Educate AI with Joel Backon — Simulcast with The Authority Podcast

Joel Backon is the editor-in-chief of Educate AI Magazine, a new platform dedicated to supporting those who seek to enhance learning through artificial intelligence. The Be Podcast Network is collaborating with Educate AI to share podcasts and other content advancing educators’ understanding of AI tools and trends. 

In this bonus episode, you'll hear about:

• How Joel got involved with Educate AI and the publication’s “why”
• Topics covered in the magazine: use cases, opportunities and risks, AI’s evolution
• How educators are discussing their experience with AI
• The value Educate AI seeks to provide
• Opportunities to get involved

About today’s guest

Joel Backon is the editor-in-chief of Educate AI Magazine. Before joining Educate AI, Joel launched and was the founding editor of Intrepid Ed News, an online education publication that grew to almost 100,000 readers. For most of his career, he was an independent school teacher and administrator, teaching history and government while leading the school’s instructional technology effort, running a dormitory, coaching basketball, and chairing several committees. Immediately following college, Joel spent 15 years in the printing and publishing industries.

About today’s host

Ross Romano is a co-founder of the BE Podcast Network and CEO of September Strategies, a coaching and consulting firm that helps organizations and high-performing leaders in the K-12 education industry communicate their vision and make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. Connect on Twitter @RossBRomano or https://www.linkedin.com/in/rossromano 

Listen to his other shows:

• The Authority — deep-dive interviews with the leading minds in leadership, management, education, and personal development.
• Sideline Sessions — conversations with successful coaches and performance experts from professional, collegiate, and youth sports. 

Creators & Guests

Host

Ross Romano

Co-founder & podcaster @BePodcastNet | CEO & edtech advisor @SeptemberStrat

What is EdTech Startup Showcase?

This series shines a spotlight on the innovative edtech companies working to make a difference for students and educators.

Through conversations with the founders and CEOs, partner organizations, and the educators who are using their products in schools today, listeners hear about solutions relevant to their chronic challenges and opportunity-expanding ideas to go into uncharted directions.

Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in everyone. You are listening to the Authority Podcast, or perhaps you're listening to the EdTech Startup Showcase here on the Be Podcast Network. We're recording this special episode for both of those feeds because we believe it's going to be relevant to you. If you're a listener of either of those shows, we are talking about a critical topic and a trending topic in education today.

It's AI, and in particular, we're talking about Educate AI Magazine, which is a new publication that's going to be routinely bringing out new content from a variety of perspectives across the spectrum, talking about all the various challenges, opportunities, concerns, everything we really need to be discussing on an ongoing basis with respect to AI, with respect to how we create, great outcomes for [00:01:00] educators, for students.

And we engage with a variety of things that are out there and really just continue to increase our understanding. My guest is Joel Backon. Joel is the editor in chief of Educate AI Magazine, which before joining Educate AI, he was the founding editor of Intrepid Ed News, which he also launched. And for most of his career, he was an independent school teacher and administrator.

Joel, welcome to the show.

Joel Backon: Thank you, Ross. Happy to be here and thank you for having me on.

Ross Romano: So I told I told our listeners, we're going to talk about Educate AI. What is Educate AI?

Joel Backon: Well, you actually did a pretty good job of describing it when you did your introduction. I'll try to go into just a little bit more detail. Educate. ai is both a magazine and a media platform. And it's designed to inform people who want to support learning through AI. And I choose that word support very [00:02:00] carefully because I think it's essential that at this stage of the game, we understand that AI is playing a supporting role.

in the education process and that teachers are still going to have a job, and that teachers are critical to student learning Because they love to help students grow. I mean, they wouldn't be in the profession if they didn't. It's certainly not the pay that attracts them to the profession. And I think, and I think, and I think many people would agree that AI today is a long way from having some of the human characteristics that, you know, we associated with, with effective learning, whether it be passion, motivation, self actualization.

Or even the balance between left and right brain. I haven't seen any of those characteristics demonstrated by the AI bots that I've [00:03:00] worked with so far. That doesn't mean it's not going to happen down the road, but certainly not today. So, the idea is that we're going to publish articles. The magazine at this point will publish six times a year, the website will publish more frequently and we'll have a variety of articles from the magazine, some shorter articles that are not in the magazine as well as regular columns by, by specific writers who have specific expertise and a news feed to keep our audience up to date with what's happening in the AI world.

So we hope to chronicle. That process as well. And our target audience is, is broad. It's educators, wherever they might be. And that would include. 3k to 12 teachers, coaches, school administrators, higher education teachers, corporate trainers, associations [00:04:00] and support organizations, parents, you name it.

AI in education is a media topic and because of that it's permeated a very large constituency. (ad here)

Ross Romano: Yeah. And I mean, if you're looking for further selling points, listeners you also can get to read columns from me who has no expertise other than I get to talk to a lot of people who know a lot of things about this. And I'm pretty good at distilling and communicating information and I can at least write.

So there you go.

Joel Backon: Well, so. You'll be the messenger for the expertise.

Ross Romano: So one of the, one of the big things with AI technologies and, and, you know, it, the past couple of years where we've really seen the proliferation of generative AI, which is one specific type of AI, I think has changed the relationship and, and, you know, emotional reaction and connotations a lot of people have around AI in general, [00:05:00] because in reality, AI has been around for quite a while.

It's present in a lot of tools that our listeners are familiar with and just haven't really thought about it as being AI, but in general a good way to think about them is productivity tools, right? When we think about, okay, what are the skills and capabilities and technologies that we're going to have available to us and need to be able to know how to use and do to be productive.

in the future to have economic opportunity to access whatever the careers of the future are going to be, or, or to continue to be at the forefront of our roles, right? And none of it should obviate the need for the human element, but It's the lack of engagement with it or, you know, the refusal to be informed and to learn what's available and how it can be used that [00:06:00] is more likely to push people out of roles than the existence of the technologies because the world will just work in different ways.

There's going to be new challenges or potentially solutions to pre existing challenges, and this is going to be the way they're solved. Are there other helpful ways, I guess, that you've seen educators describing the tools that have sort of. Addressed, I think. Some of the fears or, you know, some of the, I mean, it could be the fears or on the other hand, it could be some of the over the top cheerleading, right?

That takes place on, on both ends to start to just kind of have some kind of a foundational, context for a conversation and say look here's basically what we're talking about and we're going to look at this from a lot of angles and it's going to evolve fast [00:07:00] but let's just kind of try to remove some of that emotional component and just kind of practically understand This is what we mean,

Joel Backon: Well, you know, it, you even get inside the classroom AI is in a position, I think, even today to be helpful to teachers. And from a sort of, you used the word productivity before, and I think that's probably a good word because One of the questions that teachers are always asking whenever you present something new to them is, How's this going to help me? You know, what, what's it going to do for me? Am I doing this because the school is telling me to do it? Or am I doing it because there's actually going to be some benefit for me? So. AI is already doing things like developing lesson plans, [00:08:00] creating grading rubrics, creating quizzes and tests, and then grading those quizzes and tests.

These are all the kinds of things that have a tendency to bury teachers in the course of a typical day and also cut into the time that they can spend with their students, and that's a critical balance. That right now, a lot of teachers feel that they're on the short end of because they have so much paperwork to do and so much preparation to do for classes.

In, in a, in an elementary school. Teachers, obviously, are teaching all subjects, are creating, in some cases, up to 20 lesson plans a day, and you have to think about, you know, I've heard people joke about, well, teachers have the entire summer off. You know, what kind of a job is that? When you're working 16 hours a [00:09:00] day during the school year and then spending the summer preparing for what's going to happen in the coming school year, that doesn't sound like a big vacation to me.

So the notion that AI is going to provide tools that are going to make my life easier, and even if it can't produce a finished product, Today, it can, if it can do 80 percent of the work, and then the teacher puts the finishing touches on the test or on the lesson plan or whatever that's going to have a big impact on teachers and I think it will help to change their future.

their viewpoint about what AI is and how it can help, and they may be more open to bringing AI into the classroom.

Ross Romano: you know? Yeah. I mean, maybe, and I, I guess another potential definition for the AI acronym would be like, asks for intentionality. I mean, [00:10:00] it requires just understanding what am I trying to accomplish here? What, what do I need to do here with the lesson plans? Okay. I have my original plan. I have these variety of different things that I need to be able to do.

What. What are the adjustments I need to focus on, or what, what am I trying to create? Getting really comfortable with being able to communicate in clear steps what that looks like. And so it still requires The knowledge of what the outcome is supposed to be and what needs to be in it and information literacy to go through the content and figure out, okay, how do I need to update this?

Or what's right? What's wrong? And all of those various pieces. It can be a time saver. It can be, you know, lead to better productivity. And hopefully, as with all these things, like and with every tool and with every [00:11:00] objective, I always ask, what's the so that? this tool to save time on this so that you can, what, or use it to, you know, accomplish X so that Y.

And in this case, it can be certainly alleviating burnout, right, and overwork. It can be better adapting and having a greater variety of lesson plans available. for different students. There's a number of different things that might look like, but it requires an understanding of what that goal is, what we're trying to achieve, how to, how to create that outcome.

And it's just a technology that does it, same as other technologies help us do other things. Like, you know, it's, it's hot here. I want to turn on the air conditioner so that I'm not so hot, right? It's, it's, what am I, what am I trying to do? So. You know, and thought about in those terms, it's, it's. [00:12:00] I think overcoming that resistance to engaging with it, understanding what are some of the opportunities, understanding what are some of the the eventualities, you know, what, what are some of the things that are going to happen regardless of our efforts, right?

As far as, especially for students, right? When it comes to things that they're going to have access to at home or elsewhere and us trying to create artificial limitations within the school building without any, you know, logical reason or intention is a disservice or or thinking about, okay, well, in the present and future of work, how is work getting done?

And if we're not, prioritizing the skill development that students need in order to, to have the [00:13:00] opportunities that they want. Are we doing that with this service? On the other hand, if we're just not having any parameters and just not having any guidance or clarity around how to use tools, how to use effectively, what are the risks in that regard?

Are we risking not really having students engaging in their work because they're more or less outsourcing some of it. Are we risking them not really? learning accurate knowledge because they don't have the media literacy skills for the 21st, you know, this part of the 21st century, the AI age. So there, you know, there's a lot of considerations from all ends, but again, it requires engaging with it, which I think getting back to the educate AI is, is a lot of the opportunity that's presented here.

Who are some of the people that have been writing for the publication so far with the, you know, the first couple of issues out [00:14:00] now, and what, you know, what are some of the topics they've been looking at?

Joel Backon: Well, we've had we've had corporate writers write about products that they've developed that they believe, and we believe have some potential in the classroom. in an education framework. For example, one of them is actually an AI counselor. So the concept here is that for most schools, their counseling staff is significantly overtaxed and overworked.

A lot of schools may have one counselor for every 300 students and That doesn't really do the job, particularly over the last few years since, since COVID. So, this particular app runs on a phone, on a smartphone. And it's not designed to take the place of a counselor, but what it is [00:15:00] designed to do is when a student is feeling a significant level of stress either as a result of conversation they had, maybe with a parent, maybe with a teacher and they can't get to see a counselor, the idea of the app is to you.

Ask questions and try to get the student to understand the situation that they're in, and that it is important that they see a counselor in the near future they should make an appointment to see that counselor but in the meantime. Here are some things that you could do, in terms, could be as simple as deep breathing, but to reduce your anxiety so that you can be effective in class today. Those articles are interesting. I have no idea whether the app will be successful or not. But it sounds like something that people should experiment with and see what kind of results they get. Another, [00:16:00] another article is more focused on the special students with special needs and the kinds of applications that they are producing are designed for kids who have IEPs and need need additional help, additional support.

And it seemed to me from, from hearing about these apps that they could be used outside of the IEP world as well. just for students who are not keeping up with the mainstream class and need a little, a little additional skills work in a more adaptive way, something that is more tailored to their needs and their understandings.

AI is pretty good at doing that. So, those are the kinds of articles that we've received so far. We've received some More philosophical articles sort of goals and objectives [00:17:00] articles like the one that you wrote for the first issue. We had one writer who went to a show, a conference and reported back on what he discovered at the conference and based on what he discovered and who and the people he spoke with there, what his assessment is of the current state of affairs in AI.

In this issue, we're going to have some more specific articles about decisions that have been made by schools, systems that they're using. You know, there are products out there now that are doing some of the things that we talked about. Products, one of the more popular ones is Magic School that's being used by a growing number of schools.

It has a whole variety, a whole suite of services that, that it provides both for teachers and for students. And then we'll hopefully we're going to have some articles from actual teachers in the classroom who have tried to use AI. And, [00:18:00] and have their assessment of, you know, whether it was successful, not successful, somewhat successful.

What would they like to see AI be able to do? What is it doing now that they're not happy with? And hopefully that, that information will inform some of the companies that are working on AI based products.

Ross Romano: Yeah, and, and You know, I think the variety of different views is what is important, because as listeners who have been engaged with this series will know, you might hear from companies like Scholar Education and Pedagogy. ai and Inquire, and you know, there's AI involved in all these things, but they're addressing very different needs in very different ways, but they're educator created solutions that can basically be communicated in one or two sentences, and you would be able to say, Yes, that's a real thing I need help with, right?

Yes, [00:19:00] that's something we're dealing with in our school. And, and so there's any number of those things potentially out there, any number of persistent challenges or, or, or opportunities to do more. But it requires, you know, You know, a continuous dialogue to identify what are those things, what are the shortcomings so far, what are the areas where, right, where the, where the development effort that's been put into this technologies is not really leading in the right direction.

And and they're not easy or inexpensive, a lot of times to, to develop, but we want to reward. The effort put into that innovation. We, I think we want to incentivize innovation happening in education, right? There's a lot of smart people who can create technology to do a number of different things, and we want there to be incentives for that innovation to happen where we believe it matters in education.

And that requires all parties engaging with [00:20:00] that and trying to understand that it's a collaborative effort and everybody wants to create positive outcomes here. And. You know, and so, but. It's a lot of the, the newer and smaller startups with that you haven't necessarily heard about yet that we want to give people opportunities to learn about and to see what's possible because there's, you know, there's infinite possible niches within what can be done and developed.

And it's all about saying, how can we, how can we solve that? And, and how can we solve things that What we can't do with humans alone without technology is address the scale of all the different things that we like to do, you know, AI assistants in the classroom could be like each student having their own dedicated [00:21:00] teachers aid, right?

And that wouldn't work. work without the guidance of the teacher, you know, if it was an actual human and you just gave each student an aid and there was no teacher, every student would be doing something different. Nobody would necessarily be aligned to learning objectives or standards. It would, you know, there would be certain benefits kids would get out of it, but otherwise it would kind of be an you know, undirected free for all, but with the guidance and then with the ability to scale that support and saying, okay, Now we can, you know, fill some of those gaps, but with a clear direction of, of somebody who's an expert in the field.

You know, that's, that's what we can do there. So there's a lot of good stuff. Joel, what is your, what's your hope for what's upcoming in the publication? What's the kind of value you want to provide? What are you hoping will evolve here over this next year or so as, as the publication continues to take root?

[00:22:00] Yeah,

Joel Backon: there are two things really. One is, is obviously to provide information and feedback to, to people who want to learn more about how AI is used in education. And I think that's what any magazine would want to do for their reading audience. So, you know, that's obviously very important. The other thing that I think that we have an opportunity to do is to see if we can get our readers past the sort of cultural ethos that exists right now, which is what I would call sort of the yay or nay culture.

Because I think the response to AI from people who have not read a lot about it is either it's great or it's terrible. And it's [00:23:00] not either. The answer is much more nuanced than that. And I hope that Our publication and our website will sort of clarify that those nuances because it's not as simple as, you know, it's going to solve all our problems or it's going to create major problems for us in education or elsewhere.

But I think in education, particularly you know, most really great teachers will tell you that the only way. to be 100 percent successful is to give each individual student the amount of attention and support that they need. And most teachers are frustrated by the fact that they can't do that. So, everything becomes a compromise and AI is going to, is going to either fit [00:24:00] into each school environment and each teacher's classroom in a way that works for them, or it won't. And there's no way that, that anybody can, can predict ahead of time and say, well, this feature of AI is never going to work in schools. I mean, we're hearing some of that already. I mean, I hear You know, my own senator in Connecticut is railing about privacy issues with the AI bots. They're, they, they've been addressed. They may not have been implemented yet, but they've been addressed, and in some of the products, like the one I mentioned earlier, it has been addressed. No information is shared outside of the, of the school environment, and we understand that, you know, K 12 schools, it's a very big issue. So, I think this nuanced world is, is the key to really understanding that you have to find the right language.

[00:25:00] The best use cases for AI in your classroom, in your school, in your district, and it's going to vary from place to place. (ad here)

Ross Romano: yeah. And the only way these things happen is if we. Talk about them, right? And say, look, yeah, there's very real things that, that we need to address, we need to fix. And then if we can surface that and acknowledge, yes, that's important, then we can work on it. And then, but if it's happening in, in, you know, in the dark or, or we're just not engaging in the dialogue, then then it's not going to happen.

Afraid it didn't, or there's not purpose built tools out there and there are. You know, the, the tools available to the general public, right, that certainly are in accounting for privacy and data, or, or just even the, you know, specifics of the use cases of what schools want to achieve. And you know, and, and again, getting [00:26:00] back to, we want to incentivize that innovation to happen.

That requires, The willingness to engage and to show, look, you're, you're, you're innovation will be rewarded here because. We're going to have a clear conversation about what are the things that we want and that we want to implement. And then once we can have those things, we will follow through. But if everything that's being thrown up is a barrier or just blanket skepticism or pushback, then that's I'm not going to disincentivize anybody from wanting to develop these tools.

I'll say I'll just make something for the general public and do what you want schools. Because, you know, the only way to guarantee something will never work in schools is if they'll never try. And You know, and there's a possibility that that happens in some

Joel Backon: Right, right. Well, I mean, a good example of that is a few weeks ago [00:27:00] edutopia published an article. Title that said that read why I am banning AI in my courses. Now, that's exactly the kind of title that is going to get people riled up either on one side or the other. But if you read the article, then you discover that it's not that clear cut. The bottom line is that this teacher spent a year experimenting with AI in her classroom in this particular, this was an English literature high school course, and found that it did not meet her needs. So the next year, after having that experience, she said, I'm not using AI in this course. this year. That's a lot different than why I banned AI in my classroom.

Ross Romano: Right. More compelling headline, though.

Joel Backon: that's right, [00:28:00] much more compelling.

Ross Romano: But the nuance, I mean, as you said, is important. We had a conversation that was published on the Resilient Schools podcast here, but with somebody that EdTech Startup Showcase listeners, and in fact, Authority listeners, who will have heard from before, Preet and Shah founder of EdTech.

pedagogy. cloud and pedagog. ai, but it was conversation that that stemmed from an op ed that he had written for Ed Week that I believe was titled, I was an AI optimist. Now, I think it's, it's making teacher burnout worse or something along those lines, but basically the conversation that it's not about The tools and what they're capable of, but it's about our plan for implementation and professional development and support and looking at things holistically and figuring out if we want to learn how to use new tools, we need to set aside some time where some other things are taken off the plate and we need some guidance on that, right?

But if we're just piling more things on top, [00:29:00] even if there's high potential in the tool. All it becomes is just overwhelm, and that overwhelms everything, right, when that's happening. And so, you know, it's from people who are really in the field, who are looking at what's happening, and who aren't afraid to call out, look, right now we're not living up to the promise of what we can be, and we need to really look at the areas to address. And a lot of those things are much broader than just AI, because this is a reality with any kind of implementation, right? That, you know, that there's a lot of technology tools that are just sitting on the shelf that have been purchased and never used. There's a lot of, you know, overwhelm with any kind of curriculum, PD, and all the different demands on teachers.

To really, you know, have a clear view of that and say, look, I'm not afraid that if we talk about the real issues, that's going to mean that it's going to sabotage our ability to make progress in the future. In fact, it's going to [00:30:00] facilitate it because we're going to be realistic about we are identifying what's not working now and why it's not working and figuring out what the solution is.

You know, so we want people who are, who are thoughtful about it. So, Joel, for, for listeners who want to get involved, maybe they want to read, educate AI, maybe they want to write, or get involved in some other way what should they do?

Joel Backon: The easiest thing to do is to go to the website. You can register as a subscriber. At this point in time, it doesn't cost anything to subscribe. One of our plans is to put out a newsletter periodically to our subscriber base that will talk about some of the things that are on the site as well as things that we're planning to have going forward.

If you want to write for us, then the easiest thing to do is There's a link on the site [00:31:00] to contact, to contact us and that, that link will get to me. And I will be in touch with anybody. Who wants to write very quickly and we'll have a conversation about, you know, what your interests are and what you'd like to write about and see if we can find a context for that and, you know, move forward from there.

So, we welcome all writers. We're not, I'm not looking for experts. I know this is not a field that has a lot of experts at this point in time because we don't really have enough experience with generative AI yet. I want people who have a story to tell or a product that they think is going to help educators in in the you know in the education world And you know your opinion matters.

We want lots of different opinions. We're not We don't have a position You on, on AI in education. We don't have an official position. We want people to know what, what the pros and [00:32:00] cons are and make their, make their own decisions about how they can best use AI with, with help from people who have already tried it,

Ross Romano: Yeah, we'll put the link below to edu ai. org. So easiest thing, pop over there and subscribe to receive emails. You can check out the content that's already there from the existing issues. We also have a number of AI focused podcast episodes from the network there. So if you're interested in more, that's an easy place to find them.

And then if you want to write, yeah, reach out. Yeah. As Joel said, you know, we don't know, we're not going to know for a while who's really an expert on all of this. We have people who are confident but we don't know how it all turns out. But, you know, staying engaged, thinking about new things, continuing to learn more.

That's the best path to expertise. But if you're a practitioner or you're somehow involved in, in the process of teaching and learning in the industry, that's the perspectives and voices we want to be hearing [00:33:00] from. What are the real questions you have, what are the real things you're learning about, right?

What conversations are you having? That's going to help your peers learn about things as well. So it's all about highlighting a variety of voices and insights and keeping it authentic and ongoing and not making it you know, a one time thing or something that goes away. So please do check that out.

Get involved with the link below to make it easy for you. And and if you're not already, you know, please subscribe to these various shows. We'll have more conversations like this. We've covered AI, A number of times and it's going to be certainly something that I think comes up again and again with some authors that we've spoken to and and also a variety of founders and others in the space.

So it's not something that's going away, but we want to just keep getting smarter about it and just kind of learning how it fits into everything else that we're doing in education. So thanks listeners for being with us and thank you, Joel, for being here.

Joel Backon: Well, thank [00:34:00] you.