##VIDEO ID:KBx5kSilTko## [Music] iance to the [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] present y I uh call this meeting of the Board of Education to order the board would like to welcome the audience and thanks you for attending viewers may watch Board of Education meeting and Board of Education meetings and board committee meetings Li tcaps.net backboard recorded meetings may be viewed on demand at the same address uh please rise and join Miss W's uh grade or fourth grade class from Central Elementary in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands one nation godible andice it's always fun to see what speed we're going to go at but I do I do like the video still um so that the uh we had the review approval portion of the agenda do I have any motion to approve any changes I move to approve the agenda as presented [Music] second post say name motion carries public comment I believe there is a public comment so the board has set aside this time for public comment and individuals addressing the board should have one opportunity to speak and shall be limited to three minutes individual should not make personal attacks unrelated to actions affecting the school system we strongly encourage common courtesy and control feedback detail rules and procedures including a complaint process are outlined in policy 2504 thanks David Richardson hello everybody um hi I'm dve Richardson I'm a teacher at West High School also parent of two young children so very interest in their future uh thank you all of you for everything do board members volunteer your time for District we really appreciate coming out on this night tonight thank you Stacy for everything you done amazing conratulations High she so good at her job social Force together on the first day I came in there years ago as I think longterm substitute thanks that but I want to comment briefly on the topic of the study session which is artificial intelligence and urge um some caution and circum circumspection of with that not department at all was amazing and I've ever encountered building the district level has always been super helpful super competent um but I do want to just give a teachers perspective and a little bit of a social perspective on AI um I think from a teacher perspective I went looked through the presentation tonight looked through sort of drawbacks and benefits I don't think it's super useful in my job what I do personally I'm just one teacher this is just me uh I see teaching as primarily a human connections job I don't think artificial intelligence is good at doing that now and I kind of hope it never is it makes me question what humans really are um I think some of the stuff that uh is is in there improving workflow and things those are promises that haven't materialized yet I will say just from my perspective for years of having many Tech tools introduced made available to us ask us to use those I think overall they've not made my job easier or more efficient they either just reformatted the same problems in a new way or often added a layer of hindrance um some things I found really concerning in there um I think the prospect of using AI for human learning and connection to students is really concerning and I think IDE AI tutoring or AI feedback is is dystopia from my point of view I would be pretty upset if I found out as a student I was getting AI feedback and I wouldn't trust it to um to to make the human connections with students that make learning really happen I kind of suspect it's it's a way to continue to ask more of public education without giving us any more money and it's not free let's to kind of move on briefly just some social worries about AI uh a lot of the drawbacks in there including at a time when our sort of exorbitant and morally indefensible energy demands are leading to a global climate and social crisis being told by sort of tech oligarchs that we need to exponentially increase our energy demands to make the computer talk to us and I don't see a democratic conversation happening about what we want the future of like AI to look like talking about the social fabric of humanity here I know you guys aren't going to do that but this is a little layer of democrac so I would ask um please don't spend a dime on AI teachers thank you thank [Music] you all right um moving on to consent um do I have a motion to approve the consent calendar as presented I move to approve the consent calendar as presented and without discussion second right all those in favor say I I all those opposed say n motion carries um so then we're moving on to the study session I think we can just still start I think they can just roll okay so uh late uh last year we had the conversation about our first study session uh looking at AI we've had lots of questions and we've talked to students about it we've seen headlines and different things so um our team has put together a presentation to just give a flavor of some of the things that we're seeing now uh questions wonderings uh issues all those kind of things is kind of a a perimeter to that that will not in any way end all and be all to our AI conversations moving forward but I think it will uh spur some interest in the board and even thoughts about policy and those kind of things as it moves forward right rapidly forward of what we see with that um so uh I think that I'll go ahead and pass it over to Evan and and uh go ahead and get started good evening uh yeah excited to uh be here tonight and talk about something that is rapidly uh evolving uh something that be here at tcaps um especially I know from a tech perspective and working closely with curriculum um don't take lightly and and how it can impact What's Happening Here uh in education and our students and our teachers um so though it's a very exciting development and something that um we want to make sure we are kind of keeping up you know with with what's happening around us we also want to be very measured um and how this is kind of happening and rolling out and taking into a lot of the considerations that we'll make mention of tonight um and I think to John's point this is certainly just kind of the beginning um every day it's getting bigger better faster uh and it's something that is is certainly hard to wrap your hands around but we're we're doing um I think a pretty good job in in using leveraging the people uh in our district to do that as well as we can um so to kind of a a point of of where it's at to this point I think this video uh it's about two minutes shows some of the latest developments is uh open AI who's the creator of Chad GPT and figure one robotics company uh sh kind of some of the combinations that they have [Music] of hey figure one what do you see right [Music] now I see a red apple on a plate in the center of the table a drying rack with cups and a plate and you standing nearby with your hand on the table great can I have something me sure [Music] thing great can you explain why you did what you just did while you pick up this [Music] trash on it so I gave you the Apple because it's the only uh edible item I could provide you with from the table [Music] great so based on the scene right now where do you think the dishes in front of you go next the dishes on the table like that plate and cup are likely to go into the drying rack next great can you put them in of course [Music] all right so how do you think you [Music] did I I think I did pretty well the apple found its new owner the trash is gone and the table wear is right where it belongs I agree thanks figure one you're welcome if there's anything else you need help with just let me know [Music] so just kind of a quick example there of what we have you know from what we've started AI existed in a lot of different forms I think early on we've used it in a lot of ways anytime you've interacted with those really fun chat bots on a website those are really primitive forms of AI right response to you before maybe you get to a real person uh and now we have things where again like if was pointing out you have the dexterity to do multiple tasks at once explain its reasoning uh all why kind of then moving on to the next task and interacting with the human so just kind of a quick example of again just how quickly how powerful it's moving um and getting to I always kind of describe it as what AI is like in the movies right we're seeing kind of what what we've seen in some of these crazy movies of the robots the AI assistants doing these things for us um so what we are at tcaps we're again trying to be really thoughtful about this approach to Ai and and exposing it to our staff um within reason hopefully showing them different ways that they can leverage it to make their tasks easier um accomplish some things at at a a more efficient rate and we try and provide uh safe Avenues to get exposure to that and get started with that and so a couple examples of some of those tools uh if you haven't seen them before um one really easy one that we do like to expose our staff to because in the interest of certain things like data privacy Goblin tools is a website that's a real basic form but obviously higher up than what you've seen in the past of AI but doesn't require a login you know so it's not recording any of that personal information which we're we're pretty aunch about trying to make sure people are aware of that what are we putting in these these chat Bots what are we recording in these databases and has some kind of really neat easy ways to kind of get started with how you can leverage again how can you leverage AI to do that um so very simple Goblin tools website and then a couple of different categories of ways that you can use it to help you complete some tasks so creating to-do lists um one of the favorite ones a formalize so taking any type of text and then rewriting it we can use this we suggest a lot of people if you have trouble kind of formulating emails professionalizing them getting able to just put your thoughts down on paper and then letting AI kind of take it to that next step for you and add the the context that you might need is a really easy way um one I really like so the consultant it'll kind of take an analysis and give you some pros and cons right so asking what are some advantages of using a in the classroom there a real generic prompt for it to see what it can produce for us I always like to tell uh start out with any new tool by telling it how much I respect it so when it takes over the world it doesn't come after me I I do try and add things like please and thank you it's always nice cuz you never know when it's going to come back yeah just a casual conversation of that yeah I don't think that's a bad plan I can't say I'm always so nice to Siri that's only when it's wrong I did actually type that into chat GPT the first time I used it and it response was I've got your back that was like a couple years ago show if I have some examples too with with Gemini when you're using it which is Google's version chatbot um you can ask us some questions and I've worked with uh David noler one of our Tech coaches and secondary teacher at West Senior High um and he's had some times where he's asked the Gemini chatbot to you know help him produce something and sometimes it's first thought is is it goes I can't do that and he's had the we've recorded where he goes you can do it and it go goes you're right you're right I can do it and then it reprocesses and then kind of spits out the answer it goes I'm sorry I just had a moment you know it's giving you those kind of answers so it's it's interesting to have kind of some of those just normal conversational type items um with it maybe we stumped it here so we can go to something simpler there go perfect so again just ways to start generating some content and ideas for the teachers and I do think it's really important as these being kind of starting points right something to give that content and and help uh have our students and teachers use it to get started with something not do the work for them that's a big premise here too we don't want AI to become what it's being kind of painted as right a homework uh basically a cheat tool um I think when you're using it effectively and you're building it in and taking into the consideration of what it is in a teacher's lesson planning it can become really powerful and again be part of the process and not the start and end of the process so that no learning's actually done that the student or the teacher just thinks all I got to do is put something into this chatbot and then the results are the results I paste them and I forget it um it's about having that conversation and hopefully having that discussion so getting the advice getting the pros and cons getting kind of a final evaluation here again the chef you have some ingredients I did this one I have milk I have pasta I have chicken and I have pickles it's like the mystery Challenge on the food work take what's in there have you ever had a creamy chicken pasta with pickles and therefore it'll take my ingredients give me my serving sizes and the instructions on how to make it so these are kind of fun just kind of like an easy entry levels to use it add some hot sauce to [Music] that um and these are the kind of ways that for those who might be a little hesitant those who are not maybe quite as tech-savvy they're fun ways to let them kind of explore um how the basics of AI can work and then hopefully start to have those conversations with them of how can we go deeper what kind of meaning what in what are you doing right in your in your day-to-day that you could leverage some of these tools to hopefully help you get through those processes and then spend more time working with your students having that human interaction that we're talking about and and not going through all kind of the leg work of some of this stuff that can easily be achieved by like a chat bot so Goblin tools is one Gemini is another one that we're excited to promote and the reason being in terms of thinking about our student data safety our staff data safety with us being a Google school um Gemini's provided almost like a walled environment for using the chatbot so that means that data does not actually go with most of these like when you hear about what chat GPT is doing it's taking right it's scraping all this data from the Internet it's taking everything it can in order to be able to process and do that well anything we put in through our if you're signed in through a tcaps account and you're using Gemini that data is not included in Gemini's learning language model it's only used to process whatever that request is and then it's forgotten I mean that's the promise the agreement we have with them so they provide that for schools and businesses who want to use that so for us that's a really again safe and easy way to again promote people to play with and use it and still try and avoid putting in personal identifiable information regardless of whether we have a walled environment that's something we want to avoid because we think that's really important but we just have that extra Safeguard of knowing that they're working and playing kind of in again a little bit safer environment that's contained that we have some control over with all our Google tools and Vault and safety to again kind of provide that extra layer and Gemini is more of your traditional Is this different or the same than the Google Gemini this is Google Gemini it y so and so when you log in with a tcaps account you can see it kind of identifies itself readily right this is Gemini for Traverse City area public schools so then we have this tool that again is more specified to us in terms of it's not sharing that data out and we can hopefully use it with a little more comfort knowing that it's really contained within that and doing things like building lesson plans helping them build the templates of a lesson plan so it's not replacing our teachers in the sense of it's not doing the teaching for them the students aren't getting every piece of information they can but it might help that teacher create a structure for delivering some content and then they're able to put in the parameters there what's the standard using I wanted to do some opinion writing from fourth grade from my fourth grade teacher days and then I can take a look at what it's produced and is this something that I find relevant is the breakdown and then you can start to have it refine that I can say add some here I asked it am I understanding correctly it sounds like you all are bracing it so far more for the teacher teers and staff benefit than the students I mean I'm hearing a lot of ways the staff could benefit from using AI I think the students are using as well so the Gemini tool for 13 and up is available for our students we have it actually Linked In Our Cloud so they can access it there so when the teachers are comfortable we're definitely encouraging them to allow it again with Gemini being more safer environment that they can allow their students to then use it as well for per you know reviewing writing and then getting that feedback and then working with the teacher to see was that feedback valuable has it helped them improve the writing um younger students for sure we're not really encouraging them to use chat buts at this time it's not we don't really feel it's that appropriate with that there are some tools that are promoting it but we really focus on just like the data privacy rules are for like a Gemini our 13 and up population and accessing it directly from the student perspective yeah and I I'm just going to add a little bit I've got kind of the back end of the presentation but I think the reality is US knowing that our kids have access to these tools out there especially as age appropriateness right we have kids that we're trying to prepare for the next step and and teaching them how to use this tool to Foster their thinking and their learning versus replace it right how can you use something like this to help you study better and ask me some questions about this or produce some flashcards for me as I'm trying to learn this concept versus give me the answer for this thing that that I'm doing or write a essay for me on this PR right um and there's a lot of power in teaching our kids how to use AI to help enhance their learning and not like remove the learning for them right so a lot of discussions with kids around that absolutely I what do you think about this well if I'm just with the lens of Elementary right it's pretty it's pretty teacher based and it's a lot of efficiency right now um as far as magic school is a big one with elementary teachers making connections with curriculum making connections with MD standards uh I know a big one is with CCL our new curriculum coming in in the time that's dedicated to to that how can we make a smooth transition to other subject areas like social studies and science where we can bring those two areas together like I've already been in science and social studies district meeting to we Google or use gemini or chat gbt to say um show me the connections between CK and Michigan's social study standards right and then they take those social study standards and put them into each unit that in and of itself would take weeks right that would take like summer weeks to actually look at and we had it obviously you can have it 15 seconds so those are the ways i' I've kind of seen on the elementary end is is pretty teacher heavy but personally just as Jesse was mentioning just on a professional end you know I use it daily as far as just the efficiency see if we even start with email right I don't uh I was a science guy I'm not necessarily a language arts guy so when I write an email I write it as fast as I can and I hit the button at the bottom it says polish and then I send so you don't have to I mean that kind of efficiency when you're sending hundreds of emails a day possibly helps you said age 12 and up or is it age 13 13 okay so this that like generally 8th grade or seventh grade the kids so every kid like on their 13th birthday all of a sudden they're going to see some tools become accessible to them or is it at that seventh grade level sorry I say that first the tools you're saying at age 13 and up so like at at on their 13th birthday their tcaps computer would allow them to use tools that they weren't able to use the day before yeah based on that so that grade breakdown with the 13 are with their accounts they don't have access in the cloud like each Cloud page can be personalized in those OU groups so they won't have access to it until they've reached that threshold no that's our way but to Jesse's point I mean some of this conversation and just learning about Ai and that discussion needs to happen because that's all I can control within the cloud on their Chromebook I can't control what you go home and do on your home computer I can't control what you do on your phone so that access is certainly there and it's not something that I can or nor do I want to be in charge of Walling that off for everyone and every aspect of their life but I do want to help them learn more about it and hopefully use it responsibly um because it's not something that we are shunning the discussion about it's something that we're you know embracing and trying to kind of envelop where again it makes sense uh within our curriculum and our and our environment well and I would think that the biggest concern is you know kids going and having an essay written by AI or something and not being their own thought not being their own work and the same level AI can actually detect that not very accurately and and there's some conversations about AI durability so like when you give an assignment to a student secondary mainly and then you expect them to go off and do it you have to be mindful as to what tools if it's not done in my classroom setting and with me you know what tools do they have access to and what's the durability I don't know if that's the right word but that's what comes to mind for me of that assignment right you know like is it something that a kid can just type in Ai and spit out at least the Baseline for an essay and then work it up from there our instructors are we're we're growing their knowledge in that because I'll tell you what kids sure figure it out pretty fast and then share it with each other right and so there is a lot of education on our kids on how what's the science of learning right how do we actually learn as human beings and how can you use this tool to unlock learning versus replace it um there's a ton there though um that if we can teach our kids to use it appropriately that they have access to um that is pretty powerful so yeah it's age old as when Google came out we had the same thing right and we are having these discussions you know we're talking 10 plus years ago where we're where we're doing teaching PD around you know ask questions that kids can't Google because then you have to enhance otherwise it's the same idea right you Google a question 15 years ago it's very similar to AI where they can copy and to Jesse's Point um you know when this really had ramped up you know the chat GPT coming out and the first thing I think that flooded our inboxes were AI detectors our program can detect AI I just feel that's kind of a wholly inaccurate statement I don't think those do a very good job of doing that um I think there's for the teachers it's usually just more obvious knowing their student right the human element is just as important they know you know typically if they've had them for a out what their writing looks like what kind of assignment they'd submit and having that conversation with them as opposed to you know it's just going from one to the other if the students just generating an essay and submitting it and the teacher just taking the essay and putting it in the Checker and then that's all the interaction and again we've kind of failed in this use of AI it's about kind of are they using it to Jesse's Point like how is the lesson designed to where that can come into play and then them relying on the fact that they still do have these human relationships with the students and what they're doing and what they're asking them to do um is is far more important than us trying to invest in some holy AI Checker this will catch it 98% of the time I I just haven't seen that accuracy and so that's not something we definitely promote as kind of the way to address this issue it's definitely more on the education value and how we're integrating it I think that it'll be an interesting challenge one of the things that I was always aware of like when I went to LA school half of what they taught us a thousand Pages a week we were reading right and then you had to learn how to Den it and that was like that was the whole aim of law school was not really even to learn all the law because you couldn't learn all of the law in three years you just couldn't there were whole classes that we got tested on that we didn't even take in law school you had to learn it in three weeks but it was like um it was the the mental muscle that they taught us in doing the process and so I for me like the challenge is here to it's the critical thinking the ability to take information and put it into a form that gives voice right and so how do we how do we move students in a way to use this so that it becomes part of their critical thinking and I know we've even been using this like in the legal world mostly to gather information which it's great for but I'm I'm still a little bit concerned about um if I ask it to create a motion you know and your prompts have to be like perfect you know it's not it's not ever a great thing and then I don't entirely trust all all of it I still have to go back and read it and like actually I've never created a whole motion on one of these because I don't trust it that much yet and it's okay to because I think you know the interesting part of this is what values are built into it right what you know what what are those different thoughts of it that what perspective was it written from you know that very well may be different than your own right you know and so I think that's what's interesting you know the the ways that I've seen it used well is for kids to take that all information condense it them to do that and then to be able to say okay now we want you to debate the opposite thought and have students do that so if you just printed something off you didn't comprehend what it said you can't give the opposite Viewpoint or to debate the topic which I think is a higher order level thinking skill that we want to get to versus just wrote knowledge you know of something from that standpoint so that's the goal of what we're trying to get to for kids and I think you know that's what I've seen you know talking to our kids I think the teachers are AP AP teachers that are are using it to do look at F frqs and look at that and then be able to say okay now give another level of thought to this based on what that feedback is to go back and do that and so I think that's where it's it's powerful it was interesting I saw some oh my gosh I'm sorry I saw some interlocking kids using it this past weekend for a production they did the interdisciplinary they did a dance they did music and they did a big video production with it and we had a panel discussion afterwards and hands down everybody was like it was interesting but we don't really like it but they they said that was like one of the biggest things was the amount of prompts how many times they had to go back in to get something that worked well and that worked well together was it was a lot like some of them did like a thousand prompts you know for a small section but I thought the one of the most interesting things and this is getting out into the weeds but when they talked about the music that AI makes it has no concept of tempo you either have to feed at a Tempo and it stays on that Tempo but otherwise it doesn't and it doesn't think always think within our parameters but isn't that a cool thing to learn the tempo and and understand what that is and how to regulate that they said that made it kind of interesting because they couldn't they couldn't create any music AI that followed human human um human Tempo moves it changes yeah just wasn't there yet that's kind of kind of interesting I to your point I think a healthy distrust distrust of it at this point is is the way to go because again it goes to what we just were all talking about a critical thinking mindset and using it but really again leveraging it because it is very powerful and how it can blend in with that to get accomplish some really good things so some key terms that you know we refer to when we're thinking about so just AI literacy in general is something that we harp on So You Know the understanding and the ability to critically evaluate and use these AI Technologies thinking and teaching the students about that potential bias in AI specifically so that AI will have its own kind of built-in biases based on all the information it's gleaning just like we all create our own biases and that's really important that they have that concept so again we don't just take it for its word at every moment every prompt we put in there prompting write is very important um from my perspective being the tech guide data privacy is another really important part you know what are we putting into these uh learning language models what is it collecting what tools can I come up to with agreements like Google and Gemini with our current environment that I have a certain set of assurances that that data is being protected and separated from the larger model feeling better about that and then again letting our students use it in that controlled environment and our teachers um something that was was here well before AI but the digital citizenship portion so kind of how does that apply now with this again kind of new ever growing powerful tool um we talk about it with all sorts of other digital things but AI is is a big proponent of needing to kind of be aware of that digital citizenship role um just obviously what AI is artificial intelligence uh hallucinations is is an interesting one so when AI kind of just makes stuff up there's there's some interesting stats out there uh they you know I think it's Google Gemini wants really badly to be your friend so they say that a lot of times Gemini might do its hallucinations because it just wants to make you happy like that's kind of what's built into its programming so you need to be aware and we need to always kind of they have their taglines on the bottom we need to include our taglines please check this information not all of this might be accurate you know take it for what it's worth and then process it that way uh don't believe everything you see um and then you know thinking about it as all these are these large language models so trained on vast amounts of data Chad GPT at this point has used all man-made has scraped basically all man-made data in the world and is now using synthetic basically chat GPT created data to continue to grow so they've went through that whole process and just kind of mindboggling to think about um and then to what we were talking about prompting prompting at this point is is also very important to get out of it what you're putting into it you have to be very intentional about what you're prompting it with and then again how you redirect it kind of to your point and it may take a few times you may need to continue to ask it to solidify what you're trying to get to and then start to again critically evaluate okay what is this output is this worth it am I getting to where I need to go is it is it really kind of adding value or are we just kind of spinning our wheels and I'm having fun talking to a robot and so like that's one when I think about how do we teach kids to use AI appropriately teaching kids how to ask a really good question and how to ask follow-up questions and how to know whether the information you're getting is helping you go in the right direction is actually a great just life skill to have um and so I that's another area I think we can help educate some of our kids on how to use Ai and how to prompt and ask the right questions and ask better questions and know whether the output is helping us go where we need to go absolutely so I think we people as well yes yes yeah when so go back to the old like verify your Source like citations and even more trust but yeah SC so on that note you might get into this later so that's fine if we need to wait but um I was just curious so what what exactly have our teachers been instructed to do what kind of guidelines have they been given um and then also you know what what are the students getting and when and how I mean is it like third third hour uh start of the year or start of the semester I'm just curious how our kids are being guided in all this yeah we're going to talk a little bit so we have a guidance document that we've tried to kind of build upon um I think that's we're going to talk to later about we're starting an AI learning series which is actually starting tomorrow as an opportunity for um a variety of our staff right not just our teachers um but it's including the teachers as well and administrators to kind of have those conversations and we shared kind of early on I brought um Daniel brostrom here to talk about our draft form of that AI guidance document that she's put together Danielle's done some incredible work kind of in the AI uh field specifically with teaps and so we've feel like we've had that we have that somewhat solidified though it's a growing kind of collaborative document that will inevitably change as these things change but trying to promote that as to this point like what this guidance is how we can use it what the teachers can refer to and as well as the students on kind of where this Falls and hopefully having that information kind of flow down from our teachers using it sharing it and then kind of instructing that with the students so you have kind of couple different forms again generative AI is your ginis your chat gpts um they're generating content now they're using other data to generate that but again something to be very explicit with on our users about what that means right what the generative AI model is um what they're being trained on and what that can mean for it and then you have your predictive AIS these are ones that again I kind of said I've been around for a while you're smart replying your text that is a form of AI it's finishing your thoughts for you you swipe over and you can finish your statement sounds good I think my wife's sick of me hitting the same buttons on my phone every time I reply she knows at this point tells me to stop it um and just respond to her so um but those have been around and again that's just this form of AI so that's also important too I feel like in kind of again sharing that information is that they've been dealing with different forms of this it's obviously evolving um but they have an idea of kind of what this can look like and talking about what that means at different levels yeah that generative AI is is what makes it hard for teachers to use AI detective software to know if like if a student is just copied and pasted right it's that like what they were looking for before is like large chunks of text that like they could actually find in another document right but now that it's generating that text right it doesn't exist somewhere else so our teachers have been really really great about I would say number one being up front with kids hey here's the assignment and here are the tools you can and can't use right this might be an assignment you'll see in a second here that you can use no AI on and here's why here this is assignment you can use it to get started on because it does raise the floor for a lot of our kids it makes learning more accessible if the idea is for me to get writing and make it better maybe I'm not someone who's really good at like getting the ideas out on the paper and I kind of know what I want and AI can help me get there and then I can do the work of making it better and polishing it um and then when can you use your full on AI you can use whatever you want to um with what the task is so there's some Continuum there of that um and our teachers too have worked with there's some pretty slick features just in Google Docs where you can sort of see how is a document generated so you can look for like those large copy and paste and some of those things um when they don't need them based on that scale of what teachers expect so being really clear with the kids hey I know these tools are out here and here's what the assignment is for and here's how much AI you can use on it is is actually I've seen the best success in the classrooms with that because kids just want to know just give me the Bound for most kids are like cool okay I can do it oh I can use it to get started awesome I'll use it to get started and then the teacher wants me to do this this with it so those mindsets to me and I think in general from I work with the group are important to not just we're not taking the approach of kind of hiding underneath the bed and and letting AI come to us we want to kind of meet it where it's at and have those discussion with the kids uh and the students and the teachers so that everyone kind of is growing with it together as opposed to again trying to be like am I just trying to catch some student using chat GPT to write this or or complete this assignment um you know we don't want that to be what this is about this is this is a bigger topic and a kind of a bigger concept that we're trying to promote um so again like I said AR literacy is kind of a big recurring theme that we continue to talk about with people to make sure so we want you know what are the the knowledge the skills and the attitudes needed to engage with AI safely and effectively what is that skill set look like um do we all at this point understand the ai's capability what its limitations are any of those potential impacts so that as they're making those decisions on how it applies to whatever it is they see fit that this could be a useful tool for that you know they're taking into those considerations um and again that they're not shying away from the fact that they're going to see it whether in social studies class they're going to see it in the next level in college they're going to see it in the workforce so you know we want to be upfront about what that looks like and and hopefully prepare them for Success so we want them again understanding the AI what that is we want them to be able to hopefully evaluate the AI again have that healthy skepticism about what it's producing and what that means for um how it might apply to completing a lesson or a task um looking at those things like bias thinking about the Privacy data security and any sort of ethical impl uh implications that it might have so and then integrating it so again thinking about how is this going to be integrated in a way that is Meaningful is safe and then it's going to add value to what we're doing and not just maybe accomplish the task so I don't have to think about it anymore something else that kind of we apply to is is thinking about the 8020 rule which has a couple different applications but when we talk about it with AI it's it's thinking about AI is the ability to accomplish kind of 80% of those mundane tasks that you want to do um because that's great that saves us aot a lot of time and we can move on to more meaningful things and really focus on the 20% of kind of critical thinking uh that we might need to do to do a task and how are we redesigning to to Jesse's point about what is the assignment I'm asking them to do right so if if I'm asking to do something again that can be really easily just accomplished by a quick prompt and in Gemini then is that the right assignment to be doing or should I really start rethinking uh how I'm trying to deliver that and and what it's getting out of them and like I was in a ninth grade US history Class A couple weeks ago and the teacher was having them have a map of Europe and memorize where the countries were and where the capitals were it's a pretty rope Tas right any could could look that up anywhere and the teacher looked at me and he's like well yeah but we're going to you know we're going into World War II and these are I just need him to these conflicts I need them to understand where these countries are located and why and what their role might have been and why it would have been that way just based on their borders and that can't be something that oh wait I got to look up where France is again oh wait now I got to look up where Germany is I need him to already have some of that and I was like yeah so it's not that we're removing all these rot skills we still need them for purpose of then having these next level thinkings and discussions right they're still really important there's stuff that we do need kids to practice and have like I'm a big fan of math fluency which means you actually know some of your basic operations and facts because then you can factor a quadratic equation later on or whatever else right that matters for a later on scale so multiplication tables when you don't have your calculator same matter maybe like two digits is a lot but actually big discussion about fluency we have at elementary because once you get to fourth grade and you start Division and you don't know your multiplication tables and math gets really hard and kids end up hating math because they don't have that F I don't have that I I can't do it I can't long division yeah so as I mentioned before these are not the only exclusive AI tools that are probably that I know are being used in tcaps these are ones that we're promoting for some of those reasons both Gemini and notebook are Google tools so we have a kind of like I said a level of control and kind of Walled containment of those so it's it feels like a safer way to introduce that uh when it comes to the context of us uh using it meaning the students and the teachers notebook LM right now it's mainly just for the staff if you haven't seen it we'll I'll go over it here a little bit maybe at the conclusion of the slideshow has some really cool features and some really cool applications to take a ton of data and really process it in a multitude of different ways and it's just that to me has become again more like the movie AI like what I think about when I just want to put some information in there and really produce some kind of interesting results or some analysis that would take me days and I can do it in minutes and then provide access to other people and then again like the Goan tool is a super lowlevel version of that but an easy way to kind of get started with that kind of stuff but here's obviously a couple others that I know are out there and people are familiar with school Ai and Magic School are really specifically obviously generated towards schools have a lot of kind of feature sets that are made to do that teachers can build specific chat Bots to do something we've seen them where uh at lower levels building the the tattletail bot so a student can go kind of tell their problems to the AI first it reports back has a backside for the teacher so that they can see what the students are saying and then the chat bot might try and talk the student with it before they go you know the tell three before me kind of rule now you can tell maybe this chat bot I've seen that application just kind of an interesting unique way to use it so that the kids are starting to process that information um we you can come so if any of these tools like a school Magic School uh rows to the top kind of with our staff it's something we can do that's another one we could enter into like data agreement with to try and again kind of protect that and create those accounts so it's not something we've done to this point but that's possible and then chat GPT obviously kind of the first one on the Block that everyone's really familiar with claud's another really powerful one if you haven't seen it kind of does some really really cool stuff about kind of coding building apps right within the chatbot um if you're using that so just again super incredible powerful tools that you can use for a variety of applications and we've seen samples of teachers who use more so the magic school and school AI to say hey I'm teaching this standard in third grade and I've got a kid who loves monster trucks right and what we know about like the science of reading for example is if I've got background knowledge in something I'm actually going to be more successful at decoding words and getting some of that development if I know what I'm reading and what I'm reading about maybe as a third grade or second grade teacher I don't know a lot about monster truck rallies I can use one of these and pop in the standard and it actually will create a story or an activity for that kid that's that gives you that human element I Know Dan loves monster truck rallies I know that Dan's reading at this level and this is the standard I'm trying to can you give me something that I can use to teach Dan that will connect with his interest and already be at that background level for him so that we can work on decoding words it's it's that timesaver for teachers means that now I can think more about the relationships and how to set kids up to be successful so it's pretty cool so as we mentioned prompting is kind of really important and discussing what that looks like how are we going to successfully prompt AI how are the students and they're able to use those tools in different lessons going to prompt it so making sure you know Clarity is key being very explicit about what you want finding that level with how much information you do need to provide it if you're trying to get some sort of output um taking a look at what technique you're using like how are you going to ask those questions are you going to be nice and say please and thank you to make sure that it doesn't come back and bite you um figuring out how much context you need to provide I think what we're seeing is that's becoming less and less maybe in a scary way I've had it have a couple times where I've just mentioned something like I had it code uh an app to request um access in power school and all I said was use power school and include categories of Power School um that they might need and I didn't tell them what it was I didn't even say power school is you know a student information system and it goes okay do they want attendance do they want grades do they want discipline so like it's obviously has some of that data but again normally or I think maybe early on I would certainly need to be including all of that and it's more and more now it's kind of like I think I know what you're talking about it's getting closer so we need to be aware of that right and be thinking about that as you're doing it um and then the format you know the format matters what that prompt looks like can be important and that in itself is kind of the lesson if we are going to use it how are we formatting these prompts how are we instructing that to make sure we're getting that highest level of output possible so your data pool the tcaps data pool is just getting more sophisticated now with right so the Gemini will learn off our data pool and I mean it takes in so it it's it's allowed to it has all kind of whatever Gemini had before but the nice part is any of the new data because if you're using chat GPT it's taking that in immedi immediately saying great we're adding this to the pot and now next person who asked down the road we know that Holly had entered this and we could use that as a reference point we're at least safe in knowing that's not the case if they're using Gemini via the tcaps account it's not going to go in there for anyone outside of teaps and be like oh well Jesse was talking about you know differentiation in this lesson so we can apply that and someone asking a Gemini down the road in another town so that you know doesn't solve all of our problems but it makes us feel a little bit better about using those that kind of tool in that that sense and it helps when you're analyzing data so if we upload data from NWA you know chat GP I can do that as an attachment where I can put a spreadsheet but if I do it in Gemini obviously that's protected with what we're doing and that data doesn't get out for anyone to use so there's a link there we have our our guidance document which we could certain I mean you'll have access to to take a look through it's a it's a long wellth thought out document but some of the highlights is just as we've been saying we really want to implement AI thoughtfully it's it's something that we don't take lightly it's super powerful and we want it to be used and useful and discussed um but we want to do it with a purpose and be very thoughtful about it I think we all recognize that it's offering a massive opportunity um for us to enhance kind of what we're doing with the educational experience within reason so we just need to keep that in mind and see how are we going to do that within what we feel like are our parameters are kind of boundaries of it um I think it's important as this goes for me for anything edtech related you know the tools themselves are not the initiative it's not just about the tools it's been my thumping Point since I got into edtech it's not just about the tool it's what is the tool letting you do right and if that's that tool is not the right one we can move on to the next one we want to have that same approach with AI it's not just about Gemini like I said we have that Focus because of some of the the protections that allow us but that doesn't mean that we wouldn't look down the road to others if we start to find that they're developing at a better rate and feel like it's got more value to us um so like I said kind of approaching that just how we do any type of educational technology we're not just doing it to do it you know we want to be really thoughtful about it and then again kind of the privacy and security of student but our school data as a whole that's including our staff and anyone else who's using it it is a priority it's something that I know my team takes very seriously and due to all the fun circumstances we've already experienced here we want to be very very good stewards of that data and make sure we're being um very wise and thoughtful about how that's being shared and also just educating people on the right kinds of data to put into some of these tools and when to be a little more generic and and maybe hold off on sharing certain things in order to make sure that that data privacy is kept Paramount oh my turn yeah okay so with some of this we already talked about but I I wanted to sort of update you on what do we see in the classrooms right now how are teachers using it the last um I think it was Erica who was at the last superintendent board with the with the student Advisory Board it was all about Ai and so that was great about like how are our kids already using it that's our secondary kids um but so I listed some of them there I linked in a great article too on just student usage and and sort of what we see out there right now with our kids um I was at uh Central High School the other day and there were a bunch of kids huddle around a table and they were working on their physics and they were using AI to give them more problems um not to give them the answers of the problems that they that the teacher had assigned them but they were get they were preparing for a quiz of some sort and they were just saying hey give me some more problems like this I'm in a physics class give me some more problems like this and it was producing the problems and then they were checking their thinking and the one girl was like we got that wrong ask it ask it how how it did that ask it to walk it through and they would ask at that and then it would explain it to them and so again it's about how are we using it to enhance the learning not here's my worksheet a I give me all the answers which it can totally do that in a lot of different um things uh we do have a few teachers who are using it to provide feedback to students and um they're using it uh to provide feedback faster like if or to look for patterns um one of our AP teachers in particular likes to use it just at to so that like hey there's an essay we wrote in class she's like I'll throw it all in there I'll say hey give these kids some feedback she's like I kind of comb through most of it spot on gives the kids feedback right away and then she says hey what are the patterns that you see in all my classes are there specific hours that you see certain things that kids missed or are stronger in and then she can think about it's weird this second hour was better at that than third hour so what do I need to do in that hour versus this hour she's someone who's a little bit ahead of the curve in general in technology in the district so um but just how do I enhance what I'm doing and and support kids better at their learning um gives her the power of a data team which we also do right in groups but it's at her fingertips and she can do it kind of on the fly so again just kind of adding to that toolbox in a way that we just we would never be able to really do without a lot more time and a lot more investment into Google Translates a huge one too um oh yeah do you think we're at the same level of usage in teaps just ballpark guessing so a quarter of us teens have used Chachi P for schoolwork in 23 I would guess it would be higher than that okay yeah I thought it was low a quarter that was probably like a month ago on that one well 20 some of the things I'm seeing like in even in college uh um like I wonder she can understand her professor at the time and the computer can so it puts a full uh summary of everything that's being so if she misses anything she can go through and do it so like it's there's a lot of I mean it's going to be used I think we're all using it uh just as you said whether it be whether it be on the phone I mean we we are all Ed some may use it more than others but uh we are probably all using it so and teaching students how to use it to get the learning out of it and not to escape the learning you know like and that's a really and sometimes it's going to be learned by oh I copied and pasted and copied and pasted and now I know nothing oh okay you know like that's real right um this is a nice sort of graphic of what I was talking about the more transparent the teachers are with students the more likely the the kids are actually to to do exactly what's asked and know why am I learning this and why is the teacher asking me to do this and there's been some pretty good thinking too on our teachers about like what do I actually want kids to walk away knowing or able to do after this assignment right is am I teaching them something that's just busy work kids can see through that um but this tool kind of like totally removes that from the game right or is there something with this like I said that example with the countries no I'm teaching them to memorize where things are in their capitals but then so that we can have more discussions about why this country would have maybe not gotten involved quicker than this country over here oh that makes sense right or why they would have wanted this country as their Ally because of their access to waterways or another resource you know like we need kids to have some of that you know uh basic knowledge to get there too so I found that more transparent teachers can be with kids the more likely they are for kids to use it appropriately and the more thought they put into their assignment especially something that they're asking kids to walk out of their classroom and produce they need to know what all is out there um is really important um seeing teacher and student satisfaction gr up in relation to this that's kind of like a up and down I think depending on you know who the person is and where we are I think so what we've really done is we've tried to create space at the beginning for our teachers just to learn about it some of our staff just didn't know about it sometimes our kids know more about the technology going on out there and they learn about it faster than our adults do right and so part of it was giving them the the space to experiment and Dabble and learn and then start thinking about O Okay number one how does this affect what I'm teaching and what I ask my kids to do if I know they have access to this o what more could we do or what maybe how do I need to frame things so that they're using this appropriately would say more satisfaction some people are happier some people are not I was just thinking if you could get rid of some of the busy work and cut down on some of that required time that to satisfac actually I think we've really been talking about like Dr Van Wagner said like how do we engage kids in conversations or debates or hey we all you know process this information now let's talk about it and let's have that human connection and element about it that's how I can actually tell whether you've learned it and then processing it right yes so you know the information now what problem does it solve you know from that element well see then the third audience is the parents and are the parents feeling really separated you know because of this knowledge base um and I don't know if there's some way to bridge that to some degree as well yeah and I think the better we can teach our kids how to you use AI to help their learning I I really actually hope that like if I'm a parent and my kids in honors physics and I can't help them but I can help them use a tool that could help them right like having those kids watching those kids like ask it for another problem oh ask it for a problem like that and having the one kid go none of us could that explain this thinking and someone else is like flag that one we need to ask Mr mg about that one and I was like oh this is cool they're identifying what they know and what they don't know and then trying to use it to practice more of where they think they need like this is using it in the right way right so it was interesting because those kids had definitely someone had taught them along the way of how to use it to help their learning not replace it yeah the goal is to enhance and not remove the learning kind of put some examples of different dos and different subject areas there for for you to think about like I I really think about some of our high-end specialty areas or some of our kids who just need math is a big one we struggle to get math tutors or more math support outside of the classroom for our kids that's like really good and and I think that's something that our parents struggle then when kids come home and are stuck how do I help my kid get on stock um I I do think there's some room there for AI to help with that not to remove the human element or the teacher in the classroom but to help the kid I need another example can you explain that example to me and you go back to the just as far as Google translate goes I just worked with it the other day my kids in Spanish one in seventh grade you know we have to practice a conversation he has his exam how do you get through that con how do you practice conversation when I don't know any Spanish right so chat jpt does have a voice now that you can say you know ask me simple questions about if I'm a Spanish one student um in Spanish and then he can answer the questions in English and then they can say if that's correct or not so just as far as and that the the language barrier throughout our schools that's been used that and other software programs to really help not only with kids but then obviously what you just mentioned that communication with parents is is so much better so quickly like for just as simply as a parent coming in and asking to pick up their child and they can't speak English and now we can translate any language that we're speaking and help with with anything health questions enrollment grades parent teacher conferences it's it's a pretty big list that we've not got yeah those there have been some great barriers that we've removed and been able to you know and it's not like those programs didn't exist before they're just so accessible now that they're on your iPhone and it can instantly happen and you're hoping like everything that they are translating correctly take yeah might be ungrammatical but you can get the gist across some words are so close that it doesn't take a whole lot to get it going down the wrong path yeah and and you know Evan's right we've we've the three of us went to an AI conference uh uh man a month ago I guess that was and we've seen some states that are like or some states some school districts that are really going fast in a lot of different directions and we're being really thoughtful and purposeful about like how do we do this how do we do this right for our staff for our kids and for our parents um we've seen some of all of these in different schools around the states we have seen there was there was a chemistry teacher who just he made a bot and um I think he used uh School AI where he would upload the worksheets for kids that he was giving them and he would say hey don't give answers just coach kids through these questions and so when kids got stuck in this honors chemistry class at home they could use that bot to help them get unstuck but not to get the answers right he already had kind of restricted it on that um I I don't know providing that support was pretty cool and pretty slick right and so we've had some conversations about where would that make things more accessible some of our kids and H um still even though they haven't got a great relationship with their teachers or maybe just a teacher in the building feel embarrassed to say I don't understand that and I need to see it one more time in a classroom in front of their peers or maybe the teacher is only available before or after school and there's some I mean so there's some availability here for us to provide some targeted support to kids that I think it's directed by the teachers and and how they want that to look um we've seen some schools do some pretty cool virtual field trips um with Ani um they get those goggles on and do some of those I don't think we're there yet but we don't quite have the class sets of the VR goggles but hey the time's time's coming next Haven had the chance to visit schools I have yeah I had the chance to go to visit um a very impoverished Compton California yeah and a part of a Verizon Grant every single classroom had it and the kids went on field trips across the world every week cool that's the can you remind us what the name of that um Association or Fellowship it's the league of innovative School we've seen some schools like like Evan alluded to do some restorative activities like it might be as simple as hey there was a playground dispute about this and the AA can actually just type right in there hey can you give me a little social story on not throwing snowballs on you know and boom and don't put racks in snowballs don't put racks in snowballs um it can create a social story that's appropriate for kids at this age level or reading level and they can use that as part of that educ ational tool with those kids we've seen with some of the um high school students who maybe we've got a student that uh We've caught with a DB or with a vape pen or something like that we can do some type of like education on you know what the impact of that is and having some Bots where the kids kind of put in information and the bot talks back to them and still the administrator or the counselor can see the back end and sort of watch what some of that interaction looks like it it's very interesting and Powerful um we talked a little bit about the feedback I'm a lot on what this means for us longterm for some of our curriculum purchases and and what it looks like right we spend a lot of money buying consumable workbooks and paper workbooks that don't fit every kid when we buy the exact same workbook for all second graders or all sixth graders right we all know that right we do the best we can with that but how can we maybe use Ai and what we know about our kids to actually produce better learning tools for them so I'm I'm interested on what that looks like in the future um both curriculum purchases that I mean I think old curriculum purchases was 8 to 10 years and now they're thinking it's more should be three to five just that's how I think it evolves quickly enough that and I think the learning involves quickly enough that that's a that term should be much shorter but the cost doesn't go down no no because then they get you for the online license Mar exactly always something um lots of considerations here I'll just say like the root of education is a relationship it's having that relationships with your peers and with your teachers in the classroom period like that's what education is about and this is about how do we even promote more time for that and how do we use that and the learning to enhance to enhance that for kids and for our staff so I I think that um that's something that will always stay at the heart of it you have to have that human connection it's education um it's really interesting because really like the the amount of data that we get now from the internet from all of these things it's really exploded over what 10 years maybe 20 if you know we go back that far but and there are pluses and minuses for that like spatially in our brains we're all overworked we're all tired we all have brain po cuz we get too much thrown at us all the time and this could is actually a tool that could help us with that or else it'll combust our brains could do that too I mean being optimistic you could synthesize I'm a Sagittarius I'm an optimist and you have it all you want with unlimited data we do have some uh three teachers in particular who are just like out there on the on the cusp we have more than these three that are you know helping other teachers helping our district helping explore what's out there Danielle is very connected across the state of different um educational you know Tech tools that are out there in general but she's just been great great resource for our staff um Evan talked a little bit about this that little graphic on the side there we're super excited you know when John and I talked early in this year he said you know we really wanted to create space for all of our staff to learn about this and I kind of was like okay okay so Evan and I have been brainstorming a lot and we're tomorrow night we're more ready than I'm making that sound we're very ready going to kick off uh learning series and we're opening that up to um our teachers yep our administrators yep and also our support staff our AAS our admin assistants who who can use AI to make their jobs more efficient so that then they can spend a little bit more time greeting that parent spending time with that kid who might need that little extra help if I can take the announcements and throw them through Ai and shorten them and get them ready and cleaned up that fast now when that kid comes in to say good morning I have even more time to sit and look at them in the eye and say good morning and check in with them um so we're doing a three-part series on that starting that tomorrow night at West Senior High we're paying all of our staff through a grant so that's not coming out of our general funds um Evan and his team are leading it up Danielle and uh Dustin are taking the teacher group Dan and I are taking the administrator group and then my assistant Emily Spa is going to work with the AA she's been a building AA for years and she has already surveyed them about hey what are some parts of the job that you think AI might help you with and so um we're just excited to sort of hit all those different employee groups it's not everyone in teaps but we feel like it's a good a good mix to provide sort of they have different roles and what tools might they use and how might they use them yeah it's an important start and to to Jess's point with John kind of pushing us and and really supporting the fact that we need to create that space so that we can get more of all of our people on kind of that Level Playing Field that same page because we're still probably talking in Pockets right now of what you're seeing right and and we need to try as best we can it's it's always hard especially at our size of a district to kind of create that Foundation have everyone be at a certain level of understanding knowledge so that we know that that exposure is somewhat leveled throughout um and so this to me is an exciting start to get that excitement going and then work in so this is kind of like the after hours like Jesse said we're paying people to come and then how are we then building that into just what they're doing right and how is that going to permeate through so um like I said just yeah an exciting way to get it started and I think it'll generate hopefully a lot of Buzz and get people interested and be sharing with their colleagues who couldn't come you should check this out think some of the things that we're hopefully sharing with them that again are saving time but then taking it well beyond that real basic use of it so Will these three sessions be identical to each other or are they scaffolded to be go from beginning to advanc they're building upon one another but we're letting uh staff they like oh I can come on February 5th but not the 20 that's fine come when you can come um they are going to be different we're hoping that people can come to all three but if they can't they can make two out of the three that's better than zero um we tried to pick a sort of a location that we had a big enough space adult Furniture I mean like there were some but also like some people were like why aren we on the east side like next time next time so we'll see we're kind of like dabbling with what can we do our our thinking was we get back from the holiday we have from now to spring break a nice chunk of time um what can we expose our staff to who's going to respond what will that look like and then that'll give us a feeling for Okay now what's next right where where do we need to go from here um what what percentage of the staff have registered so far I think we had just over 50 last I was looking that was yeah it was like 50ies or 50% 50 b% would be a lot i' would be super excited and also Teri scared double edged sword there but hey we're hoping to get there like I said it's it's more about kind of spreading that out and getting everyone on at least as close to a same page as we can with this both of our high schools our larger high schools have done a series with their teaching staff because it does hit our our high school students a little sooner to they use it's out there how to use it you know how to kind of maybe Escape learning um with some of the tools and we've done a lot of talking about how do we learn as human beings and and it's hard and that's okay and learning is actually uncomfortable because I didn't know it and I have to make lots of mistakes and so you actually have to have a lot of those conversations especially with teenagers about it like it's okay you're frustrated and don't know this you're in like you know this High School level course and like we're going to keep working at it you know um so you mentioned the uh guidelines and I did skim them and um now those can you just give us like the chronology of when were those rolled out districtwide to the the staff to the students and I noticed there's even a letter to parents um it's dated last updated octob late October of 2024 um but has that been mobilized out so that's kind of part of what I'd say this we're discussing this within this learning Series so it's really it's been shared but not widely so that's part of I think this conversation that we're hoping to start to have with staff is taking a look at that guidance document and letting those folks know and also spreading the word that here's how we're trying to kind of here's that foundational piece that you can hopefully refer to in looking at that and then kind of pushing that out as as a widespread this is for now how we're trying you know it was important we played around with how this looks because there's a lot of different ways that districts across the state across the country or trying to approach it is it creating a policy is a policy not flexible enough with the changing of that so it was like okay can we do some type of guidance document that again we can grow and develop um it was in draft most of last year that's where Danielle had started piecing it together from sources like Michigan virtual which has done a lot of work there and other um organizations she's worked with and like I said I think as we develop this series we finally have felt like we've come to this place where it's not really we're comfortable with this is it's not a draft it is going to be a growing document but this is something we can point to and so with this learning series here's where we can really kind of introduce it and be like here you go here is a reference point to to your question Josie here's where you can kind of refer to and start to have those conversations if you're totally unsure you don't have anywhere else that you thought of or you're not really working directly with it at this point kind of let's use this guidance document start that conversation and then kind of hopefully develop some questions get curious and continue that development so the goal to finalize it um through these learning sessions that you're holding in the next couple of months and then roll it out to parents students and staff by the Fall sorry well I know it'll be continuous you know one of these continuous Improvement things but um you know just I saw like the sample parent letter the sample student letter the sample staff letter and for the staff and students there to sign it so I just was curious is that going to be an expectation for next school year yeah I don't I don't think we necessarily have like those those are just again kind of some examples pulling from of how we're sharing that information I think that's that's going to be up for discussion certainly as as the staff and then uh administration of how you know we see that going and if something like that those letters truly need to go home and be signed or are these points of just ways to share that information out and kind of embrace with the community and bring the parent stakeholder group in on that um I think that's still very much up for debate on how you know the most effective way to do that and if it needs to be like you said like that letter is going out for sure and everyone needs to sign it I I definitely don't think uh we're there yet as a group or feel like that's the right direction to go but it's more that conversation piece and and the other core information of that document on kind of how they're using AI tools and what they could use from that letter to share that out so go ahead well I was gonna I mean it's a lot I think it looks great and I hope we all take a take a look at it you know and I appreciate the prior prioritizing Equity to making sure all of our students was one of my my questions I know all 13-year-olds have access to it but I just want to make sure like I love honors physics can do it too but maybe our Thai kids can also do it or um General eded kids especially with math tutoring um so I appreciate that that Equity pce yeah that's really important I guess one of my questions so obviously I think in this room it's we probably get that everyone's a lot of people using it a high percentage I'm guessing 75% um are using it and it's going up rapidly and I think we all understand that I think this is I I guess this is my question is bringing staff up to because a lot of me people I probably talked to last year were like ai's just another new technology fad that's kind of come go whereas this has really been around for 15 years everyone's using it and like when you start showing people even the people hate and I'm not saying I love the concept but in reality speak you use some examples I dropped some code I wrote in the 90s and asked it to update it to like current standards and and it literally highlighted and showed me everything it did it's like you got a plug in there from 1990 that's out of date yes it is like uh um so like it was actually like shocking to me to be able to bring code that I wrote back to life in hours um after thing and I've dropped in two papers like I got a contract from someone like we just made a few minor changes I was like did you drop the two in and highlight it like I think when you start showing people realistic like this isn't just about writing a paper this is about like real things that are going to affect you everyone like so my question is is where do you think our staff are on that spectrum of getting to the understanding that it even if you don't like it even if you can only think of certain areas that it will bring change it's a great question I think there's a recognition in a majority that it is here to stay I think that you know and it's obviously not capturing this huge percentage but like with that learning series and having those conversations so hopefully we we'll start to get a gauge from them about between them and their peers of exactly where they're at and how they see it you know being beneficial and what we can do to kind of reach those others who may not be there um but I I I still think like I said we have some really cool and great usage but I still think it's definitely in pockets and I think um we've tried to you know with Danielle and sharing that out it's like they know it's there they know that it's certainly not going away um I think there's still some education that needs to be done and I think that's what we're definitely pushing for and trying to to move forward because you know looking around where the other places are maybe going fast and furious and um that can be a good thing sometimes but it could also be a little scary and so we want to try and find that right balance but not Sher away from the responsibility of kind of kind of getting them all up to to speed on on where that could be with them so yeah I think we got some work to do but I think we're going to start tomorrow go ahead D but and I appreciate Mr Richardson coming and speaking um and I get it right we don't want to replace the teacher with robots and making sure again human centered I think is also in that guidelines you know and so I I appreciate him coming and and making sure like we're doing this responsibly and ethically and equitably but I love you saying you know like it really frees up teachers to build relationships you know to sit down and look them and that gets me excited um think there are some efficiencies that no one's here to replace teachers um but again I'm not a teacher so I I really respect Mr Richardson coming in and know the piece of that that I would add is that I do believe that one of our goals for every graduate we have go across that stage is to be career in college ready and I do believe this is now a component to truly to be career and college ready you're going have to be able to navigate and use and you know while that's you know not necessarily you know something that has been like you know school's been about you know maybe more the knowledge than other but those things that we talk about our profile of a graduate creative thinking collaboration those things using these tools for are going to be key and at some point I do think that we will visit this a part of of like our Marzano teacher evaluation and those components El that at some point we will hopefully get comfortable in those elements that to ensure that our kids are career in college ready that that we evaluate how this is being used in classrooms but we have a long way to go in providing the professional development expectations those things before we get there and I think to your point about Equitable I think a lot about like yeah we need to teach all of our kids how to use these tools right in any situation I mean the nice thing about opening eye is that every kid has access to the free version which is pretty darn powerful so like do they all know how to use it do they all know how to use it appropriately right like to get an answer cool right but how could I use it to help me understand photosynthesis or help me you know like our special ed Department um does use it to help kids sort of raise the floor on some of our kids like how do I get in the game because I'm someone who takes a long time to put pen to paper and actually generate ideas and with you know AI we can make that first draft and then work on refining it right like that that's kind of yeah so but what's making your rocks roll up the hill have it in the tech department one thing we did see down at the conference is the idea of how do you build um different software around us to give it to the structure that you need right so right now for instance we have Gemini node LM everyone has access to that so a lot of people don't use um any type of AI so they might automatically go to chat GPT without knowing that we have those are two pretty powerful tools we can start with and then what other tools can we actually support because there's thousands out there so we get software requests on a regular basis once a group of people go to conferences that they want this this and this we can't support so I think we're in front of it as far as that we can start to point people where if we want to go somewhere we have these two in our Cloud that has protected data that has it's a good starting point trying to be able to provide yeah the safer or the Alternatives that we know kind of we can train them you know effectively on and to not just open it up to the latest and greatest that we're not quite sure where that data is going or or what that company is all about and we can go you know what I I don't know about this but I think you can almost accomplish the exact same thing using say a Gemini which is or notebook LM um you know taking a lot of information that you can upload and outputting it in ways that no lm's kind of most fun features it takes like I have up there you have three academic articles about generative AI in schools you can interact with it in a chatbot format so I can start to ask questions about just those specific pieces of information right so I'm controlling the data pool that it's coming from and then everyone's favorite is I can sit here and generate a podcast where it's all AI generated voices and they'll start to Deep dive and if you start to use it a lot you'll see why that's funny because everything's a deep dive that they do and it'll produce a podcast that you can listen to in processing that and they've just release you see this interactive mode so just to give a little listen welcome back everybody to another Deep dive this time we're going to look at Ai and learning specifically AI tutors and how it might all shake things up I've got to say I'm really excited to dive into the research youve provided today well it's definitely a Hot Topic these days and the research we're looking at goes beyond that simple question can AI replace teachers and digs deeper into how AI could actually help human tutors be even more effective so maybe AI can team up with teachers instead of taking their jobs so release that and then just releases this interactive mode where you can actually and this will be me shouting across the room so I'm not going to do it but I can sit here you can listen to that same podcast and then I can hit the interact button and they'll treat me like a caller they'll be like what did you have to say and I can ask a question and they'll respond respond to my question based on that data within there so again just other points of kind of access and leverage that um we would never really be able to develop on our own and now we have it and I just I've done it in a matter of minutes seconds really pretty incredible you know one thing that that strikes me I know as a representative of our indigenous Community our Learners actually learn better in real time you know we're kinesthetic Learners we're oral and audio learners um my hope is that this will help us get into more real time and maybe get off the internet for those Learners who learn better that way you know so that they can have shorter times on the internet and maybe more time personal interpersonal whether it's out in the garden or the greenhouse or on the football field I mean whatever it is you know that they're they're doing but that's that's what I'm hopeful for because really that's the third area it's just career or or college it's life life skills and contentment with who you are and your interaction with other people now there is where the challenge is and and even so maybe in some ways you can look at it um to advance those skills because if we if we have students for example that are interested in medicine um you know they could be working on stuff in the in the AI world that kind of cuts their internet time down but could be out doing more dissections or whatever it is oh that sounds gross I know but you know what I mean like biology related activities lab activities that um still require that real-time process so Evan I just had a follow-up question about the professional development that happened in August of last year because you think you mentioned that briefly um and just knowing how things have they're continuing to evolve very quickly in this space but if you can think back to six months ago what was the nature of the training of the professional development at that time for staff I think right there was again just kind of the introduction of the fact that how you can start to Leverage The chatbot kind of element because that's really where that Focus was at that time like you didn't have a lot of these offshoots and ways to kind of develop it and further evolve it like it has or the notebook LM right I just showed us kind of change the and how we're processing and so it was really focusing on like I think a lot of prompting um what that information can generate I think we were still to very aware of kind of what outputs might be correctly or incorrectly and trying to just again share that that you got to be very cautious but you know take it with a grain of salt of what you're you're generating and a lot of it too was in terms of how it's changing you know we've said it a couple times it's like if your lesson or your question can be very easily answered by a kind of one sentence prompt in in AI is that really a great question or should maybe we start to then rethink about what that is um I think that was kind of that primary start Focus because that was what you saw a lot and like I said then that's where all was coming out like we have the uh the AI uh catcher right it's going to it's going to find if a student submits it with AI and you're like and people were like should we be getting all these and I'm like it's GNA the hit rate's pretty awful and then you're going to end up accusing some poor kid who maybe has just happened to hit the nail on the head here and didn't do anything with it or someone who knows how to do a really nice job or has messed with enough to prompt it so more about kind of how are you using it but then still keeping that human element with your students and kind of interacting with them and knowing when or when not something like that might not be their work and how are you then changing what you're asking them to do to do that so kind of a lot of early introduction to it and there's just like I said it's changing daily are you envisioning more professional development like this coming August start of the new you know just to keep up to date yeah we I think like I said I think this learning series is really going to jump start a lot of different opportunities and ways that we can hopefully interject that um not only for like an after school type thing but as Jesse said we had a couple principles really kind of tackle it on and run some series with their staff during staff meetings which was awesome to see unprompted not something we had to push and then asking us for kind of just that support and so we want to see more of that more of those buildings kind of asking us for that support to do it but leading the charge right and and taking that initiative to do it so that's really the Hope because that's where you're going to get the most of them I mean it's great to to offer the incentive to come like I said in one of these learning series but having it built into kind of what their daily PD their staff meetings are is really where it's going to be the most impactful yeah the series I'm looking at right now for the the high schools the two larger high schools did they did like a four-part series what is AI what are the efficiencies for Us's Educators what's Ai and student learning and that's when they really thought about how are we teaching kids to use AI all kids you know so like there's there's both sides of that I think for especially in secondary it's like I think more in elementary it's how do I as a teacher use it how does it make my job more efficient as an AA how do I use it how could it you know um make things more efficient as a principle um but the secondaries have really been thinking about how does AI impact student learning middle schools last year had Danielle come for St AI durability of actually kind of nice um and then AI literacy so they did a four-part series on that um conversations but yeah we're hoping that after this is kind of three-part we'll know where to go next we were sort of like when John talked to us about like you know how are we exposing staff to it how are we ensuring that we're making mov in the right directions we can't just say we're going to ban it and pretend like it'll go away that's you all know that's not what's going to happen um we kind of came up with this series first and we've supported those building leaders who have wanted to go a little deeper already with all of their staff and then we're sort of going okay after we do this three-part we'll figure out the next step we do think it probably will impact as we think about PD for next year and all of our teing staff um and then I just want to also ask I think lastly um to what extent are there federal or state guidelines and and what about our associations mea Nea um masasa I mean to what extent have have they developed guidelines and have those been incorporated into teaps the office of edtech did release a document that some of those guidelines that we've created is is a lot pulled from there um that was a big one that came out uh believe end of last year and that Danielle was really on top of that and kind of pulling from that and sharing that out with us um that was the most kind of like I said widespread National one that that I had seen and then we've leveraged as many of the institutions that are doing it kind of across the state like I mentioned Michigan virtual has done a lot of work in that space and bringing in um people from those districts who are kind of full steam ahead to try and help further develop that so um we're definitely kind of taking as much as we can uh and and making it applicable as best we can so what was that one called Ed the office of edtech the US Department of Ed yeah and then the second Michigan virtual really all of the Statewide Ed organizations and MD got behind Michigan virtuals guidance they really they signed on to it um you know the reality is is most of those groups including our state department of Ed really don't have a lot of capacity you know doing that so really the resources and there was even some State Legislative funding that went to Michigan virtual for a office of AI that's been created at Michigan virtual that is specifically working on that to provide training so they held the Statewide conference that we sent our team too um with that and so Michigan virtual is really taking that lead um on this front for our State Office of AI just sounds Hogwarts doesn't it I actually think it has a different I'm close but I'm not exact on it of what it is now you're going to make me look it up actually what they called you really don't have to but it's pretty interesting so Jetson yeah I think it's going to I mean it's already having massive impacts on career choices and things I mean again a reference uh you know I just it wasn't actually my kid in this case but they were doing art and they're getting out of it because they said that everyone's getting out of it because why would you when you can just generate art which is sad but at the same time is they they said that the number was just sheer sheer down in people siging up for art so like bigger picture we got to think of like not just career choices and what we PE but like retraining people how to learn like how to make these selections too because it's got large impacts it's the AI lab within the Michigan virtual learning Institute it's a property yeah and then do I dare ask about at the policy level for us as a board I mean to my recollection having reviewed all of our policies last summer I don't think we have an AI and we don't and we're not there yet you know there are a few districts that have done that but they're revising them constantly right now so I think you know that guidance document what we tried to do I do see a point where we get to something like that and something in our student handbooks I do see some of that but just honestly we're not there yet and most of our counterparts they are not there yet I'm just wonder yeah and masb and I mean just be worth again they're Michigan virtual some of that and they haven't given a specific guidance on that I was going to say it looks like we have a new policy for AI at exact committee for staff ethics yeah to consider it's talked about in some but you know about some of that but it references it but like overall on exactly you know what like what the guidance dock does this is 42 acceptable use of generative artificial intelligence this says I I guess optional new policy yeah from turn but it's a cookie cutter one yeah I me I think that's I'm also interested in getting kids to work together with AI um the JK kids I noticed some of these kids are so excited about going to the computers uh rather than doing things with other other kids you know they they really gravitate to putting on their headphones and going into that virtual space and I think that one of the things would be very very helpful is if we can get them to work more together I'm afraid of people closing each other out see I think it's coming back around it's like when you send the kids to play organ Trail and everyone had to go and do it together mainly cuz you only had one computer that would be cool oron Trail here we go get together and you figure it out all working together on the commodor 64 but to focus a little bit of deliberately to make it more well we in and this goes back to that you know the the the art of teaching right we actually still teach kids how to work together in groups I mean heck as adults sometimes we need to be reminded of how to work together appropriately with each other too right and so we do a lot of that right how do we make sure everyone has a voice at the table how do we listen to the other side of it cool that's all this perspective what might we be missing or somebody who doesn't agree what might they be saying or reading or thinking about or coming from right so any other questions all right anything any any last uh so much more to go you know but um we'll periodically have things especially in curriculum committee you know talking about what we have with that visiting and we get well I do appreciate I said um I think this is a definite start and it's interesting to see obiously how we all feel I was wondering if if we have any kind of people who think it's not inevitable but I think it is so I'm glad um I'm glad we're all roughly on the same at least understanding that we're going to have to be very Vigilant of its uh progress so it only is until it isn't what that it said it is until it if we have a power grid that goes down then it isn't yeah that's a good point but here for those generators so um yep so then we'll finish up on that and then we'll move on to the next agenda item which is no public comment uh is there any additional public comment okay um with that that's it thanks uh I know we got a a meeting heavy a couple of months coming up so the next Board of Education meeting is Monday February 10th at 6: PM um and with that do I have a motion we did have a few questions a little bit Jo ask some questions a little on um ours our yes study sessions yeah um so I've been working at uh and I I say I I should say we collectively have been working on trying to get the schedule figured out with strategic planning so um again Scott and let the board know that nickler Dr Nick saric agreed to um do some of the sessions within the uh component of facilitating them what that does not include is any data collection survey creation survey um sending out does not include focus groups all that that was done last time and so uh I've been trying to talk to different people on that element um Nick himself thought it was going to be tough to hit our dates that we have here in time to be able to have to get the surveys get them out have enough time for them to get answered in that element so I I have found one um data company that does that work out of Grand Rapids um I think that she feels like it's tight but could have it possibly ready for the April dates definitely not the March date um and so right now we were able to um get as well as for the February 24th date um if the board wants we were able to get the isd's large room available from February 24th April 7th um and April 28th so we do have those locked down right now and so um and we have confirmed that Dr Tim Quinn is available for the 24th and Nick is available for those Nick did say that he's willing to try and and talk to some of his staff about possibly could do the facilitation of the focus groups that's something that the data group I talked to said they would not have that capacity to do and it's so many to not be local is really really tough um so you know we're that's where we're at right now when I'm a little worried and and I don't have I do have a a message out to two other data collection groups but I've had no response yet for a proposal to have um you know right now we're within a couple thousand dollar of what Nick told me he thought the cost would be and then what this data group has put together um but the longer I go here waiting the the data person I have right now will no longer be to meet our deadline of trying to have them done for the April dates so I do need some guidance if we want to try and push back in May do we want to trade shoot for this and where am I I at with hiring the data I don't need board approval to hire the data person that's under the peer viiew is the service that I can sign a contract and do but I would like some guidance on the board of where you want to go with all that so in terms of dates the the bottom line is that Monday March 3rd that was slated to be our first study session strategic that's a go that to late may I would think late May that's that would be the earliest oh yeah right now we can just cancel that much third and we might not need a third one last time we only used two in a little bit you know and we may kind of gauge it do we need a third to schedule y I'll just note that may 26th you probably know this already that is Memorial Day so yeah we won't get people probably in attendence for that but um and right now we have June 23rd scheduled to be a study session with the TVD topic I mean I think we're holding it TVD because partially because of we don't even know if Nick's available on these particular dates as well so we probably need to hammer the April 28th and April 7th down at least and then might my thought process is to get the data going because otherwise it gets much more C don't treat planic um I think we would all like to have done it but no one's responding anyway I could try and get a second but at this point I just I have somebody that you know is very reputable you know within the Grand Rapids area that you know I know is done but again I'm happy to try and work and get some more but I think that probably pushes us now out of at least the first April date at least that's why I would like to I personally I mean this is obviously a group decision so I personally would support the data that you can get especially since they responded quickly and no one else is I guess the only caveat I'd like to have is is for the board to reserve some judgment if we don't feel like we get the kind of response back and stuff like that we want that we would consider extending it and not doing that first date you know to just make sure I think I think we would all agree the process only goes well if we get the kind of feedback we had a really good response and data last time over I believe over 1,200 between staff students parents and community and I just want to make sure that we give it due diligence time and the board feels comfortable with that amount of data we can keep you updated on that but you know I think we could go with this but we may need to be flexible if we don't hit that number and we want to keep pushing to try and get more data and we and the right the facilitated focus groups also by April 7th the first correct it is tight and I guess the question that you can have a conversation with Nick is how Le because I know that his on the clock as well so so I guess I'm just asking for a little bit of latitude and understanding from the board are you comfortable with that you know do you just want to push further now like where do you want to go I think we should probably wait to push it further but we should probably work with Nick on how late we can go what's the deadline absolutely this deadline for giving your Strat have a legal requirement there is no requirement so this one wouldn't do affect July January July of 2022 so yeah I mean we've got one part of our goal on the Strategic plan was to always not to renew it before it's yeah you really want to have it for July 1 is the start technically of the new school year yeah so that's our goal but there's no legal requirement to do anything well and even if so say the last strategic planning speci study session was in May or June you've got to have a little bit of time to finalize the strategy planed you know yeah last time North took and then go and set specific goals with it and those Ginger Smith had to work her magic to produce it yeah yeah defer to job whatever you think is best and so so I'm clear this present strategic plan expires July 1 as well it was a three-year plan this is the last year of the school year of the three-year plan once left on that okay and the goal the goal then was to redo it every three years no I I looking forward to it yeah it's okay so just to be clear about that third so we're scratching March 3r I would propose that we cancel March 3D meeting I I would agree yeah got three in a row anyway three weeks in a row and then and then that third strategic planning study session is TVD in May or June June 23d do I to cancel a meeting that's already posted we need to have we don't need to do anything what's that we can cancel it we just have a open meeting that process but you any official no we call Tes you to make sure you're not going to have that luxury day D Lina found the that's why I was like excited like always excited to have you was like sweet so ideally that June 23rd study session though would be Mi GL and if we need a third yes if we need a third otherwise right now right now what I would like to do is is I will for you on galpagos which is the company that does that data so the board has that and my my my hope would be you know the next 48 hours here to be able to work with her to get that started and then with the goal of trying to hit having our data collected and be able to have that first meeting with Nick with that data April 7th if Nick doesn't think ni done or they don't our first one would then be moved to April 28th we would then use the June 23rd and then we could decide if we needed an additional one at that point again you might remember Nick thought we were close to two or three having we the fact that most of the board has done it once a lot of Staff has done once maybe we can get away with having that you know the at worst case scenario the June 23rd having it complete yeah can you guys remind me again why we aren't using the same people that we used last ni Nick did his he and his group that he worked with and partner did it all and he is he is actually pretty well retired from doing this it was by an you know a bag and a Twist of an arm that Scott got him to agree to do the facilitation part in that element what was in the bag nothing nothing everything legit okay more of a good sounds good good sounds good yep so cancel the March s meeting and yeah you got the discretion just to keep this updated okay we'll do so February 24th February 24th we will right now we're scheduled for that um again Dr Tim quin's said he is available so he's asked that Scott and I have a conversation with him around the second week of February just to make sure he's on part of what he's planned and uh and that's basically just preliminary what do you think we need to cover in the next three years uh no I think it's more of conversation of board governance boards communication style collectively those kind of things you know he um again to give you the background Dr Tim Quinns uh former superintendent Green Bay Wisconsin former deputy State superintendent in Wisconsin um he was the president of North Michigan uh Northern Michigan College um and he was also the head of the broad um Center for uh Su Urban superintendency um one of the Premier superintendent programs preparation programs of the nation um he ran was a founding uh member hired by Eli bro to run that author of 13 14 books on superintendent Board of relations and he lives here in Travers City is there any feedback from the board on things like I mean it's meant to be a collaborative like we're trying to get to like a points of if you got any frustrations are they is it because of the fact that this is our role is it because of we should be doing something different I think we're open to have difficult and Ed questions so if you got any thoughts just send them ahead of time and we can make sure he includes includes them in a positive way but it's meant to be a very open dialogue for the board with him all right okay any other questions on the calendar did there was also a note that the board office hours is now some in person some virtual it does um delineate that in there there go there was a snaap was a snap yeah it didn't it didn't actually happen um there was sort of a technical issue with the they call it the Google meet so it couldn't be resolved in a reasonable way that evening see I'm nobody showed up no emails or anything from either so yeah we we'll let you know but but the next one is in person at tan correct correct y y so okay um all right so just uh again get back to do I have a motion to adjourn the meeting motion to adjourn I second second all those in favor say I say nay meeting a jour usually I don't have to say