Okay. So, welcome everyone. Appreciate the efforts coming out tonight. We're going to stick to our timeline and hopefully get you out of here while it's still light out. Um, thank you to the strategic planning committee, those that who have attended our last um, meeting. Here are the folks
that are listed. Who's new this evening? I've seen some nice new happy faces. Great. We're going to get you signed up and a part of the committee. Uh, we appreciate again your efforts and your feedback. It's very important to me and the school district that we hear from you, your thoughts as we build this
plan. Lyanna is going to explain Notebook LM. Who's familiar with it? Okay, great. This will be a great learning experience. It's an AI tool that we've been using um in the district. Just going to give the podcast. Yes. Okay. Go
ahead. Okay. So, uh thanks. Hi everyone. Uh so, Notebook LM is another component. You might have heard of Gemini, right? For our staff, we know Gemini. That's Google's chatbt. We're familiar with that one. Um, so Notebook LM takes
what's in Gemini and really brings it to the next level. This is currently only available for staff, but in the pipeline there, a version of this will eventually become available for students. And basically what it does is we took everything that we did so far with strategic planning for this. We took our slides from our first night, our fact
sheet, we took all of your individual tables that you all took notes about your glows and grows. imported all of that information into this technology and used it to be able to get more information out of it. So, um just to show you really quick here, one thing
that it does, um it has this thing called a mind map. So, again, it takes all that information and puts it into an interactive way to look at it. So, it gives us information about what we went over with our district overview. It has demographic information all the way to
the actual themes of what you all talked about. This is all AI generated from that. Um, but to even bring that to the next level, one other This is really cool. Uh, one other thing that it'll do is if you give it a prompt and say that
you would like more information about it, then we actually get a podcast show about the information that's been presented. So, this is a cut down version of the podcast. Welcome. We're doing a deep dive today into the uh the very first strategic planning meeting for Egg
Harbor Township Schools. That's right. We've got the initial notes here. Yeah. We want to unpack the key strengths. They call them glows and the areas they flagged for development, the grows, you know, the priorities and maybe the challenges ahead. Okay. So, let's start with the good stuff, the positives. What
were those consistent glows that uh that kept coming up across the different teams? Well, what's really striking, I think, is the the huge appreciation for the teachers and staff. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's mentioned by almost every team. I mean, looking here, teams 1 3 4 5 7 8 9
10. Wow. That's significant. It really is. It suggests, you know, a really strong base of dedicated people in the schools. That's a major asset clearly. Absolutely. And uh it sounds like there are already some strong programs in place, things people valued. Oh, absolutely. especially at the high
school level that get a lot of positive comments. A solid foundation of positives. Now let's pivot. Let's talk about the other side the guru the areas where people saw room for well growth. What were the big themes there? Right. So looking at the areas needing
attention communication really stands out. It feels like a a really pervasive theme across multiple teams. Yeah, teams four, five, 6, 9, and 10 all brought it up. It seems to be about clear communication with parents, needing more consistency in the information, and maybe streamlining how information gets
out, making it less overwhelming. Team 7 actually mentioned uh too many funnels of communication. So, communication is a big one. What else was flagged as a significant growth? Yes. Facilities and uh potential overcrowding that definitely came up, especially with the preschool changes. Exactly. Teams four,
five, and six noted concerns there. How that expansion might impact the K to 5 buildings. Yeah, the logistics of that, right? And beyond just space, there was talk about needing general facility upgrades, things like uh HVAC issues. What about the kids themselves? Their
overall uh well-being, also a key grow, student support and well-being. Uh teams three, four, and 10 really highlighted the need for more mental health support for students or staff, too. Both actually, students and staff. Okay, that's important. Yeah. So, for you
listening, you should now have a pretty solid sense of the district's starting point here. Their initial reflections, the direction they're starting to map out. It's uh it's a really fascinating glimpse into how they're beginning to shape the future of education in Egg Harbor Township. Yeah. And it really
makes you think, doesn't it? Considering these initial glows and grows we've just unpacked, what aspects of the Egg Harbor Township School District resonate most strongly with you? And perhaps more importantly, what specific areas or developments will you be watching most closely as their strategic plan takes
shape? And just to reiterate, those are computer voices. They're not people. So again, it took everything that you all talked about from our first night, the transcription and everything. We put
it into the system and it on its own detected what those common glows and grows were. So just like we talked about in this room, the technology picked up those same themes and that's basically where we're moving into night two. Okay. Thank you Dr. Mullen. Uh she but
she hit me up about 3:30 and said, "Hey, why don't we show the how that works?" So that's cool stuff. We've used it before um in a presentation that we we've done at a national conference and it just summarized everything that we presented and it presented it in a podcast. So that's really cool. So, just
to get everybody up to speed, we put out a survey before we started the school um the strategic planning process and we got survey results, but after the last meeting, we followed up with another survey to uh get a little bit more information and drill down because there
were broad areas such as communication, uh facilities, but what do we need and what do we want in those areas? So, facilities, communication, students, well, well-being, staff support came up. Under the areas of facilities, um the question was what facilities related
issues should be prioritized and planning for future growth was number one. Addressing overcrowding and improving HVAC. So tonight you're all going to have a chance to give feedback uh to each one of these areas but and it's on we'll have this information for
you but know that planning for future growth overcrowding and HVAC are the topics for for facilities under communication. The survey says consistent communication across the district streamlining information and
sharing it out and increasing in-person communications. All right. Right. So, when you get to the communication conversation, um what I'm sensing is we have all these different tools that are going out at different levels and from different schools and activities and it's hard to keep track of. So, we may
need to look at um one tool, student well-being. The survey says mental health resources are needed, academic interventions, and social emotional learning programs. What aspects of student discipline need
attention? Support for transitions between grade levels, consistent consequences for negative behavior, and restorative practices. For staff support, what staffing and support initiatives are most important?
Improving staff retention and morale is most important. Training for power professionals and professional development opportunities. technology and artificial intelligence. This theme, this topic, um, we felt as as a school district, it's something
that we want input from the community. Um, it's it's new. It's up and coming. It's it's taken off at exponential speeds. Um, and it's it's out of the hands and control of some. And it has to be we have to be educated on it to to
know how to use it wisely and purposeful. All right. So, in education, we we have um briefed our teachers on this and we are training our teachers on on AI and we're going to share what we have done so far, but it's important that our students know how to use it. If
not, it can be dangerous and we're all seeing that. So, Dr. Graham, Dr. Mullen, Miss Moss, where are you? Okay. Um we presented and we've attended various conferences over the last couple
years. So in 2023 the ISTY conference uh we attended live in Philadelphia and this we're just coming out of COVID and I was like you know what I got to get back in the game here. All right we we've done so many things with COVID but about innovation is like my thing. So I said I got to get back in the game.
Let's go to this conference and we went got a train and we rode up and we spent the day with robots and we talked about um you know artificial intelligence and the and the need for policies and regs and this and that. So, we get back on the train heading back. I think we we went from Philly to Hamilton and um I
said, "You know what? We could do this in Egg Harbor Township. Let's get an innovative team together. Let's tap into the resources we have in our school district, in our administrators and teachers. Let's bring them together and let's find out what tools should be used in schools." So, that innovation team
was established. Dr. Graham and Dr. Mullen led that team for me. And there's teachers from K through 12, all different buildings. And we tapped into them. Mr. Mason um is a leader um on on that team. And anybody else in here that
was sat on that team, Mr. Dory as well, Christina. Okay, great. So they'll they'll be able if you you get a chance to talk with them, they'll be able to share what's going on. But from that, we established policy policy on artificial intelligence. You can look on our website. It's there. We're one of the first districts in the county and almost
in the state that have done that. We're served as a model. Our policy is a model. In fact, superintendent's roundt meeting two months ago, this topic came up. People were like, "What's this AI? We have to get control." I'm like, "We're in control. What do you need?" So, there's going to be a summit this
summer for Atlantic County superintendents and we are going to present um because they're interested in creating a policy because they see what the artificial intelligence what's happening in their schools. We also presented at New Jersey school boards. Uh Mr. Dory was was on board and Mr.
West at that presentation. Um we we talked about the process of our innovation team and the importance of creating policy. We had professional deh development. Um Carl Hook came to us. I also saw him in San Diego at a conference. Big on technology national
speaker. We brought him here for our staff to hear. And just recently we presented at the um FETC conference in Orlando this past January and received feed great feedback and questions. Um you know we we had a packed house and we even had a presenter that presented to
Atlantic County superintendent uh get in touch with you. Dr. Guser, I saw you in Florida interested in what you do and spoke to Atlantic Atllanta County superintendent about it. So, um, we're we're we're we're proud that EHT, um, is moving forward and we have a grip on the
artificial intelligence and what it can do. We want to be able to use it productively and in the right way. So, I feel it's very very important that tonight we share just a tad bit with um with you folks, particularly the parents that are here because we did share with our board of education where we are and
what we're using. But I'm going to turn this over to um the ladies here as they're going to go through uh Brisk and other tools that are being used and some of these things our teachers are using already and you know um already in place. So it's a great tool. Uh thank you. So, um, our
innovation team is made up of preschool to 12, gened, special ed, content areas, um, teachers, administrators, and collectively we've done a lot of research about what we felt was going to be the best AI tools to embrace for our
district. So, one thing, um, our teachers know, uh, for grades four through 12, we have, um, embraced Brisk. Brisk is a Google Chrome extension and it has some of the other features that you might be familiar with like with Turn It In and some other ones that are
out there, but it's all comprehensive in one and allows for generative AI for those teachers. Uh we also do have other AI tools such as Canva, uh Adobe Express, and the one that we just showed you right now that uh Google Notebook LM is also available for staff and most
recently Gemini 2.0. It's actually 2.5 now uh because it changes every other day it seems like. Um that is our universal basically LLM or chat GBT equivalent in our district. It is safe. It's within the Google domain. It's something that our district already has
embraced the whole Google for education. So it made sense for us and it's now available for students grades 8 through 12. So students now have access to this as well and it's in a safe encrypted environment and they don't have to worry about any data privacy or things that you'd have to be aware of with other
LLMs because it's within our domain. Let me just say something. So so you know you might be sitting there saying oh gez these tools and you know chat GBT is a real popular tool these kids are using it. That's why I said that a faculty um in September was it this September or September before? I think it was even
before time's gone so quickly. It's like we're not going to be able to fight this. We have to embrace this and learn what it is, become educated so we can see how kids are using it because kids are using it before the staff was using it, right? So you're thinking, oh, they're cheating tools, right? We have to change our mindset. You know, they're
going to they're going to do that. They've had the internet before to look up things. Now they have AI that's going to write something for them. So our teachers have to be able to detect that and we have tools for them to be able to do that. But how can we change our mindset and change our teaching
strategies to embrace AI to embrace something like a a chat GBT and say okay go ahead do it now maybe let's look what the robot said and now compare it to you know the the knowledge you learned in class um there's other tools where teachers can detect that's that's the
robot that's the kid so um while at times it can be challenging it can be used beneficial it could be a benefit So we what we started with our innovation team um last year in September coming off that conference is just kind of researching finding out
what is AI, what about it, what's going to how is it going to impact schools. So um if you haven't seen it, this is a great 60inute um episode. Oprah Winfrey interviewed some of the pioneers of technology and around AI. Sam Alman um
Christopher Ray is an FBI agent but all discussing AI and the potential of it and the one big thing that came out of it is it's coming and at an exponential rate and so there has to be rules and regulations around it. So some of these statements may look like oh it's scary
but as Dr. Gushio said we embraced it knowing that it's coming. When um Dr. Gushio spoke with students at all three levels this school year, they already knew all about AI and told her, you know, some of the good ways that they use it to help them, you know, draft an
email or make an email sound even better before they send it out to colleges or to businesses. One high school student shared how he uses it for his business. Seriously, a a profitable business productivity. Yeah. And so taking that
information, we're, you know, we took it, the committee went through and as you saw, vetted some resources that our teachers could use. And our next steps is now looking at how we're going to put it into curriculum. Our governor created a task force um last year knowing that
AI was coming and wanted New Jersey to be at the forefront of it. And that the expectation was how are we going to embrace it to get our markets to be at the ahead of the game with this? And so that's our next step now too is looking at bringing some of our innovation team
members um who are in the area of technology and seeing how they can use it to create um curriculum and activities around creating efficiencies with technology using AI because that these are these are the jobs of the future and we have a slide that'll talk
about that in a minute but I just say we've encouraged our teachers to use um for their lesson planning right it's going to give them um extended ideas, extended learning opportunities for our students. So that's okay. Um so this slide just kind of
shows that the changes are coming faster than we know it. You know, we a lot of us grew up in the Jetsons. Never thought that we would see it coming, but now officially a concept car that's out there that flies. Um, so we're just
going to show you a little uh tidbit of that. For all the advances in automotive tech, one issue only seems to be getting worse. Gridlock traffic. But this Silicon Valley startup says the solution comes straight from
our imagination. The flying car. You can actually use it today and you can cut your commute at least in half, if not more. Jim Dubovny says his company ALF Aeronautics was able to create something we've been dreaming about since the Jetson. We're trying to make science
fiction a reality. And while not quite ready for the road, Yukabnney says the flying car is about to take off. NBC News was given exclusive access to see their concept model with our own eyes. If everything goes smoothly, uh, I'm going to watch a car fly over
another car. We'll see. Sure enough, we watched it soar through the air over another car and land. But for all the magic of this moment, we were heavily restricted, forced to shoot at least half a football field away. And we never actually saw the driver entering or exiting the vehicle. But you're not
still all the way there yet because, you know, you wouldn't let me in the cockpit yet. There's a difference between you and the consumers. We still have some AP uh intellectual property which we're trying to protect. So far, more than 3,200 early adopters have pre-ordered their
$300,000 allect electric flying car, and the company is aiming to begin production by next year. But practicality might be where the rubber meets the sky. Only a few countries allow for the kind of roadto-air reality DVN envisions. It's going to be slow
incremental approach, which is good for uh legal integration, which is good for consumer integration. But he says as demand grows, regulations will catch up with the tech. For now, it's still that cutting edge pie in the sky. Steve Patterson, NBC News, Silicon
Valley. So, very interesting. A few of us um viewed this a little while ago and we had conversations three years ago at Strategic Planet. Dr. Gusio spoke about the jobs that don't exist yet. And so looking at, you know, what's here, we
were talking about, well, when it gets in the air, what are the type of jobs? There's going to be air traffic control for these cars. There's going to be people calling in. You know, you can fly at this altitude. You're safe to fly at this altitude. So, so many things that are in the works with all of this growth, and we want you to know that we
are at the ahead of it. We're trying to stay ahead of it, researching it, and and making our students aware of all the possibilities and jobs that could potentially come out of this. So, we're looking at it as far as career pathways as well. Um, and then these are just those jobs that Dr. Gushio mentioned in
strategic planning three years ago. None of these were on that list and here they are now. Actual highpaying, as you can see, positions that are out there as far as AI and cyber security, AI productivity, prompt engineers that are
trained to enter the right prompts. So Microsoft, all of these big companies have people that do this for their position. So we didn't know these existed before. And you know, we have all the um the workings in place, the policies, teaching and learning guides
around AI and also the committee that constantly stays on top of the research as Dr. Mo mentioned, it changes every day. So every day we're learning new information and you know just trying to be aware so we could bring it um in a ethical way to our students so that
they're aware of it and use it the correct way. So I thought it was very important to share that with you since we're talking about our future and what can happen and what's going to happen. Some of it's unpredictable but when I saw this I'm like this is crazy but it's in the works
you know. So is I mean we have cars out there and Dr. Mullen has one. It parks itself, drives itself. Um so it's here. It's here and it's now. Uh and we just want to make sure that we are able and ready and think, you know, those three, four, five years ahead so we can prepare
our students for uh the future, which is crazy. And we're going to be changing just, you know, for a flying car rules and regs and traffic are going to change, right? So towns are going to be looking at if they're going to allow them. if they do, you know, who's going to fly them and would do you go on the
right side of the air or the left side of the air? You know, I I'm not sure. But this morning, I was in a traffic jam in an accident and I thought about that and I was like, well, I got to just lift my car over and over all this, but so would everybody else, right? So, would they all be crashing? So, anyway, lots of thoughts have to go into these
innovative ideas. But these are the things that um the young minds are um attracted to and you those new jobs that are out there, these are what our kids are going to be doing and we have to be able to offer the opportunities and be knowledgeable about it and that's why
we're here. And our last uh category and you're going to go around is uh popery and that's um meet with the superintendent. All right, easy. Okay, easy. Okay, so here's where we are now. It's called the G gallery walk. And
where's Miss Moss? You're going to explain that for me so I don't mess it up. Hi everybody. All right. So tonight we are going to move around in groups. You're going to have about 10 minutes at each station. You're when you walked in
tonight, you got a card with a number on it. That is going to be your group. So, you are going to start at the table that corresponds to your number. Don't move yet. First thing you're going to do when
you get there is what uh there's going to be some butcher paper there and some markers and you're going to think about the topic and ideas that you have around it. And then there's facilitators at each table that are there to ask to lead the discussion.
um they're going to have answers for you if you have questions or or need some more information about what we currently have in the district or other pieces there. And for 10 minutes, you're going to have a conversation. When the timer goes off, you're going to rotate to the
next station. Number six will go to one, one will go to two, two to three, and then you'll have the opportunity to see what the group before you wrote down. You can add to it. You can ask clarifying questions around it. You can
have your own ideas around what it is. But the idea is that each group will be able to give input and see the input that everyone else has given all the way through each of these topics. And then at the end of the night, I mean after you go through the full rotation, we'll
explain about those dots. So keep those dots on hand. We'll use those at the end. But for right now, you're going to go to the corresponding table. So, it starts up here with facilities,
communications, and it loops around. [Music]
Hey, hey, hey. [Music] [Music] Okay, everyone. If you were able to uh distribute your dots, whatever, you did good. And uh that basically concludes the evening. What we're going to do is
on meet again on May 21st, we are going to look at the dots and uh compile the information because the job you'll have next is to create goals and objectives and they will roll into the plan and then the district administration will
insert the action plans the goals and objectives that you created and then we proceed for the next three years to meet the strategic plan for Egg Arbor Township School District. All right. So, thank you very much. It's still light out. Have a good night.
[Applause] [Music]