Transformative Principal

This episode is part of the Summer of AI Series, brought to you by SchoolAI, Scrible, and FocalPointK12.

  • Perhaps large language models could solve some challenges in schools. 
  • Teacher attrition - how can you build excellence if you can’t keep teachers?
  • Time is not enough to do deep work, which is required for effective planning. 
  • The AI can’t do everything (nor should it). 
  • Source it, shape it, share it.
  • AI as a creative collaborator - Lesson seed
  • Look at generative content like a sculptor would look at a block of marble. 
  • Elaborative explanation is a best practice in education. 
  • Prefer to pull methods from cognitive sciences
  • Students engaging in essay evaluation rather than essay writing. 
  • Artificially intelligent tutors - Khanmigo and others. 
  • Training against chess bots. 
  • Chess is a closed system, so perhaps not the best idea. 
  • Proficiency vs aptitude vs 
  • Hard to get quality feedback - 
  • What are the parameters you need to be in to access the highest level of success? 
  • Embedding best practices into our 
  • One-shot prompt vs. leading the language model into learning. 
  • Unit plans - 4-6 weeks of instructional planning. 
  • Distributed & interleaved practice
  • Assessments & quizzes. 
  • AI lowers the cost of evolution. 
  • Open Educational Resources compared to Teacher Pay Teachers. 
  • Things open up in ways you couldn’t imagine simply because you did something.
  • Foundational models are not particularly useful in their basic form for what we’re trying to do in education. 
  • Having granular control that teacher can make changes in the workspace
  • How to take Smart Notes
  • Obsidian note taking app
  • You learn in relation to what you already know. 
The intersection of Ai, instructional design, and backend classroom administration—opportunities and tradeoffs.

  • The limits of the technology, boundary conditions
  • Broad institutional implications - Foundational flaws in education
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein - blue and brown books. The Wittgensten Reader, the tractatus

About Thomas Thompson
Thomas Thompson is the founder and CEO of eduaide.ai, which boasts over 100,000 users. Eduaide is an AI tool to help eliminate teacher burnout and make high-quality teaching resources universally accessible.
Thomas has a Master in Educational Technology from Johns Hopkins School of Education and is still a teacher in the Maryland area. 

Martin Gurry - Public
2001 data produced more in one year than we’ve every produced before. 

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Creators & Guests

Host
Jethro Jones

What is Transformative Principal?

Jethro Jones interviews instructional leaders from around the nation to learn and teach what it takes to become a transformative principal. Episodes address topics like Response to Intervention (RTI), Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS), the latest advances in educational research, standards-based grading, and interviews with industry leaders like Bill Daggett, Rick Wormeli, Todd Whitaker and even people outside the education like Seth Godin, JeVon McCormick, Liz Wiseman, and more.