it can actually render text and others and like deep fakes that are very possible. In fact, one of the students, when I talked about his grandmother, saw a deep fake and they had to teach her about deepfakes because she was so absolutely convinced.

11:06
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so I do think there are some opportunities here to really understand some of the global issues that are going to happen with more and more with generative AI, but also some of the things that happen. So for us, with academic integrity, for us, the biggest risk here is that students are offloading all their thinking, so they're actually replacing their own thinking and their own foundational skill building and opportunities to grow with generative AI. Because now we have the easy button, right? That easy button. And I will say the vast majority of people, including students, don't really know how to use generative AI effectively. So they tend to get the worst out of it. So a lot of kids will hit will just cut and paste the prompt for their book report into ChatGPT.

11:48
Amanda Bickerstaff
And then they get this book report back, and they maybe cursory glance at it, but just cut and paste it and put it right into a document. So two things about that. One is that recently a young person did that in one of our schools we work with, and it had a character that did not exist. Straight up. There was a character that did not even exist in the book that was hallucinated by the generative AI. So it was clearly AI generated. So we know that's going to be an issue. But then on the other end, I think that what we're starting to see is that students are, you know, unaware of how to use these tools in meaningful ways, that even if they don't try to cheat.

12:24
Amanda Bickerstaff
One of the students on Wednesday said, I asked for help on my essay, and then I had to learn to say, don't give me the answer. Don't just write the essay for me like you just said, Mandy, give me questions, give me feedback. Because the tools themselves will kind of just do it for you unless you know how to prompt it. So there's a lot of opportunity here. And if we move to the next slide. And so, yes, and Stephanie, we do have a great guide for prompting for students, so Dan and our team will pop that in. But I love the conversation going, so keep going. But for us, AI literacy, this is our definition is AI literacy consists of the knowledge, the skills, and the mindsets. And I just want to really focus on this.

13:05
Amanda Bickerstaff
I think that the knowledge of skill is totally important, but mindsets of appropriate use is going to be where we spend most of our time that enable individuals to use AI in three ways, safely, ethically, and effectively. And if we go to the next slide, let's actually talk about what that means, because I think that for us, what we like about this is that at first, it balances that you just have to know what it is. Everybody, I'm going to tell you right now, even if you're here today, you might not really know the difference between what AI is as a field and what generative AI is today. Because generative AI is really what's brought us here today. That ability for, you know, you to use natural language like writing or. Corey talked about speaking to create something new.

13:45
Amanda Bickerstaff
And that new thing could be an image, a video, a lesson plan, an essay. But that is something that's been not just new, but really only a part of our lives for the last three years. And so the ability to understand and differentiate. We had. I'll go back to Wednesday. A teacher in the session changed her academic policy to go from students can't use AI to students can't use generative AI without permission. She actually changed it live. It was, it was very funny. And she was like, oh, wait, I actually need to know more about this to set my students up for success.

14:19
Amanda Bickerstaff
There's opportunities to understand about the role of training data because of the quality of the training data actually impacts not only the quality of the outputs, but also if it has bias that is very like a part of the, you know, it's always going to be there as part of outputs, but if you have a very biased data set, then your outputs are going to be pretty biased. The capabilities, limitations. This is where Mandy likes to say, and we have to say this idea of learning about and learning with. And so for us, the best way that we could do this, especially with older students into adults, is actually having them learn how to prompt and actually push the boundaries of the capabilities and limitations.

14:57
Amanda Bickerstaff
So if we go to the next slide, let's talk about what this really means, though, in terms of starting to apply these guidelines in an AI literate way, is that one is that we just want you to be safe. We just want everyone within our organizations, our institutions to be safe. And I don't just mean students, because we can be convinced of deepfakes, phishing. You know, we could create a deep fake. You know, we can create an image of ourselves, not realize that now this could be shared. But the idea of protecting your own data privacy and the data privacy of those around you is incredibly important. Knowing what tools. There's a lot of fake chatgpt out there.

15:32
Amanda Bickerstaff
Everybody, if you go to, if you want to try this out to see, go to your app store on Android or Apple and search ChatGPT and see how many fake versions there are. And if you know the right one, because it's going to be called, it's going to say OpenAI, which is the company that built it. But actually even understanding that and then also maintaining that healthy human AI interaction. And we mean that in two ways. One is that there are some people that are using these tools for AI companionship and becoming dependent on these tools as well, as we might just be giving away all that good thinking.

16:05
Amanda Bickerstaff
So, for example, when Mandy was talking about how she and Corey were talking about how they use it, I don't think I, as their, you know, their colleague, would be super happy if they were like just giving chatgpt all the things I asked them to do, because I do ask them to do a lot. And so I think that safety component is really important. And it goes way beyond what we just commonly see, which is just the idea of data privacy and security. The second thing is around ethics. This is where academic integrity comes in. But also just like, do I understand the climate impact that every time I hit a button, like any technology, it's going to have an impact on energy consumption. But also it could have other pieces around professional and academic integrity. There are other, we talked about it.

16:47
Amanda Bickerstaff
Biased disinformation, deepfakes can also be issues here. And then finally, I think this is where the verify before you share rule is really important. And so the idea that everything, things are going to look so real that we need to be able to verify or in this case do no harm. Like if we think we're creating a really funny image of someone and then it gets taken out of context, it could really be damaging. And so that's going to be important. And then finally, we just believe this so strongly is that you have to, especially as you are going into your career or college, we should be teaching kids how to effectively use how to use these tools.

17:24
Amanda Bickerstaff
And whether that is being consumers of the tools and applications or actually learning how to prompt this is so important because just last week LinkedIn actually identified that AI literacy was the number one top rising skill out of all of them. And so AI literacy, you're already going to start seeing them on job postings, on expectations for internships, and even into college. And so we really think that's important. But also we want you to make sure that we're really teaching people how to use their own humanity, expertise, care, attention, creativity, to make the most of these tools.

18:03
Amanda Bickerstaff
Because I'm going to tell you right now, people that use their own expertise or own thinking and originality as the center of how they use generative AI will do so much better and they get so much better output and they're able to do things that have never been possible before. So I'm going to hand it over. And so this is what, like we would suggest for you all thinking about that first step. Does this resonate with you? Do you want to look at other types of definitions or do you want to define it for your context? So I'm going to go to the next slide and I'm going to hand it over to Mandy.

18:37
Mandy DePriest
Thank you, Amanda. And I will say too, the se I just wanted to add, we structured it that way on Purpose with safely and ethically coming first before effectively. So it's important to kind of get those guardrails in place before you can even think about effective use. But moving into our next topic, which is, okay, we've sold you've bought into it. We need to build AI literacy. What do we need to now do? We would suggest starting by building a team and gathering evidence because that's going to help you make your AI literacy initiative the most relevant and helpful to your context. So the first thing, and I saw several people in the chat mention they do have a team going and that's great, is to create a cross functional team that includes a variety of stakeholders, maybe beyond what you initially think of.

19:29
Mandy DePriest
So I mean of course school leaders, teachers from a variety of disciplines, go down to your PK in kindergarten, elementary, you know, if you're higher ed, make sure you get somebody from every department, including like CTE or whatever that you might not initially think maybe has much use for AI because they certainly do. Like this touches everyone. And so we want to make sure we get everyone's perspective, include students in this, especially like young adults. Everyone at AI for Education is sick of hearing me talk about this book, but 10 to 25 the science of motivating Young People talks about how we can help younger people, like buy into stuff that older people want them to do.

20:10
Mandy DePriest
And so if we come at it as this, well, here we're going to decide and we're just going to tell you how it's going to be, then you're liable to encounter pushback. But if you bring students to the table as equals, your needs are just as important as our needs. Let's talk together about how we can come to an agreement that works for everyone. Then you are much more likely to get buy in from students as well as from parents. You need members of your IT staff to help you vet like the logistics of data privacy and safety and evaluating tools and rolling them out large scale across your organization. And of course board members, anyone from the community that might have a vested interest, whoever you can get on, and these might not all be like around the table all at once.

20:49
Mandy DePriest
You can use surveys or other instruments to collect data from them, but just as long as everyone has a chance to make their voice heard, that's going to give you the most balanced and holistic approach in your organization. Like Amanda said, we need to start with a common understanding of AI literacy. It might mean one thing to one person and another thing for another person. And so they're having A conversation about it, and they don't realize that they're talking about two totally different things. Maybe for one person, it's like she said, technical details. I understand, you know, what a transformer is and what natural language processing is. And maybe for another person, it's more, well, I know how to, you know, evaluate a deep fake image or something like that, or I know not to cheat or whatever.

21:26
Mandy DePriest
You know, more of a conceptual mindset type of thing. So you want everyone to start out from the same place. So make sure you've got some way to build a common understanding of AI literacy for this group. And finally, make sure you have a clear goal that is aligned with your organization's mission and values. I would suggest you start when we talk about aligned implementation. We talk about starting with your mission vision, looking at the teaching practices that are already happening, like, what are your academic goals that you're already rolling on, and then thinking, how can AI come in to support that? Rather than leading with the technology, because that's how you're going to keep your people at the center and their needs at the center and help them understand that we are not supplanting anything that we're already doing.

22:10
Mandy DePriest
We are trying to bring this in as a tool to enhance. And then, so speaking of gathering data, we have a suggested list of questions. If you don't know where to start on that short link there on the screen or the QR code, I think Dan will drop it in the chat as well. He already has. Awesome. But if. If you just want to, like, quick start, you know what you would ask. We have five questions that will help you gather data already for your context. When we did our last train, the Trainer Institute, we had a participant who developed a presentation based on survey data that he had conducted at his.

22:44
Mandy DePriest
He was at a higher education institution and he had talked to students, he had talked to faculty, he had talked to administrators, and he had very detailed statistics, and he could pinpoint exactly what they were worried about and what his training needed to focus on. So we know that he can go in with a high degree of confidence that any conversation he has about AI literacy at his institute is going to be right there, bang on the nose for anyone's needs. Amanda, Corey, have I missed anything in this section that you would add? I'd love to hear from you guys.

23:14
Amanda Bickerstaff
I just think there's so many, like. Like, we have so many ideas of what's happening, and then I ask people in the room and like, we tend to do, like a keynote, we'll be like, how many of you have used ChatGPT? And I promise you, when you ask other things, people like those that have put the training together are always surprised by that. They either over estimate it or underestimate it. And then often we have no knowledge of what's happening with kids. Like, are they using generative AI for personal use, for entertainment? Corey can talk about this, but when we did our ethics piece that we had around AI companionship. Corey, let's talk about the top 10 apps. How many of them are companion apps?

23:51
Corey Layne Crouch
Oh yeah. The top 10 of unique monthly users. Generative AI apps. Three of them. Character AI is number three in the most unique monthly users. And then two others, Janitor AI and Spicy Chat AI, which are both avatars, are in the top 10.

24:12
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, and I, we don't want to be canceled, everybody. We did not name it.

24:16
Corey Layne Crouch
But it is not name it. We're just giving facts.

24:19
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, exactly. But I will say that Snapchat AI 150 million users. It is by far the second most used in terms of an embedded app. And so I think that this is, yeah, Rachelle, we'll send you that. We'll, we'll put that into the top 10. But I do think as an evidence person, everybody, please, we made it so easy. It's the five questions. You just hit go. It makes a force copy, you can change it, we edit it. We tend to update it and edit it. And then we also have prompts in the library that help you analyze the data. So just this is, it's going to take you five to 10 minutes and I promise you're going to learn so much more to drive you into a good direction. So thanks Mandy for popping it over to us. So now to Corey.

25:04
Amanda Bickerstaff
So Corey is going to like and actually I really want you to focus on this. Like if you're in the chat, you've already been talking about how to get started. So really think about that for this section. Let's do it.

25:14
Corey Layne Crouch
Well, we talked about first you need to have that clarity about what AI literacy is. What is it that you're even trying to build for your community? Who's a part of that cross functional team that is going to help to spearhead this initiative. And now we can create. You can go to the next slide, Mandy, you know, start thinking about your plan. And when I think about this and when we're working with leaders, I definitely am thinking about, you know, when I was a school principal with only X number of days in the calendar and 100 staff members with varied needs and the need to continue to drive toward our priority student outcomes.

25:58
Corey Layne Crouch
I'm already thinking about, okay, I believe that this is an important topic and priority, but where does it fit into our overall training plan and really that overall calendar and plan for professional development for your staff as well as in the student experience and student schedules and courses? And what we want to encourage you to do is think about where it fits in already. Where is this overlap when you're thinking about the priorities for your district or school, your teaching and learning need, priorities in that professional development and in the student experience? And what do you want to build with Gen AI literacy? Like Amanda said, we do say, you know, you gotta get the foundation of learning what AI is so that you can then learn with AI. So you have to have some initial sessions of laying that foundation.

26:56
Corey Layne Crouch
But then think about when you're doing, you know, instructional coaching and instructional practice or when students are learning the content in their core classes. Where does generative AI literacy and tool and appropriate tool use already naturally spiral in with those objectives that you're driving toward? I recognize, easier said than done, but we're starting to see examples of this where you can find ways to integrate it throughout as well. If you map it out according to the schedule that you have, we can go to the next slide. Now part of being able to identify that and build an AI literacy plan is really understanding what is your training capacity. So you have a cross functional team already thinking about your implementation and we strongly encourage you to think about how are you building that in house capacity to develop leaders and trainers.

27:56
Corey Layne Crouch
And it might be some senior teachers that are really excited about this topic. Instructional coaches, school leaders. We even have, we have a student intern that we work with that she's actually leading training and discussion with her peers because she has built her AI literacy with us. And you'll probably want to do something where you're thinking about both building your capacity in house and partnering with external literacy trainers as well. And I will make the shameless plug here for our Gen AI literacy trainer institutes. Our resources can help build your capacity. And then you can also have a few folks on your team start to build that training expertise so that you can even better embed it within the training schedule and plan that you have for your school.

28:55
Amanda Bickerstaff
If I can jump in here, I think that we get a question a lot from like a lot of organizations that come here, come to us, have already tried to do this work. And what happens is I think that there's such A culture of like another lms, another student information system, another ed tech tool that sometimes it can be quite hard for you as those embedded within institutions that are already doing this work to get people to understand this is just not another thing. Like, this is just not you coming in and saying, and today we're doing this and it's going to be. And then the teacher goes, oh, I'm just going to close my door. And a year later it's going to be something else.

29:32
Amanda Bickerstaff
And, and we know that happens, but we, one of the things that we think about with the partnering piece, whether it's like going to webinars like ours or other Reese, great resources or people in the community, even like industry leaders in the community, come in and talk, is that it allows you to not push something. And that's. Instead it's like, here's this expert that's coming in and talking about something really important. And what happens is that allows us to get like, allows us to say things that are hard for you to say. And I think that is, you know, especially for us. We're not selling anything. We're not selling a tool or anything along those lines outside of AI literacy. But I do think that's really helpful.

30:10
Amanda Bickerstaff
And what you'll notice is like, luckily we have a couple people in the group that did the trainer. A lot of what we are focusing on that is like, how do you build psychological safety? How do you answer hard questions? How do you, how do you make it feel real and good and a little bit funny and a little bit weird and, you know, all the things that we do to create comfort. Right. And I think that's your opportunity, whether you do this in house by building capacity or you work with people like us.

30:37
Corey Layne Crouch
Yeah. Yes. And I'm going to say we might not make a ton of friends with this one, but I'm going to say it because we deeply believe it. We also believe that this AI literacy plan that you have needs to beyond training that you might get for tools that you sign up with. So I know some of the edtech tools and their teams offer training to really help you maximize the tool that you're paying for and make the most of that investment. But per what we've been covering, we deeply know that AI literacy is about the safety, the ethics and making smart tool selection and appropriate use selection outside of just what is this one tool interface and how do I get all of the features to work.

31:26
Corey Layne Crouch
So we're not Saying, don't do that training with whatever tool you may have signed up with. But we believe you need more than that to help support the full, you know, safety, ethics, and effectiveness of using Gen AI. We can go to the next slide and what we've been hit, We've hit on this a bunch, but we'll say it again, that the training should be for both your staff and your leaders, as well as students and the broader community of caregivers and parents, and potentially even your community business owners that support your students so that you're learning together and building an understanding as well as a compass for how you want to safely and ethically navigate Gen AI integration in your. In your community and in your school. And then.

32:25
Mandy DePriest
Oh, sorry, Corey, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say we've been getting more and more requests from, like, parent groups and like schools who want to provide training for their staff, specifically on communicating with parents. And I think that's as a result of parents starting to be more aware and starting to ask questions. And so I think it's helpful to get out in front of that as much as you can and kind of help build goodwill by saying, like, we're being very transparent. We're communicating with you. This is, this is what we're doing. So.

32:53
Corey Layne Crouch
Absolutely. And even the districts that were working with on Wednesday, Mandy, to your point, there was a parent in the room as part of their task force, and she was very much saying, we need to make sure we are providing learning opportunities for the parents because we're trying to have students build a skill set of appropriate use. And even it's not helpful if students are following the guidelines in the classroom, but then they go home and the parents aren't as aware of the different tools that they're using and whatever is appropriate to use to guide them. Mandy, you want to talk about our principles for effective training as well? Let's go ahead and go to that slide. So now that once you have your team, you're starting to think about where does training fit within our priorities and our calendar and our schedule?

33:52
Corey Layne Crouch
You have to make sure the training is effective.

33:55
Mandy DePriest
Yeah. And this is what we've kind of gleaned from our experience providing training to schools and districts all over is we kind of need to see these things. Number one, focusing on general AI literacy before specific tools. Corey spoke to that very well just a moment ago, because a lot of times people will kind of put the cart before the horse because they've seen something on social media like there's lots of teachers are excited about this one tool, so can we anchor it in this? And we always advise you to take a step back. Build that general AI literacy first because most of those tools are powered on foundational models.

34:31
Mandy DePriest
And so all of the same issues regarding bias and hallucinations and like just ethics of use all apply and so you'll be able to develop more general skills and move with agility between tools if you have that first. So that's the first step, build general AI literacy Second, focus on building capacity, not expertise. I would say one of the most frequently asked questions we saw in the last train the trainer and I've seen a few times and this one start to come up as well is what if people ask a question that I don't know the answer to? Like there's, they feel this intense pressure to know everything all at once and we need to communicate and be really clear to everyone. Like that is not the goal here.

35:07
Mandy DePriest
Once you have the basics in place, that's enough to start, you know, thinking about how you want to incorporate it into your practice. And you'll learn as you go. But don't let the goal of being a perfect expert that knows everything about AI get in the way of you being a proficient AI user today. So build that capacity, not expertise, that more knowledge will come. Number three, respecting teachers agency and autonomy. When it comes to using gen AI, I think this is huge. I think we had a question just yesterday at our AMA about like how do I get these teachers to buy into this and do what we want them to do? And it's like, well the, you may not be able to get them to fully buy into it and that has to be okay.

35:48
Mandy DePriest
Like this type of technological shift happens in the context of subjective feelings and emotions. Everyone's going to have different experiences and beliefs that they bring to the table that they're going to combine with their professional knowledge, their knowledge of their field and their content area. And we have to trust teachers to be the professionals that they are and make informed decisions about how this will fit into their teaching and their subject area. And so I think it's a good idea to create guidelines and frameworks that people can operate within and make choices within. One of the things that we hear all the time is well, AI is just here to stay, so we have to learn about it no matter what, you know, and it is here. But like that really undermines teacher agency and autonomy.

36:30
Mandy DePriest
We do still have a lot of choice about how we want to integrate it into our practice, how we want it to look, what tools we want to use, how we want to talk about it with students. And so you want to develop guidelines that are broad enough to accommodate a wide variety of integrations of AI into their teaching, but then specific enough so that people still know what to do. It's a fine line. Number four, you want to customize your training for the audience needs. If you are talking to an elementary audience, that's totally different than if you are talking to a higher ed audience in terms of, you know, what tools can be accessed, what the concerns of the audience are going to be, whether they're more concerned with like safety and privacy on the lower end.

37:13
Mandy DePriest
We see that a lot with elementary, or if they're more concerned with academic integrity and things like that, we see that on the higher end. So think about what they care about and you can demonstrate quickly in your training why this matters to them and speaks to that. Number five, providing opportunities for hands on practice is probably the biggest thing. There was one study, and Amanda can probably quote it chapter and verse recently, that showed that a lot of the people who had negative feelings towards AI had not actually used the tools ever. And so what we always try to include in our training is some kind of hands on prompting or exploration of the tool so that we can immediately demonstrate what the value is for you.

37:50
Mandy DePriest
And we often see people as they start to use it, like at first it's really quiet and then they start to kind of nudge their neighbor and be like, hey, look at this. And then people start laughing as they start doing silly things and realize the capabilities. And you can feel like the vibe palpably shift in the room. And I think more than anything that helps move the needle on any kind of resistance or skepticism or questioning. I mean, certainly we should still maintain some caution, but like just kind of getting over that initial hump of, you know, resistance, hands on opportunity is the best. And then finally continuing support. It can't be a one and done, not with something like this.

38:25
Mandy DePriest
You need to, in that initial training, talk about, here's how we're going to continue to support you, whether it's through continued partnership with an outside organization like us, whether it's through incorporating it into cadence of PLCs or professional development that you already do, whether you're going to deploy instructional coaches to help support. But what are you doing to help teachers continue to develop their understanding of these tools? Where can they go if they have questions? Identify who they need to ask. That just helps Develop that sense of psychological safety like Corey was talking about earlier. Like, we have planned for this, we have made provision for this. It's okay for you to ask questions and make mistakes. It just helps develop that culture of innovation and experimentation and things that you really want for ideal AI implementation. Amanda, Corey, what would you add?

39:14
Amanda Bickerstaff
I think I just want to say I know this probably feels like a lot. And what we would suggest though is that if you think of these as like general operating principles, meaning like you're not, no one needs to be an AI expert, including you. You know that we're focusing on foundations first before we going into specific tools and also thinking about those customizations that like, honestly also like, what is the most dramatically interesting and engaging thing you could do. So like Jim and the. And it's like, you know, there's a couple things that he loves doing with teachers. Like if you're in higher education, show how to use research, like, show like Notebook LM and how it could be great at like understanding and working with really dense research papers.

39:56
Amanda Bickerstaff
I mean, I think that part of this also is finding your own voice in this. If you're going to be the trainer as well as knowing the vibe of the group you work with. Because some people are going to want it to be, they're going to be most interested in the, the ethical concerns, like Manny said. But some people might just be like, man, I spend five hours every week doing X and I'd really like to do it both better and like more quickly. Like that is a great thing to nail first. Like, and it doesn't mean you have to do a whole thing just on that. But like if you're going to do the basic introduction, include something about that introduction.

40:32
Corey Layne Crouch
Absolutely. And, and if we can go to the next slide, Mandy, we have some ideas and examples for working with both with students and your whole community. These are things that you can do in workshops, in class, but as those separate follow up activities as we're talking about planning for continued support and really embedding it, providing case studies to discuss and to really apply those AI literacy guidelines or academic guidelines, you know, whatever you're working with. This is what our student intern is actually doing with her peers where they have a set of guidelines, but she is presenting them with some scenarios and they're discussing within their advisory groups, having debates about what is the impact of the tools and the guidelines that we've decided upon as a community.

41:31
Corey Layne Crouch
Having students having teachers create their own infographics or their own one pager resources to have available to them in their classrooms or even in the hallways of your school, for example, to help support the application of AI literacy principles and guidelines. And then, of course, in breakout groups, have students, have parents, have your staff and educators put things into their own words and then their own context and present it to one another as well. We can go to the next slide because we will be remiss. I know we're coming toward the end here, but we would be remiss if to not tell you about a few of the things that we run into. I mean, and I know, Amanda, even you and I this week ran into some of these common issues and barriers.

42:28
Corey Layne Crouch
I mean, one, you can really prepare for a lot of these by thinking about how you would address them less. Like, explaining tricky concepts like hallucinations and AI detectors is a bit of a tricky concept because it can feel like we're taking a helpful tool away from teachers. And so even thinking about the components that might be a little controversial within the group, like AI detectors and student use, really thinking about how you're going to navigate and in fact, invite varied opinions within your audience so that you, they can see what the range is and really discuss and connect it to common vision for your school and your students. Tech issues. I think we both ran into WI fi issues this week.

43:16
Amanda Bickerstaff
Oh, my gosh. Yeah, also, just like, can I just say that, like, one of the reasons why we don't often train with like a Gemini or Microsoft copilot is it'll just straight up say no. For example, on Wednesday, were doing an image generation piece and someone in the Gemini was like, I do not build images. And we're like, yeah, you do. And it's like, no, I don't. And so like, I do think that just even like the tech issues of, like, honestly, I've been in places where not only has bandwidth network, but literally every chatbot in the world broke when I was in Iowa last summer. If you were training on that day. I feel bad for you too. I feel bad for the people that were hanging out with me. But I do think this is where it gets.

43:57
Amanda Bickerstaff
I just, like I said, according to the chat, like, I feel like, honestly, like, part of our job is just like rolling with the punches and showing how these could be teachable moments and like, you know, doing a lot of turn and talk when things don't work and having a lot of little things in my back pocket for that.

44:12
Corey Layne Crouch
You know, thinking out loud, the troubleshooting. And we'd have we don't have it quite on here. But the other thing that we navigate a lot too is because these tools can be unpredictable and we're live modeling and we, that we think that's what you should do and sometimes you get really inappropriate outputs for, you know, we try to be careful about it and we notice it right away. But even being ready to see, like I was modeling character AI on Wednesday and pulled up Saquon Barkley and he was extremely flirty to the point where I was like, okay, that we're not doing this example anymore because it was a bit uncomfortable.

44:57
Corey Layne Crouch
And while I had preferred to not be put in that spot in a brand new district that we're working with at the same time, it was such an important teachable moment because they were learning about the potential risks of something like character AI if their young people are on it frequently engaging with these avatars. The other thing I think Amanda and I both hit, were talking about it on Wednesday with our group cognitive overload. We find that six hours is the maximum. But even in, you know, an initial training of just a couple hours, knowing how much you're offering your audience, they are likely going to hit a point where they need to digest. And same with our students as well. And then of course you'll get, we'll get resistance or pushback.

45:48
Corey Layne Crouch
And thinking about those mindsets goes back to, like Mandy said, the importance of some of that agency and autonomy. And it also is helpful when you do the gather evidence in step two. You are potentially already know some of the folks on your team that you'll have to help, you know, navigate to around some of the things that might be blockers for them as they engage. What else, Amanda?

46:18
Amanda Bickerstaff
I mean like the Herb is a good buddy in the chat. Like, I mean if you've done this, you just know that like I think the way we manage it is you can do your absolute best but just be like humor, you know, like don't show your discomfort. I also just say one of the things that like I think is so important about what we do is when something doesn't work because a technology like Genai might have a bandwidth issue or it might just get stuck. People think it's broken. And a lot of what we do is to say refresh. And it is that simple action of saying just try again that has so much meaning for those that are really on the fence and or are not very technically savvy. And I think that's where it really is going to be. Like, meaningful.

47:06
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so I think that this is where we believe very strongly that part of it is just, you're just a partner. You're just like, you're just there to make sure that it goes as well as possible, keep it fun and light, but also, like, help them when they need to be helped. Because I think that people are really, like, uncertain. And so that's why keeping the vibe you can sell like us, we're, like, very happy, like, supported. You know, we care a lot. And I think that goes a long way for this as well.

47:31
Corey Layne Crouch
It also helps to show, to highlight that idea that we say that this is about building capacity and not expertise. Even as people that do this all of the time. I mean, we navigate the technology in the same way that everybody else is navigating the technology when we're doing the training.

47:50
Amanda Bickerstaff
Absolutely.

47:53
Corey Layne Crouch
All right.

47:53
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yes, we're coming.

47:54
Corey Layne Crouch
Yeah.

47:56
Amanda Bickerstaff
So how do you do this? And I think this is what the thing is, everybody, number one, is like, we think about embedding. Once you've built generative AI literacy, what we would highly suggest is start identifying tools that you think could be used in meaningful ways. And that might just mean chatgpt, or it might be Gemini or Copilot or quad, or it could be something like consensus AI if you're doing a lot of research. It could be, you know, brisk or, you know, Magic School if you're in K12. And so I do think that this is where it gets really interesting here, is that for the same thing we talked about, those aligned, think about the 3D. The three overlaps mapping spheres is that you need to pick a tool that you want to align with the key outcome.

48:38
Amanda Bickerstaff
So, for example, if you're saying, I just need a chatbot for our. Our faculty or staff or students, the answer is why? Why do you need that? Is it to build just AI literacy? Okay, that's.

48:51
Mandy DePriest
That.

48:51
Amanda Bickerstaff
That makes sense that it would just be a chatbot, but is it to help with critical thinking or brainstorming or lesson planning? And that's where we want you to really think about what is the actual purpose of the tool so that you're able to a set people up for success, but you're also not inundating people with 10, 15, 20, 25 tools. Because a lot of them, I will be honest, if the foundation models make mistakes and are not great yet, then any application is also going to have those limitations. And so they might solve for some things, but it is impossible. Not almost apostle. It's impossible to solve for all of them at this stage because the technology is so new. So it's almost better to be like really targeted first because also these things are expensive, these things are not cheap right now.

49:37
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so I do think that's where we want you to think about because if you wanted to pull in every tool, it would cost your entire tech budget, if not more. So if we go to the next slide, Mandy, and we're kind of coming up to the end, we have a couple things for you. So Mandy actually is. If you don't know who we are, like I, Amanda, I helped, I started the business and then I do a lot of our training and strategic work. Corey is like me, very similarly on the road a bunch. And Mandy also does training, but also Mandy is the lead on our content. So if you like anything we shared today, let's give Mandy some like applause because she's the one that's doing all this work. So this choice board is actually a great way to get started.

50:17
Amanda Bickerstaff
So Mandy, you want to share that? Yes.

50:19
Mandy DePriest
Well, thank you for that, Amanda. But it's also very much a team effort. All of our thoughts go into creating these resources. So I'm just thankful to be part of the team. But we often find that when we get to that hands on component of a training, we have people who are already kind of familiar with the basics and are ready to kind of do some self exploration of some different tools. Or maybe you're in a situation where you are deciding what tools you want to pilot and you just want to kind of get quick exposure to a lot of tools. Something like a choice board will help you kind of structure like an independent exploration of tools.

50:59
Mandy DePriest
And so we, this is actually just a Google Doc that we share and this one has these particular tools based on what the group were working with when we initially made it wanted to do. But we've done several versions of this point at this point with different tools. You know, if they wanted to explore presentation tools or if they wanted to explore research related tools or things like that, you know, you can customize it however you want, but we just provide the link to the tool. Sometimes we put, you can see this one has like a sample task immediately underneath it. But if you wanted to make it a more open structure, you wouldn't have to include that. You could just have the links to the tools. And that lets everyone gain exposure to a wide number of tools.

51:39
Mandy DePriest
They can make sure they find the one that's most relevant to them, the most relevant use case and they can give you Feedback about what they like, what they didn't. And that can help guide your decision about what to implement in a pilot and also what to if you're going to purchase something, things like that. So we have the short link there, I think. I'm sure Dan has dropped it in the chat already, but welcome you to take that, copy it, you know, do whatever you like to help build capacity, not expertise in your people.

52:06
Amanda Bickerstaff
Yeah, absolutely. And I dropped it in. I beat Dan, but I dropped it in. So you had the choice board. If we go to the next slide, you know, the last couple of things we just want to think about in terms of the embedding is like just starting to think through, you know, when and how. So like for your leaders, like when is the best time for them to engage? It might be summer, you know, this upcoming summer when they, if you have 12 month employees, like that might be the place. Or during like kind of days where they don't have people on site. Right. Because we know that leaders, if you have people on site, like you're not fully paying attention. So think about that for staff, like what do you already have? Already allocated.

52:48
Amanda Bickerstaff
And I wrote a note about this in the chat. But like don't just do an AI training where you have to find a day and a time, but like can you infuse AI tools and ideas directly into it? And someone just said about GPT4O image. You can do some really fun like image generation stuff. Like you have your weekly meme for your trainings or after school sessions you do with teachers. Just build one live and show people how to use natural language. Not just to build the image now, but also to edit it. You know, Mandy's been having a lot of fun with cats, everybody. There have been lots of cats everywhere. There have been cat memes.

53:23
Mandy DePriest
Everyone loves cats. I'll just say so.

53:25
Amanda Bickerstaff
That's cat. Corey has two cats. But there's cat memes, there's cat. All kinds of things happening. So there's some fun there for students. This is where we really believe it can be embedded in your already if you already have digital literacy programs or media literacy. But we do believe that there's opportunities at onboarding with advisory or homeroom core classes. We have seen really good examples and we have a curriculum as well. If you want to try it out around AI literacy work that you can pull into an ethics unit or into civics or you know, it's. There's a lot of really good opportunities but also just like Again, pick the, pick your battle, pick that battle. So pick your, like, moments to like, infuse some of this work.

54:04
Amanda Bickerstaff
And what we would suggest is we love a think aloud, actually talking about how we use the tools. It works really well for all audiences, but also for students. Show them how you give feedback and you took something that was pretty crappy and you made it better. And I think that could be really helpful. And then finally, can you start to do work? We've seen webinars be very effective. Family nights, even recorded could be really great to bring people together. Okay, next slide. And I think we're coming up on the last piece. And so what we have is like, there, this is just an example for you all. And we're going to actually, I think for our train the trainer, we're going to create a version of this that you can use.

54:43
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so we'll make sure to share this on the site as well. And so an example of like an AI literacy plan is like right now, if you don't already have an AI team, this is a good time to either start the AI team and, or start building evidence. So gather that data and then understand when and how, because I'm going to tell you right now, if you notice that 90% of your students are using generative AI, you should be planning for student AI literacy as quickly as possible. And so understanding that is going to be easier. It's also going to be easier for you to build, buy in with whoever's making those decisions if it's not you when you have that data in hand.

55:19
Amanda Bickerstaff
December, like we said, that's where you can do a lot of like we've seen, actually Corey and I have done optional and Mandy as well. We've been involved with like optional PD days that have been really well received in summer. But also if you don't have a set of guidelines, this is a good time to start them if you haven't already. And also picking one or two or three tools that you're going to pilot with different groups so that when you come into the next school year, you've got your AI literacy plan, you've got your set of simple guidance, and you also have some tools you're going to be focused on. And then in the fall, this is where we would love you to kick off AI literacy, make it a big deal. Have it be a day.

55:53
Amanda Bickerstaff
I'm telling you right now, kids care about this, everybody. There has never been a time, I think, where kids do not care about the same thing. That we care about so much. And I promise you that. And so have a big day, make it a big deal, have a lot of fun, embed that those opportunities for staff and then also socialize those guidelines and start building those piloting pieces. And then finally in spring, just continue. This is a continuous process. And Mandy actually wrote a slide that really resonated with me this idea that like it's not a, it's a, like it's not a in state. Like gen AI literacy is not going to be a shining goal on a hill. It is a lifelong learning, it is a journey and it is as much about that learning together as anything else.

56:35
Amanda Bickerstaff
And so I think that's going to be just really important for us to understand that none of this says here 100% AI literacy by X. We love that and we would love to see that. But it's much more about how are we building these systems, these spaces and the opportunities to build AI literacy as an entire, you know, if you're a high school, middle school, elementary or university. So last piece is, you know, we don't stop learning ourselves. And so one of the things that's really nice is that you guys can be part of our journey and we can support you. And, and so whether you join or have us come in or do the work, we also have free webinars we're doing. So Leon Furze is, is Australian. I don't know if any Australians were able to come because the time zone.

57:18
Amanda Bickerstaff
But Leon is a really good guy doing really interesting work still. He's still working within organizations but he talks a lot about assessment practices and so he'll be joining us next week. It is free and it's a great one. So if you want to do this, we can, you know, drop this in the chat, but know that it will also include it in the email tomorrow. And then finally, we are your partners here. There's so many free resources. If you've never tried our prompt library, we have a free two hour course. We're hoping to have a student course soon, probably for the fall. I keep like all things that, you know, we should be 90 people instead of, you know, 10.

57:54
Amanda Bickerstaff
We have a lot of big goals, but we also have our newsletter if you're really interested in like learning more about AI and education. But I just want to say thank you all for being here with us today and celebrating AI Literacy Day. We can come off share. I mean, I think that, you know, as the person that had the crazy idea two years ago to be able to have hundreds of people join us, not just here and around the country and also the world has been really amazing. So I just want to say thank you all for being a part of this journey. Whether you're just getting started or you've been doing amazing work, we appreciate you. And I want to say thank you to Mandy and Corey, who I could not do this without, and Dan.

58:29
Corey Layne Crouch
Our fearless leader.

58:31
Amanda Bickerstaff
You guys are stuck with me, but we just appreciate everybody. We'll be sharing the recording and resources tomorrow. Good luck. Just like, you know what? This is a day to celebrate this new opportunity of learning and the opportunities that will come with it. So thanks everyone. We really appreciate you and hope you have a beautiful day.

58:47
Corey Layne Crouch
Thank you for being here, everyone.

58:49
Mandy DePriest
Thank you. Bye.