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Scaling Success is a national K–12 education and technology podcast uncovering the people, partnerships, and proven practices behind programs that are working and exploring how their success can be replicated and scaled. Jennifer Womble and Jacob Kantor bring together two sides of the K–12 innovation ecosystem: education leadership and edtech partnership. Scaling Success is grounded in a simple belief: some of the best solutions to education's biggest challenges already exist in our schools. We need better ways to find them, understand them, share them, and scale them.
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[00:01] Lorne Rodriguez: We made the decision to go with a guidebook and not a policy, specifically because this technology and field is evolving way too fast to try to codify something in a policy that by the time it gets reviewed, approved, and published.
[00:15] Steven Butschi: I think we walked away with 3 things. The first is we need to make sure that AI tools are built with learning in mind, hence why we created LearnLM. And I think we were debuting some of that at that time, Jacob, when we met there, and, and we realized that we need to have strong learning science principles, but we continue to iterate on that. For example, we just
[00:37] Jacob Kantor: Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of Scaling Success with Jenn and Jacob. We have a powerhouse episode for you guys today. And as I was prepping for this with Jenn, I said, man, we have some heavy hitters on this. And I was going to read their bios. And then I said, even reading their bios will give no justice to who these 2 gentlemen are. So, I'm going to turn it over to both of them to do intros, proper intros of all the things that they are working on and who they are. First, we'll start with Steven.
[01:15] Steven Butschi: Hi, everyone. Thanks, Jacob and Jenn, for having me. I am the director of our education team at Google for North America. I've been here now 16 years, which is funny because when I first started, I told my first supervisor or manager that I'd be here 2 years. And then she became 16. So I guess there's some good stuff going on. But I am incredibly excited about all the work that's happening around AI and Gemini. And when you all are asking about who are some great districts, of course, I thought of Lorne from Chicago Public Schools. So Lorne, I'll turn it over to you.
[01:47] Lorne Rodriguez: Sounds good. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm Lorne Rodriguez. I'm the manager of enterprise generative AI for Chicago Public Schools. I've been with CPS around 5 and a half years now, originally starting as the educational technology specialist when SOPA, the Student Online Personal Protection Act, came into play. It's a law in the state of Illinois. We had to build out a whole funnel for bringing in edtech products and getting agreements in place with them. So that was my entry into CPS, and I worked my way up to the AI manager. But I'm also a product of CPS. Proud CPS student, K through 12. So it feels good leading this work in the system that I grew up in.
[02:31] Jacob Kantor: Amazing. I love that backstory. And I do want to double-click into the edtech side of the house because I feel like I live in this world. But Jenn, I'm going to turn it over to you to kind of set the stage and kick us off.
[02:46] Jenn Womble: Yeah, so we are so incredibly grateful that you're both here today and really What we are talking about is how you take a vision that you want to employ something in a district and have high-volume usage and a lot of capacity. So we're kind of gonna be telling the story with some very specific strategies today around Chicago Public Schools. And kind of just to set the tone, this is a bellwether district. The rest of the country really looks to you all for guidance. You've set the stage. You're one of the largest, most diverse districts. Right. with a really amazing history of rich leadership, dealing with equity in different and new ways, dealing with diverse populations. I think I've read there's over 100 languages spoken in your district, so we can tell there's a lot of ethnicity, a lot of diversities. You have a lot of needs that we know, and when you guys do something, everybody notices, right? And so we really wanted to look at how did you take that entire Chicago Public public schools and the challenges you're currently facing. Because I think what Jacob and I are talking almost every day and sharing articles about what's happening around the whole country, declining enrollments, shortage of teachers. So Illinois is not the only one dealing with this. And you already mentioned the AI policy frameworks that are coming about. So with all of this in mind, I'm really appreciative that you're here to tell this story. So I think I'm going to start off with a little bit of your history and kind of shape us and tell us, Lorne, like, What was the primary problem and the reason why CPS wanted to use AI, and what is that solving for you all? And how did it come about, maybe even?
[04:24] Lorne Rodriguez: Yeah, absolutely. So this is over 2 years in the making in CPS. Back in January of 2024, our CIO at the time and our Deputy Chief of Teaching and Learning at the time, decided that we need to have a governing body around AI in the district. And so they've— they joined forces and created our very first AI steering committee. We met for the very first time in January 2024, and we were meeting every 2 weeks at that point. And when I say it's— it was the CIO and the Deputy Chief of Teaching and Learning, they brought together other leaders from various different departments. And it continued to grow and evolve. By July of that year, we released our very first AI guidebook, which is our overarching guidance for the district. Throughout those discussions, we made the decision to go with a guidebook and not a policy, specifically because this technology and field is evolving way too fast to try to codify something in a policy that by the time it gets reviewed, approved, and published, it would have to be edited. And so our guidebook allows us that functionality or that the ability to actually update it. So every 3 to 6 months we update the guidebook. And since we are now over 2 years since the initial one launched, we are on version 6 of our guidebook. And since that, we actually received feedback from our stakeholders. And that's another part of it as well, right? Not just the evolving nature of this field and the technology, but we wanted to incorporate feedback from our stakeholders whenever possible. And so some feedback we received is that the guidebook, it's definitely high-level guidance for all of our stakeholders for the district at large. And our educators wanted a little bit more targeted guidance around generative AI use in the classroom. And so one of our operating committees actually wrote the Instructional GenAI Playbook, which very much is focused on the classroom use with exemplars, meaningful use, as well as meaningful avoidance of AI in the classroom. And so we have our very first version of that published at the end of last school year. And so we're in a revision cycle phase for both the guidebook and the playbook right now. And so we have different groups in there writing comments, and we'll be publishing these— the version 7 of the guidebook and version 2 of the playbook sometime in the next couple of months.
[07:04] Jenn Womble: So, Lorne, can I ask you, did that committee— were you already a Google district, or did you guys decide which, you know, AI tool you were going to use? I love that your guidebook has more advances than Gemini does, so you've got more iterations. You're, you're keeping up with the speed of Gemini. So just curious, the backstory on that in the very beginning.
[07:26] Lorne Rodriguez: Yeah, we, we've been a Google district for quite some time, um, and so, um, before I joined CPS, we were already a Google district using Google Workspace as our main platform. And so everything we do is in Docs, Sheets, Slides. We have a district curriculum called Skyline, which we built specifically to provide high-quality curriculum to all of our teachers and students. It's not mandated, but it is readily available and accessible by all of our teachers and students. It is vetted as high quality, and it is— Yeah. full-year content. So a teacher could start at the beginning of the school year and have everything they would need for a whole school year for 7 different content areas in grades PK through 12. And all of the materials for that is on Google Docs, Slides, Sheets. So definitely Google has been a big part of everything that we've been doing.
[08:21] Jenn Womble: Nice. And was the Google team involved when you were just having those AI conversations in the very beginning?
[08:28] Lorne Rodriguez: In the very beginning, it was very internal because we wanted to make sure that we were actually bringing the various leaders and voices and roles and responsibilities across the district to the table. And so that's why the initial steering committee was formed in partnership between the teaching and learning side and the ITS side of the house. And that has even evolved even more. So we have the steering committee, and then we also have 4 operating committees that sit below the steering committee. And we also have 3 working groups that sit below that. The working groups aren't different people than the operating committees. They're just different mix of those people in the operating committees. And over all of 5 of those groups, we have about 130 individuals from across 30 different offices and departments across all of CPS, including about 30 different school leaders, assistant principals or principals who all sit on a specific school leader group. And all 5 of those groups oversee all of the evolution of our governance and literacy for AI. And we are in the process of forming more of like an advisory council, which would include external partners. Nice.
[09:37] Jenn Womble: Thanks.
[09:39] Jacob Kantor: Wow. A couple of highlights just from my brain, even kind of in these first 8 or 9 minutes, is A, it was 2 years of you guys really being intentional. And, you know, we all share a common friend, I'm sure, in Rob Dixon. And as we were on stage last year at EdTech Week, I think he said, hey, my word for 2026 is going to be being intentional with anything I spend time in, but also intentional on the products I put in front of my teachers, my students. And all the staff. And I think along with that is all the different stakeholders, right? And even this dynamic of like all the principals, the assistant principals getting comments, people are in documents and sharing comments, and this is going to be the 7th version of this. It's like, A, that just brings all the joy to me because you guys are being very thoughtful and it's almost like out of necessity, right? You guys have a huge system. Yeah. But I just wanted to kind of highlight that for our listeners where, right, this wasn't, hey, let's put this together in the next 30 days and get something out to folks. This is a process that took you guys some time, and now you guys are on the 7th version of this. And like, this was very intentional.
[10:59] Steven Butschi: And if I can add to that too, I think intentional is the perfect word, Jacob. And even from the beginning, Lorne, when you all rolled out at Chicago Public Schools Google Classroom and Chromebooks and Workspace, there was this intentionality around how do we bring teachers and ensure that they have not just access to the tools, but actually training. And one of my favorite stories was when the creation of this PD series called Googlepalooza. So bringing upon, you know, Lollapalooza happening in Chicago. And now every year, I think it's been over for a decade now that you all hosted Googlepalooza. They just had it this past week or so. And this idea of how do we ensure that people don't just have access to great tools, but they can use it effectively to support that high instructional— High quality. high-quality instructional material and to support the curriculum goals as opposed to just using tech for tech's sake.
[11:47] Jenn Womble: And Lorne, maybe you can tell us how you have really integrated Gemini and some of the AI tools into that training and into the pedagogy. I love this idea of having a curriculum that's aligned to your district that everybody's using. That's really beautiful. So how did you then decide how to integrate, you know, AI into that?
[12:10] Lorne Rodriguez: I want to make a quick note. It seems like my internet's going in and out. So just as a heads up for everyone, I did hear everything that was going on. I'll answer the question, but I just want to give you a heads up. So in terms of incorporating Gemini and the Google AI products into our training, because we are a Google district, all of our adult stakeholders have access to the Google AI products. So Gemini, Notebook, And everything that comes in Gemini, including Gems and Canvas. And because it's integrated into the Google Workspace and everything we do is in Drive, it is a tool that we actually incorporate and we make sure to incorporate into our training. My team has built out what we call our AI Accelerator training, where it's like we do various versions, but the most intensive version is an 8-hour training spread across 2 days, 4 hours a day. And the first about hour and a half, The first half of the first half, so the first quarter of the program is all foundational AI literacy. So we don't even talk about tools or use. We talk about bias, energy consumption, prejudice, and everything that we should know about how artificial— what the difference between artificial intelligence and generative AI is, how it was trained, how they were developed, so that we become informed users or decision makers when we want to choose to use or not to use these tools. And then we— the other components of that training is specifically on Gemini, Gems, Canvas, Notebook, given the integration into our Drive, how we can leverage, pull in Drive files, create slides, or tools like Vids that somewhat recently became like a core feature. great tool to have incorporated into our Google Workspace and is really allowing our teams to build out more instructional content, like training content in terms of like vids or videos instead of just slide decks. But yeah, it's a key component because everyone has access to it. It's a part of our— the main workspace that we spend our time integrated into our Drive. So it's key for our stakeholders to really know how to use these tools.
[14:28] Jenn Womble: I love that you're starting with the AI literacy piece. And I have seen several trainers use Quickdraw as the way to teach AI literacy because you can actually use Quickdraw and see the data behind it, and you can understand the pieces and parts and understand the prediction model. So there's so many beautiful pieces in Google that help teach the AI literacy, but I love that you do that piece first so that that groundwork is already built and you all are creating a mission focus of like, how are we now going to improve our pedagogy based on this with a So it's really a beautiful model. I know a lot of districts are probably hearing this and thinking, okay, we need to build this in and not make AI literacy just another training, but make it really woven into the fabric of how we want teaching and learning to look. So I definitely want to call that out because that's a great piece. I'm hearing a lot of districts having so many segmented and siloed trainings, AI literacy, then AI fluency, and now you use the tool, and now you do this. It's really interesting that you guys made that decision to be really intentional about putting that together, and I applaud that work because it really clarifies what the mission is of the work you're doing. So I'm going to ask you just a kind of an interesting overview question. What kind of tools are you seeing that the teachers are really enjoying the most or using the most from a usage perspective? Because there's so many amazing things right now.
[15:50] Lorne Rodriguez: Definitely Gems and Notebook. I think are the two. Those are the two that we spend a little bit more time on as well, because they— we think that they provide the most value in terms of like being able to build out gems for a specific purpose. And just everything that Notebook provides, I think, is just amazing. It's just an amazing platform. So we definitely focus a little bit more on those two. But the ones a little bit more advanced users are leveraging Canvas a lot more as well, which also is just another amazing component of Gemini.
[16:25] Jenn Womble: Can your students access Canvas as well? Can your— do they have access or is it just your teachers?
[16:30] Lorne Rodriguez: Just our teachers.
[16:32] Jenn Womble: Okay. Okay. Very good. Interesting.
[16:35] Steven Butschi: It— I've heard some amazing use cases to your point around Notebook and allowing folks to treat different modalities of understanding topics in new ways, whether it's podcasts. I serve on the board of a college and I took A whole bunch of, whether it be presentations from the president, handbooks for the board, even files of our budget. And I mashed it all together into a podcast that I listened to while I was driving there. And it's fascinating to see how you can— this can be used both for learning, but also on the administrative side and how people are using that to improve the operations of their schools and their districts. So I agree, it's fascinating to see everything that's coming out of Chicago Public Schools. And I think to your point on intentionality, I think you all have done such a good job of thinking through how and when to make tools available. Yeah. available for certain populations. And I know, Lorne, you all are thinking next on how and when to bring students along on that journey, if you want to talk about that.
[17:31] Lorne Rodriguez: Yep, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, so we do have it off for students at the moment, specifically because, just generally speaking, we think there's a lack of research on the impact of generative AI tools on students. We see a lot of value or potential value with these tools. And so we want to take that structured, intentional approach on Actually have shifted the strategy to be more school-based in terms of saying, you as a school with your school leader and the educators at the school, do y'all feel ready about turning this on for your students? So that community can make the decision about turning it on for their students so that the teachers are ready to say, these are instructional shifts I'm going to make because now I know that my students can access Gemini in the classroom, or I can start leveraging creating notebooks or gems and sharing those with students. From a school leader perspective, being aware that both educators and students would be leveraging Gemini in the school. And so there's a lot of consideration and thought that is going into how do we roll this out? Because months back, it was a thought, maybe we turn it on for high school students. And Based on discussions we had with school leaders and educators and internally, we said we need to shift to actually making sure that we have like this readiness metric, which we're kind of overarching calling a future readiness. And not just because we used to be calling it AI readiness, but we want to evolve that into more about future readiness as AI is a component of what everything else that's going to be evolving and happening as we move forward.
[19:11] Jenn Womble: And Lorne, how are you seeing from the district lens the actual school leaders really approach this? I love this community approach to readiness, but are they kind of taking the lead in role modeling? Are they learning alongside your teachers? Like, what is the expectation for leaders in your district as well?
[19:30] Lorne Rodriguez: They are definitely working alongside. They want to learn how to leverage these tools to support the work that they're doing. We've had various different individuals across the governance groups who are supporting and building tools specifically for the school leaders. And so we have something called the CIWP, which is a continuous improvement work plan. It's like a 3-year plan that school leaders have to put in place for their individual schools. And we had somebody on that team who was building GEMS specifically to support school leaders in building the CIWP, as well as evaluating or revising the CIWP as the the time progresses throughout their 3-year plan. And so finding those use cases for the school leader and how these tools can really enhance their, whatever it is they need to do, and CIWP just being one example of that, is where we're focusing a lot of our time right now, is how can we find those specific high-value use cases for a school leader and support them in building these tools that can tap right into that use case.
[20:36] Jenn Womble: Yeah, I love setting the example because I did read an article about a principal in your area that canceled faculty meetings and had everybody listen to the podcast in Notebook instead that day and how they were— she was modeling how to give back time. And I thought that's really brilliant as a district to utilize your leaders as the role models for this use. So I really applaud that, the work you're doing to support the leaders at the top too, because sometimes actually they're the ones who get left out in the process. Yeah. And so it's hard to build a community around if you're not really focusing on those initiatives.
[21:11] Jacob Kantor: Jenn, thanks for that. And Steven, I wanted to throw it to you because it's funny because this theme we will have to like pluck into this episode of really being intentional, right? So like even going back 2 years ago as Chicago Public was thinking about their Not just policy, but also rollout and what this looks like across all the schools. And, you know, myself being in LA, right, like a huge system where you have to be intentional or it's just going to get lost because there's 1,000 schools in LAUSD and like everyone has different students based on what part of LA you are in. But I wonder, like, you know, going back 2 years and really it seemed like you guys already had a really good relationship with the Chicago Public School team. So I wonder Can you take us back into the Wayback Machine and give us the, like, how did that come to be as they were thinking about AI? You guys were obviously— Google as a whole has been working on all of this stuff for a long, long time. But how did that— what was the genesis of that relationship taking form?
[22:22] Steven Butschi: Well, and to what we mentioned earlier, the good news is that there's been a strong relationship for over a decade between Google and Chicago Public Schools, whether it be working on Chromebooks together or Workspace or Google Classroom. And so it was a natural evolution when AI was coming out that talking with Lorne and his humans, thinking about how are you all approaching this? What support do you need from us? What controls do you need? And then part of that, as you heard from Lorne too, is that it's important that districts control who they enable it for. So providing that granular capability, they could say, we want it on for all of our staff, or we want it on for just our 12th graders, or we want to give it to schools, and schools can make that decision. So making sure that there's that granularity of choice. Another thing that we heard too through that process was that there's a lot of great AI tools, but what you use in your consumer life and just putting an EDU label on it is maybe not the best. You know, Lorne was talking earlier about how does this affect learning? How does this affect children? And so one thing that we decided was, could we take the power of Gemini, but essentially add a layer, which we call LearnLM, to make it more appropriate for schools? So we're looking at what does great learning science principles say about how learning happens. And one of it, for example, is that a great tutor helps deepen metacognition, asking you to think about your learning. A deep tutor stimulates curiosity. It doesn't just give you the content, it makes you curious to learn more. A deep learn— a great tutor is going to ensure that the content is being scaffolded and you're not getting too much at once. And so we started thinking about how could we embed that into Gemini in a school experience? And so we created this guided learning process within Gemini, where now a teacher can assign a guided learning to a student, and it has that Socratic method and those learning science principles built in. And that's where it's been really helpful working with Chicago and other schools. Miami, for example, all of their high school students have access to Gemini. And I think that they're doing a great job of thinking about, to Lorne's point, where should we use and where should we not use AI? And that's what I've seen in Miami, for example, that they've mentioned. They'll message their students and they'll say, We don't recommend using it here, but here's a great way that you can use it as you prepare for finals. Here's one way that you can use flashcards in Gemini Notebook. And so I think that that's the intentional use of— it's not just using tech for tech's sake, but how can we actually think through what is my end goal and where can tech support me there, but using it really purposefully and to the point of this episode, intentionally.
[24:54] Jenn Womble: Yeah. What's really interesting being from Florida, there's been a lot of highlight and I serve on the Florida AI Task Force and Miami-Dade has been the shining star example because they did similar, Lorne, to what you've done, is train teachers really well on Gemini before they move forward with implementation. And they're also in conjunction with the University of Florida doing deep research on what that looks like and what the outcomes are. So we've been having a lot of conversations about outcomes-based contracting and outcomes-based products. So, Lorne, my question for you is like, what are you all looking for as the outcomes of leveraging AI? What are, what is it that you're looking for and how are you gonna be able to measure if this is all working?
[25:35] Lorne Rodriguez: That's, that's the question, I think, is how do we measure? And that's where we're moving into this school year is a focus on impact, measuring the impact of the foundational infrastructure that was built over the first year that I was in this position, the building on that infrastructure in the second year to actually build out AI literacy programs and badges and the AI governance framework with all those different groups. So moving into this year, now that we have that solid foundation and the systems to actually push things out, now we need to start measuring. Is it having a positive impact on the stakeholders? Is it doing what we want it to do? And should we be making any changes to it? So we've been having a lot of discussions around how do we do that? And setting baselines, I think, is the first step. Is like, how do we measure current state so that we can see what the change is time year over year? And one of those is we, at the beginning of last school year, we launched our anonymous generative AI survey to the whole district, and we had just around 500 respondents to it, which I was really actually excited to see 500 people respond to our survey. And We are relaunching it this year. And so it is becoming an annual generative AI survey at the start of the school year so that we can actually— that can be one metric in terms of measuring year-over-year change from the responses to the survey. And again, anonymous, so they can feel free. All of our stakeholders can feel free to respond however they feel. That's just one component, but we've been doing a ton of stakeholder engagement as well. So we've been running— focus groups with various different stakeholders, as well as one-on-one interviews with leaders, so executive directors and above, building out stakeholder analysis, determining where are we missing things, where we do, what are we doing really well, how do we tap into the infrastructure that we've built out, including we've built out a change champion network. We have a community of practice that we call the CPS Neural Network, which is Made up of over about 600 now stakeholders from across the district, various roles and responsibilities really meant to connect stakeholders from across the entire district. So teachers who might never have connected with a teacher on the other side of the city, teachers who might not have been able to connect with a school leader or district leader, now all in the same space having conversations about AI. And so how do we leverage those to have that impact and measure that impact? So that is the focus for this. This year. Can't say I have the answers for that right now, but I hope that by the end of this school year, we will have specific metrics that we have been able to say, this is where we need to improve. This is what we've been doing really well. We need to double down on. And maybe this is something that we need to— we can just stop doing because it's not having a positive or negative impact and it's just kind of taking up our time.
[28:42] Jenn Womble: Absolutely. And I think in addition to our word of intention, it's got to be iteration because you all are iterating your professional development over time, which is at lightning speed, almost as fast as a next version is coming out of AI. So that's very commendable because a lot of times people get that one training and it's done. But it sounds like creating networks and communities and ongoing conversations over time. I'm curious because we are constantly a little bit joking about every night on X there's a new update on AI. You know, how are you guys in a large district pushing out updates, or are you holding them until it's an appropriate time? Or— because as things are happening so quickly in a district that's that large, how are you sharing updates with all of your, you know, leaders and teachers?
[29:35] Lorne Rodriguez: So we do a couple things specifically with regards to updates in the field. Uh, the first is Every week in that CPS Neural Network, which is a Google Classroom, actually, we do a weekly What's New in AI. And so we do a post that is about the news, both education-focused as well as non-education, just so people have an internal source of updates from various news sources or research or anything happening. Our AI steering committee meets once a month. And we start every session with a What's New in AI. So we crowdsource news articles, research, and we, we go over about 3 of them. But we typically have anywhere from like 7 to 8 topics or news that we, we include on that What's New in AI slide. So that's really how we make sure to bring in— External things that are happening or things that directly impact us, like maybe regulation changes in the state of Illinois. Things like that. But in terms of pushing out things to the broader community who might not be in the CPS Neural Network or the AI Steering Committee, we have found that most of our stakeholders aren't really that up to speed on things anyway. So they're like, the rapid evolution of like models or tools that are coming out don't really matter to them as much. And so we're— but we, We make sure to adjust anything that impacts our training directly so that while we are training different groups throughout the school year, our training is always up to date. And we also communicate with previous teams that we've trained to make sure that they receive the updates on things. And so that's kind of how we've approached that side.
[31:24] Jacob Kantor: And Steven, you know, as I was prepping for this, I was like going in the Wayback Machine of like being on Google's campus for the event that I I actually think that that's where we met for the first time, was at that event. But I remember going to the 12 different tables, and one of them was the NotebookLM team. One of them was like, there were so many different teams showing you, hey, this is what we're working on. This is what we're working on. And I remember even the conversation we had, because it was, I want to say, before ISTE, before you guys launched all of the tools. And I remember vividly talking to you, and I'm the weirdo that's always like, I think you should talk to this person, and I think this person should talk to this person, and we should all talk. And I remember being like, hey, we should talk to Dr. Richard Charles because A, he is deep in all of this. I know Denver is deep in all this, but you know that last table? I swear that last table is building all the admin tools that he actually already uses. So I don't know if you remember that, but vividly, it's in my brain that I remember At one point during the day, I was like, oh man, they listened. Like, they're all talking. And I remember you were there with Dr. Charles, and you guys were talking about, like, admin tools. And this is way before the ISTE announcement with all the teacher tools. But I wonder, like, give us everything. I know you guys are such a unique organization where, like, you're constantly iterating as well, right? Making sure tools are properly rolled out. There's pedagogy behind it. There's research making educators lives easier. Like, where did this all come from? Like, did that have some emphasis, that event from the Wayback Machine? Like, give us kind of under the hood how some of these things are taking place.
[33:22] Steven Butschi: Absolutely, it did. And there are 3 things as I reflect. I remember that day in California very well, Jacob, and it is those conversations. I think I took away 3 things. And as we were thinking about product roadmaps, They've certainly influenced us. Well, one, let me— before I get into my 3 things, the first is one takeaway we've heard from a lot of these conferences is people want Gemini Notebooks that stay up to date with automatic Google Drive syncing. We hear you. It is coming. So you will now not have to resync all your documents in Gemini Notebooks. So thank you for that feedback. But tactically, and at a higher level, even more philosophically, I think we walked away with 3 things. The first is we need to make sure that AI tools are built with learning in mind, hence why we created LearnLM. And I think We were debuting some of that at that time, Jacob, when we met there, and we realized that we need to have strong learning science principles, but we continue to iterate on that. For example, we just announced at ISTE this year that we now have support for ACT and GREs with no-cost practice tests, which my parents would've been so happy if I had had this, because I had to pay for all of the SAT, ACT prep, and that stuff's not cheap. So it is great to be able to have This equitable access to help students prepare for those exams. The second thing is, how do we keep educators in the lead? And that's why I love what Chicago Public Schools and Lorne and team are doing, is they really have made sure that educators are in the lead in making decisions. And that means a few things. One, that this needs to be led by teachers. Two, that it's rooted in curriculum. And three, that they can actually get insights and understanding, especially when some of those schools start to make those AI tools available to students, having teachers have a window into what they're doing and what they're learning. And so So we just launched at ISTE this new feature where you can assign guided learning Gemini exercises in Classroom. And then with Class Tools, teachers can lock the students' screens to ensure that they're staying in guided learning. But what that provides is that teachers are, not only are students getting that safe Socratic experience, but teachers also getting insights in the class. They can go on the back level and look at both class level, but student level, determining what concept are they grasping. And we're using AI to help create those insights. So, you know, if you're learning about Newton's, in physics, Newton's law, thermodynamics or something like that, it can say they're grasping this concept but not this concept, and you can see how they're engaging and where they're struggling. And so I think, you know, obviously it's clear that I need to go back to school about Newton's law of physics because I did not grasp that very well. But I think that that is very helpful of keeping educators in the lead, ensuring that they've got visibility. And the last thing that we heard is, while Chicago and many other schools use a lot of Google products, It's not the only thing. And so how do we create interoperability? And so we've been spending a lot of time on LTI, which is this idea that you can bring together Gemini tools within Moodle or Canvas or Schoology or other products. So that way you're getting the power of AI there. So there's a lot moving, and it comes from those experiences, Jacob, of chatting with schools and understanding how do they want AI to show up and what do we need to build in order to make sure that it's not just a consumer tool going into schools, but instead— Right. It's really purpose-built for learning and for education.
[36:40] Jenn Womble: And I love that 2 of the tools you just mentioned actually get us closer to the goal of personalized learning, because that has been our goal for, I don't even know, 10, 20 years we've been saying that word. But you just talked about giving immediate and personalized feedback, which every teacher is dreaming of getting inside the head of the student, like, did they get it? But if they can actually see individual feedback, that's so powerful. And then the fact that they can have all of that at their disposal really quickly, you know, And not having to wait a really long time to get that feedback is so powerful for teachers. And I love that you guys are listening to this community because we're getting so much closer. We know that that Socratic method is the only way we can get the 2 sigma problem solved and we can get real learning happening. And it sounds like you guys are getting closer to really creating situations and learning environments where kids are empowered and can have agency with these tools and take charge of their learning. And it's actually so exciting to hear about what's happening. So I'm going to for a little bit of a sneak peek. Like, what can we look for? Like, what's coming next? What— there's so many things that are happening, but in the education field, I do love that Lorne said they're protecting their teachers and not trying to overflow them with too much at once, let them focus on teaching. I really admire that approach. But what are we seeing? Like, what's on the horizon? Like, what can we look forward to coming next?
[38:02] Steven Butschi: I will tell you that one thing tactically on Gemini Notebooks that we were talking about earlier, One request we got is to easily share your content with Gemini Notebooks publicly. And so that is tactically coming, which will be great, where admins will still remain in control and can decide who in their organization can share public notebooks. But the ability that if you're at one school and want to share, you know, what your notebook is or on your curriculum to another neighboring district, that will be possible. But at a high level, there's 2 areas we've been thinking about. One is how can we continue to make it easier for educators to leverage AI. And I think you were just mentioning all the great work that Chicago Public Schools is doing around professional development. We're thinking about that from 2 aspects. One, how can we have a refreshed Gemini tab in Classroom that brings together what are common journeys that educators are going through, and how can we make it with one click really easy to use AI to improve that journey? So for example, whether it's lesson planning or creating hooks or creating rubrics, we want to make sure that that's very easy to accomplish quickly. Secondly, as part of making it easier for educators to leverage AI, as we know, there's a ton of professional development that needs to happen. I think, Jenn, you were sharing that about 90% of students are using AI, but only a little less than 50% have even gotten even a few minutes of AI training. And so we earlier this year made a commitment to, we say we want at least every educator in the United States, all 6 million between K-12 and higher ed, to have some sort of free bite-sized, we call it snackable and stackable training. So we've been working on the Google AI Educator Series, which are modules which are about 10 to 15 minutes. You get a badge after each one. You can stack these. So it gives at least a little bit of that foundational learning. And Lorne has been great. He came out to an event we did in Mountain View and is giving feedback on how we continue to develop the training, what content we need to be putting in there. So that is really important. It's free, no cost. We encourage all educators to check it out. But then the second piece, and where I see us going, is how do we start to automate certain activities so we can really allow educators to focus on the human experience of teaching and learning? And so an example of that is, let's say you're a teacher and you send a snippet or a recap to your principal every week at the end of the week. Could we start to automate using Google Workspace Studio, where you could have a draft that's populated in your email box that, you know, goes through Google Classroom or goes through your Gmail or goes through your chats and gives you a couple of those bullet points? Yeah. So you're not starting from scratch, and it's personalized, it's protected under your terms of service. So it's confidential, it's FERPA compliant. But how do we start to create some of that agentic process? So that way then, if I look back at, you know, my school experience, sometimes I don't even remember everything I learned, hence why I need to go back for physics. But I do remember the teachers, and that is the powerful piece. I'm sure all of us could raise a hand and think about a teacher that made a difference in our life. And it wasn't a piece of tech, it wasn't a book per se, it's about that human connection. So how can we leverage tech to reinforce that? Yeah.
[41:07] Jenn Womble: And I love that thinking that it's actually amplifying the teacher in the classroom, like giving every teacher an assistant that we know we can't financially do that, right? But these tools could actually empower it in some way. So it's super exciting. Jacob has 2 young ones back to school this fall, so we're thinking a lot about students. So I'm just curious, we've talked a lot about the adults in the system trying to solve problems, but what is Google thinking about where students should be? Where with what they're learning as well? Like, should it be coming from the teachers? Are you guys providing platforms? We know kids after hours are obviously on Google. So what is Google thinking about for kids even outside the school day?
[41:47] Steven Butschi: Yeah, we're making things like guided learning available for consumer use cases as well. And we want to make sure that they're in a safe and protected environment. So certainly, and that's where also having a lot of parental controls, ensuring that parents can control that experience on how their kids are interacting. And so we think, and I hope, I think that there's a powerful piece where AI can help let us engage in our curiosities. I remember when the internet, you know, was coming and becoming popular within schools, and I was like, wow, I'm really interested in planes. I want to go deeper. And now to think that we can actually contextualize that. So when I go to my physics class, now I'm learning about it from a plane perspective. So I'm even more interested and can retain it. But I think there's a tremendous amount of potential of how we can allow students to engage in their passions. But also personalize that. And it gets to your point, Jenn, around that 2 sigma problem and how we can give more of that personalization.
[42:43] Jenn Womble: Yeah. And after-school time is— Jacob and I talk about this all the time— the kids that don't have parents at home. Here in Florida, 1 out of every 22 kids has a parent incarcerated. So we— kids need to be learning outside the school day. And because you guys are creating these incredible programs that they could access, that actually is a lot of equity. That's a lot of equity in our system that doesn't always have it. And it gives students access to resources in the after-school hours a lot of them really need. So I love that what Chicago Public Schools is doing during the day and setting that groundwork, but that's also building better citizens for tomorrow and better students. So it's really exciting to see what's coming up next. It is. I think that's a place that we really look to.
[43:25] Steven Butschi: I think you're right. And what I also love is I'm seeing more and more districts are actually engaging with their communities and they're helping parents that want to build their AI literacy and they're helping understand, especially as there are questions around screen time, I think the parents are starting to understand through that process of it's about screen value and what are, when are we using the technology and for what reason and how it can be very helpful, just like a car. It can be very helpful and, uh, it can also be not helpful. And so if I'm taking the car to walk, you know, uh, just down the block, maybe that's not super useful and a waste of my time. So I think that that's that professional development that's happening both for employees and staff members, but also for community members is really fantastic.
[44:05] Jenn Womble: We want to circle back to Chicago Public Schools just a little bit, and maybe because you've worked with so many districts, can you tell us like what's been the secret ingredient to making it really work well in this district? Because obviously they've talked a little about the framework, the policy, the implementation, but like, is there some secret— what's the secret sauce that people could copy from Chicago Public Schools as you've seen different districts and you're able to compare with that lens?
[44:32] Steven Butschi: I think that they— there's 3 things that I've seen, taking a step back. The first is that they've thought about where teachers are and where they're spending their time and helping integrate AI into that process. So you mentioned, Lorne, you talked a lot about Google Drive and that teachers are spending a lot of time there. So how can we build in AI into those processes? I think that's one. The second is the intentionality. I think to your point, they started with, let's create an internal committee. We're not engaging with external tools. We're thinking about what do we want to accomplish as a district? And not just saying, well, we've launched this tool or this tool. It's about what are the goals for that? And I love their operating committees and the workgroups that they've put together because it really fleshes out that question. And then the third is their commitment to professional development. As I mentioned, they're engaging with us on the Google AI Educator Series, but you've heard that they've then taken content from that and from other places and really built in 8 hours full of really important pieces from the ground up of what is AI to how do I actually use this to personalize learning or things like that. So I would say those are 3 things if you're in your district to check, you know, how are we weighing against that? Where are teachers spending our time and how can we ensure AI is embedded there to help them? How do we think about our goals? And then how do we ensure that people have professional development so they can use it effectively?
[45:47] Jenn Womble: Jacob and I talk a lot. We don't get a lot of renewals if we haven't done the PD right. So a lot of districts, if the PD piece is not there and the teachers don't understand it and they're not using it, then they're not going to continue to have that as a product and be efficient. So I think that that partnership that Google is bringing with them for training, they're not being left by themselves. It's the first thing they're thinking about, not the afterthought. Jacob, do you think— we've had this conversation about that before too. What do you think? Yeah.
[46:20] Jacob Kantor: Yeah, you know, I think going back to kind of where we started this and being really intentional, right, on how the tech serves families, students, teachers, the principals, the district leaders, the board members, right? Like one of my conversations even earlier today was around getting everybody on the same page so everybody's rowing in the same direction. Yeah. Versus you have a board member that is not rowing in the same direction, and you put in 2 years of work into a system-wide rollout that's very thoughtful with lots of intentionality, and then one person kind of derails it. So it's like, this is a refreshing conversation for me. But as we wrap, we want to be mindful of Steven has a lot of responsibilities on his plate, and same thing with Lorne. Yeah. Steven, what's giving you the, like, we're going to have lots of superintendents, cabinet members, technology leaders listening. Like, what action would you encourage everybody to take if it's a district leader that wants to find out more about what you guys are doing? Like, give us some action items. We're forever the, like, you heard something here, something sparked curiosity, joy. action, like what one action would we encourage everybody to take?
[47:49] Steven Butschi: Oh, I can't just give you one, Jacob. Can I have 3? Yes. I think the first is check out that Google AI Educator Series and see if there's content. To your point, Jenn, you might want to mix in other content that you have, but it's at least a spot to get started. And there's a little bit of a framework that can allow you to think about how you want to engage. PD and engage your staff and administration to think about AI. The second is, I'd say, play. I think Lauren and Jenn both recommended Gemini Canvas, which is the ability to use natural language, the hottest coding language there is today, English language, to build things. And I was working with an educator and she was building a Jeopardy game. It took her 5 minutes to personalize. I think it was on the history of a certain state. Yeah. And it's like, that's such a cool way that would've taken hours to build something like that before. And now you're using that to engage the class in a fun activity. It's personalized to her curriculum on what she needed to teach or the standards she wanted to make sure were accomplished. And then the third piece is, I would encourage you all, if you haven't checked out Gemini Notebook, also called NotebookLM, it is fantastic for other parts of your life. I was speaking with an administrator in Missouri and she's like, I actually use Gemini Notebook to get this job. And I was like, tell me more. She said, I took it in my resume, the job description, I put in the school strategic plan, and I was saying, give me, what are some of the interview questions you think they'll bring up? What are some of the unique traits that I have? And she's like, it was a great, essentially mock interview to help me prepare and learn more about the district and think through the interview process. And so, even though we talk a lot about learning and education, think about it for your own development too, your career development, your ability to to grow as a person. So those would be my piece of advice.
[49:40] Jenn Womble: I love it. And there's an entire new vocabulary that's here, because now I'll be with teachers and they're talking about gems and they're talking about— it's just interesting, all the different vocabulary. I never thought I would hear teachers talking about vibe coding, right? And so, and friction. And so it's so interesting that it's, I think for a lot of teachers, it's bringing the energy and the excitement back. I mean, for some of the most recent reports is that the teacher satisfaction is on the rise right now. And I actually think it's because they have access to tools that are actually really helping them, and it makes it exciting and fun. And I actually just saw a teacher in the grocery store, and she was like, you know that first week we have to teach them all the classroom rules and all that? She goes, but I went into Canvas and I created a game to where they're playing a game about the rules in the classroom, and now everybody loves it. So it has taken things some of the times that we have to do, or the parts that are necessary aligned to the standards, But it's actually bringing a lot of energy and life to the classroom. So I'm excited about what Google is doing, and I love all the new language. I think we could have a new vocabulary for education based on all these terms, but that's what's making it fun again and bringing life back to it. So it's a good thing. All right, Jacob, we've been talking about what we're looking forward to this year with the school year, right? So what are you looking forward to, Jacob? You got to tell us. Let's all end with what we're looking
[51:03] Jacob Kantor: forward Ooh, I'm looking forward to watching my kinder and 2nd grader develop into their unique selves at school. Just the learning, new friends. We're making goals for the kids. They have to make their own goals. I just suggest some things. So they have to make their own goals for the year. And the goals are like making friends, having playdates, getting my next belt in karate, but really looking forward to the family side of, uh, seeing them grow, uh, and experience new teachers, new friends, more speech therapy, all the family stuff. That's what I'm always looking forward to for sure. But I'll throw it, uh, Steven, same question to you.
[51:54] Steven Butschi: I am looking forward to all the ways that there's new creations, new things that are gonna happen because as you mentioned, technology is constantly iterating. And I'm looking forward to hearing about some of those use cases that, you know, we have an idea sometimes when we launch a tool like, oh, we might use it for this or that. For example, we were launching Lyria, which is in Gemini where you can generate a 30-second song. And I was like, I wonder how they're gonna use this in schools. And then I was talking to a superintendent and he said, we actually have a really tense situation right now in our district where we're doing, we're gonna close some schools and we're, Redistricting some boundaries. And he said, we actually started the meeting of school board meeting where we create a 30-second light song about, you know, we're all in this together. We're making sure that we're focusing on students and, and success of our district. And it just took the temperature down a little bit. And I was like, I had never thought of that. Not a use case that I thought about, uh, Lyria. So I'm excited to see about all the new ways that people are using technology to support their Yeah, and
[52:59] Jenn Womble: I'll have to share, I'm looking forward to a lot of, kind of a little bit of a rebirth of our administrators, because we work with a lot of district administrators who have been over the last few years faced with a lot of navigating a lot of challenges and a lot of burdens. But I have seen them start to leverage, kind of similar to what you're saying, Steven, create creative ways to leverage these AI tools that are actually helping them in their career, speaking with more teachers, speaking with more principals, how they're doing evaluations, Improving things at their district level, like even bus routes and, you know, using this in a way that they hadn't explored before. And it's kind of bringing the life back. I'm excited to see the people and the humanity kind of really being reinvigorated because now AI is really a tool that's leveraging the humanity and it's shining on a lot of creativity. And I'm excited to see our— a lot of our leaders getting excited about education again and the things that are happening in the classroom. And as a whole, I'll say I'm really looking forward to society paying attention to classrooms more. Since artificial intelligence, people are really paying attention to education and what it means and why it's so important in our economy and to training students for the future. And I think that's a good thing. You know, there's a lot of conversations that we might agree or disagree with right now, but it's bringing the attention and the spotlight back to education. As you know, this is our most brilliant resource, is our children. And so I love that educators and administrators are excited again and being creative. So I'm really looking forward to that. And these kind of conversations are a result of that. Like, AI wouldn't have brought us all together for this conversation today and highlighting a district that's really phenomenal in our country. So I appreciate everyone's time. I think that's a great way for us to end.
[54:44] Jacob Kantor: Definitely. On that note, we thank the Google team for helping us coordinate. Steven, we thank you for your time. We thank the Chicago Public Schools team. We thank Lorne for his time. And Jenn, appreciative of you, appreciative involved all of you guys. And to the listeners out there, hopefully there was some nuggets of gold here. And let us know what you think of the episode and all the good work that's happening across the country and how we could all be of service to you guys. And with that, we wish you guys a positive rest of your day.
[55:16] Jenn Womble: Thanks for listening to Scaling Success. Some of the best solutions to education's biggest challenges already exist in Our schools. We are uncovering the most impactful implementations in education to share with you and scale for the future.
[55:33] Jacob Kantor: If this episode sparked an idea, pass it to one person who could use it— a superintendent, a tech leader, a teacher, or a partner working alongside a district. That's how good ideas travel.
[55:44] Jenn Womble: And if you know a program that deserves this kind of deep dive, tell us. We're We're building a national repository of ideas and frameworks worth scaling, and we want yours in it.
[55:57] Jacob Kantor: If you've had any interaction with Jenn or me, do us a huge favor. Jump on Apple or Spotify and leave us a review, and also share this with one educator that needs to hear the message.
[56:08] Jenn Womble: Great ideas, proven practice, greater impact.
[56:13] Jacob Kantor: I'm Jacob.
[56:14] Jenn Womble: And I'm Jenn.
[56:15] Jacob Kantor: See you next time.
[56:16] Jenn Womble: On Scaling Success.